by Becki Willis
“This is getting scarier every day,” Kenzie whispered.
“It means we have to be very careful of who we trust,” he cautioned. “At this point, we need to keep all of this information between the four of us, just you, me, Makenna and Hardin.”
“I need to call Kenna. I have to share all this with her. And we’ll need that key to take to the bank. Maybe she could meet us in New Hampshire.”
Her computer binged, alerting her to a post on a social web site. Clicking over to close the web page, a glimpse of the photo stopped her in mid-stroke. “Uh-oh.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Travis frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“I-I sent some photos to Kate last night. Pictures from the concert and Red Rocks, a few from the Estes Park story. She uses a lot of my photos for the on-line magazine and in posts for our social sites. I-I must have accidentally sent some of my pictures from the carnival. Look at what just popped up on our page.” She turned the computer screen so that he could see it for himself.
A picture of last night’s carnival filled the page. It was a shot of the crowd gathered round the mechanical bull, but in the background was a clear view of the event’s banner, advertising its location. The post said, “Yee-haw! Ropin’ up fun in Casper, Wyoming! Which of our photographers is on scene for the annual event? Your correct guess might win tickets to tonight’s rodeo and carnival! Share this post with your best guess to enter.”
“I’m sorry, Travis. I had no idea I sent this one, or that Kate would use it like this.”
He muttered under his breath, running a hand over his neck as he thought aloud. “Okay, so that’s a complication we didn’t need.”
“What should we do?”
“Let’s get packed so we can check out.”
Chapter Seventeen
Thirty minutes later, Travis was studying the map he had gotten at the front desk.
“Where will we go?” Kenzie asked.
“I don’t know yet.”
“I’m sorry, Travis.”
“It can’t be helped now. Maybe not many people have seen the post yet.”
Kenzie looked at the screen on her phone and cringed. “Ninety-three people have already replied. Seventy-nine have shared it. Do I have time to call Kenna before we leave?” she asked worriedly.
“Call her, but use this phone.” He pulled a cell phone she had never seen before from his back pocket. “This is a secure phone. And you’ll need to call Hardin’s secure line.” He scrolled to the number and handed it to her.
“You think our phones are tapped?” Her eyes were wide as she plopped down at the table with a discouraged thud.
“Hard to say. But this is turning out to be pretty complicated. I don’t want anyone getting to that bank before we get a chance to check it out. Better safe than sorry.”
“I’m scared, Travis.”
He cupped her cheek with his large hand. “I know, darlin’. But I swear, I won’t let anything happen to you, not if humanly possible.”
“I trust you.”
He put an encouraging arm around her shoulders as she pushed the talk button. She leaned into him as she waited for Hardin to answer.
“Kaczmarek.”
“Hardin?” She was not accustomed to the all-business tone in his barked greeting. “It’s Kenzie. How are things at home?”
She heard the smile come into his voice, felt its charm through the phone lines. “Hey, Kenzie girl. Things are fine down here. How are things up there?”
“Getting more confusing by the minute. But we finally have a solid lead. I think we know where the safety deposit box is.”
“Which is why you’re calling me on this line, I assume.”
“You and Travis may be used to all this cloak and dagger drama, but it’s made me a nervous wreck.” She smiled at Travis when he squeezed her shoulder. “How do you feel about another trip to New Hampshire?”
“I’m game. Worked out pretty well the first time; found the woman of my dreams.” She could hear what sounded like a kiss on the other end of the line.
Kenzie laughed. “Quit kissing my sister and put her on the phone.”
“You’re no fun. So how are things going with Merka?”
Kenzie glanced at the man beside her, who could obviously hear the conversation “He’s not half bad when he gets the stick out of his butt.”
At her words, Hardin laughed and Travis scowled. “Give the guy a chance. After all, he came all that way for you,” Hardin reminded her.
“Yeah he did, didn’t he?” Wonder mixed with pleasure, warming her tone as she leaned in just a little closer, in spite of the dark look Travis wore. He held the look a moment longer, until it dropped from his face and something akin to embarrassment took its place. He gave her a gruff tug, tucking her up under his arm so she could no longer see his face.
The sisters talked for a few minutes before the men took over and worked out details. Just before they hung up, Kenzie grabbed the phone back. “Do you think you could bring the box from Kenna’s past? Maybe it has clues we missed.”
“Good idea.”
“Okay, take care of my sister. And of yourself. I’ve sorta gotten attached to you.”
Hardin laughed. “Will do. But get your own Ranger, I’m already taken.”
Kenzie hung up the phone with a laugh of her own.
“Are you blushing?” Travis asked incredulously. “What did he say to you to make you blush?”
She turned bottomless green eyes to his, her words a bit husky. “He told me to get my own Ranger.”
Travis sucked in a sharp breath. It was filled with the scent of her, the same scent that haunted him each day and kept him awake at night. He stared down at her mouth, mesmerized as the tip of her tongue darted out to moisten lips dry with nerves. Totally fascinated, he murmured one word that changed her entire world. “Done.”
