The Bliss Factor

by Penny McCall

  Okay, so he’d fallen and hit his head, that had to be it, and since he didn’t remember his real identity, he’d bought the pretend one. Probably all those goofballs, with their ridiculous outfits and stupid accents, stopping by to ask him how he fared, or if he wanted to be bled, or offering to bring by some leeches. And thinking he was from a culture that waged war with regrettable regularity, he’d concluded someone had tried to kill him.

  Really, she thought, wasn’t it just like her parents to overdramatize the situation? Those two guys in the forge could have killed Larkin any time they wanted. There’d been dozens of opportunities she’d overlooked at the time because her hormones had been busy noticing bulging, sweat-sheened muscles. The muscles were under cover now, and more important, she wasn’t looking at them, and thinking back now, the fight seemed so well choreographed. Larkin could simply have forgotten it was all a performance, maybe missed his timing enough to earn himself a scratch in the process. Which meant the danger was all in his head, and she just had to humor everyone for—

  Crash. The Hummer gave a shimmy, and Rae’s gaze flew to the rearview mirror. It felt like they’d been hit, and sure enough she caught a glimpse of light blue car roof close on their rear bumper. And then she looked over at Connor Larkin, and she was sure. She started to pull over, but he curled his big hand around her wrist. That didn’t stop her. One look at his face did. He’d gone from laid back to high-alert, blue eyes almost laser intense as he looked out the rear window.

  “It’s just a fender bender,” Rae said, “no reason to break out the big knives.”

  “Keep driving.”

  “Why?” she asked, just as there was a second, louder thump from the rear, one that made her put her foot back on the gas pedal. “That wasn’t the car hitting us,” she said.

  “What do you suspect it was?” he asked her.

  “Remember when you asked me what a gun was? I think you’re about to find out.”

  chapter 4

  RAE PUT HER FOOT TO THE FLOOR, TELLING herself with every beat of her pounding heart they hadn’t just been shot at. And not believing it. “Friends of yours?” she said to Larkin.

  “Why would friends try to harm me?”

  “That was sarcasm.”

  Nothing. Not because he didn’t get the concept, because he was busy staring out the back window. Rae blew out a breath, glad he wasn’t looking at her like that.

  “What manner of coward strikes from hiding?”

  “The kind who means business,” Rae said, splitting her attention between the road and the mirrors.

  A powder blue Honda Civic, circa 1990 and stuffed with three men—at least one of them dressed like a pirate—zipped into the next lane and pulled up alongside the Hummer. The roof of the car didn’t reach the bottom of the driver’s-side window. Rae thought she saw the Honda’s window go down—hand-cranked by the guy in the passenger seat. Not that it did him much good since what he got was a face full of shiny black paint, and anything he did would be the automotive equivalent of David and Goliath. Then again, David had won that fight.

  She stepped on the gas. The Honda kept up and closed in. Rae fought instinct and held her position in the lane. No way was a Civic going to force a Hummer off the road. “Score one for Detroit,” she said, not so freaked out by the gunshot anymore since the Hummer had been impervious to that, too.

  “Detroit?”

  “Made in the U.S.A.? Domestic versus foreign?”

  Larkin shrugged that off, so Rae did, too. Besides, the Honda wasn’t gone, just staying on their back bumper. She ought to be more alarmed, but it was like being threatened by a car full of circus clowns. “Larry, Moe, and Curly Soprano,” she muttered.

  Connor Larkin laughed.

  “You got that?”

  “Got what?”

  “Oy,” Rae said, which wasn’t a word but seemed to sum up the whole situation nonetheless. If he was trying to drive her crazy it was working. “There’s a state police post not much farther along this road.”

  “Police?”

  “Law enforcement.”

  He still looked puzzled.

  “Constable? Scotland Yard, cops, deputy, sheriff—”

  His hand closed around her arm again, long fingers overlapping in a grip that was firm without being tight. But she could feel the power he was holding back. He could snap her wrist without a second thought. “No sheriff.”

  “I don’t want them following me home, and it’s probably the only way we can lose them.”

  He kept his hand where it was, his eyes intent on her face but with none of the threat she’d seen when he looked at the assault vehicle. He might believe he was a guy who solved his problems with three feet of cold steel, but at least he knew who his enemies were.

  “As soon as they see the police station they’ll take off,” she said. “Trust me, we won’t even have to go inside.”

  “Your word?”

  “Um, sure.”

  “Then we are in accord.” And he let her go.

  “Taking the word of a woman? That’s something a sixteenth-century armorer would never do,” she said as she hooked a right into the state police entrance, trying to do it without slowing down too much so it would be a surprise to the guys in the Honda. She didn’t quite pull it off. A stunt driver she wasn’t. Not to mention the Hummer cornered like a parade float.

  The Honda kept going, though, just as she’d predicted. She parked at the far edge of the mostly empty lot and turned to him. He stared back, brow furrowed over guileless blue eyes.

  “How much do you remember?”

  He shrugged.

  “You do that a lot, and it’s getting very annoying. Do you even want to remember your real life?”

  “Aye, but what would be gained by haste?”

