John pushed Renee backward until she bumped against the tree again, pausing for a few seconds to catch a breath. At the same time he thrust his hands through her wind-tangled hair and turned her faceup, and when he met her eyes and saw nothing but sheer, hot desire, he thought he was going to explode right there.
He dove in to meet her lips again, and she opened her mouth to him willingly, her tongue moving with his in a dance of pure ecstasy. Feeling her squirm against him during his testosterone assault had already sent him halfway to heaven, and now all he could think about was finishing the trip.
With a soft groan Renee went on the offensive again, sliding her hands down his chest and around his hips to hook her fingers into his hip pockets. She dragged him hard against her until his groin was pressed firmly against her abdomen. She might not have wanted it last night, but she sure as hell wanted it now, and he didn’t stop to wonder why because—Lord—he wanted it, too.
He caught the hem of her sweatshirt, nudged his hand beneath it, then went straight for the clasp of her bra. About a hundred times since last night, he’d thought about how that tiny clasp had been just a flick of his fingertips away, and now all he had to do was hold it here, twist it there, and it would open. Just…like…that.
Her bra fell away. He swept it aside, then closed his hand over her breast and squeezed it firmly. She broke off their kiss with a muffled gasp, then dropped her head back against the tree, her eyes closed, breathing wildly, her fingertips digging into his shoulders. He wasted no time pushing her sweatshirt up and over her breasts until they met the cool autumn air. He circled them with his hands, then moved the pads of his thumbs over her tight nipples in a hot, strumming caress.
“John…oh, God…”
The deep, throaty hum of her words sent a jolt of heat spiraling through him. He could tell by the sound of her voice that she wasn’t telling him to put on the brakes. She was begging him to hit the throttle and move full speed ahead.
He kissed the ivory column of her throat, then moved upward to swirl the tip of his tongue against her earlobe, still caressing her breasts, doing his best to drive her crazy at the same time the blood was sizzling through his own veins. The pine forest surrounding them had become strangely unreal, his mind turning hot and hazy and completely beyond his control. Everything about this woman was making him forget who he was and what he was supposed to be doing, because right now he was absolutely sure he was supposed to be making love to her, and he knew that couldn’t possibly be right. But anticipation had shoved every other thought from his mind. He wanted her right here, right now, right up against this tree, right down in the dirt or anywhere else he could have her.
She worked her hands in between them and grasped his belt buckle. In only a few seconds she had it undone and was starting in on his jeans, and it was a damned good thing. The way he felt right now, if she didn’t rip them off in the next ten seconds he was going to rip them off himself. And then hers would be next.
But as she coaxed his zipper south, slowly it dawned on him that he was only a zip and a tug from standing in the middle of a pine forest half naked. A half-naked cop, soon to be all naked, on the verge of making love to an accused armed robber.
When the full force of that mental image hit him, he froze. For the first time he realized that she really did intend to go through with this. She clearly intended for them to get naked in the dirt, just as he’d suggested, just as he’d imagined, just as he wanted so badly he could taste it. And that was when he felt a hard mental slap that knocked his sanity back into place.
Of all the women in the world, he was on the verge of making love to the one most likely to end up in prison. Good God—was he out of his mind?
He leaned away suddenly and took her by the shoulders, holding her at arm’s length, fighting to keep his wild breathing and stratospheric body temperature under control. Her hands fell away from his zipper and she looked at him quizzically, her blonde hair blowing in the breeze, her cheeks flushed pink with passion. Somehow he managed to grind out the words—the only words that would redeem him from this situation he’d been stupid enough to get himself into.
“Well,” he said, with as much nonchalance as he could muster, “I guess we know now just how far you’ll go to stay out of jail, don’t we?”
Renee stood perfectly still for a moment, his words hanging almost palpably in the air. She opened her mouth as if to speak. Then she clamped it shut again, her expression shifting to a mask of total fury. She slapped both palms against his chest and gave him a hard shove.
“You bastard!”
