“I’m Joel.” The kid, too, shrugged. “I didn’t really know ’em or anything, but I know the dude was pukin’ his guts out in the can and no one else could get in to use it. So they put them up for the night in that motel.”
Chains leaned back in his chair, startling the teenagers with his sudden appearance in their conversation. “What was the name of the place they was dropped?” he demanded. “That was my sister, and I was s’posta meet her here.”
The kid looked annoyed to have his budding flirtation interrupted, but he answered readily enough. “Don’t know, man. I had to use the can so bad I wasn’t paying much attention.”
“I didn’t see either,” the girl contributed. “It was about a two-hour ride from here, though,”
“Nah, more like an hour and forty-five minutes,” the kid disagreed.
She turned to him, clearly willing to defer to his greater knowledge. “You think?”
“Yeah, an hour forty-five. Definitely.”
Well, all right. Chains shoved to his feet, dropping tip money on the table. “Thanks, kid,” he said. He reached for the bill that lay facedown on the young man’s table. “Here, let me get that for you.”
“Hey thanks, dude.” The young man grinned up at the girl. “Want some dessert? My treat, now that I’ve got a couple of extra bucks.”
Chains picked up a new toothpick at the counter as the cashier totaled the two tabs. He stuck it in the corner of his mouth and grinned as he made his way across the parking lot to his car. Kaylee was right.
He was one smart guy.
How stupid can one woman be? Catherine stormed back up the shoulder of the highway, a brown grocery sack clutched fiercely to her stomach. She didn’t believe this; she just plain didn’t believe she was going back to that motel room.
Voluntarily putting herself back in Sam McKade’s double-crossing clutches.
She could have made a clean getaway. She’d talked to the owner of the local garage, and he had a car he was willing to rent her. She had Sam’s money to pay for it and could have been long gone, back to her safe and orderly life. That’s what a smart woman would have done. Just jumped in that car and headed for home.
But she hadn’t been able to forget Sam’s awful coloring or the dry, parched look of his mouth. She was ten kinds of fool for worrying about the man, and had told herself exactly that several times. But had that smartened her up or directed her attention back to her own problems, where it rightfully belonged? Hell no.
That spelled “sucker” in her book, no two ways about it.
The niggling truth was, Sam McKade held a fascination for her that she couldn’t seem to dispel. So here she was, with a bag full of clanking bottles of Gatorade and a box of saltine crackers, going back to play Nurse Nancy to a man who’d probably have her handcuffed to the nearest piece of furniture before she could say, ‘How ya feeling?’
What a dolt.
She found him sitting on the floor, sound asleep, slumped against a wall. Setting down the bag, she squatted next to him and reached out a hand to gently shake his shoulder. “Come on, Sam,” she murmured. “Come on, sugar, this is not the best place to recuperate. Let’s get you on the bed.”
“Mmph.” He opened his eyes and rubbed a hand over his sandpaper jaw. He tried to lick some moisture into his lips, but his tongue was as arid as the rest of his mouth. Red assisted him to his feet, and his efforts to help were clumsy and largely ineffectual. He tumbled weakly onto the mattress, where he lay blinking up at her. “Hey. Dreamed you took off.”
“Did you?” She pulled off his shoes and socks and then left him. He heard her go into the bathroom, but she came right back out and there was a rustle of paper, the clink of glass kissing glass. A few minutes later she was back, sitting down next to him and sliding an arm beneath his shoulders to raise him and brace him. “Here. Drink this.”
Liquid slid cold and refreshing down his throat and Sam gulped it down greedily until she pulled the glass away.
“Easy,” she murmured. “You don’t want it to come right back up again.” She brought the glass back to his lips and forced him to consume it in unsatisfyingly small increments until the cup was empty.
“Good.” He looked up at her. “More.”
It took three more glasses, which she only let him have a niggardly sip at a time, before his thirst was slaked. Finally, he slumped back onto the pillow. The last thing he heard was her voice murmuring something about crackers.
