Meg threw the car into reverse. She’d pull out the other way—the motel’s driveway went all the way around the building. If she couldn’t lock him up, well, she was going to have to outrun him. He might’ve been able to get out of the trunk in a snap, but it was going to take him some time to find his car keys in the woods, in the dark.
It should have been easy to do—after all, she was in a car and he was on foot. But as she hit the gas, he leapt forward, right onto the front hood.
She went faster and faster in reverse, and the car started to whine, but she wasn’t outrunning him. She was taking him with her.
He was clinging to the hood with the tips of his fingers.
Meg hit the brakes, turned the steering wheel hard, but he didn’t slip off.
She slammed the gears back into first, but all she could think was, God, what if he did slip off, and she ran him over?
She didn’t want to kill him.
The car came to a shuddering halt, and she sat there, staring at him through the windshield.
He looked back at her unblinkingly, completely motionless except for his fingers. He took the opportunity to get a better grip on the edge of the hood, right up by the windshield.
His hair was completely soaked as if he’d been standing under a shower, and water was streaming down his face.
“Please get down,” she said.
He read her lips. “No.” He shook his head.
He couldn’t hear her and she couldn’t hear him through the glass and over the roar of the rain, but she didn’t need to hear to know they’d hit a standoff.
And Meg couldn’t help it. She started to cry.
John just watched her, his face expressionless, his eyes hard. And then he said something, something about the hotel, something that was too long and complicated for her to be able to lip-read, particularly with tears blurring her vision.
She rolled down her window a half an inch.
“Cut the tears,” he said. “That may have worked to manipulate the guard back at the safe hotel, but I’m smarter than that. I’m going with you, Meg. Get used to the idea. You’re not leaving here without me—even if I have to ride like this all the way. Of course, if you try to drive on the interstate with me up here, the police will probably pull you over.”
Meg couldn’t stop crying. She should have locked him in the trunk and driven immediately away. Of course, he probably wouldn’t have gotten into the trunk if he hadn’t known it would take her some time to drag Razeen out to her car.
Damn it. Damn him.
Okay. Okay. She could handle this. After all, she was the one in the car. All she needed was for him to get down off the hood, and she’d drive away as fast as she possibly could. John was fast, but there was no way he could keep up with a car. She had the definite advantage here.
Meg wiped her eyes and got ready to hit the gas. She nodded at him through the windshield. “Okay,” she said. “You win. You can come with me.” She hit the unlock button, but kept her finger right there, on it, ready in case he started to move. “Get down off the hood.”
As soon as he got off the hood, she’d floor it.
But he didn’t move. Not an inch.
Rain was coming in through the open crack of the window, getting her even more wet than she already was.
John just looked at her, and she knew that he knew she had no intention of letting him get into her car.
“Open the passenger side window,” he countered, “and I’ll climb in from up here.”
She wiped her eyes again. God, she couldn’t stop crying.
Could she risk flooring it and try to shake him while he was climbing in? Or would the open window give him an even better handhold on the car? Even if she started raising the window the moment he began to move—which would be hard to do since she’d have to reach across and crank the window up—he’d still get his hands around the frame. And with a well-placed kick, he could easily break the half-opened window.
“Come on, Meg,” he said. “I’ll just climb in and we’ll talk while you drive. That’s all I want. Just to talk to you.”
Yeah, right. Like he wouldn’t go for her gun while she was driving? How was she supposed to drive and keep her gun on him at the same time?
No, this was why in the movies the criminals always made the kidnapped or carjacked person drive. That way they could sit in the passenger seat and hold the gun.
God, this was crazy. How had her life suddenly become a bad movie?
“I’ll shoot him,” she said. “Razeen.” Threatening that had worked before.
John’s mouth tightened. “If you do that, Meg, I can’t help you. So please don’t. Open the window and let me climb in. I need you to trust me. Right now. Please. Trust me.”
“What?” Her voice shook. “Trust you to take my gun and haul me back to DC? Because you know what’s best for me? Gee, where have I heard that before? That worked out so well the last time, didn’t it? Get off my car!”
A muscle jumped in the side of his jaw. And with the rain running down his face, he almost looked as if he were crying, too.
“I did what I thought you wanted,” he said. “That night. You had too much to drink and I didn’t want it to happen that way, Meg. Not like that. You want to talk about it? Great—it’s about time. I wanted to talk about it when I got back from the Middle East, but you’re the one who never returned my calls. Let me in. We’ll talk about it now.”
Oh, God, that long-ago night was the last thing Meg wanted to talk about—not now, not ever.
