That Was Yesterday

by Vella Munn

  “That’s talk. There’s always talk.”

  “Talk nothing. It happens.” Was he pushing things too far? Reed decided he had better change the subject. “How’s Miss Curtis to work for? I mean, this isn’t the kind of business where you usually find a woman running the show.”

  Clint opened the door. “Mara knows exactly what she’s doing. She always has. That’s why I work for her. We’re going to be tackling skids next. Mara likes us to rotate. She’ll be with you in a few minutes, Mr. Steward.”

  Reed leaned forward. Mara had just come back from a run with the businesswoman. Now the two of them stood next to the Alfa Romeo. Mara was perhaps four inches taller than the carefully dressed businesswoman. She exhibited a grace that the other woman with all her exercising and massages couldn’t equal.

  Mara stood with her weight settled over one hip, her free leg angled out, giving Reed a breath-stealing look at lean length. He remembered a white-faced woman with her arms wrapped around her middle but could make no connection between that image and the woman he saw today. Whatever had brought her into the police station the other night was under control. She could talk to Detective Kline without going back in time.

  A woman like that could live alone out here.

  After listening to the businesswoman explain that she could hardly wait to challenge a certain co-worker, Mara turned the conversation to what she needed to accomplish before the afternoon ended. She explained that as soon as Clint laid a layer of oil over the track, the students would put what they’d learned in the classroom about spin control to the test.

  She had Reed wait until last. By then she’d forced herself to sit in a confined space with the other four men and resolutely kept herself from drawing comparisons between now and Friday night.

  “I’m sorry,” she said as she stared at the Jag’s close bucket seats. “At least you’ve been able to watch the others. I hope you’re not concerned about flipping.”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “That’s half the battle.” Reed Steward took up too much space inside the car. She told herself it didn’t matter. She would deal with this emotion and master it. And she wouldn’t let him know. “Whenever you’re ready. We’ll start at about forty miles an hour.”

  Mara strapped on her seat belt. Reed followed suit and then started the Jag. As he eased onto the track, he wondered what the bureau would say if they knew what he was doing to the expensive prop they’d leased for him. If he wrecked it—

  The question didn’t last. “Have any of your students lost it?”

  “A few have come close, but there haven’t been any accidents.”

  “So far.”

  Reed eased the Jag to forty miles per hour and headed for the oil slick. Just before the rear wheels lost traction, he glanced at the woman next to him. There weren’t going to be any mistakes. Not with her life in his hands.

  Reed didn’t make the mistake of slamming the brake to the floor. Instead he shifted into neutral, keeping the front wheels straight as the car twisted 180 degrees, heading in the opposite direction. Then he went to work, cranking the wheel hard to the right to add momentum to the spin.

  When the skid was over, the car once again pointed in the direction it had been going before it hit the oil. Reed nudged the gearshift and put the Jag into motion again. He was drenched in sweat.

  “How do you feel?” Mara asked.

  “You don’t want to know.” Reed shrugged his shoulders, forcing himself past the emotion that had knotted his hands, and went on. “But, like I said, I know my car. An automobile is more than a tool. If it’s the right car, it becomes an extension of its driver.”

  “An extension?”

  “Part of me.”

  The man’s reactions were sharp, Mara thought. Despite his tension, Reed Steward had accomplished what was asked of him, and well. Whatever he needed from the Curtis School of High-Performance Driving, it wasn’t the basic course. Why, then, was he putting himself through this? “You mentioned having some specialized needs?” Mara asked warily.

  “Yeah. I do. But there isn’t time to talk about that now, and you said you were busy tonight.”

  “I am. And I have to talk to Mr. Dixon. He’s fighting this class every inch of the way.”

  “Of course.”

  Mara glanced over at Reed. He hadn’t said anything about having seen her before. There’d been the time and opportunity for him to mention that she wasn’t a stranger to him, but he hadn’t done it. Maybe the flash of recognition she believed she’d seen had been nothing more than another layer of the insanity she was going through.