Then he fell headfirst into a bottomless black pit.
Catherine watched over him, not sure if she should call in a doctor or not. The point was most likely moot, since she doubted one could be found out here in the middle of nowhere. But that didn’t stop her from worrying.
Sam awoke every hour or so with a raging thirst and she poured more Gatorade down him, after which, like a man stepping off the side of the world into deep space, he’d once again immediately be swallowed up by a deep, consuming sleep. Awake one moment and comatose the next—it wasn’t normal. And when he was awake he complained of being cold, which in this heat really wasn’t normal. Gradually, however, his color improved and the worst of the dryness left his lips. His skin remained dry, however, and he kept shivering, so she wrapped him up in blankets. She was limp with relief when, around nine o’clock, he broke into a light sweat and awoke long enough to swear fretfully at the coverings piled on top of him, tossing them onto the floor. She coaxed him to eat a few crackers, and when he dropped off to sleep this time it seemed to be at a more natural level of unconsciousness.
Sitting on the bed next to him, Catherine allowed her head to thump back against the wall. For the first time in hours, she felt he was going to be okay.
She should get going.
The idea of gathering up her purse and suitcase and figuring out a plan of action, however, was just too much effort. And the honest-to-God truth was, she really didn’t want to. Somehow, her safe and secure life in Seattle just didn’t have the same allure it had a few short days ago. Try as she might, she could no longer hear it calling her.
Besides she was sure to awaken before Sam in the morning, so she might as well get some rest, see how she felt in the light of day, and deal with it then.
“Oh, God.” Catherine’s voice was faint and laced with an undercurrent of hysteria. She thumped her head against the wall once, twice, three times. She was in big, big trouble if she was reduced to the Scarlett O’Hara defense. Fiddle-dee-dee, Rhett, I’ll think about that tomorrow.
Damn. She was an independent woman. She didn’t need any outdated, antebellum, Southern belle justifications and rationalizations. She made well-thought-out decisions and acted upon them. She…
Oh, the hell with it. She slid down on the mattress next to Sam. She was too damn tired for this—she really would think about it tomorrow.
In less than a minute she was sleeping like the dead.
17
IF JIMMY CHAINS could have gotten his hands on that punk kid who’d told him Kaylee was in a motel somewhere an hour and forty-five minutes west of Laramie, he’d have busted him in half, broken both arms, and kicked his fuckin’ teeth down his throat. He’d canvassed one nowhere little burg after another without success, and in the process he came to appreciate the aggravation that must have set off his own father’s temper all those years ago. Maybe the old man’d had a point after all. Maybe fists were the only thing a smart-ass teenage boy understood.
The kid had played him for a fool and he hated it when people took him for stupid. Few men ever did so twice, at least to his face, because he always responded promptly—with his fists, his feet, with a broken bottle, knife, or gun. He’d never liked hurting women, but he’d agreed to kill Alice Mayberry when Sanchez shopped the idea, and never in this man’s lifetime would he’d a done it just for the money, either.
The bitch had called him big, dumb, and ugly one time too many. So how smart did that make her?
Kaylee, now, she was a different story. He sure didn’t like the thou
ght of having to hurt her, even knowing it was necessary. Maybe she hadn’t talked to him all that often back at the club, but she’d always had a friendly smile, a wisecrack, or a ‘How-ya-doin’?’ for him when they did cross paths. She’d never made him feel slow or dim like some’a the other girls did.
And today she’d told him he was smart. Nobody had ever said that to him before.
It was true, though, he wasn’t the dumbshit everyone seemed to think he was. Nobody as stupid as some folks made him out to be could dress this sharp, for one thing. And when he’d needed to take a piss and had pulled off at that scenic overlook, spotting Kaylee right smack dab in the middle of the road in front of him like the goddamn answer to all his prayers, hadn’t he jumped on the gas?
Would’a got her, too, if not for the old bat. Who would’a thought someone so little and creaky-looking could move so fast?