He stumbled backward. She pulled her sweatshirt down and stalked past him, whacking him with her elbow at the same time. She walked up the road several angry paces, then spun around hotly.
“You really think that’s why I wanted you? To stay out of jail?”
“Hell yes,” he said, buckling his belt as he strode toward her. “And you can give it up, sweetheart. It won’t work. I know plenty of cops who can be bought with far less than a hot female body. Unfortunately for you, I’m not one of them.”
“Excuse me,” Renee said, “but I don’t believe I was the only one participating!”
“But you were the only one with something to gain.”
“So you didn’t really want me. Is that right?”
He gave her a disinterested shrug. Her gaze traveled down his body and stopped at his crotch. “Sorry, John, but your built-in lie detector is telling me otherwise.”
He shifted uncomfortably. She had him there.
“Okay, Renee. I suppose there’s a lot about you to interest a man, in spite of the fact that you’re a fugitive.”
“So it was basically a lust thing.”
Oh, yeah. Lust had been heavily involved. And so had stupidity. Daniels was right: his objectivity was shot to hell, and he probably needed a month of vacation instead of a week, out alone in the wilderness with no law-breaking women to tempt him. He’d been thinking with his crotch instead of his head, and that was a very, very dangerous thing to do.
“More like curiosity, really,” John said. “You promised me all kinds of interesting things to escape Leandro, so I thought I’d see just how far you’d go to keep yourself out of jail. To tell you the truth, it was even farther than I figured.”
“I told you that’s not why I did it!”
“Well, then, suppose you tell me the real reason. Because from where I’m standing, it looks like sexual bribery, pure and simple.”
Her stance was belligerent, with her fists on her hips and her chin thrust forward, but her angry gaze had faltered a little. She blinked several times, and he was surprised to see tears glistening in her eyes.
“Okay! Fine. You want to know the real reason I wanted you? I’ll tell you why. Because where I’m going, I won’t have the opportunity to make love to a man again for, oh, say, the next ten years or so. And since kissing you and…and other things…is not an entirely disgusting experience in spite of the fact that you’re a cop, I figured, why not?”
She’s yanking you around again. Tears and all. Don’t buy it.
“Kind of like having that last cigarette before the firing squad pulls the trigger?”
“Well, I could have done without that analogy, but yeah. Kind of like that.”
“I see.” He shrugged again. “Actually, I suppose kissing you has its advantages. As long as that pretty little mouth of yours is occupied, it can’t be telling me lies.”
“I’ve told you the truth! About everything!”
“Are you kidding? You haven’t spoken a truthful word since the moment I met you! You’ve lied to me, stolen my car, shot my car—”
“You big, dumb jerk! They actually pay you to solve crimes?” Her words shot through the forest, then echoed back at him, doubling the accusation. “Think about it, will you? If I’d really been the one who shot that store clerk, I wouldn’t have shot your car. I’d have shot you!”
Stunned, John just stared at her.
“Now let’s get out of here,” she said, wiping her eyes on the shoulder of her sweatshirt and sniffing a little. “I’m sick of this damned forest, and I’d just as soon get all that booking and fingerprinting and strip-searching over with, if you don’t mind.”
She turned and marched up the road, not even bothering to see if he was following. He stared after her, frozen to the spot where he stood.
I wouldn’t have shot your car. I’d have shot you.
He’d been so furious about his car last night that he’d just written her off as loony, never really stopping to think about the reason she’d destroyed his vehicle and not him. Why hadn’t she shot him when she had the chance? Even a shot in the leg would have rendered him incapable of coming after her. She could have hopped into his car and easily escaped. It would have been hours before he could have gotten out of the woods, and by that time she’d have been long gone.
But she hadn’t done that. She’d shot his car instead.
He started walking, staying several paces behind her, suddenly smothered in an avalanche of confusion. He’d seen a lot of things in those clear blue eyes of hers, but God help him, a lie wasn’t one of them.