  Maybe.

  An hour later Mara stood watching the last of her students leave. The red Jag was already nothing more than a blur of movement. With the echo of her conversation with Reed still nagging at her, she turned toward Clint. She felt hollowed out. “An interesting lot. Ms. Alsobrook likes you.”

  “Ms. Alsobrook likes anything in pants. I’d hate to be that desperate.”

  “Desperate? Did you see those earrings? She didn’t get those at a dime store.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about.” Clint watched the aimless flight of a distant hawk. “So she’s got more money than she knows what to do with. That money isn’t buying her happiness.”

  Mara shifted her gaze to the hawk. “Do you feel sorry for her?”

  “Yeah. I guess I do. She’s trying to be something she isn’t. But she didn’t ask my opinion, and I’m not going to give it. What do you think of the guy with the Jag?”

  “What?”

  “He’s a different one.”

  “Different?” Mara repeated.

  “Let’s just say he has some rather strange ideas. He doesn’t fit in here.”

  “I know.”

  “He’s a decent driver. But he isn’t crazy about some of the things we’ve asked him to do.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “So why is he pushing himself?”

  “I don’t know. His application didn’t say. But maybe I’m going to find out. He wants to talk to me.”

  “Yeah? About what?”

  “I’m not sure. Clint, I have an appointment with the detective in an hour.”

  “I’ll meet you there. Unless you want me to hang around here while you close up.”

  “No. Of course not. Honest. And you don’t have to meet me there.”

  “Yeah, I do. I want to make sure they’re taking this seriously.”

  “Do you think they aren’t?” Mara asked.

  “I wouldn’t take anything for granted. We’re talking about your safety. I don’t want you getting lost in the shuffle, and I don’t want to hear about lack of manpower or whatever excuses they might try to dump on you. In an hour. And then you’re coming home with me.”

  Mara looked up at Clint, silent. She should tell him she no longer needed his protection, his spare bedroom. A woman who would turn twenty-nine next month was light years away from a six-year-old child crying for her parents at some massive, distant racetrack. But the words eluded her. She was frightened but determined. Reality was that in a minute Clint would leave and she would let him. She wouldn’t see him again until they met at the police station.

  In a minute she would have no one except a hawk and a watchdog to keep her company.

  As soon as it got dark even the hawk would leave.

  Chapter Four

  The floors of hospitals squeaked. It didn’t matter what kind of shoes a person wore, highly polished floors protested any contact. Reed pondered that, not because he cared about gleaming floors, but because right now the journey was easier to focus on than the goal.

  But he couldn’t put it off. He had no choice but to push open the door to room 312 and step into the gloom beyond. The room’s amenities consisted of a single bed, a chair and a small, curtained window beyond the machinery that monitored Jack. His friend was covered by a faded pink coverlet. The smell of disinfectant pressed against Reed’s senses and
forced his mind back to other hospital visits when the patient had been his mother—when there’d been too many tears from her and not enough words inside him.

  Jack wasn’t moving. Damn it, he still wasn’t going to be able to yank the man out of here.

  “Jack? You awake?”

  “Why? You taking a survey?”

  “What if I am?” Even the undersized chair tucked in a corner of the room was pink. Reed decided that when and if he ever decorated a place, there wouldn’t be a hint of that color in it. “Do you know what this place is costing the bureau? They want you out of here.”

  “Not near as much as I want out,” Jack managed as Reed approached the bed.

  Reed’s mentor and only true friend seemed to have aged ten years. He tried to tell himself that any man stuck in a dark closet like this would look pretty bad, but that wasn’t all. Jack had five broken ribs, a bruised kidney, a concussion and a lacerated forehead.

  “At least you’re talking,” Reed said. He knew he should sit down, but going after the chair and dragging it beside the bed was beyond him, when the only thing he wanted was to pick Jack up and get both of them the hell out of here.

