Crazy for You: Life and Love on the Lam (A Loveswept Contemporary Romance)

by Juliet Rosetti

  He snagged it, squinting at the price tag. “You paid twenty bucks for this thing?”

  “For God’s sake, Ben! Wrap it around your leg as tight as you can. I’ll do it.” I lightened up on the gas and started looking for a place to pull over.

  “No—don’t stop! Turn on your fog lights.”

  I cut down the headlights so the snow wouldn’t throw our own glare back and kept my foot on the gas, driving way too fast for the slick conditions. The road coiled and looped like a sackful of snakes, but eventually, I figured, it had to hook up with a highway.

  Then I caught the glint of headlights in my rearview mirror. It was them! Who else would be out on a night like this? Had they spotted us? I pressed down on the gas pedal until we were going dangerously fast.

  The road spooled endlessly on, the trees thinning as the road climbed until it was winding along the spine of a high, narrow ridge. On a clear day the view would have been spectacular, but now it just gave the wind free rein to buffet the car. Pig began to falter, its tires struggling to find traction on the slippery slopes. Even with the wipers going full blast, the snow was so thick that visibility was limited to a few yards.

  Labeck turned around and looked over his shoulder. “Moving up on us.”

  The vehicle behind us was coming up with alarming speed. Soon it was close enough for me to make it out in the rearview mirror—it was the pickup truck I’d seen earlier in the parking lot. It appeared to have been patched together out of spare parts from an auto junkyard, but its weight gave it better traction than Pig, and its larger engine lent it more power. It was gaining on us by the second.

  We crested a crag and pounded down the other side. Seconds later, the pickup bounced over the top and came roaring up behind. Now, when I risked a panic-stricken glance in the mirror, I saw three heads silhouetted in the truck’s front seat. Petrov and Gozzy must have recovered sufficiently from their charbroiling to join the pursuit. Gozzy was driving, which probably meant the bucket of bolts belonged to him. The road twisted and we lost them for a moment. I stepped on the gas.

  “You’re doing great,” Labeck said.

  Fate always punishes compliments. The truck roared up behind us, closing the gap. Suddenly it surged forward and rammed us, its snout crumpling our trunk, smashing out our rear window, and whiplashing our bodies. Shrieking in panic, I somehow managed to wrestle the car back onto the road.

  Pig still had game. I slammed the gas to the floor and the pickup receded behind us. Frigid air swirled in through the shattered window, whipping my hair into my eyes. We swung up a ridge and discovered that the road sloped downhill from here, emerging a couple of miles farther along onto a two-lane highway. A string of pinprick lights like fireflies were strung out behind a sluggishly moving beast with flashing orange lights. A snowplow! Cars, cellphones, salvation!

  Our pursuers must have realized this, too, because they came barreling up behind. The truck slammed us again, and the impact was so brutal my teeth bit into my tongue. Labeck flung out an arm to protect me, but it was too late; all effort was now too late. Pig smashed through a guardrail and soared off the road, flying for a few exhilarating, bladder-bursting seconds before bouncing to the ground, battering through brush, and tobogganing down a steep, wooded slope.

  A tree burst through the front windshield, a rock punched out the passenger window, and the car tumbled down the hill in a jolting plunge that jarred our bones and would have turned our organs to bloody mush if Pig had not performed the last service of its life: it exploded its air bags.

  At last it came to a bone-rattling halt, snagged in a nest of trees. Pig vibrated, pinged, settled lower, and died, with a long, sad hiss of its radiator.

  “Ben?” I whispered.

  Silence, during which I had time to regret every opportunity lost, every kiss not kissed, every word of love left unspoken.

  Then a hand groped for mine in the dark. “How bad are you hurt?” Labeck asked in a pain-choked voice.

  My heart resumed beating. My eyes brimmed with tears. Working by touch, I checked to make sure Ben’s femurs hadn’t erupted through his eardrums and that his kidneys weren’t sitting atop his head like ice bags.

  “Just a little banged up,” I whispered. “Are you—”

  He gave a shaky laugh. “Alive, baby.”

  “Do you think they’re still up there?”

  “Count on it. We’ve got to move. Can you help me get out?”

