The speaker blared again as the woman repeated her request for an order, but Renee’s hunger had vanished in a cloud of sheer panic. Where was John? Twenty miles away? One mile away? Standing right behind her? And surely he hadn’t really called the police. He had to be bluffing about that, right?
She tossed the phone down, cursing her stupidity in answering it in the first place. The only reason she’d picked it up was because she thought it was possible that Paula had gotten the phone number off caller ID and was calling her back. The last thing she expected was to hear John’s voice on the other end of the line.
She had to get out of there. Now.
Unfortunately, the minivan was in front of her, at least three cars had pulled in behind her, and a row of carefully pruned holly bushes sat between her and the parking lot. The minivan moved up to the window, and Renee felt a rush of relief. But relief edged into panic again when the gum-cracking Mc Teenager at the window started handing food to the driver. Bags and bags of food. And Cokes. And ice cream sundaes. And chocolate chip cookies. Renee estimated that in the span of two minutes, enough food went into that van to feed a third-world nation.
Then the driver handed an open cardboard container back to the McTeenager, pointing out something about that particular hamburger that evidently wasn’t right. Renee gripped the steering wheel until her hands ached. Surely her sense of time was warped right now. This food transference couldn’t actually be taking eons.
She leaned her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes, trying to get a grip. What were the odds of John being anywhere near there? About a thousand to one? Even a hundred to one didn’t sound so bad. All she had to do was hug the minivan’s bumper, and the second it pulled out, she would too. Everything was going to be okay. She took a deep, calming breath, then opened her eyes again.
John was coming across the street.
For a moment she sat there, frozen with disbelief, like the time she’d whacked her finger with a hammer but it took a second or two to feel the pain. Then a big red danger sign flashed in her brain. She slapped her palm against the Explorer’s horn in one continuous blare, trying to get the car to clear out.
The driver stuck his head out the window and glared at her. “Hey! Keep your shirt on, will you?”
At the same time, three long-haired girls—or maybe boys, she wasn’t sure which—plastered themselves against the back window of the minivan and gaped at Renee as if she were some kind of mind-numbing video game.
And John was closing in on her fast.
Renee rolled the window down, stuck her head out, and yelled at the driver. “Move! Please move! Please!”
He ignored her, continuing to hog the drive-through as if time were not a factor, as if the woman in the green Explorer behind him wasn’t about to get mauled by one very large and very angry cop.
John leaped over a low hedge at the edge of the parking lot and strode toward her, his face a mask of unmitigated fury. On the verge of hysteria, Renee fingered the door handle, thinking about running. Then she thought again. John was bigger than she was, and certainly faster. She wouldn’t stand a chance.
She hit the button to roll the window up, then flicked the door locks. John circled the minivan and headed for the driver’s side of the Explorer, his teeth clenched, looking as if he were ready to explode. His left eye was practically swollen shut, surrounded by a Technicolor bruise that made half his face look like something out of a zombie movie.
He yanked at the Explorer’s door handle. Finding it locked, hauled a gun from the waistband of his jeans and whipped it around until Renee was looking right down its barrel.
“Police! Put the car in park and turn off the engine!”
Renee gasped at the sight of the gun. She hated guns.
“I’m gonna blow a hole in this window!”
From the look on his face right then, she didn’t doubt it. She didn’t doubt he’d tear right through the door with his bare hands if that was what it took to get to her.
If only the driver in the car ahead of her had the good sense to get away from the raging wild man waving a gun around, Renee might have a shot at escape. But his gaze was glued to the spectacle John was creating as if he were watching an episode of Cops.
“Last chance, Renee!”
She was trapped. Maybe it was better to let him in than to have him claw his way in. He’d still mangle her, of course, but maybe he’d actually let her live. She shoved the gearshift into park.
“Unlock the door!”
Renee’s finger hovered over the door lock.
“You’re resisting arrest! Unlock the door or I’m breaking the glass! Now!”
Renee held her breath and flipped the automatic switch. All four locks shot up. John stuck his gun back into the waistband of his jeans and jerked the door open. He clamped his hand onto her arm, yanked her from the car, and spun her around.
“Hands on the car!”
“John, please—”
“Shut up and put your hands on the car!”
She placed her hands on the car like a common criminal, which was exactly what he thought she was. He patted her down, running his hands roughly over her waist, her hips, then down each of her legs. She had a flash of the fantasies she’d had about him less than an hour ago, and not one of them had involved him touching her like this.
