Worth the Trip

by Penny McCall

  His hands moved to her hips, but she pulled them away, twining her fingers with his, keeping control. She set a pace that was slow and delicious, shuddering as he moved with her, loving the way his body felt under her hands and mouth, all that strength surging up as she pressed down and they both came apart, her heart pounding as she collapsed beside him, every nerve ending humming with pleasure and filled with so much peace she never wanted to move again.

  And then her stomach growled.

  “I don’t think you should have any oysters or chocolate,” Trip said, sounding worn-out but in a good way. “I’m pretty sure I couldn’t handle you on aphrodisiacs.”

  “There’s really no such thing, anyway. It’s all in the mind.”

  “Then I’m doing something wrong.”

  Norah laughed a little. “Trust me, you did everything right.”

  “Actually, you did everything right.”

  “It was definitely a team effort.”

  “Team. There’s a word I haven’t heard from you in a while.”

  It was a word she’d never heard from him. He’d trotted out the concept before, but only when it suited his agenda and always with the firm understanding that he would lead and she was expected to follow.

  Norah sighed, rolling onto her side, away from him. She felt Trip curl around her, and it made her eyes well up because she knew it wasn’t real.

  “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “You’re trying not to lie to me, remember?” And she was trying not to lie to herself, either.

  “Norah?”

  She rolled back over, went into his arms, letting her actions speak for her, now and in the future. They’d be a team, and he’d be the leader. She’d enjoy the fringe benefits, too, with no expectations and no regrets. But she’d take a lesson from him and keep her own goals firmly in mind.

  chapter 17

  “WOW, THAT’S TOO BAD,” TRIP SAID, SHAKING his head over the sad state of Hollie’s tires. They were standing in the hotel parking lot, Hollie, Lurch, Norah, and himself, getting ready to hit the road, except Hollie’s BMW wasn’t roadworthy.

  “Don’t stand there acting all innocent,” Hollie snapped at him. “I know you did it.”

  “I’m wounded.”

  “Ahhhh.” Hollie whipped around, stomped to the edge of the lot and kicked the bushes planted there. For a full minute. “Fine,” she said when she’d stomped back, looking like an outraged Barbie doll, “go off to the zoo without me. Yeah,” she smirked, “I know where you’re going, and I’ll be right behind you.”

  “Don’t miss the penguins,” Trip said, “I hear it’s a real kick to watch those little guys swim around in circles and never get anywhere.”

  Lurch actually cracked a smile.

  “And where the hell were you?” Hollie yelled at him.

  “Sleeping right outside our door, exactly where you left him,” Trip said. “You know, Hollie, I don’t think you’re paying him enough to sleep on the floor. You’re lucky nobody called hotel security and had him thrown in jail.”

  Hollie pulled out her phone, glaring at Trip while she dialed information and asked for the nearest rental car place.

  “This is fun and everything,” Norah said to Trip, “but, you know, places to go.”

  “Right. I’m driving.”

  Norah climbed into the passenger seat without argument. “If you can handle vandalism,” she said, “I guess you’re well enough to get behind the wheel. Not to mention I’d like to avoid a repeat of yesterday.”

  “Not up for another episode of vehicular assault?”

  “I’m not up for any kind of assault.”

  “Too bad, I had plans for tonight,” Trip said, getting a kick out of the way she blushed.

  “What I’d like to know is how you pulled that off,” Norah said, tipping her head toward Hollie and her flat tires.

  Trip started up the sedan. “You slept like a rock last night.”

  “Apparently so did Lurch.”

  “That’s what I paid him for.”

  Norah burst out laughing, looking more relaxed than he’d ever seen her. “If I didn’t think his mercenary heart might come in handy, I’d love to tell Hollie.”

  “She’d probably ask for a cut.”

  Trip pulled into the Detroit Zoo entrance, parking in the structure because the lot that fronted the street was too exposed, and there weren’t enough vehicles to hide their sedan.

  As they crossed the drive from the structure to the entrance, Trip reached over and folded her hand into his.

  She tensed, her gaze zipping to his face.

  “We’re not wearing wedding rings,” he said. “It should look like we’re dating, and people who are dating hold hands.”

  “Marital status has no bearing on hand holding. It’s the state of the relationship that matters, the closeness and personality of the participants—if they’re comfortable with their partner and with public displays of affection, that sort of thing.”

  “Oh. Are you sure?”

  Norah took one look at the grin on his face and smiled a little herself. “Want to see my diploma?”

  “No, but I’d like to read your book. Starting with chapter four.”

  Norah winced slightly. Her hand flexed in his, but she didn’t let go. It was all for show anyway, so chapter four and holding hands meant nothing, right? “Why would anyone care if we’re dating or married?”

  “Because if we’re not married and we’re not dating, what are we doing here together?”

  “Maybe we’re scientists.”

  Trip shook his head. “Scientists would have made an appointment to study or observe or whatever scientific thing they were here to do.”

  “I still don’t get why it matters.”

  “People notice stuff like that, not always consciously, but they notice.”

  “And you don’t want to be noticed.”

  “Do you?”

