Hunted

by Karen Robards

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better?” She glared at him. “This whole stupid trade-me-for-Holly’s-little-brother scheme is not going to work, by the way. You’re delusional if you think it will.”

  “It was the best stupid scheme I could come up with on short notice.”

  The trace of mocking humor in his voice did not sit well with her. “To hell with this. I want to know what’s going on.”

  “No, you don’t. Believe me, you don’t.”

  “If you won’t tell me, how about I try to figure it out for myself?” Caroline asked pseudosweetly, then frowned, thinking. Her eyes stayed fixed on his face as she continued. “What is it they say? Oh, yes: once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how unlikely, must be the truth. First thing to do is discard the most unlikely explanations, such as the slim but not entirely nonexistent possibility that you are completely crazy. Clearly you weren’t after money, because you left the chance for a million dollars behind. Publicity? I don’t think so. Here’s what we’re left with: you, previously a good solid cop, were fired yesterday for taking a bribe, which Holly swears was a setup. Holly was arrested for possessing drugs, which he swears was a setup, too. Who supposedly set you two up? A very generic ‘the cops,’ again sworn to by Holly. He’s thrown in jail and thinks he’ll be murdered by morning. You take New Orleans’ top brass hostage, including, significantly, the superintendent of police and the mayor, in a spectacularly wrongheaded fiasco of a move that nevertheless succeeds in getting Holly out of jail and, not coincidentally, makes you both the object of a manhunt that’s probably going to end with the two of you getting killed.

  “So what is the common denominator here?” She paused, musing. Then her voice brightened with triumph. “I have it: the cops. Specifically, the NOPD.” Her eyes narrowed on his face. His expression was guarded, but something in his eyes told her that she was on the right track. She continued slowly, piecing it together as she went. “I’m guessing you, or Holly—it would have to be Holly, wouldn’t it, or else there’s no reason for him to be involved—stumbled across something, some evidence of corruption, or a crime, which”—the look she was giving him turned speculative—“you reported to the superintendent of police, who either did not believe you, which accounts for the fight everyone says you two had, or did believe you and wanted to stop you from sharing what you discovered with anyone else. Bottom line, he didn’t like what you had to say. The situation went to hell from there.” At the telltale firming of Reed’s mouth, she smiled. “Bingo, right?”

  “Leave it alone, Caroline.” The look he gave her was grim.

  “Too late,” she taunted. “Let’s see, what could it be? What big bad could Holly have uncovered?”

  “Goddamn it.” He said it violently enough to make her eyes widen. But he wasn’t talking to her, she realized a split second later. His eyes were fixed on something up ahead. His hands had clenched tight around the steering wheel.

  Glancing out through the windshield, Caroline froze. Her heart lurched. Her stomach sank.

  Although they were partially hidden by the trees, there was no mistaking the red revolving lights dead ahead.

  A squad car was speeding right toward them.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  BEFORE CAROLINE could say anything, before she could make so much as a sound beyond her first instinctive indrawn breath, Reed doused the headlights. Darkness dropped over them like a curtain.

  “Like that’s not going to attract attention,” Caroline scoffed.

  “You have a better idea, I’m all ears.”

  She didn’t.

  “Oh, God, it’s all over.” Her voice sounded hollow. Her heart slammed against her ribs. There wasn’t a thing she could do, except stare in horror at the oncoming squad car. While it was still hidden by the trees except for the brilliant flashing lights that could be glimpsed through the stockade of trunks, it was approaching at a fast pace. The siren wasn’t on. If it hadn’t been for the activated light bar on top of the car, they would have had no warning at all.

  “We just now saw their lights. I’m hoping they didn’t see ours.” He had taken his foot off the gas rather than hitting the brakes. Caroline guessed that it was to prevent the telltale flash of red from the brake lights. She watched as he shifted down into neutral.

  “Reed.” He was pulling off the road. The Mazda bumped over gravel and then grass, going way too fast for a blind ride along the badly overgrown grassy strip at the edge of a forest. Trees flashed past Caroline’s window, so close that she cringed a little. Thank God the car was slowing. Her voice went dangerously high-pitched. “What are you doing?”

  The squad car came around a bend, and suddenly she could see it speeding directly toward them, a solid pale shape beneath the pulsing red light bar that lit up the night.

  “Stopping.” Even as he said it, the Mazda bounced over a cluster of small bushes and, amid the sound of branches slapping the paint and scratching along the undercarriage, shuddered to a halt. Reed had already let go of the steering wheel and was reaching for her seat belt before it finally stopped. His voice sharpened as he leaned toward her: “Duck.”

  “What?”

  She didn’t get an answer. At least, not in words. Instead, as her seat belt released, a hard arm encircled her shoulders and he pushed her down so that she was lying across the console. He then covered her body with his own. The plastic console was hard and unyielding beneath her ribs. His torso on top of hers was heavy and suffocating. With the way he was twisted in the seat, her head wound up resting on the side of his muscular thigh.

  “Oh my God, this would be the moment to take these handcuffs off me. Your best chance is to surrender to me before they—” Her voice broke off as the Mazda’s interior lit up with pulsating red flashes. “—find us,” she finished in a tiny voice.