“You know I’m not armed,” she told him. “I don’t have a gun. I hate guns. I don’t even like the word—”
“Oh, yeah? The way I hear it, you shot a convenience-store clerk.”
“It wasn’t me!”
He spun her back around, took her by the upper arms, and pinned her against the car, glaring down at her with an expression that bordered on the homicidal.
“You’re a lying, bail-jumping, car-stealing pyromaniac,” he muttered. “I ought to—”
“I’m innocent! I didn’t do what they say I did!”
“Innocent people don’t run! And they sure as hell don’t steal cars!”
“I was only borrowing it. Really. I—”
“You have a vocabulary problem, Renee. Borrow and steal are not the same thing. If I give you something, that’s borrowing. You take my keys while I’m sleeping, that’s stealing. Now get in the car!”
He shoved her through the driver’s door, then got in after her. The minivan still sat in front of them, its occupants glued to the situation as if this were a commercial break and the action would pick up again any minute.
John laid on the horn. The driver’s eyes flew open wide. He yanked his head back into the car, stomped on the accelerator, and left the drive-through. As John drove by the window, the teenage girl on duty looked as if she’d swallowed her Dubble Bubble.
“You should have told me you were a cop,” Renee muttered.
“You should have told me you were a fugitive.”
“I’m not a fugitive! I mean, I am, but it’s only because—”
“Forget it. I don’t want to hear it.”
“Where are we going?”
“To give you back to Leandro.”
Renee swallowed a gasp of sheer terror. Did he actually intend to throw her on the mercy of a madman? “But you’re a cop. Don’t you have priority, or seniority, or something?”
“Only if I want to exercise it. The minute the bondsman posted your bail, you signed your rights away. He can send anyone after you he wants. Leandro has the authority to bring you in, and since I’ve had all the fun I care to have for one night, I think I’ll step aside and let him do it.”
“Please, John! Please don’t make me go back with him. He’s so angry—”
“Why? Because you torched his car? Gee, I can’t imagine why that would piss him off.”
“You know what he’s like. Don’t make me go with him. He’ll kill me. I swear he will!”
“He won’t kill you. They stopped that ‘dead or alive’ thing about a hundred years ago.”
“Please. I want you to take me back. Please.”
“I said he wouldn’t kill you. I didn’t say I wouldn’t.”
Renee came within an inch of believing that. She had never witnessed anything like the hard, intense, “I wanna maim somebody” look John was giving her right then, and it was all the more frightening because she was that somebody.
“John. Please listen—”
“No. I’m way past listening. Especially when all I hear are lies.”
“I’m sorry about that. But—”
“Sorry? Sorry? You lie to me, steal my car, and get me into a fight with a thousand-pound gorilla, and all you can say is you’re sorry?”
That was when Renee knew that this was more than just your average cop-to-fugitive animosity. John was taking this personally. Very personally. She’d made him look like a fool, and there was no way he was ever going to forgive her for that.
A moment later he slowed the car, then swung into a hospital parking lot and came to a halt in a spot near the emergency room door. Renee looked around questioningly.
“What are we doing here?”
“I told you. I’m giving you back to Leandro.”
“He’s here?”
“Only for as long as it takes them to shove his nose back into place.”
“You actually broke his nose?”
“Yeah. It’s standard operating procedure when you’re protecting innocent young things from their abusive boyfriends.”
Renee winced. If he’d intended to make her feel guilty, he’d succeeded.
John got out, circled the car, and dragged Renee out the other side. “I want you to behave in here,” he said, hustling her toward the door. “You step one foot out of line, and I’ll make whatever plans Leandro may have for retaliation look like a picnic in the park. Got that?”
He dragged her into the waiting room and up to the glass window. A middle-aged Hispanic woman in Snoopy scrubs with a stethoscope dangling around her neck stood behind the glass, flipping through a chart.
John slid the window open with a thunk and flashed his badge. “Where’s the guy who came in here a few minutes ago? Tall, smashed nose, ugly as sin?”
The woman eyed John’s badge. “He’s in the back.”
“He needs to come to the front. Right now.”
“Sorry. He’s doped up.”
“What?”
“He was complaining about pain, so I shot him up with Demerol. I’ve got a plastic surgeon on the way.”
“Surgeon?” John said with disbelief. “He’s having surgery?”
“Yeah. Whoever smacked him really did a number on him.”
“When will he be released?”
“Sometime tomorrow.”
John closed his eyes and muttered a curse. Renee felt an enormous surge of relief, an emotion John clearly didn’t share. He stuffed his badge back into his pocket with a harsh breath of frustration. “Well, that’s just great.”