  A first! Ben Labeck asking for help. Shoving aside my slowly deflating air bag, I clambered out the broken driver’s side window. We were precariously situated on a slope, with Labeck downhill from me. Hanging onto Pig for support, I floundered around to the passenger side. Labeck’s door had been wrenched off and he was hung up by his seat belt. Even in the dim light, I could see that his pants were soaked with blood. Punching down his air bag, I wrestled with the seat belt and finally unsnapped it, then helped Labeck ease out of the car.

  “Next time,” he said, “let’s just call a cab.”

  Chapter Thirty-two

  It’s okay to be a little paranoid. Because sometimes they really are out to get you.

  —Maguire’s Maxims

  Pig’s accordioned trunk gaped open, as though the car’s last act of sacrifice was to offer us its contents. The suitcase I’d packed for Quail Hollow was now a Samsonite pancake, but groping in the dark, I snatched up a few things that might come in handy—an old wool blanket, a tangle of jumper cables that might serve as a tourniquet, a flashlight, a screwdriver, a pair of socks, a water bottle…

  “Let’s go,” Labeck said urgently, grabbing the cables, wrapping them around his waist.

  I knotted the blanket superhero-style around my neck and crammed everything else into my purse. Keeping close to each other, we moved downhill, picking our way by snowlight. Gazing up at the slope we’d tumbled down, I didn’t see how we’d survived. Pig had nose-dived about ninety feet, its trail marked by snapped saplings and smashed underbrush. On the ridge above us, the truck’s headlights glowed through the trees. The Road Warriors were probably already on their way down. They were going to be mightily pissed when they discovered that we selfishly hadn’t allowed ourselves to be killed.

  A bullet through the leg was not slowing down Labeck. He thrust downhill as though leading a troop of Boy Scouts to a promised land of beans and weenies. Moving would make him bleed more, but we couldn’t risk the few seconds it would take to fix a tourniquet. At last we reached the bottom of the slope, where a narrow stream bisected a ravine. At first glance, the stream appeared to be frozen, but I caught a whisper of current beneath. Too treacherous to trust.

  Labeck scanned the opposite bank. “Let’s cross it,” he said. “More trees on the other side—better cover.” Only if you knew the guy would you suspect he was hurting and trying not to show it.

  “That ice is too thin,” I protested, scanning the terrain for something we could use as a bridge, but of course there’s never a fallen log around when you need it. Voices echoed from above. Our pursuers were moving through the woods with all the stealth of a SWAT team invading a crack house, calling back and forth to each other.

  Labeck hobbled onto the ice. Blood dribbled out of his pants legs, black against the skin of snow on the ice. The ice fractured beneath his feet, and he dropped to his hands and knees and began worming his way across it, arms and legs splayed to spread out his weight. I stood on the bank, stomach clenched, white-knuckled with fear, waiting for the ice to give way. It splintered and water seeped from the cracks, but, astonishingly, it held Labeck’s weight. Seconds later he was crawling up the opposite bank.

  Two metallic thuds came from above, the sound of the baddies bashing into Pig.

  “Are they in there?” Petrov’s voice.

  Labeck was frantically motioning for me to cross the stream. I tossed my purse across. It bounced against a sapling and nearly fell into a patch of open water, but Labeck reached over and snagged it by a strap. Choosing a stretch of
ice a few yards away from where Labeck had crossed, I lowered myself onto the ice, whimpering as the icy water seeped through my clothes. But knowing that Labeck had made it across, I figured I could do it, too, and a few minutes later I clambered up on the opposite bank.

  “Nobody in there.” I recognized Gozzy’s slurred, meth maggot voice. “Let’s throw a match in the gas tank. I wanna see her go kaboom—like in the movies.”

  “No,” Petrov shouted at him. “A fire would be visible for miles.”

  “Hey, there’s blood on the ground.” Gozzy sounded thrilled. “One of ’em’s hurt.”

  “Kennison thinks he nicked Labeck.”

  “How come he was shooting at ’em? We was supposed to be careful so it would look like they got all burned to pieces in my cabin.”

  Petrov made a disgusted noise. “Change of plan.”