  The patrol car was clearly almost upon them. Once again, instead of welcoming potential rescue as any right-minded victim would, she found herself identifying with Reed. Her breath caught, her throat tightened up, and her cuffed hands clenched into fists. With Reed’s big body resting atop hers, she could feel his tension. His arm around her was rigid, and his thigh beneath her cheek was taut. He was heavy as a sack of cement, holding her down below the level of the windshield so that neither of them was visible to the officers in the cruiser passing the car. Bent over as she was, with Reed’s weight on top of her, it was hard for her to take a deep breath. His own breathing was even and slow, and she got the impression that he was deliberately controlling it.

  He said, “I’m not surrendering.”

  As his forbidding promise registered, she realized to her dismay that she could not feel his gun where it should have been. All she could feel against her back was his solid chest and a ridged shape near his left pectoral muscle that she knew must be his empty holster. One hard arm curved across her body; his hand rested near her hip. The other—to her horror Caroline saw that he held his gun against his leg.

  Cuffed as she was, there was not a thing she could do about it.

  “If they see you with a gun they’ll shoot you on the spot,” she warned urgently.

  Even as she said it the lights were upon them; the entire interior pulsed red as hellfire. Goose bumps raced over her skin. Her blood thundered in her ears. Bracing, she listened for the sound of brakes, of the siren being activated, of something that would tell her that the moment of reckoning was at hand.

  He said, “Whatever happens, you stay in the car and stay down. I don’t want you getting caught in any crossfire.”

  “We don’t want any crossfire,” she almost wailed. “Reed, please don’t do this.”

  The whooshing sound of tires rolling fast over pavement was followed almost immediately by a lessening in the intensity of the lights inside the Mazda. A moment later, and the red flashes were entirely gone.

  Caroline lay where she was, unmoving. Reed, too, remained motionless atop her. Her heart continued to pound a mile a minute. She
was sure that his did, too.

  What was happening? Had the squad car stopped behind them? Were armed officers even now sneaking up on them through the dark?

  Or had the cruiser simply passed them by and continued on?

  Not knowing was driving her insane. Caroline felt like she was about to jump out of her skin.

  Cautiously Reed lifted his head and looked around.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said, exhaling. “They’re gone.”

  Oh. My. God.

  “They’re gone?” To Caroline’s embarrassment, her voice squeaked. She sat up when he did, and they both turned to look out the back window at the same time. Sure enough, in the distance she could see the flashing red lights racing away from them. She felt shivery inside with the aftermath of fear, and took a deep, hopefully calming breath. “Thank God.”

  He looked at her. With both of them partially turned around in their seats, their faces were surprisingly close. His eyes gleamed in the darkness as they met hers. His mouth curved into the slightest of wry smiles.

  “Hey, you’re being kidnapped, remember? You want me to get caught.”

  “No, I don’t,” she said.

  He must have heard the conviction in her voice, because his smile vanished and he looked at her searchingly. Then he leaned forward and kissed her.

  At the touch of his mouth on hers, heat shot through her. His lips were hard and hungry, and the way he was kissing her made her dizzy. She closed her eyes and opened her mouth under his and kissed him back with all the pent-up passion for him that she’d been holding on to inside for ten years. Her heart began to pound and her body quickened and she shivered with a rush of absolutely unexpected pleasure.

  Oh. My. God. In a whole different way.

  When he pulled his mouth from hers, her lids fluttered up and she looked at him almost dazedly. Chemistry—that’s what shimmered in the air between them. Potent. Explosive. The kind of inexplicable physical reaction that made getting naked and horizontal with the other person feel absolutely urgent. For a moment, as his gaze moved over her face, she went all melty inside in expectation of—something. Tender words. Another kiss. Feverish handcuffed sex. Until she realized that, although his eyes were heavy-lidded and hot for her, he was frowning, and the set of his mouth could best be described as grim.

  Then he reached past her to grab her loose seat belt.

  “Sit still,” he ordered, pulling it around her. “I don’t want to make this too tight.”

  “That’s it?” she asked indignantly as he clicked the belt into place. “Sit still? That’s all you have to say?”

  “You wanting hearts and flowers, Caroline?” He sounded almost impatient. The look he flicked at her was impossible to read. “You got the wrong place, the wrong time, and the wrong man.”

  That stung. That made her mad.

  “Obviously,” she snapped, and glared at the road ahead because she didn’t want to glare at him, since that would make how she was feeling just too damned obvious. “Instead of wasting time kissing me, you might want to try driving away. Because there might be another squad car. Or that last one might come back. The fact that he didn’t see us is an absolute miracle anyway, and if I were you I wouldn’t want to push it.”

  “I don’t believe in miracles.” Clearly ready, willing, and able to continue on like that kiss had never happened, he returned his gun to its holster then started the car again, while Caroline leaned back in her seat, rested her head against the headrest, and tried to calm down. She felt limp with reaction, and 99.9 percent of it was from that blistering kiss. Her heart was still beating way too fast, and her blood still simmered.