  “What makes you think I wouldn’t be?” Jack said, wheezing.

  “Because the last time I saw you, you were a zombie.”

  “You were here before?”

  “Three times.” Should he take Jack’s hand? Reed knew how to shake hands, slap another man on the back. He hadn’t known what to say or do when his mother was the patient. And he didn’t know how to give comfort to someone who’d never needed it before and might not want it now. “Do you remember how you got here?”

  “Yeah.” The word was hard-bitten. “I remember all right.”

  “They forced you off the road. They tried to kill you.”

  “I screwed up, Reed.”

  “No.” The piercing depth in Jack’s eyes might have intimidated someone else, but Reed had known it for more than half his life. He wasn’t about to back down. “You don’t screw up.”

  “If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here. My cover? What a joke. I thought I had everything in place. I got ahead of myself. Started pushing before I knew what I was into. What are you doing here? I thought they’d sent you to Denver.”

  “I bailed out.”

  “Because you like hanging around hospitals.” Jack coughed, his face contorting. “Don’t kid me, Reed. I want to hear everything.”

  Reed rammed his hands in his back pockets and leaned his hip against the side of the bed. There was a gnawing sensation inside him, but he would do something about food later. It felt so good to hear Jack talking again. That first visit had come close to being the hardest thing Reed had ever done. Staring down at the bruised and misshapen features of the man who’d done so much for him was something he never wanted to repeat. “You weren’t in any shape to complete your assignment,” Reed said simply. “I figured I had to come pick up the slack.”

  “Yeah? Tell me something. If it was anyone but me, would you be here?”

  Both men knew the answer to that. “The bureau’s in an uproar,” Reed said instead. “We’ve never had an agent almost killed before.”

  “Like I said, I screwed up.”

  “Come off it, Jack. Give yourself a break,” Reed snapped. “I’ve been talking to the police. This isn’t just big, it’s well organized. And the operatives are ruthless.”

  “Still—” Jack coughed again, “—there’s no excuse for my getting into the mess I did.”

  “Why don’t you let me be the judge of that.” Reed didn’t want Jack to exhaust himself talking, but it was the only way he’d learn the essentials. Briefly Reed explained the steps he’d already taken and that he knew he wasn’t going to get far without Jack’s help. Who had the older man contacted? What had Jack learned about the destination of the expensive automobiles being snatched?

  Not enough, Jack admitted. What he did know was mostly what Reed had already deduced. Those behind the operation were determined enough that killing someone careless enough to be caught sniffing around wouldn’t slow them. “You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?”

  Reed didn’t.

  “Don’t do it. It isn’t worth your life.”

  Jack Weston had given Reed direction when he hadn’t known such a thing existed. Thanks to Jack, Reed wasn’t sleeping on park benches or in prison. Jack had forced, encouraged, convinced him to take charge of his life and turn it into something worthwhile. It galled him to hear the desk jockeys at the bureau hinting that Jack had lost his edge. Damn it, no one was infallible. He’d like to see anyone else accomplish what Jack had during his thirty-year career.

  But what Reed felt went deeper than just a commitment to Jack’s reputation. Someone, or a number of someones, had tried to kill the man staring up at him. Reed wouldn’t forget. Or forgive.

  “I’m not going to get killed,” Reed reassured his friend. “I’ll get them, Jack. Put them out of business and behind bars. Then we’ll tell the stuffed shirts at the bureau that we want and deserve raises, big ones. We’ll get that sailboat we’ve been talking about. Head for the South Seas.”

  “I’m hanging it up, Reed.”

  “No.” He should have been sitting. That way it wouldn’t matter so much that Jack’s words were making him lightheaded.

  “I mean it. It’s time for me to get a desk job.”

  Men like Jack Weston didn’t retreat behind desks. “Get yourself out of here,” Reed said slowly. “Take time to heal. You’ll see it differently then.”