Kenzie moved into his arms, melting before his mouth even met hers. He kissed her deliberately, taking slow sips that seemed to pull her very soul into his.
Despite his claims, even Travis knew they had started down a path that could not be reversed. She fell into him eagerly, but the knock on the door brought them apart.
“Who would that be?” she whispered, the color draining from her face. “Management?”
Travis shook his head, looking around the room. “I’ve already checked out.” His eyes landed on the window at the back of the unit. “Grab only what you can carry,” he whispered. “I’ll get my computer bag with all the papers. We’ve got to get out of here.”
Kenzie grabbed her overnight case and camera bag from the table and headed for the window. Following his hand signals, she struggled to raise the pane as he made his voice sound muffled. “Honey,” he called out, loudly enough for his voice to carry through the door, “can you get the door? Must be the towels we asked for.”
Travis motioned for her to reply, then silently wedged a kitchen chair beneath the doorknob.
She opened her mouth, but fear had stolen her voice. Trying again, she was impressed with the whine in her words. “I’m doing my hair!” As she awkwardly lifted a leg up to the windowsill, she threw out the first thing that came to mind. “Quit stinkin’ up the bathroom and get it yourself!”
Travis threw her a dirty look as he swung his bags over his shoulder. He was at her side with two long strides, hefting her out the window even as he tucked his head against his chest and crammed his long body through the narrow opening. He motioned for her to run toward the tree line as he yelled back into the room they had just vacated, “I’m coming, I’m coming. Hold your horses.” He grumbled a bit more about the interruption as he pulled the drapes shut, then he took off running behind Kenzie.
They slipped into the hedge of overgrown shrubbery that offered ‘privacy’ between the motel and an old shopping strip. “Try to keep low, between the cars, and head behind the laundromat,” Travis instructed her. “Go!”
Kenzie crouched low, slipping between
the handful of cars in the parking lot. The asphalt was buckled and uneven, preventing her from moving too fast. She was intent on the path in front of her and unaware that Travis had stopped, until he hissed her name.
Her eyes widened when she saw him in the front seat of a bright yellow Volkswagen Beetle. He had the passenger door open and the motor running.
“Get in!” he hissed, his head bent low over the steering wheel.
“What are you doing?” she squealed.
“Keep your head down and get in this car!” She had heard him angry several times, but he had never spoken with such ferocity.
“But-But…” She was sputtering, even as she climbed in. He threw the car in reverse before she had the door closed.
“Do you see anyone behind us?” he asked, peeling out of the parking lot.
“There’s a woman running out of the laundromat. She’s chasing us.” Kenzie turned back around, a stunned expression on her face. “You stole her car!”
The look that crossed his face was a mixture of shame and irritation. “I borrowed it. She was kind enough to leave the keys inside. Do you see anyone else? Anyone from the motel?”
Kenzie chose that moment to look over her shoulder, just as he was taking the corner with questionable speed. She fought a wave of dizziness as she tried to peer through the trees. “Um, I see a man behind our unit. And I think he has a gun!”
“We got out just in time.”
“Did we get all the papers? All the clues?” She looked around in panic, trying to locate the items in question.
“Got ‘em. I put the papers we printed at the library in my bag. The manila envelope is in yours.”
Kenzie looked over at him. Despite the serious situation they were in, she burst out laughing.
“What are you laughing at?” he asked crossly. “There’s nothing funny about our current situation.”
“I-I know. But-But you should see yourself!” She could hardly talk through the peals of laughter. “Your long legs are all scrunched up, your knees are banging against your elbows, you-you have to hold your head sideways to even fit, and – and that silly flower keeps slapping back and forth! You look like- like a clown in a circus car!” Kenzie laughed so hard that tears ran down her face.
Travis held the scowl as long as he could, until a tiny smile finally broke the planes of his face. “Okay, so it wasn’t the best escape car,” he admitted. “But I didn’t see you coming up with anything better.”
“I didn’t know we were looking for anything. I would’ve gone for a truck.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not like I had time to shop around,” he grumbled.
“So what now?”
“We get as far as we can on –” he glanced down at the dashboard, past the built-in flowerpot with its gaudy fake daisy – “a fourth a tank of gas. Or until the cops catch us, whatever comes first.”
They wound their way down a series of side streets that ran roughly parallel with a major thoroughfare. After several minutes, Kenzie announced, “I have a better idea.”
“I’m listening.”
Kenzie began digging around in her camera bag. “I say we call Brenda.”
“Who?”
“Your admirer from the library. I have her card in here somewhere. I was using the back of it to jot down notes. Yep, right here! Brenda Sorenson.”
“We’re not bringing an innocent civilian into this mess.”
“We need to ditch this car and find some way to get to New Hampshire. They’ll be watching for us at the airports and bus stations. Do you have a better plan?”
He did not answer directly. “And what do you plan to tell her?”
“I’ll leave that up to you.”
“So I’m supposed to go up to a woman I barely know and say ‘Excuse me, would you mind driving me and my girlfriend across the country? We’d take the bright yellow bug but we stole it from a laundromat when a man with a gun broke into our motel room. He may or may not be with the mafia. You don’t mind, do you?’”