  “There they are!” Gozzy’s woods-trained eyes had picked us out. Seconds later he was bursting through the brush, emerging on the bank of the stream, raising his shotgun, firing. The sound reverberated against the stony walls of the ravine, and the pussy willow shrub next to us got raked to shreds.

  Labeck and I hit the ground, then rapidly scuttled backward, scrabbling to get out of the gun’s range.

  “I’m going across,” Gozzy announced.

  “The ice is too thin,” Petrov warned.

  “If them two got across, so can I.”

  Peering through the trees, Labeck and I watched as Gozzy stepped out onto the ice, holding his shotgun cradled in his arms. He took a second step, a third. Suddenly there was an ominous crack, a sound like a troll crunching peanut brittle, and then the ice shattered. Gozzy plunged into water up to his knees, pinwheeled his arms for a brief, entertaining moment, then toppled backward into the stream, squealing like a kid whose ice-cream cone has fallen to the sand.

  “Get me out,” he sputtered, extending a hand toward Petrov.

  Petrov just stood there. Maybe he hoped the dumb lug would drown. Finally Gozzy floundered out, cursing through the chattering stumps of what remained of his teeth.

  If I hadn’t been so terrified, I would have laughed.

  “Where’s Kennison?” Labeck muttered. He held a branch aside for me and I slipped under his arm. We began to move downstream, parallel to the creek.

  Where was he? I had the feeling that Kennison was more dangerous than the other two combined. I remembered what he’d said the night he’d given me a ride home. “Hunters thin out the herd, eliminate the weaker deer, and let the strong ones thrive.”

  He was out there somewhere, he was stalking us, and if he found us, he was going to kill us.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Maxi pads: Because you’re glad you’re a girl! If you believe that, see me regarding a bridge.

  —Maguire’s Maxims

  “Could you pull your pants down?” I said to Labeck.

  He cocked an eyebrow. “If you do the same thing.”

  Unbelievable. Exhausted, frozen, and bleeding to death, Bonaparte Labeck was still capable of entertaining frolicsome notions. He fumbled toward his belt, but halfway there he seemed to forget what he’d been about to do and closed his eyes. “Just leave it,” he said thickly.

  “Don’t be an idiot.” Leaning over, I loosened his jacket and unbuckled his belt.

  Faint smile from Labeck.

  “You can wipe that smirk off your face.”

  I unzipped his jeans zipper. The smirk got smirkier. If Labeck thought I was going to see to it that he died happy, he needed to think again. I unknotted the scarf he’d tied around his thigh and eased down his jeans legs. Stretched out there atop the hay bales, he was shivering, his skin hard-pebbled with goose bumps. I unknotted the car blanket slung around my neck and snugged it over his torso.

  “Your hands are cold,” he complained.

  “Do you want to do this?”

  “Hell, no.”

  “What about that sports medicine degree?” I was trying to keep Labeck’s mind off the pain while I peeled the jeans fabric away from the wound as gently as possible.

  “We never covered bullet wounds. Hockey games don’t usually involve gunplay. Unless it’s the playoffs.”

  The entry wound was about the size of a Skittle. The flesh had purpled around it in widening circles, turning the wound into a ghastly bull’s-eye. Lesser women might have swooned, but wounds hold a sick fascination for me. When I was a kid, I used to taste-test the scabs I peeled off my own knees. Mostly they tasted like salty granola.

  “I’m going to raise your legs.” My first-aid training was rusty, but it seemed logical to direct the blood flow back toward the heart. I wrangled a hay bale into position, lifted Ben’s wounded leg, and propped it atop the bale, winging a silent thanks to whoever had built this shed out in the middle of nowhere. If we hadn’t stumbled across it, we’d probably have frozen to death.

  After leaving the site of the car crash, we’d followed the creek downhill, hoping it would lead us to civilization. Instead, the creek had sunk into a reedy, impenetrable swamp. This was the point where I’d been ready to curl up in the snow and wait for cryogenic preservation, but Labeck had kept us slogging on. We’d stumbled through scrubby woods for what felt like hours, finally emerging in an open field where the wind had free rein to sandblast our faces.

