by Penny McCall
“What if I keep them from getting in front of me?”
“That’s the defensive way to handle this situation.”
“And defensive isn’t going to be enough,” Norah said, not that the grimness in his voice was her first clue. Hearing the part about the grudge had pretty much put her on the offensive.
“We’ll have to take them out, then get to the highway as fast as possible,” Trip said. “Before somebody else finds us.”
“Do you know where the highway is?”
“GPS,” he said, pulling out his phone. “Not that we can miss I-75 since it runs right down the middle of the state. But it would be nice to come across it on a road where there’s a ramp. Once we’re on the highway they’ll have no way of knowing where we are.”
“So, violence.” She glanced over at him. “Got any suggestions?”
“Don’t worry about denting the car.”
She snorted softly, smiling despite herself. “Something more specific might be helpful.”
“Just keep driving, it’ll come to you.”
Great. For days he’s been dictating to me. Now, when I want him to tell me what to do he clams up. And asking again would make her look needy and pathetic, not to mention there was her pride, which he’d stirred up by making sure she knew he was there for the FBI, but not for her and her father. So, what the hell, if he was willing to put his fate in her hands, then damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.
They’d left the town behind, the road curving through farmland and woods. The vehicle immediately behind her, a pickup truck that sounded like a ninety-year-old chain smoker with pneumonia, nosed out into the next lane. She swerved, keeping the sedan in front of the truck, one eye on the rearview mirror, the other on the tight curve coming up ahead. The truck was in and out of the oncoming traffic lane, and the driver was getting good and angry.
They hit the curve, both vehicles slowing drastically. Norah kept to the right lane, the guy in the truck taking it as an opportunity to get around her. And oncoming traffic wasn’t cooperating, which was to say there wasn’t any. Damn, Norah thought, punching it as they came out of the turn, then shrieking when her windshield filled with horse and buggy, equipped with one of those triangular warning signs.
“Amish,” Trip yelled, bracing himself in the passenger seat because the road was bounded by deep ditches, with marshland on one side and heavy forest on the other. The buggy didn’t have anywhere to go, and neither did she, coming up fast on the buggy. And then it got worse.
A semi appeared down the road. Somebody wasn’t going to be happy in a minute. Norah decided it wouldn’t be her. She floored it, the sedan rocketing forward, giving her just enough room to slip in front of the pickup, the car giving a little shimmy when their bumpers brushed.
The pickup driver found himself next to the buggy, staring at the word MACK in capital letters and made the only maneuver he could, cranking the wheel hard to the left and going airborne into the swamp. Norah just caught the splash before she buzzed around the buggy and whipped back into the right lane.
“One down,” she said to Trip.
“That was luck.”
“What have you got against luck?”
“Nothing, but there are two more guys back there who are already on the phone getting reinforcements. And after your little demonstration, there’ll be more than three of them. Picking them off one at a time isn’t going to cut it.”
So what do you suggest? She didn’t waste time asking the question, though. The other two vehicles, a low-riding car and an SUV, were around the buggy and coming up behind her. And she could only think of one maneuver that might work. It might kill them, too, but it was all she had.
She poured on the gas, the sedan’s engine roaring as they sped down the long straightaway in front of them, with another sharp curve ahead. She hit the edge of the curve with a quarter or third of a mile between the sedan and the other two vehicles, stopping so fast the sedan shuddered as the tires lost traction, the back end sliding and the tires smoking as she forced the car into a tight U-turn.
“What are you doing?” Trip said, one hand on the dash, eyes on the two vehicles barreling down on them.
“You wanted a master stroke,” she said, accelerating to a modest speed and keeping the car dead center on the white line.
“Back off, Norah, this is a suicide mission.”
“They don’t want us dead, remember?”
“Unless it’s us or them.”