Chains shook himself as he pulled into the lot of yet another run-down motel just as the skies opened up and it began to pour. Point was, he’d thought fast, the way smart people did, and he’d taken advantage of the situation, doing what needed to be done.
Hell, a dumb guy wouldn’t a thought to eat at the restaurant where the bus stopped for dinner in the first place, and so would’a missed overhearing the conversation about the woman he was looking for. He opened the car door and dashed through the rain toward the darkened motel office.
His face heated up and his fists clenched. Okay, it probably wasn’t such a hot idea to think about the conversation in the restaurant right now. He tried the office door and then pounded on it when he found it locked. Thinking about it just got him all bent out of shape all over again. It was nearly two o’clock in the morning, and he still hadn’t found the motel that was supposed to be a mere hour and forty-fucking-five minutes from his starting point. He’d like to get his hands on that punk asshole. And to think he’d picked up the little turd’s dinner tab, too.
He was just getting ready to put his fist through the door’s window and help himself to the guest register when a light went on in the back room. A man shuffled out, squinting against the glare of the light he switched on as he came to the door.
A bell rang over it when he pulled it open. “Nasty night,” he greeted Chains. Yawning, he shuffled back to the desk. “You want a single?”
“No, man. I want information.”
The man’s head came up warily.
Chains was tired and fed up and wanted to go home where there were palm trees instead of this bullshit shoot-out-at-the-OK-Corral scenery. Seemed to him this was a situation private enough that he could beat whatever information he needed out of the guy, without pissing off the boss. His willingness to do violence must have shown, for the man opened the register without a word and set it on the counter, turning it for Chains to read.
Neither Kaylee’s name nor the bounty hunter’s was in there, but he was smarter than to expect it would be. “Redhead with show-stopper tits, tall guy with black hair,” he snapped. “Ya seen ’em?”
“No, sir.”
Chains leaned over the counter. “You wouldn’t lie to me, now would ya?”
“No, sir.” The man swallowed hard, but met his eyes without flinching.
Chains swore. Then he blew out a weary breath. “The hell with it. I’m beat. Give me that single.”
He’d catch a few hours’ sleep and find her in the morning.
Sam awoke to an empty room. He jerked up in bed, the sheet spilling down around his lap. Where had Red gone? She’d come back last night, unless he’d dreamed it. But where was she now?
Then, over the patter of rain on the roof, past the roar of blood in his ears, he heard a muted noise and sagged back against the lumpy pillow. She hadn’t left; she was in the bathroom. He could hear only the faintest of sounds—sort of a muffled chink, chink, chink—but it definitely came from inside the unit, and unless they’d gotten mice in here overnight, it had to be her.
His bladder made its needs known, which he took as a good sign since it meant last night’s dehydration was a thing of the past. But although he tossed aside the covers, he only moved as far as the side of the bed. He sat there, feet planted wide apart on the thin carpet, hesitant to get up and go into the bathroom.
He had the makings of a huge problem on his hands. He was beginning to wonder if he’d snatched the wrong twin.
Rubbing the flat of his hand over his jaw, the rasp of his heavy morning beard barely registered over the hard thump of his heart, the sudden clamoring of his emotions. Jesus, what a piss-awful thought. But it was one he had to consider. There were…inconsistencies about her that he’d been ignoring.
She had a vocabulary on her that wouldn’t quit, for one thing. What was it she’d said the other day, that she had planned to tell people he was transporting her across state lines for salacious purposes? What kind of showgirl said salacious purposes, for chrissake?
Not to mention she was smarter than his original impression had led him to expect. Loads smarter. Hell, she thought faster on her feet than he did and turned the smallest opportunity to her own advantage.
He also hadn’t failed to notice that, except for that one time, she ignored nine-tenths of the makeup in her bag. Or that she was friendly to women and children while ignoring every guy who tripped over his own two feet trying to get next to her—unless it was to enlist his help in getting away from him.
And…she’d come back last night.