  “Not if I’m doing something illegal.”

  “Don’t think of it as illegal, think of it as reclaiming stolen property.”

  “I’m pretty sure the officials and the police would consider it illegal—that’s if they didn’t throw me in jail until I tell them where the rest of the loot is.”

  Trip grinned. “You didn’t use to be so cynical.”

  “And then I met you.” But Norah was smiling, too. Better yet, she’d relaxed again—at least her hand wasn’t clamped around his hard enough to cut off circulation any more. “We have a date with an elephant,” she said, taking the map the cashier had given them. She stopped inside the entrance, spreading the map on top of a handy garbage receptacle.

  Trip looked over her shoulder, both of them searching for the elephant enclosure. Both of them came up empty.

  “No elephants,” Norah said. “Where did the elephants go?”

  “Let me check the Internet,” Trip said, taking out his phone.

  Norah walked over to the gift shop and went inside. She was back out within two minutes, flipping through a thin booklet. “It says in here they determined that the amenities and the climate here were not good for pachyderms,” she said, hurrying toward a long pavilion off to her left. “The elephants were sent to California where the weather is always warm and they have an actual herd.”

  “Hooray for the elephants,” Trip said, following her into a switchback line-up system that was completely empty.

  Norah walked the lines, back and forth. Trip hopped the low barriers and met her at the front just as an old-fashioned steam engine pulling a line of passenger cars was arriving.

  “That’s the difference between you and me,” she said, sliding into the closest car with bench seats and open sides. “Shortcuts.”

  Trip hopped in after her. “We both arrive at the same destination. I just get there faster.”

  “Ever heard the saying, ‘It’s not the destination, it’s the journey’?” she said—a little self-righteously, in his opinion.

  “That’s pract
ically an FBI motto. This operation happens to be a race, but a lot of ops are undercover, and an agent who doesn’t pay attention to where he is and what he’s doing every minute won’t make it to the destination. It’s the so-called normal people who miss out on the important things because they’re focused on getting a bigger house or that fat promotion with the corner office.”

  “Or tenure?”

  Trip didn’t say anything, the train’s whistle covering his lack of inspiration, because his first impulse was to deny it, but a denial would ring false, and Norah would notice false.

  “Everyday people have to pay mortgages and buy groceries and put their kids through college,” she said as the train shuddered out of the station, picking up speed until it was moving at a snail’s pace, suitable for toddlers and grandparents. “They don’t have the luxury of thinking only of themselves.”

  Trip found himself speechless again, no train whistle to cover it this time, which was all right since this time he was reviewing his own life and coming up lacking.

  “I’m sorry,” Norah said. “We should be focusing on the clue.”

  And he shouldn’t need her to remind him of that. “So the elephants have gone to Disneyland,” he said, “what about their enclosure? What happened there?”

  “A pair of white rhinos have taken up residence. The girl in the gift shop says they’re very happy there.”

  Trip crossed his arms, giving her a half smile, impressed. “Did you get their names, too?”

  “Tamba and Jasiri, but I don’t think calling them by name is going to make them any friendlier.”

  “The elephants wouldn’t have been a picnic, either.”

  “So how are we going to get in?” Norah wanted to know.

  “We’ll figure it out when we get there.”

  The train took its sweet time, but it was faster than walking, especially with a bullet wound that was admittedly minor but still hurt like hell with every step he took. The sky was a uniform, gunmetal gray, the air warmer than it had been, but Trip slung an arm around Norah’s shoulder, liking the way she settled against him. The train dropped them at the far northwest corner of the zoo, only a deserted café between the station and the enclosure now occupied by the rhinos.

  “Now what?” Norah said when they were standing at the wall in front of the deep concrete moat where the rhinos lived. They were nowhere to be seen, probably inside the soaring concrete bunker that had once housed the elephants. “The moat and pool were altered in the makeover, but the brochure doesn’t say anything about the building.”

  “If they’d found something during the renovation, it would have been in the papers, which means it would be on the Internet.”

  “It stands to reason there’s nothing hidden inside the enclosure.”

  “I agree, not only because it would be idiotic to get inside a cage with elephants, but because nothing about this has been difficult.”

  “So we’re looking for someplace well hidden but not inaccessible.”

  Trip worked his way around the outside enclosure until he came upon the public entrance. Inside was a fairly large room with lighted panels around the outside, referencing various aspects of rhino zoology, from natural habitat to the preservation efforts of places like the Detroit Zoo. The other side of the room was lined with glass panels that overlooked the rhinos’ indoor enclosure, where Tamba and Jasiri grazed on a pile of greenery being tossed to them by a man wearing a zoo uniform and a bored expression.

  “Feeding time,” Trip said.

  “We’ll have to wait,” Norah said.

  “Can’t. Hollie knows we’re here, and we didn’t slow her down for long. She won’t have any trouble finding us here, either. All she’ll have to do is ask around.”

  “So we’re on a deadline. What do you suggest?”

  At the end of the room was a door, labeled off-limits to any but zoo staff. Not to mention it was locked. Trip lifted the cover of a small box at the right side of the door. “Keypad, and the door’s probably equipped with a silent alarm. We’ll have to charm ourselves in, the same way Puff must have done.”