But Renee wasn’t a suspect he had to decide whether or not to take to jail. Some other cop had already made that decision, and judging from the evidence against her, it had been a slam dunk. All John had to do was transport her from point A to point B and his job was over. He had a clear, unequivocal responsibility that was as black and white as anything could possibly be. So why, when he looked at Renee, did he see all those shades of gray?
Because for the first time, he was actually starting to believe that maybe—just maybe—she was telling the truth.
It took at least twenty minutes after they’d started back down the road again for the fire-red blush on Renee’s cheeks to fade. All she’d wanted was for John to quit being a cop for a few stupid minutes. To make her feel the same way she’d felt last night when he’d kissed her. To give her something she could remember during the long years she was facing inside those prison walls, where a man’s touch would be as rare as gourmet meals and bubble baths.
But now she knew it hadn’t been real.
She’d never felt so embarrassed in her life. She had never, ever thrown herself at a man the way she’d thrown herself at John. And then to have him turn around and mock her, suggesting that she was trying to bribe him with sex, had been the ultimate in humiliation.
No. The ultimate in humiliation had been when she’d blurted out the whole pitiful truth of why she’d done it.
They walked in silence for the next hour and a half, trudging along the dirt road, which soon turned to gravel, then to blacktop. A rusted-out Ford truck passed them once, but even when John waved his arms and practically threw himself in front of it, the driver refused to stop and give them a lift. That had sent John into a fit of grumbling and cussing that used most of the four-letter words Renee had ever heard and added a few new ones to her vocabulary.
It was midafternoon by the time they emerged onto the state highway. Without a word, John turned and walked along the shoulder of the road, and soon they topped a hill and the Red Oak Diner came into view. She got dizzy with dread as she realized how close they were to civilization and therefore to jail, and for a minute she thought she was going to collapse right there at the side of the road. As soon as they got to a phone, John could call for help and her fate would be sealed.
She wanted to cry. To run. To beg him not to turn her in. Instead he walked stoically beside her, his face a mask of cop-like purpose, as if things hadn’t gotten so hot between them a few hours ago that Smokey Bear had almost been called into action. She could see now that he was a cop through and through, and he wasn’t about to cancel her one-way ticket to jail just because she’d happened to mention approximately a thousand times that she was innocent.
Or because she’d wanted him to make love to her.
They reached the parking lot of the diner, and she couldn’t stand the silence any longer. Sarcasm probably wasn’t the smartest thing to express right about then, but it was about the only way she could get words out without falling apart.
“So what’s the drill now, John? Are you going to find some rope, or tape, or maybe a spare pair of handcuffs lying around so you can subdue your dangerous fugitive again?”
John pulled her to a halt beside him. “When we go into that diner, I want you to sit down at the counter and keep your mouth shut. I mean shut, as in absolutely nothing coming out of it. Is that clear?”
She opened her mouth to snap back at him, but then she realized that something was different here. His words were low and intense, but without all the anger and animosity he’d shown her up to now.
What was going on?
He opened the door to the diner and motioned her inside, directing her to sit on a ragged vinyl stool at the counter. They were greeted by the same man who’d been there last night—a balding, fleshy-faced guy with an entire Goodyear steel-belted radial lopping over the waistband of his Wranglers.
“Well, hey there, John!”
John’s face broke into a big, congenial smile. “Hey, Harley.”
Renee blinked with astonishment. A smile? From John? She’d assumed his mouth muscles were incapable of moving against gravity, but there it was: a beautiful, dazzling, million-dollar smile that made him look thoroughly sexy and engaging, and she couldn’t take her eyes off him. He slid onto the stool beside her with lazy grace, as if he’d just dropped by for a casual cup of coffee.
Harley looked back and forth between John and Renee, flashing them a smile filled with an assortment of teeth in various states of disrepair. “Soooo…you kids have a good time last night?”
The question hung in the air for what seemed like hours. Renee waited for the ax to fall, for John to declare that she was a desperate criminal he was in the midst of hauling to jail. Instead, he shifted that gorgeous smile in her direction, this time filling it with so much sexual suggestiveness that she practically melted from the heat of it. He looked back at Harley with a conspiratorial, one-guy-to-another smile.
