“We should grab some food.” He glanced at Lauren.
She nodded. “I shouldn’t be hungry. I mean, someone just tried to—”
He touched a finger to her lips and nodded to others close enough to hear.
“But I am hungry,” she finished.
They ordered coffee, juice and sandwiches and took their food to the most isolated table they could find. No one sat close enough to overhear their conversation, and they could look through the window without being too close to it. Not surprisingly, Lauren slid into the booth with her back to the wall.
After a moment’s hesitation, Chris slid in beside her. “I’m sorry to do this, but I would rather be able to see the room.”
And they looked like a couple who wanted to be not merely as alone as they could be, but also close to one another.
They were close, his left side touching her right side from shoulder to knee. Once they had removed their warm coats, the contact was electric, setting Chris’s nerves on edge, robbing his appetite. He began to eat anyway. He needed the fuel regardless of its quality or lack thereof.
Lauren seemed methodical in her consumption—a sip of coffee, a bite of sandwich, a swallow of juice. Repeat. Chris found himself falling into the same pattern, neither of them speaking.
On the other side of the room, a mother tried to keep three children under five from sliding off the booth seats and running around the room. She looked harried. The children’s faces glowed with youthful zeal and joy beneath shocks of red hair.
An ache began in the region of Chris’s heart. Had life gone differently, had his father not been killed, had Chris and Lauren not made the decisions they had, they could have children at least the age of the younger two. They hadn’t talked about children yet. Maybe they should have before they discussed marriage, but somehow the subject never came up. Chris hadn’t thought that far ahead.
He hadn’t thought ahead on too many things, like how lonely life was on his own. He didn’t even have a pet. Pets deserved to have owners who were at home more than he was.
“Do you have a dog or cat?” he asked suddenly.
Lauren started, dropping her sandwich onto the tray. “What a strange thing to ask me.”
“I guess it is.” Chris glanced out the window.
The drive-through line hadn’t diminished, and a crowd headed for the front door of the restaurant.
“Do you?” he pressed.
“No. I travel too much.” She replaced the top half of the bun but didn’t pick up the sandwich. “Or I used to travel too much until the past six months when I hired more people to do that for me.”
“More management, less hands-on?”
She nodded. “I still do some software development too.” She took a bite of her food, chewed, swallowed, then added, “And now I’m thinking about getting a dog or maybe a cat or both. Seeing Donna with a dog made me think having one around would be nice. What about you?”
“I also travel too much and don’t see that stopping anytime soon.”
But the conversation did. More people entered the dining area, sitting by the windows and discussing the explosion.
“They don’t know whose car it was.”
“Probably drug dealers.”
“Up here?”
“Those punks are everywhere.”
Chris pulled out his phone and searched for the local news headlines. What people said was about as much information as the reporters had. He inspected online videos to see if he and Lauren showed up in any of them, but the screen was too small to tell.
What he did see was that his battery was running low. He hadn’t given it a full charge, only increasing power in spurts when in his vehicle.
“Did you lose the phone you bought for me?” Lauren asked.
“It’s in my coat pocket, but it’ll need to be charged too.”
They looked at one another, the message clear—where would they do that? For that matter, how would they get anywhere?
Chris handed Lauren his phone. “Will you call Mrs. Delaney? Giving us a ride will get her away from her house.”
“I can’t call Donna.”
“I think she’ll understand. It will also show her how dangerous these people are.”
“But I don’t know her number.” Lauren crumpled the wrapping from her sandwich. “We weren’t exactly friendly with one another.”
“It’s programmed into my phone.”
Lauren’s eyes widened. “She gave it to you?”
“Let’s say I acquired it.” Chris touched her hand. He couldn’t help himself. “If you know someone else around here you can call, go ahead.”
“I don’t know anyone who’s here right now. But what about people from your office?”
“Too far away.”
“Donna might be by now. We left there over an hour ago.”
“It’s worth a try, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so.” Slowly, Lauren opened his contacts on the unlocked phone and scrolled through until she found Donna Delaney’s number.
Chris sat close enough to Lauren that he heard the phone ring at the other end of the connection. And ring again. And again.
His body tensed. If she didn’t answer or was unable or unwilling to help them, he would have to go to local law enforcement for help. That would tie him up for hours of questioning and waiting and explaining.
“Hello?” Donna Delaney’s voice came through loud and clear. “Who is this?”
“It’s Lauren.”
“What do you want?”
Lauren hesitated a moment. “Help.”
“What kind? Putting my son back in prison? No way.”
“No, not that.” Lauren gave Chris a quick glance before she continued, “Have you heard about the explosion in the parking lot?”
“Of course, I have. It’s all over TV.” Donna sounded impatient.
Chris hoped that TV was in a friend’s house or a hotel room and not the one he had seen in her kitchen.