His words dripped with sarcasm, but a warm sensation unfurled in Kenzie’s chest when Travis called her his girlfriend. However, she was in the middle of an argument and could not afford to be sidetracked. And he was known for cheating during their matches.
“I’m pretty sure we never clarified our relationship to her. We’ll just let her think I’m your sister. And I’m sure you can think of something a little more subtle.”
Travis would have retorted, but she had already dialed the number. She held up a cautionary finger when the line picked up. “Brenda? Hi, this is –” she paused, realizing she needed an alias. Never mind that she swore she was done with such. Her eyes fell on the Betty Boop floor mats and she smiled. “Betty. My brother and I met you Friday afternoon at the library.”
“Yes, I remember you.” The librarian’s tone turned from cool and reserved to clearly delighted. “Your brother?”
“Yes, you remember Billy Bob, don’t you?” Kenzie let a slow southern drawl slip into her words. “He hasn’t stopped talking about you all weekend.” She ignored the outright look of shock on Travis’s face and the surprised gasp on the other end of the line. “You made quite an impression on him.”
“I-I did? But I thought… I thought you called him darling.”
“Oh, that. It’s just a cover. You see, Billy Bob is very shy. He gets embarrassed when he’s strongly attracted to a woman because he has a – well, a very male reaction, if you know what I mean.” Kenzie turned her head so she wouldn’t see the very angry reaction he was having to her fabrication. “I could tell you were having that effect on him and I was just trying to save you both a little embarrassment. But now we find ourselves stuck in town for the day with nothing to do and no means of transportation. Billy Bob was too shy to call you himself, so I’m doing the honors. Would you – would you consider having a little company?” She lowered her voice conspiratorially and added, “It looks like he’d really like to see you.”
When she hung up the phone moments later, she announced merrily, “She’s picking us up at the library in fifteen minutes. I figure we can ditch the car a couple of blocks away and wait for her.”
“You – What – I can’t-” Travis was beyond forming a coherent thought, much less a complete sentence.
“That’s not a healthy shade of red on you,” Kenzie observed.
“I can’t believe you did that!” The words finally burst out. “What were you thinking!”
“I was thinking you had the woman falling all over herself Friday afternoon. I was thinking that right now, she’s our best chance at getting out of here.”
“We could call Hardin, or even my Captain. I know I said to keep this between us four, but we can trust him. He could –”
“No. Absolutely not,” she broke in.
“Kenzie-”
“Get that growl out of your voice. I refuse to go to the Rangers or the FBI or anyone else. They would just want to take over and boss me around and send me to Witness Protection. At the very least, they would put me under a microscope and watch every move I make. No, thank you. Now cheer up, big boy.” She changed the subject as she flashed him a grin. “You said you don’t get out very often, but here you’re having two dates in two days! A real Romeo in the making.”
“I swear to you, Kenzie Reese,” he threatened lowly, his countenance dark and angry. “I don’t know how and I don’t when, but I swear you’re going to pay for this little stunt.”
Beginning to laugh again, Kenzie ignored his threat. “You’d sound a lot more menacing if your face wasn’t all red and mottled, and you didn’t look like a clown in a circus car!”
***
Brenda Sorenson lived on a quiet street in an older neighborhood, on the opposite side of town from the Piney Wood Motel. The librarian and her brother were delighted to have unexpected guests on a lazy Sunday morning.
Brenda believed their story without question, sympathizing with their run of bad luck. Kenzie – or Betty, as t
hey knew her- explained how she and her brother were headed to South Dakota to visit a sick aunt, but a wrong turn landed them in Wyoming; after all, Billy Bob had no sense of direction. Their car broke down just as they were coasting into town and they were now out of money.
Kenzie played her role to the hilt, pretending to be a loving sister concerned about her brother’s love life – or lack thereof, to hear her tell it. The anger and humiliation on Travis’s face could easily pass for shyness, but the librarian did everything in her power to put him at ease. When he wasn’t throwing daggers at Kenzie with his eyes, Travis was fending off the aggressive moves of the not-so-shy librarian.
The downside to playing Travis’s sister was that it left Kenzie paired with Stu Sorenson, Brenda’s brother. Divorced for the third time, the fifty-year-old dentist was overweight and overconfident. Out of spite, Travis told the obnoxious man that Kenzie was fascinated with all things dentistry and had an uncommon attraction to men who practiced it. He hinted that her dazzling smile and straight, white teeth were the fringe benefits of various affairs with dentists. It was all the encouragement Stu needed to regale her with loud, boring tales of his profession. Worst of all, he assumed his suggestive comments and lewd ogling were welcomed.
Brenda insisted on cooking lunch for their guests. She served lemonade on the back porch and refused to let either of them help, leaving them with a few moments alone when she recruited Stu to set the table.
“You are so going to make this up to me, Kenzie Reese,” Travis hissed under his breath.
“I think you’ve already gotten even, siccing Stu on me like you did. Can you imagine having that man’s hands down your throat? His breath is deplorable.” She shivered, the lingering smell still in her nostrils.