“A good time?” John slipped his arm around Renee’s shoulders. “Well, now, Harley. What do you think?”
Renee was so stunned she just sat there, her eyes wide, probably looking exactly like what John was making her out to be—a brainless bimbo racking up points toward the Olympic bed-hopping championship.
“I think you’re one lucky son of a bitch,” Harley replied. “That’s what I think.” He dropped his voice and leaned closer to John. “Looks like she likes the rough stuff, huh?”
John looked at Harley questioningly. Harley pointed to John’s bruised eye, smiling as if he thought a little sadomasochism really pepped things up between the sheets.
“Uh…yeah,” John said, turning to stare pointedly at Renee. “I guess things did get a little rough here and there.” He wasn’t kidding about that.
Harley tapped the counter in front of Renee. “Hey, darlin’. Ever consider an older man? Now, I might not be as pretty as John, here, but what I lack in looks I make up for in experience. You and me could—”
Whap!
Harley spun around, a little shocked, it appeared, at getting smacked on the back of the head with an order pad. “Experience that, you dirty old man!”
He rubbed his head. “Marva, you rotten old hag! I oughta—”
“You ought get your butt into that kitchen and get to work fixin’ that dishwasher so you don’t have to do ’em by hand later. That’s what you ought do!”
Harley muttered something nasty under his breath and slunk into the kitchen. Marva turned to Renee with a kindly smile. “Ignore my husband, sweetie. He’s all bark and no bite. Believe me.”
Renee turned to John, feeling a rush of hope. He hadn’t told them. Why hadn’t he told them?
“We had some car problems back at the cabin,” John told Marva. “Had to walk out. I’m going to need a wrecker, so if you’ll just let me use your phone—”
“Why, sure! Give Stan a call up at the Mobil station in Winslow. He’ll get you fixed right up.”
“Borrow your phone? Mine’s out of juice.”
“Sure, honey.” She nodded toward the phone at the end of the counter.
“Hey, something sure smells good,” John said. “What do you have cooking back there?”
“Beef stew.”
“Perfect. Why don’t you bring me and Alice some of that?” He glanced at Renee and winked. “We kind of forgot to eat last night.”
Alice? Who the hell was Alice?
Then she remembered. That was the fake name she’d given John last night. What kind of game was he playing?
Marva gave John the phone number of the Mobil station. He went to the end of the counter to use the phone while Marva went into the kitchen and returned with two bowls of stew. Renee was so hungry that it was all she could do not to plunge face-first into the bowl.
“So tell me, sweetie,” Marva said in a sly whisper. “Was he good?”
It took a moment for Renee to figure out what the woman was talking about. She glanced over to John, who was talking on the phone but watching every move she made. He’d told her not to talk. Until she could get a handle on this situation, she decided it might be best to take that advice.
She turned back to Marva, and in lieu of a verbal response, she gave her a big smile and a provocative little wiggle of her eyebrows.
Marva beamed with delight. “I knew it! The first time he walked in here…” She fanned herself with her order pad, as if her body temperature had suddenly shot through the roof. “Whew! I’m tellin’ you, sweetie, if I was twenty years younger, I’d tell Harley to take a hike and follow that man wherever he wanted to go.”
Of course, she’d just smacked Harley on the back of the head for the same kind of pronouncement, but Renee didn’t bother to point that out.
John came back and sat down beside her. Renee had no idea what was going on, except that she’d finally gotten the chance to eat, and not a soul in the vicinity knew who she really was. She gave John a few questioning looks, which he carefully ignored. She felt the faint stirrings of hope. If he’d told these people the real story of what happened last night, he’d be obligated to take her in. As it was right now, though, nobody here knew she’d jumped bail. She wasn’t even sure they knew John was a cop.
Did that mean his options were open?
They’d just finished eating when Stan rolled into the parking lot with his wrecker. John paid the tab and escorted Renee outside.