She could still feel the heat of his body, pressing her against the wall in the hallway just outside her bedroom door. She could taste his kisses, hot and sweet, feel his hands on the bare skin of her back as he peeled her dress from her shoulders and—
No. This wasn’t helping. Every minute they wasted here was a minute she wasn’t getting closer to finding Amy.
“You want me to drive?” John pressed. “Let me in the driver’s side. That way you can hang on to your gun. Come on, Meg. I just want a chance to talk to you. You drive away from here without me, you’re going to end up dead, and I’m going to end up hating myself for the rest of my life for letting you get away. Don’t do that to me.”
He was silent for a moment, just watching her through the windshield.
“I’ve let you get away too many times before,” he said quietly. She could barely hear him over the rain. “I’m not letting you go this time. Not willingly. Not when you need me—and dammit, you do need me.”
Meg shook her head. “No, I—”
“Yes,” he said. “You called me. You asked for help, and god damn it, I’m going to help you whether you like it or not.”
“You already did—”
“What are you afraid of?” he bulldozed on. “You think I’ve got another of WildCard’s tracking devices on me? Well, I don’t. Besides, if I did, it’s electronic and I’m soaked. It would’ve been ruined by the rain.”
“I’m supposed to believe that a Navy SEAL would develop a tracking device that couldn’t be used underwater?” Meg shook her head.
“This was a prototype,” he told her. “Sure, the next step is to waterproof it, but WildCard didn’t get that far—and you don’t believe me, okay, fine. I’ll . . . I’ll take off my clothes. That way you’ll see there’s nothing hidden on me.”
That way she’d also have a naked man on the hood of her car. All she’d need was one car to pull into the parking lot and . . .
Talk about drawing unwanted attention.
“Don’t,” she said sharply, understanding that that was his plan. He was trying to make it so that she had no choice—so that she had to let him into the car. “John! Stop!”
But he was doing it. He was taking off his clothes, one hand at a time—careful always to have a tight grip on the hood of her car.
He threw his jacket down onto the driveway, and then his T-shirt. Kicked off his sneakers and socks.
Unfastened his jeans.
Somehow he looked even bigger without his shirt on. “Let me in the car.”
“No.” She started driving. Slowly. So that if he did slip off, she wouldn’t run him over.
It wasn’t easy for him to get out of his wet jeans, but somehow he did it while holding on to the hood. Oh, dear God, he had even more muscles now than he had three years ago.
And he still wore plain white briefs.
His right arm tightened as he let go with his left and reached for that waistband.
Meg hit the brake. “Okay! Okay! It’s kind of obvious you’ve got nothing hidden on you! You’ve made your point!”
“So let me in.”
“I can’t.”
The rain was starting to let up, just a little, and Meg could see car headlights approaching on the road. With luck, whoever it was would just drive past. With luck, they wouldn’t pull into the parking lot. With luck . . .
The car pulled into the motel lot. It was moving slowly in the rain, but it was heading straight for them.
John saw it, too, and took off his briefs.
And there he was. Completely, gloriously naked and gleamingly soaking wet, clinging to the front of her car, like some surreal hood ornament.
The approaching car looked as if it had lights mounted up on the roof, as if it might be a police car.
Meg looked at John, looked at her gun. If she didn’t let him into the car, if that was a cop and he came over to find out what the hell the naked man was doing on the hood of her car, she’d have to kill Razeen. Right now. In the next few minutes. Seconds, maybe.
She couldn’t breathe.
And John knew what she was thinking. “Don’t do it, Meg,” he said. “Don’t go past the point of no return. Let me in.”
Meg opened the driver’s side window, cursing the entire time. She said words she didn’t even know she knew how to pronounce as she scrambled over the parking brake and into the passenger seat. As John Nilsson, dripping wet, slipped into car, as naked as the day he was born.
“Drive,” she ordered him. “South on 95. I swear to God, John, you pull any tricks—like driving to the police station or heading back toward DC—I’ll kill Razeen.”
He put the stick shift in gear and pulled out, past the oncoming car.
It was a roof rack, some kind of ski rack, not a cop car’s lights.
John handed Meg something and it wasn’t until she took it from him that she realized it was his briefs. They were soaking wet and he’d wadded them up in an attempt to wring them out.
“Check them,” he said. “I want you to be sure I haven’t attached one of those tracking hoo-ha’s to the elastic band.”
She sat there, completely numb, holding tightly to his underpants and her gun as he pulled onto Route 95 heading south.
This was absurd. She was in a car with the one man who’d played a part in nearly every one of her fantasies for the past three years, he was buck naked—and she couldn’t bring herself even to take a peek.
“The faster you do it,” he said, squeegeeing the water from his face and hair, “the faster I can put ’em back on.”
