“Eli,” she said. “Wake up.”
He rumbled low in his throat. Sprawled on his stomach, he reached across the sheets, long fingers searching out the place where she’d slept. When they didn’t find her, he flipped over on to his back. A buttery spill of sunlight through an opening in the drapes highlighted the smooth planes of his chest and the golden streaks in his hair.
He was beautiful, not to mention the best lover she’d ever had. On the other hand, he was obviously a criminal and undoubtedly dangerous. But the word that described him at the moment – the word that pounded in her head and chest like a second heartbeat – was liar. The one thing she couldn’t bring herself to forgive.
“Mornin’,” he said and brushed his hair out of his face. His smile was no less inviting for being slow and sleepy. But when his eyes lit on the gun in her hands, that smile faded like an unfixed photograph exposed to light. He pushed himself up to lean against the headboard and lifted his hands at either side of his head.
She clutched the gun in front of her in a two-fisted grip, aimed at the centre of his bare chest. Her entire body shook, but mostly her finger where it was poised over the trigger.
“I don’t want to shoot you.”
“I don’t reckon I care to be shot.”
“Cut the cowboy crap.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He shook his head and let his hands drop. “Shoot if you’re gonna do it, but you’d better be ready to run. That bitty snub-nose don’t have a silencer. It’ll make one hell of a bang.”
She glanced at the door. Could she make it? Throw down the gun, snatch up her bag and drag the suitcase from under the bed before he got his hands on her? No, it wasn’t possible. But neither was killing him in cold blood.
Still, she raised the gun a few inches higher and straightened her stance. “What’s your story?”
To his credit, he didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “Your boyfriend hired a guy in New Orleans. He sub-contracted the job to me.”
“What’s the job, exactly?”
He shifted a little, and the ratty motel blanket slid a few inches to expose the line of dark hair leading down from his navel. “I find lost things and put ’em back where they belong.”
So that’s what it came down to. In the end, she was just another misplaced object to be collected and returned to its owner. But this particular misplaced object had more questions.
“I was careful. I took every possible precaution. How did you find me?”
His face twisted like he knew some bad news and didn’t want to be the one to share it. “There’s a GPS inside the lining of your bag. I’ve been trackin’ you since you blew past Houston.” He heaved a sigh and gave her a pitying look. “I guess your boyfriend’s been trackin’ you a lot longer than that.”
The leather bag – the one that never left her side. Phillip’s very first gift, which he’d undoubtedly used to follow her every movement for the past three years. She loved that bag.
Thhat bit what I get for being sentimental.
She heard a loud buzzing, like an especially obnoxious doorbell. It took her several seconds to figure out it was coming from inside her own head. A few seconds after that, she found herself sitting on the corner of the bed, the gun pointed at the floor.
Eli approached her, clutching a glass of water. He moved slowly, with his free hand raised in front of him, as if she were still likely to shoot him through heart. She saw he was naked, and realized she was naked, too.
He handed her the water. “If it makes you feel better, I’ve been hangin’ around El Paso for days, waiting to see where you’d finally decide to cross the border.”
“Why would that make me feel better?”
“You ever been to El Paso?” He smiled as he said it, and she felt the corners of her mouth wanting to lift.
“I made it easy for you, didn’t I?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t expect you to stroll into the roadhouse like you did. That was a piece of luck.”
“The paper in your wallet says I’m a blonde. How did you know it was me?”
“It also says you’re tall with a good body. I played the odds.”
He was also playing at being honest. She knew better. “You said you were harmless.”
“Have I hurt you yet?”
She set the gun on the bed next to her, drank the water and handed him the glass. It was all the answer she was willing to give. “Now what?”
“Now I’m supposed to hold you till your boyfriend gets here.” He reached for his jeans.
She watched the stretch and roll of muscle in his back as he dressed. “You could take the money and let me go.”
“It ain’t the money he’s after, I reckon.” He pulled on his socks and boots. “Besides, how far do you think you’d get on your own, Melissa?”