“You didn’t tell them,” she said, the moment they were out the door. “Why not?”
“This isn’t some TV cop show, Renee. I see no reason to disturb a man’s place of business any more than I have to.”
He spoke with conviction, but his words just didn’t ring true. They were the only customers in the place, so they’d have hardly disturbed the man’s business. And she had a feeling that if Harley the dentally challenged sadomasochist knew she was a bail jumper, he and Marva would have cracked a beer and sat back to watch the show, glorying in their celebrity status for the next year or so by repeating the story to every redneck within a fifty-mile radius.
So what was the real reason John hadn’t told them?
“Are you Stan?” John said, greeting the wiry little grease monkey who got out of the truck.
“Yeah. Where’s your car?”
“Back in the woods. Just off Lake Shelton.”
“Hop in.”
Stan started back toward the truck. John took Renee’s arm and followed him. “My advice still holds,” John said under his breath. “Keep your mouth shut.”
She crawled up into the cab of the wrecker and sat down, hoping that the spring sticking out of the shredded blue vinyl seat cover wouldn’t rip a hole in her jeans.
Then she had a terrible thought.
Maybe John was giving her false hope just so she’d behave herself. She’d given him so much trouble on the way out of the forest that he didn’t want to deal with any more of it, so he was going to make her think he’d changed his mind about taking her in so she’d do whatever he told her to.
No. That didn’t make sense. Now that they were back to civilization, he didn’t have to put up with anything. All he had to do was bind her hands, her feet, her mouth, if he felt he needed to, then deposit her like so much dirty laundry on the steps of the Tolosa police station.
But that didn’t appear to be his plan.
“So what kinda problem you got with your car?” Stan asked, downshifting, then stomping on the gas until the engine roared.
“Alice here was doing a little target practice. It got out of hand.”
Stan grinned. “She shot your car?”
“Afraid so.”
“Tire?”
“Radiator.”
“Not smart to give a woman a firearm,” Stan said with a sad shake of his head. “Never met a single one of ’em who could hit the broad side of a barn.”
Sexist pig, Renee thought, then smiled sweetly. “Actually, Stan, I’m an excellent shot.”
“You kiddin’?” he said, the words squeaking out on top of a hyena-like laugh. “You hit a car radiator!”
“I was aiming for the car radiator.”
John slid his hand onto Renee’s thigh and tightened his fingers against it. “Alice—”
“Because I couldn’t bear to shoot…the target.”
John shot her a quick glance, then turned away again. He loosened his grip on her thigh, but his hand lingered.
Renee dropped her voice to a whisper. “And I think the target knows why.”
He flexed his fingers, almost like a caress, still refusing to look at her. “Even if he does,” he said softly, “that doesn’t take away his responsibility, does it?”
For a moment his words didn’t register. When they finally did, Renee felt a horrible sinking sensation in her stomach. All at once the truth of the situation dawned on her. It wasn’t just a matter of making John believe her. It was a matter of him also making the choice to protect her over protecting his job and his reputation, and that was never going to happen.
No matter how much she delayed things, no matter how much she pleaded with him, no matter how much she prayed to find a way out of this, she didn’t stand a chance. He hadn’t told the world she was a fugitive, but that didn’t mean he had any intention of letting her go. Maybe it was just his way of allowing her to have some semblance of a normal life right up to the time that cell door slammed shut behind her.
At that moment, she decided that the last thing she wanted was to force John to drag her kicking and screaming into that police station. He was offering her the only thing he had to offer, a little dignity, and she decided she was going to take it.
“I won’t give you any more trouble,” she whispered. “Just do what you have to do.”
Then she turned away to look out the window, staring at the towering pine trees, thinking that she might be forty years old before she ever saw one again. Soon John’s hand slipped away from her thigh, taking with it the last shred of hope she had.