  We walked for several eternities stitched together until, quite suddenly, dark shapes loomed out of the snow and I caught the stench of cattle, pungent even in the cold. A cluster of cows stood huddled around a hulking structure. It was a barn or shed, I saw, guarded by a tall, skeletal windmill. As we’d straggled closer, the cattle wheeled around to face us, lowering their big heads.

  “Will they attack?” Labeck asked, sounding nervous.

  “I don’t think so. Let’s get inside.”

  The cattle shied away as we threaded our way between them. They were beef cattle, big and blocky, wearing their shaggy winter coats, lowing mistrustfully at the intruders, but at heart such bashful creatures they’d stampede if you said boo.

  Exquisite relief as we stepped inside the shed. The place hadn’t been built to shelter the cattle, whose hides kept them warm even in freezing temperatures. It was a storage shed for cattle fodder, with half-filled hay mows on both sides of a narrow walkway. We clambered into a valley between tottery mountains of hay bales and collapsed, just lying there, absorbing the delicious sensation of not having to move. Eventually, I flogged myself into action. Ripping off the purse bandoliered across my chest, I rummaged in it for the flashlight I’d rescued from my car trunk. It won’t work, I thought.

  But it did, sort of, splaying out a grudging puddle of light. I shone the light at Labeck’s leg, then almost wished I hadn’t. His pants were so saturated with blood it seemed impossible he had a drop left in his body. The constant walking had kept the blood drizzling out of his wound. I felt horribly inadequate to handle this. There might be muscle or tendon damage—there was no way I could tell. Still, if anything major had been hit, I reasoned, Labeck wouldn’t have been able to walk at all. The only first aid I could think of was to stop the bleeding.

  This was the point where I’d pulled down his pants.

  “I’m going to clean your wound,” I told Labeck, trying to sound as though I knew what I was doing. I found a small bottle of hand sanitizer and a pack of Kleenex in my purse, and set to work swabbing the wound.

  Labeck jerked as though I’d prodded him with a hot poker, hissing through his teeth.

  “Sorry. Should have warned you.” Cleaning the wound resulted in a fresh dribble of blood. What could I use to staunch it? In pioneer days, I’d have ripped my petticoat into strips, but I’d left my petticoat at home with my corset and high button shoes. I did have something in my purse that might work, though. Unwrapping it, I extended its wings and pressed it against Ben’s wound.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “A maxi pad.”

  He reached down and tried to snatch it off. “Ouch.”

>   I slapped his fingers. “It’s your own fault for having hairy legs. Be careful or you’ll rip the magic flexi-wings.”

  “I’m not wearing that thing! The guys will laugh at me.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. We’re not going to live long enough for anyone to laugh at you.”

  “I don’t want the undertaker laughing at me, either.”

  I gave his butt cheek a small spank. “Move onto your side.”

  He did. He was quiet for a moment, then said, “Could you do that spanking thing again?”

  “You’re incorrigible.”

  “You better believe it, baby.”

  He was still a tighty-whitey guy, I saw, unable to keep my eyes from straying. Doctors could use Labeck as a living anatomy chart. Note the sharply defined lines of the gluteus maximus, class. Tight ass, thighs like steel girders, muscles bulging from twenty years of working out on the ice…

  Stop that, you pervert! You want this guy to bleed to death while you indulge in sexual fantasies?

  The exit wound on the back of Labeck’s thigh was larger and more ragged than the entrance wound, but curiously, it didn’t seem to have bled as much. I cleaned it with sanitizer, then attached a mini pad to it.

  “That’s not another of those things, is it?” he growled.

  “How can men spend half their lives looking at ying-yangs on porn sites, but get so freaked out over a perfectly natural thing like menstruation?”

  “You sound like my sisters. I had to listen to them yammer about that stuff at the supper table until I lost my appetite.”

  I was just about to launch into my lecture about how guys needed to get over their stupid hang-ups about menstruation, when something large lumbered into the shed. If it was the bad guys, we were cooked, because we’d been caught with our pants down, in all senses of the word.

  The thing mooed.

  “Just a cow,” I said shakily.

  “I think it wants to be milked,” Labeck said. “You’re a farm kid—you know how to do it. Get us some fresh milk. I could use a midnight snack.”