  “How about getting rid of the three guys in the Honda?”

  “They have fled like the curs they are, nor will they know where to find us again.”

  “Fine, but you could have a wife somewhere, maybe some kids.”

  He looked troubled for a second, then his expression turned . . . sunny again. There was no other way to describe it. “If that be the case, I must have left them already. I was with the faire for many months, and Annie says I never spoke of a family.”

  Not so unusual, Rae thought. More than a few of the people in her parents’ traveling group were keeping secrets. Connor Larkin could be one of them, and what better way to keep a secret than to claim you couldn’t remember it?

  They sat there for a minute more, Rae’s eyes on the building, willing someone to come out and ask them what they were doing there. No such luck.

  “We should be on our way,” Larkin finally said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “You promised your father.”

  “Yeah,” she said on an outrush of breath, her eyes still on the door to the police station but her body making no attempt to take her there. “If you agree to talk to the police, I’m sure my father would understand.”

  It only took one glance at Connor Larkin to make her feel ashamed.

  She fired up the Hummer and guided it out of the parking lot, her shame turning to anger, and since anger was preferable she let herself get good and ticked off. How did her parents do this to her? she fumed as she made the turn back out onto Dixie Highway. She’d reasoned with them. All her objections had been perfectly logical and rational, too, yet here she was, doing exactly what they wanted.

  She slid Connor Larkin a sidelong glance and found him staring at her. Jerk. Jerk with muscles, and a great butt, and killer eyes, and a face that appealed to her, not because it was handsome, but because it showed character, from the small scar along his jaw to the smile lines around his eyes and mouth. Problem was, what kind of character?

  Sure, she could tell he’d seen some things, been through some hard times. A man who shifted from hapless Renaissance kook into Rambo’s slightly saner cousin between one heartbeat and the next probably couldn’t include choirboy
on his resume. That didn’t mean he was a good guy. And okay, it didn’t take a genius to know the cartoon characters in the Honda weren’t the good guys here, either. Cops usually didn’t cork their suspects over the head or try to run them off the road, definitely not with an innocent bystander in the vehicle.

  So what kind of trouble had Connor Larkin brought on himself, and now her? And why didn’t he want the police involved? Rae had an answer for those questions. In fact, there were several possible answers. None of them was comforting.

  CONN SAT BACK IN THE HUGE CONVEYANCE THAT at once felt familiar but also completely foreign. Nearly everything was like that. He knew he should recognize things, knew he wasn’t as simple a man with as simple a life as the Connor Larkin he saw in the mirror every morning. But it was like having something on the tip of your tongue. The harder he tried to remember it the further it seemed to slip away.

  Every now and then he got a flash of something, a lightning strike of memory that was there and gone so fast he couldn’t quite wrap his brain around it and hold on. And he didn’t want to. For the most part they were unpleasant scenes, full of violence and dark emotion. Whoever he’d been, Conn had a feeling he would dislike that man, so he saw no need to pursue those memories or his true identity. He was content being simple. He enjoyed moving easily through the world with no specific destination and no urgency to get there even if he’d had one.

  Then again, he could think of one destination that seemed to carry with it a great urgency. He glanced over at Rae, the taste of her still lingering on his tongue, her scent, her warmth, the feel of her in his arms. That split second when she’d melted against him was unforgettable. He wanted that again. Need weighted his blood and blurred his mind, heat rising up inside him, making him blind for a minute while he simply accepted that it was, without concerning himself over the why of it, or where it might go. He was a man who lived in the moment, and in that moment nothing mattered except getting her into his arms again, taking her mouth as he laid her down on any flat surface—or against any horizontal one, for that matter. If she hadn’t been busy driving . . .

  He’d still keep his hands—and his mouth—to himself. He’d kissed Rae when she’d been a complete stranger, attracted to her beauty and the knowing expression on her face. It was as though she understood him—who he was inside and what he was thinking, including his slightly odd view of life and humanity. Especially his odd view. He knew it was ridiculous. He didn’t know her at all. But he’d bowed to instinct and allowed himself to capture one kiss regardless. Problem was, memory or no memory, now that he knew who she was the man he was inside wouldn’t trespass on his friendship with her parents by kissing their daughter.

  Unless he was invited. Judging by the cold reception she’d given him, an invitation—that kind of invitation—would not be forthcoming. She’d let him stay in her dwelling, but not in her bed.

  “Hey, you awake over there?” Rae said.

  Conn turned to look at her, saw her eyes glued to the rearview mirror, and kept turning. “Our pursuers are very persistent,” he said, his mind already making the leap before his eyes spied that damned light blue vehicle, coming after them like a fly chasing an elephant. Not really threatening at first glance, but if a fly stung at the right moment, real damage could be done.

  The sense of peace and well-being inside him lifted like a shroud, revealing the ugliness beneath. For that alone he might have hated the men in the Honda, but the ugliness was as wintry as it was black, and he embraced it because his own safety was not his only concern. Or even the most important. He would not see Rae hurt because of him.