Norah kept going, filled with a recklessness that was part adventure and more hurt than she cared to admit—the pain she’d suppressed last night—figuring she’d deal with it later. Later, apparently, was now, and while she had no intention of dying, or even being hurt, it gave her a bit of a kick to give Trip some of his own medicine. Payback? Sure, and it was absolutely insane. But it was a lot of fun, too.
She pressed harder on the gas pedal, aiming straight for the last two chase vehicles, accelerating as they raced toward each other, no hesitation, no second-guessing, her hands firm on the wheel. When she was close enough to see their faces through their windshields, when Trip shouted, “Noraaaaaah,” and the other drivers were yelling, too, she swerved sharply toward the SUV, which was slightly ahead.
The SUV driver took evasive action out of pure reflex, cutting the wheel sharply to the left, which sent him hurtling over the ditch and into the woods beyond. Norah was already cutting the wheel hard toward the car, that driver going airborne like the first, his yell trailing off behind him like he’d fallen over a cliff instead of making a short trip into a shallow marsh.
Norah slammed on the brakes, turned around, and drove back the way they’d come, slowly, checking both vehicles as she passed by them.
“They could have guns,” Trip said, his voice an octave higher than usual.
“They weren’t even out of their vehicles yet, and I wanted to make sure they were okay.”
“What the hell were you thinking?”
Norah shrugged and kept driving, keeping the car to the speed limit. “It always works on TV.”
“TV? TV? Jesus Norah, you almost killed us with a TV stunt?”
“I didn’t almost kill us,” she shot back, more than a little irritated. Being on familiar ground again, at least intellectually, helped her keep her cool. “I challenged drivers who were probably men and likely bullies. Aggression in bullies is used to cover up a lack of self-esteem, often with a host of underlying fears and phobias.”
“Bullies don’t always back down when you confront them.”
“That’s true, but the confrontation took them out of their behavioral comfort zone, and when I introduced unexpectedness—I swerved, in other words—they were confused and frightened enough to flinch.”
“And if one of them had been a psycho with a death wish?”
She shook her head. “Those guys are usually loners.”
Trip sat back, clearly steaming. “You’re getting a kick out of this, aren’t you?”
“Absolutely.”
“A thousand things could have gone wrong.”
“And nothing did, so why are you tearing me apart?” She already knew the answer—she’d taken his role in the operation and left him to sit back and be rescued.
Trip huffed out a breath and flopped back in his seat, proving her point. He didn’t sulk for long. “I didn’t think the second guy was going to take the bait,” he said, glancing over at her with a grudging little smile that warmed as he talked. “He stuck with you for a second.”
Long enough for her to start thinking of alternatives, but what she said was, “I never doubted he’d lose,” which curiously enough was the absolute truth.
“And that’s why he did,” Trip said. “Half of any success is believing you can pull it off.”
Norah looked over at him. “You know, you’re a pretty good natural psychoanalyst.”
Trip scowled at her. “There’s no reason to get insulting.”
chapter 16
; THE DETROIT ZOO ACTUALLY OCCUPIED A CORner of Royal Oak, a bit to the west of the city and right on the service drive for I-696. And just in case the road signs, and the long brick wall with DETROIT ZOO in big white letters didn’t announce their arrival, a water tower decorated with animal silhouettes and blazoned with the name of the place loomed at the entrance.
The zoo was open til five, which gave them a couple of hours, but Trip wasn’t at full speed and neither, frankly, was Norah. All she could think about was sleep—a halfway decent meal and then sleep, ten solid hours if she could get it.
Trip directed her to an honest-to-god hotel with room service and everything, and since she was so recognizable, he made all the arrangements. She kissed her good night’s sleep good-bye before she walked into the room and saw there was only one bed.
“Wishful thinking?” she said, dropping her small overnight bag on the desk.
“A man by himself doesn’t ask for a room with two beds.”
“Trust me, they’ve seen weirder things here.”
“Best not to draw attention if we don’t have to.”