She flinched. “I got this far. And don’t call me that.”
He paused in the middle of pulling on his wrinkled T-shirt. “Rumour has it there was quite the little bidding war over this job. Your boyfriend made you sound like easy pickins.’ Said you were as soft and brainless as a new-hatched chick.”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“You deserve to know. He said you’d answer to just about anything, includin’ ‘baby’, or ‘bitch’.”
The words seemed to hook into her flesh like tiny barbs that caught and tugged. She rose from the bed and gathered her clothes. On her way to the bathroom, she gave the leather bag a kick that sent it into the opposite wall with a thud.
Baby or bitch. Baby or bitch. It repeated in an endless loop as she brushed her teeth and pinned up her hair. Her reflection in the mirror was pale, as if she’d been washed in milk, except where the stubble across Eli’s jaw had left its mark. The rug burns on her knees throbbed in time with her pulse. She couldn’t think past the noise in her head.
When she looked up again, Eli was leaning in the doorway of the bathroom. He met her eyes in the mirror. “If you run, he’ll set somebody else on your tail, sure as cold iron. Somebody not nearly as nice as me.”
“It doesn’t matter. I can’t go back to him. He’s …” She stopped. There were no words to describe the monster Phillip had grown to be in her imagination. No words for how much she despised him – or how much she despised herself for being such a clueless dupe.
“I can’t go back.”
Eli crowded in behind her. He rested his hands on the sink at either side of her hips and hooked his chin over her shoulder. Lit by the overhead fluorescent light, his grin had all the deadly charm of a rattlesnake’s.
“Who said anything about goin’ back?
“So,” Eli said, trying to keep his voice level and reasonable, “what you’re tellin’ me is you’ve never actually fired a gun.”
“Right. But how hard can it be?” Her crooked smile said she’d recovered from her little spell of shell shock and come to grips with the situation.
Gotta admire an adaptable woman.
He sighed. “I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”
He’d already contacted the client – Phillip, she called him, but Eli didn’t like the taste of it on his tongue – and told him where and when to take delivery of his wayward property. The man’s voice had sounded tinny in Eli’s ear, like the whine of a blowfly.
“Sweet Melissa,” he said. “Feel free to try her out. Be sure she knows I gave you permission. You won’t be sorry. Consider it a tip for excellent service.”
The man laughed, and Eli had to hold the cell phone away from his ear to keep from dropping it in the dust and smashing it with the heel of his boot.
Over a vending machine breakfast shared on the wrinkled sheets of the motel bed, they’d put together a plan. Now it was a few minutes past noon. They were driving north, into the wind-carved landscape of the Chihuahuan Desert. Mountains rose in the distance, beyond mile after mile of straw-coloured dirt blowing in the gullies and a sky the bleached-out white of old tombstones. The un-air-conditioned cab of the truck felt like the in
side of a kiln. The radio gave nothing but static. Eli did what he could to fill the sweaty silence with local trivia.
“This area has a population density of two people per square mile. The average income is only about nine grand, makin’ it one of the poorest counties in the country.”
“Why do you know all this?” she asked him.
He shrugged. “Part of the job.”
She watched him drive. It made him nervous, like when she’d watched him at the pool table. He’d told the truth about that. In fact, he’d only told her a single, small lie. In the greater scheme of things, it wasn’t worth much. So why did he feel so damned guilty about it?
“I’m sorry,” he muttered, half-hoping she wouldn’t hear. No such luck.
“For what?”
The tips of his ears were on fire. “For when I said I was just an interested bystander.”
“You’re not interested?”
He turned and found her looking at him with expectation on her face, like it was a serious question. He shook his head. “It’s the bystander part that’s the lie.”
The answer seemed to satisfy her.
They pulled off the road next to an abandoned gas station. The small, saggy building stood up to its knees in yellow weeds. He set up a row of empty beer bottles on the fender of an old Dodge and taught her to shoot her bitty gun.