  The driver of the vehicle stayed behind them, however, following them to their destination. Conn had no desire to live with the demon inside himself for that long, nor would he give his enemies the choice of where and when to strike.

  “Can you bring us even with them?” he asked Rae.

  “They shot at us, remember?”

  “And it gained them nothing.”

  She met his eyes, her own widening at what she must have found there, before she looked right and left, and behind them before they began to slow measurably.

  They moved along on the extreme right, the dirt and stone edge of the road a blur outside Conn’s window, even at the slower speed. The other vehicle moved over into the next section of roadway, coming even with them as Rae dropped back.

  Conn waited until the smaller vehicle was beside theirs, put his hand over Rae’s on the steering wheel, and jerked it to the left.

  “Hey!” Rae stomped on the gas and the Hummer swooped over in front of the other car. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “ ’Tis clear, is it not?” Conn said. “The principle is not unlike jousting. You are the knight, this is your steed, and size can be as devastating a weapon as steel.”

  She glared at him.

  “I learned it from them,” Conn said in his own defense, watching the blue car slow as the Hummer sped up, opening a safe distance between the two.

  “People die jousting,” Rae reminded him, needlessly as that would not have been an unwelcome fate for three men who sought to harm them.

  “We are perfectly safe.”

  “The other drivers, the innocent drivers, aren’t.”

  He took that in, recognized his oversight, and put it away, not in the least insulted at being corrected by a woman, especially as she had failed to consider all angles of her own actions. “The blackguards are following us to our destination.”

  “Yeah,” she said, sounding grim, “I get that.”

  “It cannot be allowed.”

  Rae didn’t respond, but Conn could see her thinking, working the problem over in her mind. For a minute, a split second really, he warred within himself, wanting to take charge of the situation and thwart their enemies himself. Then she looked at him, smiling coldly, and he let the ugliness slide back under its shroud and the world become a simple, sunny place again.

  “I fail to understand your intention,” he said to her, “but I rejoice that it will be inflicted on someone else.”

  Rae pushed some buttons on a small device on the panel to one side of the steering wheel, her smile turning yet more devilish as a tiny picture popped into colorful life.

  Conn stared at the little picture, again feeling that sense of vague familiarity without definitive recognition. He reached for the buttons, but Rae slapped his hand away.

  “It’s GPS—Global Positioning System.” She shook her head, apparently deciding it was too much to try to explain. “It provides a map to anyplace you want.”

  “How is a map going to help us?” Conn asked, letting the rest of it go.

  “It’s not the map,” Rae said, a glint in her eye that would have gotten her hanged as a witch had she lived in Conn’s time, “it’s the destination.”

  When she was in college at the University of Michigan, Rae had interned one summer for the United Auto Workers union. Part of her job had been to travel around to the different Locals and audit their books. She’d managed not to find any irregularities. She might not have been born and raised in Michigan, but everyone had heard of Jimmy Hoffa, and she had no desire to solve the mystery of where he was buried by joining him there.

  Probably not the kind of education intended by the internship program, but knowledge was knowledge, and sometimes it came in handy when you least expected it.

  She stayed on Dixie Highway, heading into the city of Pontiac, Michigan, following the Hummer’s GPS directions to Woodward Avenue and then Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. UAW Local 594, proud representatives of large truck and SUV makers, sat along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

  Rae guided the Hummer into the entrance of the local union hall, the Honda following right along. Until, she assumed, the driver got a good look at the building, with its large lettering and distinctive logo. The Honda made a wide circle around the parking lot. Rae floored it, the Hummer’s tires squealing as it lumbered toward the single driveway,
just barely beating out the smaller, more agile car. Rae angled the Hummer across the exit, completely blocking in the Honda.

  Even on a Sunday there were men in the union hall. They came spilling out the door, alerted by the shriek of rubber on pavement and the roar of engines. And then they spied the Honda. The driver backed away, circling the parking lot again, looking for a way out.

  A couple of guys disappeared into the union hall, the rest scattered into the parking lot, coming back with tire irons, baseball bats, and a whole lot of anger directed at anyone misguided enough to drive a foreign vehicle onto union property during the current automotive meltdown.

  “Are those men angry?” Conn wanted to know.

  “Yes, but it’s too complicated to explain.”

  Like the GPS, the ins and outs of the world market, bankruptcy, and the domestic workforce’s disgust with foreign-built vehicles were a lot for someone from twenty-first century Detroit to comprehend, so Rae chose to forego explanations.

  The Honda rolled to a stop, the three guys inside radiating fear. Even the car seemed to brace itself for what it knew was coming.

  A tire iron smashed into the Honda’s windshield, and the driver’s panicked face disappeared behind a maze of shattered safety glass as the rest of the blue-collar assault team got into the act.

  “Gives the term beater a whole new meaning,” she said instead, earning another of those chuckles that seemed to be reflexive for Connor Larkin, amusement without complete understanding.

  They looked on for a moment or two, as the Honda took a fair beating, although its passengers were still intact, shouting and swearing from inside the increasingly damaged vehicle. They weren’t foolish enough to get out of the car.

  “How long do you plan to sit here and watch?” Larkin finally asked her.