He turned on the defroster, turned the fan up high. The rain plus his body heat was steaming up the windows. The cool air felt good against her flushed face.
How had this happened? How had this gotten so completely out of control?
“You’re in an awful big hurry to get these back,” Meg said. “It would be just like WildCard to hide some kind of homing signal in a pair of underpants.”
John laughed. “Yeah, it would be. I’ll have to suggest it to him. He’ll like the idea.”
“Maybe I should just throw them out the window.”
“Be my guest. I brought ’em in here for you. You’re the one who won’t even look at me.”
“I’m not looking at you because I’m mad at you,” Meg countered. “I’m furious. I’m . . .” Her voice broke. “Terrified,” she whispered. And then she said the unthinkable. “If Amy’s dead . . .” She felt bile rising in her throat, felt her stomach churn, her blood turn to ice.
“Life goes on,” John said quietly. “Believe it or not, Meg, life does go on. It takes a while. Sometimes years. Sometimes longer.”
But it didn’t. It wouldn’t. Not for Meg.
“I won’t let her be dead.” Meg fought the urge to vomit, cursing herself for being weak. She had to stay focused. She had to believe that she could save her daughter. She had to be strong. “I won’t. I won’t think it, I won’t believe it.”
“I was only seven when my mother died,” John told her.
She turned to look at him in surprise, then turned quickly away.
Oh, my God.
She’d made the mistake of looking at him. It was dark in the car, thank goodness, and he was mostly in shadow, but, oh, my God.
“I know I kind of led you to believe I was older than that when it happened,” he continued, “but I wasn’t. So, see, I know what it feels like to lose someone irreplaceable, to lose someone you need as much as you need air to breathe. If you want me to be completely honest, I’d have to tell you that I’m still not over her death. I’ll never be over it. But I learned to live with it. And that’s what you’ll do, too—if you have to.”
“No,” she said. He was wrong. If Amy were dead, yes, she’d have a chance to go on living, but she wouldn’t want to. And if Amy weren’t dead . . . Please God, let Amy still be alive.
She looked down at the wet wad of fabric she held in her hand. “I can’t take the chance that you’re lying to me about this.”
“Fair enough.” He reached over and took the briefs and threw them out the window.
He could have just as easily done the same thing with her gun. She tightened her grip on it as she turned slightly to face him. She had to watch him, and oh, Lord, in the greenish light from the dashboard, all his muscles seemed to glow, like some exotic living anatomy textbook. “Keep both your hands on the steering wheel,” she ordered him.
“You’re the boss.”
Was she? It didn’t feel that way. Meg kept her eyes carefully on his face. Only his face. Now what?
It wouldn’t be long until the sun came up, until truckers going past could look down, into her car and see—her gaze drifted—that.
Oh, my God.
She was going to have to find him something to wear. Some of the truck stops sold T-shirts and running shorts. But how was she going to get them? Leave John and Razeen in the car while she went inside? No way. Even if she took the keys, John would probably be able to hot-wire the car in the time she was inside the store. She’d come out, and he’d be gone. With Razeen.
But she certainly couldn’t send John in, naked. Not that he’d ever willingly get out of the car.
Unless he took the car keys . . .
She was going to have to figure something out. And soon.
Meg took off her jeans jacket using the method she’d seen John use to take off his jacket while out on the hood. One arm at a time, the other hand firmly holding on—in this case to her gun—while she finally shook the jacket free.
She held it out. “Take this.”
He glanced at her, and wisely didn’t make any kind of comment about the fact that she’d told him to keep both hands on the wheel. He took her jacket and covered himself.
It didn’t help.
Five miles wasn’t enough.
Sam had run hard, pushing the pace until Jenk and WildCard started to whine. They’d both been up too late the night before, WildCard surfing the Internet, and Jenk with some woman he’d met at the hotel, in town on a business trip—lucky little son of a bitch.
Sam had slept badly, too, but he didn’t have as good an excuse.
He hadn’t seen Alyssa Locke once since he’d left the hotel for PT with a small group of the other SEALs early this morning. Yet ever since he’d stepped out the door, he’d had this little jangly sixth sense buzz that
made him believe she was out there, watching him.
Somewhere.
As Wolchonok led Jenk and WildCard back toward the hotel, Sam picked up his pace and headed out toward the Lincoln Memorial. On a hot, restless morning like this, with the humidity starting to build and the weather threatening to storm by the late afternoon, he was good for at least five more miles.
If he tried to go back to the hotel now, without running any farther, he’d jump out of his skin.
Troubleshooters 02 The Defiant Hero Page 21