  “I don’t think so. I know I’ve been out of it a lot of the time, but I’ve been thinking. I remember…” Jack swallowed painfully. “I remember looking over at that damn truck coming at me. I knew there wasn’t anything I could do about it. Not a thing. Then—I don’t know if I’d crashed yet or not—it came to me.”

  “What came to you?” Reed asked, because not asking wouldn’t stop the answer.

  “That there’s got to be more to life than this.”

  “There is,” Reed countered. “There’s…that sailboat.”

  “A sailboat. Come off it, Reed. Look at me. Look at yourself while you’re at it. I’ve been in here for days, and do you know who’s been here to see me? Doctors. Nurses. Some reporter I wouldn’t talk to. Someone from the bureau trying to figure out how much it’s going to cost them. And you.”

  “Three times,” Reed pointed out, although he was beginning to understand.

  “Wonderful. No family. No friends. Not even a bunch of flowers. Do you know why? Because I never stick around anywhere long enough to make friends. And because I don’t have a family. Just a sister who hasn’t heard from me since last Christmas and probably has no idea what’s happened.”

  Reed wanted Jack to stop talking and get some rest. The older man might have been flat on his back for days, but he was still exhausted and understandably so. The drugs he’d been given were depressing his system. That’s what it was. A drug-induced depression. That and his injuries.

  “You want flowers, I’ll get them. And I’ll call your sister,” Reed said, disturbed because he’d been so angry and worried that neither of those things had occurred to him. “I’ll be back with something decent for you to eat. How about a pizza? You do what those doctors tell you and get yourself out of here. Go sit on the beach somewhere. I’ll join you as soon as I can, and then we’ll figure out how much of a raise we’re going to hold out for.”

  “All I want is my retirement, Reed. I mean it.” Jack ran dull eyes over the too-small room. “It might be too late for me. It probably is. But before I die I’d like to find out if there’s more to life than this. More than just you giving a damn about me.”

  “What are you looking for? Sympathy?”

  “You know better than that. Maybe running my head into a telephone pole woke me up. What’s it all for, Reed?”

  Reed opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

  “That’s what I thought. You should understand. Th
ere’s no one who’s going to send either of us flowers. Think about it.”

  Reed didn’t remember reaching out. But somehow he wound up with his strong hands wrapped around Jack’s limp ones. He squeezed, holding on until Jack focused on him. The wounded man’s eyes were no longer dull. They glistened. When Reed blinked, he discovered that his own eyes were damp. “I won’t let them get away with it,” he whispered. It was a vow.

  A half hour later Reed went back to the opulent, impersonal hotel room he’d set himself up in. Instead of going over what Jack had told him about the ring’s operation, he stretched out on the firm bed with its crisp sheets and stared up at a white ceiling that was shot through with some sparkling stuff. Jack would bounce back, Reed tried to tell himself. He’d stop talking about wasted years, and Reed would no longer be forced to draw parallels between Jack’s dark mood and the cloud permanently draped over his own mother.

  Reed didn’t blame Jack. He blamed those who’d almost killed him. Anyone who’d come face-to-face with death would have his underpinnings loosened. Jack couldn’t honestly mean it about quitting the bureau. Retiring. Looking for something or someone else.

  Someone. The thought stopped Reed. Except for him, all Jack had was a sister living in Portland.

  Think about yourself, Jack had said. Reed did. For a half second. Just long enough to conjure forth an image of his parents. His father was painted in military blue, his mother in splotches of gray that faded off into nothing.

  That was it. Except for Jack, that was it.

  Mara's phone rang. She stared, willing it to be silent. Willing her heart to steady. “He has your phone number,” the police had told her. “He might try to get in touch with you.”

  The phone rang again.

  “It’s Reed, Reed Steward,” the man on the other end said in response to her numbed and hesitant hello. “Do you have a few minutes?”