That was the real kicker, the one he couldn’t quite get around. When she’d left, he’d sure been in no condition to hunt her down. She could have been a state away in any direction, which would have given her a decent head start. He might have found her again, but maybe not. And even if he had, odds were it would have been too late or would have run him through too much money to do him any good. So, why hadn’t she just kept going?
Could it be that she didn’t have a thing to lose because she was exactly who she’d insisted she was all along, and a simple fingerprinting at the end of the road would prove it?
Oh, shit, McKade. The very idea made him sick, and it wasn’t simply the money he’d have to kiss good-bye or the knowledge that he’d once again let down Gary.
It was remembering every word he’d spoken, every action he’d taken. All of which had been made under the assumption he was dealing with a dim-bulb showgirl. A lying dim-bulb showgirl. And a car thief.
Not a respectable teacher of the deaf.
He surged up off the bed. Okay, if he’d been wrong about her, he’d apologize. Would an apology be enough, though? Doubtful, buddy boy, extremely doubtful. Well, he’d return her to her home. He’d…
The sight that greeted him when he pushed open the not-quite-latched bathroom door stopped every thought in his head.
She was standing with her back to the door, one foot up on the toilet seat, leaning over to carefully stroke a razor up her lathered leg from ankle to knee. She twisted slightly to swish the razor clean in the sink, tapped it against the sink’s edge with a chink, chink, chink that knocked the excess water from it, and then turned back to apply the razor to a fresh patch of lather. She was wearing his shirt again, but its tail rode up each time she leaned forward to ply the razor, exposing and then concealing a portion of the panties beneath.
Panties that consisted, from what he could see, of a single, satiny thong that rode the division of her round, firm cheeks. They were lipstick red. Fitting, that.
For they matched the little pursed lips of her tattoo.
The tattoo that wordlessly invited all comers to kiss her lucious butt.
The tattoo of a chorus girl, not a teacher.
Relief he didn’t care to examine too closely raced through his veins. Jesus, what an idiot. Okay, sure, maybe he’d made an assumption or two that was on the clichéd side…like showgirl equals dumb. But he hadn’t entirely lost either his mind or his touch. He nearly laughed out loud. Then he got a closer look at the razor in her hand, and the crazy surge of relief segued into irrita
tion.
“Hey,” he groused, shoving the door more fully open, “that’s mine.”
She jumped, letting out a shriek. “Holy Mary, mother of God!” A hand slapped to her heart, she dragged in several gulps of air, then twisted her head around to glare at him. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack? Get out of here!” Reaching a hand back to yank the shirttail firmly over her bottom, she turned her attention back to finishing up her leg, muttering under her breath about inconsiderate men who sneaked around like cats in an aviary.
“Gimme that.” He reached for the razor in her hand, but she twisted away, blocking him with an upraised elbow. Her razor hand didn’t miss a stroke up a virgin patch of lather. He watched the endless swath of smooth leg that appeared in its wake while flecked white lather built up on the blade. “Dammit, Red, that was my last one, and now it’s gonna be useless.”
Catherine spared him a glance over her shoulder. “Feeling much better this morning, I see. You’re right back to your usual charming self.” She swished, rinsed, and tapped. Applying the razor once again to her skin, she blocked another attempt to grab it away from her. “Will you stop that! You’re gonna make me nick myself.”
“Shit.” He straightened up and stared at her. “It’s ruined. I might as well shave with the top of an old tin can now.” He raked his hair off his forehead and scowled at her. “A rusty tin can. One that’s been opened by a knife.”
“Oh, poor baby. I can’t remember the last time I heard such a pitiful, sad story.”
He stormed out of the cramped little room but a second later was back. A smooth white object with coils at one end was thrust into Catherine’s line of vision. “Here,” he growled. “Use your own damn razor.”
She shouldered it away, twisting around to reach the last remaining stripe of lather on the back of her leg. “That’s an Epilady, McKade.”
“Yeah? So?”
“So it doesn’t whisk the little hairs off nice and neat like your mother’s electric razor; it rips them out by the roots. You use it. I’m not into that kind of pain.”
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