The doctor leaned toward John and dropped her voice. “He’s not wanted, is he? Just between you and me, he has a face right off a post office wall.”
“No,” John said wearily. “He’s not wanted.”
“Pretty wicked-looking bruise you’ve got there. Does your smashed-up face have anything to do with that guy’s broken nose?”
“You might say that.”
“You want me to take a look at it? You could have an orbital fracture. I can get a facial series—”
“No. It’s fine. Got any surgical tape?”
“Uh, yeah. Sure.” The woman went to the back room, then returned with a roll of tape and handed it to John.
“Mind if I take this?” he asked.
“No. Go ahead.”
John took Renee by the arm again and led her back to his car. He pulled Renee’s arms around in front of her, crossing one wrist over the other. Before she knew exactly what was happening, he’d wound the surgical tape four or five times around them.
“What are you doing?” she asked, horrified.
“I’ve got no handcuffs.” He ripped the tape off and pressed down the loose end. “And I’m taking no chances.”
Renee looked down at her bound wrists, and all at once the reality of the situation came crashing down on her. How had this happened? she asked herself for the thousandth time. How had she landed on the wrong side of the law again, when she’d put her heart and soul into becoming the kind of person who would never have to worry about being arrested?
As a teenager, she hadn’t felt humiliated to be dragged to jail. All she’d felt was defiance, along with that hopeless feeling of not giving a damn because nobody else did, either. The indignity she felt right now was a result of the self-respect she’d managed to gain since then, and a philosophical person might say that her humiliation was a step in the right direction.
She wished she could tell John about the years she’d spent putting her past behind her. About how she’d suffered through demeaning, dead-end jobs just so she could pay her bills. About how she’d finally built a life for herself she was starting to be proud of, only to have it shatter into a million pieces.
She’d seen the man behind the badge. The man with a heart. The man who’d shown her compassion when he thought she’d been abused, then gone to war with Leandro when he thought she was in danger of being hurt again. That was the man she wanted to talk to now.
Slowly she lifted her gaze from her wrists and met John’s eyes, but as he stared back at her, she saw that his anger had been replaced by an impassive, stony stare. His jaw was rigid, his eyes cold and unreadable, and that was when she knew. There was only one side of him she was going to see from now on: the cop side.
She held out her wrists. “Please don’t do this. Please. I’ll go quietly. I promise.”
“Tell me some more lies.”
“But, John—”
“You want your mouth taped, too?”
“No, but—”
“Then I suggest you keep it shut.”
He opened the car door and shoved her into the passenger side of the front seat, pushing her head down to clear the opening. He slammed the door behind her. She settled back in the seat, her heart thumping in a relentless rhythm.
“We’re going to the cabin so I can get my stuff,” John told her. “Then it’s nonstop back to Tolosa.”
His words settled on her with heart-wrenching finality, and by the tough, uncompromising expression on his face, she knew she wouldn’t be talking him out of this. He was going to deliver her to jail, then turn his back and walk away, believing he’d done his part to incarcerate a desperate criminal. She’d be shuttled through the system and eventually land in prison, sentenced to a life of despair and hopelessness for a crime she didn’t commit.
It was official. Her life was over.
Twenty minutes later, John pulled up in front of the cabin, a feeling of déjà vu washing over him like an ocean wave at high tide. Only a few hours ago, he’d been in this very spot, primed for a night of hot sex with a beautiful woman. Now he was dragging that beautiful woman to jail.
God, what a night.
Actually, the more he thought about it, the more he decided this turn of events might work out pretty well. This would give him an excuse to return to Tolosa. He could tell Daniels he’d had to cut his vacation short to bring in a fugitive. How could the lieutenant argue with that?
Fortunately, Renee had the good sense to keep her mouth shut on the way back to the cabin, because if she’d opened it up and started yapping again about how sorry she was and how she was innocent and all the rest of that crap, he probably would have gagged her, tossed her onto the roof of the car, and tied her to the luggage rack.
But instead of talking, she spent the whole time with her bound hands in her lap, running her fingernail back and forth along the seam of her jeans. And she was still doing it now, her blue eyes downcast, a strand of blonde hair falling carelessly across her cheek. She looked so damned innocent that if he didn’t know better, he’d think—
John killed the engine, feeling like the biggest moron who’d ever walked the planet. She’d played him like a fiddle all night, only to start up the music again just by sitting there doing nothing at all.
He yanked the keys out of the ignition, then got out, circled the car, and dragged Renee out. The single floodlight down the path by the cabin door gave off enough light to softly illuminate her face, and when she turned her eyes up to meet his, all at once he felt as if he were manhandling a stray kitten.