It took Stan and his crew nearly three hours to find the proper radiator for John’s car and get it installed, which meant that he and Renee were forced to spend the majority of the late afternoon sitting on orange plastic chairs at Stan’s Mobil station, breathing in enough car exhaust, brake fluid, and cigarette smoke to cause an instantaneous case of lung cancer. About two hours in, John sprung for soft drinks for both of them. Since he didn’t seem to want to carry on even the most cursory of conversations, about the only words she’d spoken were “diet” and “Coke.”
But while John had no interest in interacting with her, he still kept an eye on her the whole time, even to the point of checking out the bathroom window before letting her enter the filthy little room to conduct her business. At the same time, though, he didn’t restrain her, and he didn’t tell a soul who she really was.
They were on the road again by six thirty, and by eight forty-five, John had turned his Explorer with its brand-new radiator off the freeway onto the exit leading to Tolosa. The tension he radiated was almost palpable. She wondered if he felt any compassion toward her at all, but nixed that thought immediately. He hadn’t so much as looked at her for the last fifty miles, staring straight ahead at the road, his face tight and expressionless. Even though she felt desperate to say something to break the awful silence, she had the feeling he wouldn’t tolerate so much as a hiccup out of her. Since the last thing she wanted right then was another confrontation, she kept her thoughts to herself.
John turned left onto State Highway 4 from the freeway service road and headed in the direction of the police station. Renee placed her hands on her thighs, then lifted them a little and realized she was trembling. It wasn’t cold in the car, so she couldn’t blame her affliction on that. She was just scared—pure, grade-A, top-of-the-line terrified.
Darkness had settled over the city. They passed the Tasteefreez where she and her friends had hung out in high school. It was more like “Tste Frz” now, with several of the neon lights on its sign either broken or burned out. The red paint was peeling, the windows smudged with years of accumulated grime. Renee tried to remember if it had looked that bad when she was in high school. She probably wouldn’t have noticed even if it had, since she’d been in an altered state from alcohol most of the time. But when it came to drugs, she’d told John the absolute truth. She’d never done them.
Well, okay. There was the pot she’d smoked a couple of times in high school when she was dating Jimmy Calhoun, who was the Will Rogers of addicts—he never met a drug he didn’t like. But when she realized Jimmy had fried so many brain cells that he had trouble remembering his own name, neither he nor marijuana had held much fascination for her anymore.
And okay, she’d popped an upper or two. And she’d consumed enough alcohol as a teenager to pickle her internal organs. But it had been seven years since she’d touched anything stronger than an occasional beer while watching a ball game, and that counted for a lot. And no matter what influence she’d been under at the time, she’d never done anything as awful as armed robbery.
She slid her shaking hands beneath her thighs and took a deep breath, which didn’t calm her in the least. She knew what it would be like when they reached the police station, because she’d been through this drill before. Of course, she didn’t know the last cop who’d booked her, an anonymous, stone-faced guy who’d merely been going through the motions. She hadn’t kissed that guy. She hadn’t almost made love with him. She hadn’t wanted him so badly she’d nearly fainted from the feeling. He’d been a nameless nobody she could easily hate, but when it came to John, her emotions weren’t quite that clear-cut.
The light at the intersection of State Highway 4 and Wilmont Street turned yellow, then red, and John brought the Explorer to a halt. Renee caught sight of the police station in the distance, a meticulous little redbrick building with the American and Texas state flags flying out front. Tears sprang to her eyes.
No. She wasn’t going to cry, and she wasn’t going to beg. She hadn’t ruled out throwing up, though. Judging from the way her stomach felt right then, that was a definite possibility. She sniffed a little and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her sweatshirt, but realized immediately the futility of it. So much for holding back the tears.
John was staring straight ahead, his face still impassive, but he was gripping the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles whitened.
“Don’t cry.”
He said the words harshly, grinding them out through clenched teeth, which only made her eyes tear up more. She felt his anger and really did want to stop crying, but there wasn’t much chance of that now.
The light turned green, and Renee’s heart lurched.
A second passed. Then two.
John didn’t move.
The driver behind him honked, but still John sat there, staring straight ahead, his fingers clenching the steering wheel, releasing slightly, then clenching again. He’d rolled the sleeves of his shirt to the elbows, and the muscles of his forearms stood out in sharp relief with every contraction of his hands.