Norah picked up her bag. “I’m getting my own room.”
“We’ve been through this already,” Trip said, sounding exhausted.
“I don’t think the guys who invaded my house and chased us out of Chicago are going to stumble across us here.”
“Maybe not, but people who don’t have our best interest in mind keep finding us, and I’m in no shape to kick down doors if you need to be saved.”
“Then I won’t scream for help.”
He smiled slightly. “You’re not really a screamer anyway.”
Norah rolled her eyes. “I’m taking a shower, and checking out the tub. Maybe it’s big enough to sleep in.”
Trip just grinned at her, so she took a long, hot shower, washing her clothes out when she was done. She would have stayed in the bathroom for the rest of the night, but her empty stomach was talking louder than the muddle of what she felt about Trip. So she cinched the belt of the hotel robe tight and opened the door, her courage faltering a little when she saw Trip’s eyes darken as he realized she wasn’t wearing anything under that single thin layer of terrycloth. Not exactly a scenario designed to help her self-control, but she kept her gaze off him, and that did the trick. Until he spoke.
“I ordered dinner,” he said in a nighttime deejay kind of voice that made her want to laugh, or at least giggle hysterically.
“Thanks,” she said instead, dropping into the chair at the desk and taking out some notes she’d brought along in the hope she’d have time to work on her book.
“Okay, then,” Trip said, “I’m going to take a shower before it comes.”
“Sure,” Norah said, then streaked to her feet but only making it halfway across the room before Trip came back out of the bathroom holding a scrap of black lace—not a thong, but not far from it even if it did cover the top half of her butt cheeks.
“The shirt is bad enough,” he said, “but these?”
“It was a gift store, in case you didn’t get that from the boxers and the I’m Too Sexy T-shirt, which was the only one they had in medium. And apparently the place was frequented by strippers, because that lace is scratchy, and after wearing those things for a couple of hours stripping wasn’t completely out of the question. I was seriously considering going commando—”
Trip sounded like he was strangling.
Norah realized she was rambling, and her verbal territory was only making matters worse. She eased over and took the panties from him, stuffing them in the pocket of her robe.
He just stood there, staring down at her.
“Shower,” she said, “cold.”
“There’s not enough cold water in the state, and this is the Great Lake State, so that’s saying something.”
She turned him around and shoved him into the bathroom, closing the door behind him and not saying a word, especially since her response would not run to the verbal. Her response would be to tear the door open and join him in the shower because he was right, there wasn’t enough cold water in the world to counter the heat moving through her. He certainly wasn’t helping matters, looking at her like that. How much did he think she could take? She wondered, getting angry, which was hardly helpful. Anger was a hot emotion, and it could turn so easily . . .
She spun away from the bathroom door before she talked herself into trouble. When Trip came out, she was back at the desk with her notes, the television on low, pretending to work. She looked up, though, she couldn’t help herself, catching Trip’s gaze in the mirror. He didn’t say anything, but there was so much tension in the room she could have knit a sweater out of it, so much untapped angst that when someone knocked on the door she jumped.
“Room service,” Trip said, and even though she’d passed the point where she could imagine putting anything in her stomach, at least it provided a distraction. And then the distraction took on epic proportions.
“Hollie,” she muttered when Trip opened the door, and she saw the tabloid wannabe standing in the hallway, “nauseating in an entirely different manner.”
“Isn’t this cozy?” Hollie smirked, surveying the room, one bed, the two of them in hotel robes, and coming to the obvious conclusion.
Norah bit back a denial. She’d only be playing Hollie’s game. “How did you find us?”
“Puh-leeze, what kind of investigative reporter would I be if I couldn’t eavesdrop on a few backwoods treasure hunters?”
“Now you’re an investigative reporter? I thought you were making a documentary.”
“That was before you ditched me. As you can see, it was just a waste of time.”