No. She’s not innocent. There is absolutely nothing innocent about this woman.
He took her by the arm and led her down the winding, wooded path toward the cabin. She let out a ragged sigh, and he felt as if he’d just kicked a stray kitten.
All at once, Renee’s head shot up. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?”
She stopped suddenly and listened. “That noise.”
“Cut it out, Renee.”
“I mean it!” she whispered, inching closer to John and scanning the darkened forest. “Someone’s out there!”
John stopped and listened, but by his skeptical expression, Renee could tell he thought she was lying. But she was sure she’d heard a rustle of dry pine needles, as if someone was walking through the trees.
John shook his head and started to lead her toward the cabin again, when the same sound filtered through the night air, this time louder. He whipped his head around, his gaze searching the forest, and she could tell he’d finally heard it, too. Slowly he drew his gun.
“Who is it?” she whispered.
“I don’t know,” John whispered back. “There shouldn’t be anyone within ten miles of here.”
Renee thought her heart was going to beat right out of her chest. She was sure someone—or something—was walking through the forest. Unfortunately, the risen moon had faded to a pale timber disk, making it hard for her to see what sharp-toothed animal or ax-wielding human was out there waiting for them.
John led her by the arm into the trees, stepping over a fallen log half-buried in pine needles, dodging a cluster of saplings. Every ounce of self-preservation she possessed told her not to go anywhere near the forest, but then she decided that sticking like glue to the guy with the gun was probably the best course of action.
“Sounds like someone walking through the brush,” she whispered.
“Shhh…”
“Are we sure Leandro’s still in Winslow?”
“Shut up, will you?”
John stopped and listened. Seconds passed, filled only by silence. “Hey!” he shouted. “Who’s out there?”
Renee heard a mad crunch of pine needles practically at her feet. She looked down, and right in front of her, a pair of red, devil-like eyes glared up at her like a creature from the depths of hell.
With a strangled scream, she yanked her arm from John’s grip, whipped around in a blinding one-eighty, and ran.
“Renee! Stop!”
But her fight-or-flight instinct was in full swing, with the fight part not even an option. Then all at once her ankles hit something hard. She flew through the air, then fell facedown into the dirt, knocking the wind out of her lungs in one big whoosh.
“Renee! It’s only an armadil—”
John never finished his sentence. Instead, the same fallen log that had tripped her tripped him, and he fell in a sprawling heap only inches to her left.
In the span of a single heartbeat, Renee came to two important conclusions: one, she’d just run screaming from one of God’s more benign creatures—an armadillo—and two, her way out of a prison sentence lay in a pile of pine needles only a couple of feet beyond her hands.
John’s gun.
Without even thinking, she pushed herself to her knees, then lunged for the weapon. She grabbed the gun with her right hand, which was bound beneath her left one, then did a fireman’s roll to her right before rising to a sitting position. To John’s credit, he was already on his knees, but she’d been quicker in zeroing in on the gun. It felt heavy and dangerous, but despite the awkward position of her hands she clung to it tenaciously, determined not to give in to her gut instinct and run screaming from it, too.
John sat back on his heels, breathing hard. “Give me the gun, Renee.”
“No way.” Renee got to her feet, her gaze never leaving his.
“There’s a big price to pay for shooting a cop,” he told her, easing to his feet at the same time.
“I don’t want to hurt you. I just want your car.” Assuming, of course, that she could drive with one hand crossed over the other and bound with surgical tape.
“Give me your keys,” she said.
He paused for a moment, then methodically reached into his pocket and extracted the keys.
“Throw them down and back away.”
He did what she told him to, but even in the near-darkness of the forest, his cold, calculating expression unnerved her. She could almost see his mind working as he formulated a plan to get the upper hand again. He backed away two steps, then three.
“Keep going,” she told him, and waited until he was far enough away that when she dipped the barrel of the gun down to pick up the keys, he wouldn’t be within tackling distance. Once she was satisfied he posed no immediate threat, she knelt carefully and snagged the keys with her left hand.
She started to back through the trees toward the Explorer, the gun still trained on him. But to her dismay, for every step she took backward, he took one step forward.
“No!” she shouted. “Stay there!”
He kept walking, slowly and steadily. “How many crimes do you plan on committing tonight, Renee?”