“A weapon that size is tricky. You wanna get as close as you can before you draw, ’cause it ain’t easy to aim when the wind’s blowin’ dirt in your eyes.” He showed her how to squeeze the trigger and stepped back, out of her way. “Watch out for the recoil.”
She turned out to be a quick study. He wasn’t surprised.
All at once, he wanted her – wanted to take her down in the dust and feel her fight against his hold. Wanted to feel her give in, and not because he’d overpowered her, but because she wanted him right back.
It crackled through him like lightning, and he had to look away.
He wondered how far he’d go for her. He’d never killed a man in his life, but it didn’t seem like such a long fall from where he stood to the place where he’d be willing to shed blood just to keep her safe and at his side, where shebelonged.
Kate watched Eli’s hands as he cleaned and reassembled his rifle. His frown of concentration and his sure touch on the gleaming barrel sent distracting jolts of sense-memory through her body.
That’s how he looked at me. That’s how he touched me.
She turned away and squinted into the bone-coloured sky.
They were standing on the shoulder of a nameless road with nothing – not a tree or a boulder or even a mile marker – to dignify the spot. Eli lifted the rifle to his shoulder and checked the sight. He glanced at her. “Last chance to make a run for it.”
She shook her head. “You’re the one who said he’d never let me go.”
“Just makin’ sure we’re on the same page.”
She wanted to tell him she was with him all the way. Instead she asked, “Are you scared?”
The question seemed to catch him by surprise. He laughed. “Damn straight. Scared is what keeps you breathin’, so long as you don’t let it get in your way.”
It seemed like a sound philosophy. Also, it made her feel better about the lump of terror in her throat that kept threatening to choke her to death.
“He’s late,” Eli said.
“He’ll be here. He likes to make people wait.”
The heat tightened like a tourniquet. As the seconds ticked down, they didn’t touch or look at each other. They didn’t talk about their plan, or what they’d do if they succeeded. But for the first time in recent memory she didn’t feel alone.
Phillip arrived twenty minutes later. He drove a rented Mercedes, the colour indistinguishable beneath a layer of dust. He pulled off the road fifty feet from where they stood and got out of the car.
“Let him make the first move,” Eli had told her when they were discussing strategy on the rumpled motel bed. “Let him come to us.”
The gun tucked in the back of her jeans felt hot and hard and slick against her sweaty skin. She pressed her hand against the scorching fender of the truck to steady herself and observed how Phillip’s hair didn’t move in the breeze.
“Hello there!” he called and walked towards them, moving like he had sand in his joints. The salmon-orange polo shirt beneath his linen jacket flashed like neon against the empty desert. Even at this distance, his grinning, clean-shaven face looked insincere – full of artfully veneered teeth and bogus good cheer.
In sharp contrast, Eli lounged against the tailgate, working several days’ worth of beard and dust-caked jeans. His rifle hung from the fingertips of one hand. The suitcase sat on the ground between his feet.
He smiled his rattlesnake smile. “Welcome to Texas.”
Phillip ignored him. “Melissa? Is that you?” He stopped twenty feet away and squinted in the hazy sunlight. “Come out where I can see you, baby.”
Hating herself for the involuntary urge to obey, she stepped forwards. When she came even with the tailgate, Eli stopped her with a whispered, “That’s plenty far enough.”
“You changed your hair,” Phillip said. His lip curled in disgust. “It makes you look your age.”
She stared at him, struggling to process the insult. He wanted to talk about her hair?
When she didn’t respond, he shrugged. “That’s all right. We can change it back again. Everything can go right back the way it was, baby, as soon as we get home.”
Now Eli straightened and shifted his grip on the rifle. “There’s been a change of plans.” He kicked the suitcase forwards. “You take the money. She stays here.”
Phillip chuckled. “Took her for a spin, did you? I told you she’s a good lay.”
Despite the heat, a sickening chill washed over her, raising gooseflesh down her arms and back. Eli shot her a look out of the corner of his eye and shook his head ever so slightly.
