by Jane Graves
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 mid-afternoon by the time they emerged onto the state highway. Without a word, John turned and walked along the shoulder of the road in the direction of that seedy little diner where she’d propositioned him last night. She had no choice but to walk right along with him.
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. To help her, for God’s sake, because there was absolutely nobody else on earth she could turn to right then. 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 the 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 now, 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 oughta 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 oughta 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!” She nodded to the phone at the other end of the counter. “Give Stan a call up at the Mobil station in Winslow. He’ll get you fixed right up.”
“Thanks, Marva. Hey, something sure smells good. 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 here, 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 m
ean 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 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 bam.”
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 had 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, still he 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. Renee’s heart thrummed in a hard, painful rhythm, until she wondered if maybe she was having a heart attack. Maybe her short but eventful life would soon be over, saving her from wasting away behind those prison walls.
Unfortunately, her heart kept beating.
The tension radiating from John 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 that he wouldn’t tolerate so much as a hiccup out of her. Since the last thing she wanted right now 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 die 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 now, 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.