“That was us.” Lauren spoke so softly Chris doubted Donna could hear her.
Silence.
“Are you still there?” Lauren asked.
“I’m here.” Mrs. Delaney’s sigh sounded like a windstorm through the phone. “Where are you?”
“Ask her where she is,” Chris murmured.
“Where are you?” Lauren asked.
“At home making hors d’oeuvres to take to a friend’s party tonight.”
“Donna, you should—” Lauren stopped. “Please, will you come get us? And bring Saber with you.”
“I think you should just call the cops. I don’t have time to be running around rescuing you.” Donna made her pronouncement and ended the call.
Lauren handed Chris his phone. “Why are we hiding from the police?”
“We’re hiding from the press. With an incident like the explosion, they will be wherever law enforcement is.”
“And if we end up on camera, whoever is tracking you and me will be able to find us.”
“Especially since law enforcement is likely to hold us for longer than is safe now. And I’m not sure we can count on Donna to help us. Or whom else to trust.”
* * *
Chris didn’t feel safe with law enforcement, with others like him, because of her brother. And most of all because he was protecting her.
Her course of action was clear. She needed to get out of the restaurant and away from him to stop being a burden. She had broken their engagement to avoid hindering his chosen career. She still didn’t want to interfere with his life.
“I’d like more coffee,” she said.
She was telling the truth, but she would have to get it later. While Chris fetched more coffee for them, she would get out of the restaurant. She had left the scene of the explosion with him, too shocked to
think what she was doing. Now, with food and caffeine in her system and time and distance since Chris’s Jeep had exploded, she was thinking again, her mind and body demanding action.
“I’d like more coffee,” she repeated and started to rise.
Chris stood. “I’ll get it.” He picked up their cups and headed for the drinks counter.
The instant he was around the corner, she stood, snatched her backpack from the other side of the booth and started for the door. If she timed her exit right, Chris would be preoccupied with filling their cups and wouldn’t notice her departure.
Halfway to the door, she remembered the cell phone he had purchased for her. He’d said it was in his coat pocket. She retrieved it, stuffed the phone into her backpack and left the restaurant with a tired-looking family.
A blast of cold air in her face gave her a moment’s pause. She was on her own without money or a fully charged cell phone. Bravery or foolishness? She had no idea. She didn’t know what she was doing or where she was going except that she needed to separate herself from Chris.
He wouldn’t harm her. Never that. But she could never forget how he had been willing to sacrifice their relationship for the sake of a career he had never planned before his father’s death. A career he must have known would lie in conflict with his fiancée’s family background.
I think I can do more good in law enforcement than as a lawyer, he had said at the time.
He’d accused her of caring about his lower salary expectations. And she had said some hurtful things. She didn’t want to remember those. She had replayed them too often over the past five years, regretting every one of them, wanting to apologize, to ask forgiveness.
She could have contacted him. If he had changed his cell phone number, she knew how to find his mother and sister. They would have given him her number for her to apologize.
But she had been carrying around her wounded heart for five years, protecting it by staying away from any kind of contact with Chris. So, was she running now just to be away from him, or because she thought he could go to the authorities without her?
Confused, Lauren slipped between two SUVs and leaned against the bumper of one, out of sight of the restaurant.
Sitting next to Chris at the table had been uncomfortable at best. Too many times, she wanted to rest her head against his broad shoulder, breathe in his scent of soap and fresh air, rest on his strength. When he’d touched her hand, she’d wanted to grasp his fingers and hold tight.
Sitting next to Chris had felt right, which was the source of her discomfort. She shouldn’t feel right so close to him.
She felt wrong running away. He would look for her now instead of Ryan. She was wasting his time. He would think that was why she’d left the restaurant without him—to delay him from going after her brother.
Not that he could. Nobody could. Maybe Donna knew, but Lauren had no idea where to find her brother. Just as she had no idea how to get help. She didn’t know Donna’s phone number to try again with her. All she could do was call the emergency number and ask the sheriff’s office to pick her up. Anything else was out of the question. She had no money and no credit cards.
But she did have a credit card. She hadn’t yet returned Chris’s to him. When she changed her clothes and packed her other purchases in the backpack, she had slipped the card into an outside pocket. She could make her report to the authorities and then somehow get to a hotel for the night. With her and Chris separated, the men who had been able to track them and blow up Chris’s car would have difficulty finding them separately.
She hoped.
Slowly, cautiously, Lauren edged toward the parking lot entrance. Walking along the road would make her more visible. But it was safer being out in the open.
She hoped.
She reached the road and picked up her pace. At frequent intervals, she glanced over her shoulder to see if Chris was trying to catch up with her. She looked at the cars speeding past on the road in the event one slowed beside her. If one did, she would run up an aisle between rows of cars in the parking lot next to her.
All this delayed her progress. No matter. She didn’t doubt for a moment that officers would remain at the scene of the explosion.