Phillip advanced on them, still moving stiffly, as if he couldn’t bear to ruin the perfect crease in his $1,000 trousers. “I can’t blame you for wanting to keep her a while, but let me tell you, friend, she’s got some bad habits. Always asking questions, for one. Isn’t that right, baby?”
“You should take the cash, mister,” Eli said. “It’s all there. I counted it.”
Shock rocked Kate back on her heels. He counted the money? When?
Phillip didn’t appear to be listening. “Of course, she’s already past her prime, but I’m sentimental. I like to keep what belongs to me until I have no more use for it. Then I pass it along to someone with less discerning tastes.” He waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “She’ll be a hand-me-down inside of a year. You can do better, friend. For a handful of pesos, you can rent better.”
Beneath the constant rush of the wind, she heard Eli’s teeth grind together. But when he spoke, it was all easygoing cowboy twang.
“I reckon you hadn’t ought to talk about her that way, mister.”
“Really? Is that what you reckon?” The smug grin dropped away from Phillip’s face. “Because I reckon I’ll talk about her any way I want. Now kindly hand that suitcase to Melissa and send her over here. I’ll count out your cut and we’ll be on our way. We’ve got a flight to catch.”
Eli shook his head. “Sorry, mister.”
Phillip rolled his eyes. “Melissa? Tell this fly-by-night cowboy to quit fucking around, will you? Tell him you want to go home.”
Kate said nothing. She stood perfectly still and watched as Phillip’s assumptions caught up with reality. First he looked betrayed, like a kid deprived of a promised treat. Then his handsome face hardened, and he muttered something that sounded like, “Bitch.”
He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a gun. It was somewhat larger than the one tucked against the small of Kate’s back. At the same time, Eli lifted his rifle to his shoulder and took aim.
“Melissa, grab that suitcase and get your ass over here.”
> “Get in the truck, Kate.”
She laughed. She couldn’t help it. It had been a long day. “Why don’t you both settle down before you drop dead of testosterone poisoning?”
Phillip’s eyes flickered in surprise. He wasn’t accustomed to being spoken to that way – especially by her – and she knew she’d scored a point. Eli said nothing, but a muscle in his jaw twitched and he lowered the rifle a fraction of an inch.
Phillip cleared his throat. “I suppose we can come to some kind of compromise.”
“Put your weapon on the ground, mister, and kick it away,” Eli said. “Then I’ll drop mine.”
“That hardly seems fair.”
Eli shrugged. “I’ve got the money and the girl. The way I see it, you’ve got nothin’ to lose.”
Phillip appeared to think it over. Then he bent at the waist, set the gun on the ground and gave it a kick. It slid several feet on the pebbled surface of the shoulder.
Eli lowered his rifle and leaned it against the bumper of the truck. He picked up the suitcase and started towards Phillip.
Phillip had shoved his hands into the pockets of his trousers. Instead of watching Eli’s approach, he stared at Kate, his face fixed in a smirk. She knew that expression. He wore it when he was feeding her lies and expecting her to swallow them without complaint. When he was underestimating her cmpletely – her intelligence, her strength of will, everything that made her a person.
Eli came to a stop three feet from where Phillip stood. His stance remained loose and amiable.
“Don’t let Phillip make you angry,” she’d told him that morning over pork rinds and lemon-lime soda. “Don’t let him get under your skin. He’s good at that. He knows how to take advantage.”
Now, without ever taking his eyes off Kate, Phillip leaned in close and said something to Eli. She couldn’t read Phillip’s lips, and his words were blown away in the breeze, but she saw Eli react. She saw his back stiffen and his hand rise. She was too far away to stop it.
The crack of Eli’s fist connecting with Phillip’s jaw made her jump. Phillip grunted and fell back. A second later he straightened. He winked at Kate over Eli’s shoulder.
The Mammoth Book of Hot Romance Page 43