The driver behind him hit his horn in several more long, droning honks. John acted as if he didn’t even hear them.
He looked to his right, down Wilmont Street, then shifted his gaze to Renee, his dark eyes boring right into her. She blinked. A tear coursed down her cheek, and she reached a fingertip up to brush it away before it could fall.
The driver behind them laid on his horn again. John spat out a curse. He stepped on the gas, cut the wheel hard to the right, and swung his Explorer south onto Wilmont Street. Renee grabbed the door beside her as he stomped on the accelerator. In seconds he’d blasted past the thirty-mile-per-hour speed limit, pushing the car to forty and beyond. Away from the police station.
“John?”
“Don’t say a word.”
“But—”
“Do you want to go to jail?”
“Of course not, but—”
“Then don’t say a word.”
Okay. No problem. She’d have her lips sewn shut and her vocal cords surgically removed if it meant not going to jail.
Not going to jail?
Renee couldn’t believe it. Had he actually reconsidered taking her in? If so, where were they going now?
John drove several miles down Wilmont Street before finally turning onto Porter Avenue and entering Tolosa Heights, an older part of town with aging but tidy storefronts, interspersed with an occasional fast-food restaurant or an office building.
Then he turned onto James Street, a residential area of brick houses that had been built in the 1950s. Even though night had fallen, streetlamps illuminated the calm, idyllic neighborhood. Trees in that flux state between autumn and winter held on to their few remaining leaves for dear life. An elderly couple, bundled against the cool night air, scuffed down the sidewalk, a Boston terrier trotting along beside them. It was a regular Norman Rockwell kind of place. Unfortunately, it was hard for Renee to appreciate it when her insides felt more like Pablo Picasso.
Where in the world was he taking her?
John slowed his car, then reached up to the visor over his head and pulled down an automatic garage-door opener. He swung his car into the driveway at 1530 James Street, a neat little redbrick house with white trim, black shutters, and a row of crape myrtles lining the sidewalk in front of the house.
He hit the button on the remote, and the garage door came up. He drove the Explorer into the garage, lowered the door again, and killed the engine. The silence was overwhelming.
“Where are we?” Renee asked.
“Home.”
“Whose home?”
“Mine.”
Renee couldn’t believe this. John had brought her to his house?
“Why are we here?”
He didn’t reply. He escorted her out of the car, unlocked the back door, and led her into the kitchen. The house was in a time warp, with the original cabinets and counter tops from the 1950s, both in a screamy shade of yellow. He instructed her to kick off her muddy shoes, and he did the same. She’d barely gotten her feet out of them before he grabbed her arm and led her through the living room. She caught sight of a little bit of updating—refinished hardwood floors, mini blinds, and an area rug or two—before he pulled her down the hall and straight into a bedroom. From the looks of it, it was his bedroom, sparsely furnished with a dresser and a bed topped by a solid navy-blue spread.
He grabbed something off the dresser. Renee’s heart skipped when she saw what it was.
Handcuffs.
Before she knew what was happening, he’d snapped one of them onto her left wrist. The metal felt like ice.
“John. Please. No handcuffs. I promise I won’t try to get away.”
“Yes, you will. The first chance you get.”
He led her over to the bed. He pushed her down to a sitting position, then snapped the other handcuff onto one of the spindles of the headboard.
“Please, John. Not again. Not after being tied to that bed last night!”
“Fine. I’ll take you to jail. They have a very nice cot there with your name on it. You won’t even have to wear handcuffs.”
“Never mind. I don’t know what I was thinking. The handcuffs are lovely.”
“I knew you’d see it my way.” He started out of the room.
“Wait a minute! Where are you going? You can’t just leave me here!”
He left the room and closed the door behind him with a solid thunk.
“John!”
His footsteps faded down the hall. Then…silence.
Renee looked down at her cuffed wrist, then back at the door again.
What the hell had just happened?