  “If he hid the clue.”

  Trip beat a fist on the door. The guy on rhino feeding duty looked up, frowned, and shook his head. Trip banged some more. Tamba and Jasiri didn’t appreciate it. Neither did their caretaker.

  “Shit,” Trip said, “he’s going for his radio.”

  “Let me.” Norah stepped up to the glass and drew a big question mark on it with her finger, then put her hands together like she was praying, an innocent expression on her face.

  The caretaker hesitated, then put down his rake and came to the door, opening it enough so they could see that the name patch on his shirt read BOSCO, but not so wide that he couldn’t slam it shut in a split second.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked, his eyes on Norah.

  Trip nudged her forward.

  She stepped back. “I, uh, was wondering what their names are?”

  He scowled at her for a second, said, “Read the walls, lady,” then slammed the door shut.

  Norah rounded on Trip. “What was that?”

  “You got him to come to the door. I assumed you had a plan.”

  “My plan was getting him to open the door. You were supposed to do the rest.”

  “He was ogling you. I figured you’d have better luck getting us in. You know all the tricks, or did you make them up for that book you wrote?”

  “Of course not. Those interactions are fact.”

  “And you grew up with one of the greatest con men of all time. Some of it had to have rubbed off on you.”

  That, Norah thought, was exactly the problem. She loved her father, but she didn’t want to be like him. She’d seen the hurt he’d caused her mother, and while she would hardly inflict a lifetime of pain on the man inside the rhino building by coercing him into letting them inside, that sort of behavior led to a slope she didn’t want to slip onto.

  “C’mon,” Trip wheedled, “where’s the girl who ran three guys off the road yesterday? What happened to your sense of adventure?”

  “Conning me into conning him? Weak, Jones.” But she squared her shoulders and rose to the challenge. Slapping Trip across the face was just gravy.

  “Hey,” he shouted, loud enough to carry through the door, even if Norah hadn’t made sure they were in front of the glass.

  She reared back again, Trip catching her by the wrist just as the door flew open.

  “Ouch,” she whimpered, twisting to make it look like he was applying pressure. “You’re hurting me.”

  He let her go, and she stumbled back, right into Bosco. Bosco caught her, then swept her behind him, shifting the rake he held and stepping forward. Trip put his hands up to ward Bosco off, stepping back. He turned on his heel and started to walk away, looking over his shoulder for a long moment. The threat she saw there probably wasn’t all for show, but either way it did the trick.

  “Thank you,” she said to Bosco, not having to work too hard to make her voice breathy because it had just sunk in that she’d slapped Trip across the face. Hard. At the time it had seemed like a good idea. Now it felt more like suicide. It probably would be if they left without something to show for all their trouble.

  “Is there someone I can call for you?” Bosco wanted to know.

  “No. If I could just sit down for a minute.” She looked around. “There are no seats out here,” she said, which she’d already known.

  “I’m not supposed to,” Bosco said. “There’s a café just up the way.” And he started to lead her that way.

  Her legs gave out, and she leaned into Bosco, who staggered back a step or two. “Jeez, lady,” he said, “at least make an effort. You weigh a ton. If you pass out there’s no way I’m picking you up.”

  So much for chivalry, Norah thought, wondering where the hell Trip was as she stumbled toward the door, getting there just as Bosco slumped against her, nearly dragging her to the floor. Then his weight disappeare
d and Trip was there, easing Bosco down.

  “What took you so long?”

  “I was enjoying the show, Meryl,” Trip said. “Or maybe I should call you Powderpuff. You’re definitely a chip off the old con man.”

  “Great, thanks. You didn’t hurt Bosco, did you?”

  “You slapped me across the face,” Trip reminded her. “You’re not worried about me.”

  “You signed up for this, he didn’t. And it was your idea to con him.”

  “Feeling guilty?”

  “Maybe a little,” she said, which perked her right up. Her father never felt guilty. He always said it was a waste of—

  “Guilt’s a waste of time,” Trip said, dragging Bosco through the employee door and propping him up against the wall.

  Norah shook off the flashback to her childhood, this time with Trip’s face in place of her father’s as he pontificated on his every-man-for-himself philosophy of life. Trip had a moral core her father would not only have found amusing but useful. Sure, Trip tended to compromise his ethics, but he was doing it for what he saw as a greater purpose. And he was usually dealing with criminals—not that that made it all right, but for a lot of people, including Trip, conning a criminal was justifiable behavior.

  “Norah,” Trip called out, “you going to help me look?”

  “What if someone comes along?” she said, taking the opposite side of the small area where the zoo personnel cared for the rhinos. “Shouldn’t one of us keep watch?”

  “Tourists will think we work here. There shouldn’t be any other zoo employees along, unless one of them tries to call our buddy, here, and doesn’t get an answer.”

  “You could fake it.”

  “That only works in the movies. More likely the person on the other end will ask a question I can’t answer, and then this whole place will be on red alert. We’re only getting one shot at this, and we both need to search.”