An explosion intended to kill her and Chris.
Lauren shivered. Despite his criminal activities, her father had kept her separate from that part of his life. Violence had never touched her until the night before. It was something she saw happening to other people on the nightly news. Her life was easy because she could afford to make it easy, had worked to have the privilege of security and safety. She wasn’t equipped to face down men who wanted her dead. All she knew was to run—from her father, from Chris in his new career, from men who wanted to kill her because of her brother.
This time, she was not running away. She was running toward the law, to someplace quiet where she could work out her feelings toward Chris.
No, not her feelings for Chris. She had no feelings for Chris.
Despite the sunshine once again breaking through the clouds and blazing against white snow and shiny vehicles, making her wish she had purchased sunglasses, Lauren caught the flash of police lights ahead. Safety. She increased her speed.
And the pocket of her coat vibrated.
She jumped and slipped in a puddle of slush, catching her balance on the side of a compact car. The vibration rippled through the fabric at her hip again. She pulled the cell phone from her pocket and stared at the screen. No name showed, as she hadn’t put anything into her contacts, but she could guess the identity of the caller since, as far as she knew, only one person had the number.
For a moment, she debated not answering. The power read only 22 percent. Chris could simply think the phone had died. That, however, wasn’t true. The phone hadn’t died, and didn’t dead phones send calls directly to voice mail? He would think she was avoiding him.
While she argued with herself, the phone stopped ringing, then started again.
She swiped the answer button. “What do you want?”
“That was rude.” Chris’s voice echoed down the line.
Lauren resumed walking and said nothing. She couldn’t dispute what he said. She had been rude in her greeting.
“Why did you leave?” Chris asked.
“I’m going to the sheriff for help.”
The sheriff wasn’t more than a hundred yards away.
Lauren scowled at an SUV pulling a trailer and blocking her path as it waited on the exit driveway for a break in traffic.
“Did you think of somewhere your brother has gone?” Chris asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Would you tell me if you did?”
Lauren headed up the driveway so she could walk around behind the trailer and didn’t answer. She knew she would. She had to or she would be an accessory to Ryan’s crime of escaping federal custody. But Chris wouldn’t believe her and the idea of his doubt in her honesty hurt too much. And that hurt made her angry with herself.
She shouldn’t care what Christopher Blackwell thought of her.
“Lauren, don’t—” The phone beeped to indicate the battery was down to 20 percent and drowned out his next word.
To preserve what power was left, she disconnected the call and dropped the cell phone into her pocket. She had to walk into the parking lot and behind a car and a van to get past the length of the hauler trailer. The car was empty. The van was running, steam puffing from its exhaust pipe and music blaring so loud from inside that the bass pounded into her body like a heavy heartbeat.
She flung up her arm so the driver could see her through the back window and stepped behind the van.
She heard the pop of a disengaged brake at the same time someone shouted, “Stop!”
Too late. She was already behind the van. And the driver had thrown his vehicle into Reverse.
She tried to run. Her boot soles skidded on black ice. No traction. Escape lay too far ahead, too far behind. To her right stood the trailer, to her left the van.
The van surged backward.
Clear pavement lay beyond the trailer’s back bumper. She leaped that way. No good. In seconds, she would be a human pancake caught between the van and trailer.
The SUV driver lay on his horn, blasting above the cacophony in the van and the roar of traffic. Other horns resounded from the road.
And suddenly the trailer was gone from her path.
Lauren dived between two cars. A heartbeat later, the van slammed into the vehicles’ bumpers, spun onto the driveway and surged into traffic behind the trailer.
Lauren staggered to the front of the cars and was sick in the snowbank.
“It was an accident,” she said aloud when she could talk. “An accident.”
“Say it enough and we both might believe it.” Chris spoke from directly behind her.
That close, he must have been right behind her while calling her. He must have been near enough to see what the van driver intended, must have been the person who warned her.
He must have seen her lose her breakfast in the snow.
Wishing she could simply crawl beneath the nearest sedan, she leaned against the fender instead and covered her face with her hands. “Tell me that was an accident, Chris. Please tell me it was an accident.”
She feared she sounded whiny.
“It wasn’t an accident, Lauren.” Chris brushed hair away from her face with such tenderness tears filled her eyes. “That guy knew you were behind him.”
“And he gunned the engine. I heard it.” The tears tried to slip out of her eyes and down her cheeks. She squeezed her lids together.
“And who would back up with that trailer right behind him?” His fingertips lingered against her temple, impersonal through gloves, yet oddly intimate, close. “I’m sorry to be so blunt, but I can’t lie to you.”
“Say what you like. You have always been honest.”
“Yes.” He heaved a gusty sigh that sounded as though he carried a two-ton weight upon his chest.
Perilous Christmas Reunion Page 11