“You’re right,” Trip said, in an about-face that left Norah and Hollie gaping at him. “There’s no point in fighting the inevitable. You’ve got a room in the hotel, right?”
“Yes,” Hollie said.
“How about we let you know when we’re taking off in the morning. You can tag along.”
“I can tag along? Me?”
“Sure,” Trip said, “Lurch, too.”
“Who’s Lurch?”
“That homeless guy who carries your camera around. You can even let him turn it on tomorrow.”
Hollie narrowed her eyes at him, then looked at Norah. Norah did a hands up, no idea what he was up to. “What’s the catch?”
“No catch,” Trip assured her, “just be ready to go first thing in the morning.”
“You’ll forgive me if I have Loomis—Lurch,” she said when he looked confused, “sleep outside your door.”
“I won’t take offense if he does.”
“Okay, see you in the morning.”
Norah waited until the door closed. “What was that all about?”
“Just having a little fun.”
“Then you’re not letting Hollie follow us tomorrow.”
“I thought about it.”
She crossed her arms, waiting for an explanation.
“Don’t you want to know why she’s so fanatical about this?” Trip said.
“Why didn’t you just ask her? I mean, she would have lied, but—”
“She would have known we were looking at her as more than an irritant, and if she has something to hide she’ll be a lot more vigilant. And don’t give me that crap about being a closet psychologist. I happen to have a lot of experience with the criminal mind. It comes with the profession.”
“Sure, whatever you say.” There was another knock. “That’s probably room service,” she said, “maybe you’d like to ask Hollie to join us for dinner.”
“What the hell, there’s another robe in there.”
Trip went to the door and let in the waiter, and while he was tipping the man Norah looked under the covers. “Oysters, strawberries, chocolate cake. You’ve got to be kidding.” She picked up the phone, but he went back to the door and pulled in another room service cart.
“So what was the point of that, and I don’t mean the obvious one.”
<
br /> “Just pointing out the elephant in the room.”
“You must be talking about your ego.”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
Norah held her ground, but her appetite was gone. “I just don’t think we should be sleeping together.”
“After I made it clear that my goal is the loot, you mean. Would you rather I lie to you?”
“No.”
“And you aren’t the type of woman who lies to herself.”
“No, but—”
“And then there’s this.” He backed her against the wall and kissed her. She was lost the second his lips touched hers. There was only Trip, pushing her robe open, then moving into her, pressing her against the wall, his hands hot on her skin everywhere, making her forget her reservations, grateful she was a means to an end. Use me, she thought, moaning a little and moving against his hands, not looking forward to the day when he’d leave but deciding to make the most of the time between now and then. Mostly now, she amended, grabbing the wrist attached to the hand wandering in the vicinity of her waist and tugging upward, Trip obliging her by cupping her breast and rubbing his thumb over the nipple, and when his mouth replaced his hand, she arched, banging her head on the wall and not caring because it felt so good, the way pleasure speared down and exploded in her belly.
Trip straightened, tugging on her arms, but her knees had gone weak and the rest of her just wanted his mouth and his hands on her again, wanted him inside her—
“Bed,” he strangled out.
“Floor,” she said, trying to pull him down.
“Too hard,” he said, and she laughed. “That’s my point.”
“The floor, too, and I’m not up to carrying you, so—”
“Right, bullet wound,” she said, suddenly able to walk, hell, she would have run if it had been more than a few feet, shoving Trip down on the bed when they got there, and straddling him.
“Hold that thought,” he said, shoving her off and hobbling into the bathroom, reappearing with his jeans in one hand, fumbling out the wallet with the other and holding up the little foil packet he took out of it like a trophy.
Norah definitely felt like cheering when he flopped down on his back and pulled her astride him again. He put his clever mouth on her breast, slipped his fingers down her stomach, then inside her, the lovely haze of pleasure narrowing, building as his hand disappeared so she could take him in, a long, slow slide intended to drive him crazy, but nearly pushing her over the edge, too.