“Crimes? I haven’t committed—”
He was right. She couldn’t exactly quote the statute, but holding a gun on a cop was most certainly a crime, and an even bigger one, she imagined, when the gun was his. Add that to bail jumping, fire starting, car stealing… Good Lord. How had she gotten herself into this mess when she’d never intended to step on the wrong side of the law again?
“Tell you what,” John said, his voice low and even. “Why don’t we just pretend this never happened? I’ll take you back to Tolosa, and if it turns out you’re innocent of the robbery, I’ll forget about your stealing my car. I’ll forget about your taking my gun. But I gotta tell you—if you shoot me, I’m afraid I’m going to have a pretty hard time forgetting that.”
It was a tempting offer. But no matter how reasonable his suggestion sounded, with all the evidence against her, sooner or later she’d be facing a prison sentence. Just the thought of incarceration made her hands shake as if she had some kind of neurological disorder. She took a deep breath, trying to get a grip. Then tears welled up behind her eyes, and she shook even harder.
No, no, no!
She blinked quickly, but she couldn’t stop the tears. She wiped her face against her shoulder, trying to clear her blurry vision. She couldn’t fall apart now. Not when she was only a few feet away from freedom.
John held up his palm, still inching toward her. “Now, sweetheart, if you’re not careful, you’re going to accidentally pull that trigger, and I think you’re going to be real sorry you shot me. Isn’t that right?”
She was still five yards or so from the car, but all at once she could tell she wasn’t going to make it. John was advancing closer with every step, and the minute she had to turn the gun down and away from him to unlock the car door with her left hand, he’d be on her. She had to stop him.
“Don’t come any closer, John! I mean it!”
He held out his hand. “Give me the gun. Just hand it over, and I’ll forget all about this.”
“Oh, yeah. Sure you will!”
“I give you my word, Renee. I’ll pretend tonight never happened. But I have to take you back to Tolosa. If I told you anything else, you’d know I was lying, right?”
Renee looked at him warily. He’d probably learned all kinds of negotiating skills in cop school, all of which were designed to keep him from getting shot and make sure she ended up in custody. So how was she to know what was the truth and what wasn’t?
“Besides,” he went on, “you say you’re innocent. If that’s true, you don’t have anything to worry about.”
“Come on, John! With all the evidence against me, they’ll just go through the motions. They’ll toss me in jail and throw away the key!”
“You’ll get a fair trial.”
“Oh, give me a break! Do you really believe that?”
“I’m a cop, Renee. What do you think I believe?”
“You didn’t answer my question!”
John stared at her, his breath fogging the cold night air. “Of course I think you’ll get a fair trial,” he said finally, but his response came a bit too late to be believable. She hated the way he was patronizing her. She hated the fact that he thought she was a criminal. And above all, she hated the fact that he was trying to act as though he had her best interests at heart when all he really wanted to do was see her behind bars.
John held out his hand again. “The gun, Renee.”
“No! I’m not going to prison for a crime I didn’t commit!”
Prison.
All at once she was assaulted by the memory of the “scared-straight” program she’d been through as a teenager. The harsh, mocking voices of a dozen female inmates pounded inside her head.
You’ll love the food here, blondie. Maggots are one of the four major food groups.
Hey, baby, whatcha think of my dress? Pretty snazzy, huh? Get yourself locked up and you can have one just like it.
See this scar? Knife’s a wicked thing. Didn’t even see it comin’.
Whatsa matter, chickie? Don’t cry. You’ll have plenty of friends in here. We’ll even introduce you to Big Maude. She just loves pretty little blondes like you.
Renee’s stomach churned. The memory of those terrible hours swirled around in her mind like a scene from a horror movie. She couldn’t do it. If she let John take her back to Tolosa, her life would become a living nightmare.
The gun felt heavy in her hand, straining the muscles of her forearms until she desperately wanted to drop it. But she couldn’t. The weapon she held was the only thing standing between her and incarceration. She took a deep breath and closed her finger around the trigger.
“I can’t let you take me to jail,” she said, her voice shaking so badly she could barely speak. “I-I have to stop you somehow. I have to.”
She raised the barrel of the gun a notch. John’s eyes widened and he held up both palms. “Now, Renee…”
She’d never fired a gun before, so she didn’t know how it was going to feel. It would be loud, and it would probably knock her right off her feet, so she braced herself, preparing for the worst. She couldn’t say John looked panicked, exactly, but there was an unmistakable flash of apprehension in his eyes.
“Take it easy, Renee. Think about what you’re doing.”
No. She’d thought enough. It was time for action.
“I’m sorry, John.”
She took a deep breath, zeroed in on her target, closed her eyes…and pulled the trigger.