  “Then let me put it another way: God looks after fools and children,” she responded caustically, turning her head so she could look at him.

  He smiled. It wasn’t much, a quick curve of his lips, but it was enough to make her go all sort of warm and fuzzy inside, which under the circumstances was absolutely infuriating. She might not be able to help feeling sexually attracted to him, but discovering to her dismay that she liked him, too, as the man he was now quite apart from her ten-year-old memory of him, was not a good thing.

  In fact, it could be downright dangerous.

  In sheer self-defense, she looked away. The Mazda was moving, jolting free of the bushes, its tires biting into gravel before finding the road. A quick glance back through the rear window found the squad car’s lights. They were now no more than a distant flash of red through the trees.

  “That was close,” he said. “What do you want to bet they’re rushing to hook up with the roadblock on I-10?”

  It was possible, Caroline supposed. Thing was, she didn’t care.

  “You know, we can play hide-and-seek with the patrol cars all night,” she said with a touch of acid as the Mazda accelerated to what she felt was a dangerous speed without turning on its lights. Fortunately just enough moonlight spilled through the overarching branches to make it not quite suicidal. “But I’d rather not.”

  “With any luck, we’ll be off the road before another one comes along. Like I told you before, we’re almost there.”

  She wanted to ask where, but knew there wasn’t any point because he wasn’t going to tell her.

  “Yippee,” she replied with a notable lack of enthusiasm, and to her annoyance that made him smile again.

  Moments later, he turned the Mazda onto a dirt track that wove a considerable distance through the woods. Because by consensus they continued to avoid using the headlights, the deeper they drove into the trees the darker it got, until finally the car was practically inching along and Caroline couldn’t see a thing. But he kept going, and at last they pulled into a clearing that, by comparison with the darkness they had just emerged from, seemed awash with moonlight. Caroline saw that it held a long, ramshackle-looking wooden structure with a tin roof. Reed stopped the car right in front of it, got out, and pulled open one of what looked like about three pairs of shedlike doors while she squinted at the words Duck Tours painted in big white letters above them. Then he got back in the car and drove into what appeared to be a rudimentary garage. Inside, it was so dark that she couldn’t even see him sitting beside her.

  “Duck Tours?” she asked.

  “A guy I know used to run them through the bayous for the tourists. Went out of business when the price of gas went through the roof. It’s been empty for a while.”

  “Oh.” She understood that he was referring to the big yellow amphibious vehicles that she could actually remember seeing a time or two on the city streets. “This is where you’re planning to hide out?” Her tone was doubtful.

  “This is where I’m planning to hide the car.” He killed the engine. “In a few minutes I need to make a phone call,” he said. “And I want your word that you’ll be absolutely quiet while I do it.”

  The threat of more duct tape, of which there was still a healthy amount on the roll in the backseat, was unsaid but there. It wasn’t necessary.

  “You know, I’d scream for help as soon as whoever you’re going to be calling answered the phone except, gee, I’m guessing they’re going to be too far away to come running.”

  “Does that mean I can trust you to be quiet?” His voice was dry.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, yes.” She frowned as he reached past her to pull up the plastic bag he’d dropped into the footwell. His arm brushed her leg, as did the plastic bag with its bulging contents, and then he was unfastening her seat belt and his arm brushed her breast, and there it was again, that jolt of sexual chemistry that made her toes curl and her body heat and that she absolutely was going to resist if it killed her. As he withdrew into his own seat she had to ask, even though she thought the chance of actually getting an answer was practically nonexistent. “Calling anybody I know?”

  “Your father.”

  She was surprised by his answer, surprised that he told her.

  “Why?” she inquired.

  “To let him know I have you, in case there’s any
doubt. To arrange a trade.” He got out of the car, opened the back door, presumably to retrieve items from the backseat, then came around to her door and opened it. A moment later she felt his hand on her arm. “Come on, get out.”

  Caroline got out. Reed closed the door, locked it with a beep, and then with his hand on her elbow urged her toward the grayish light that was the clearing.

  As soon as they were outside, she saw that she’d been right: the backpack was slung over his shoulder. The plastic bag hung from his arm. He’d shed his jacket while he’d walked around the car to fetch her—she presumed it was now in the backpack, although she supposed he could have left it in the car—and had rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt to the elbow. He was likely hot; even in her sleeveless blouse and short skirt she was feeling overwarm herself, which, since the temperature was relatively pleasant, she attributed to a hellish combination of reaction from their kiss and stress and the rain-portending heaviness of the air. Seen by moonlight, with his tall, broad-shouldered, supremely fit build and his shoulder holster plainly visible against his shirt, he looked every inch the tough, seasoned police detective he’d been until the previous day.

  She faced, again, the mind-blowing puzzle of how he had ended up here, in this shadow-filled clearing on the run from the very institution to which he had dedicated his life. But she was too tired and jittery to analyze it any further at the moment, and so she turned her attention to her surroundings. The open area where they stood looked like it had once been a parking area, and from the texture of the ground underfoot she thought it might even have been graveled, although only a few scattered pebbles were left, embedded in the hard-packed dirt. The towering black walls that were, in actuality, the trees crowded the perimeter of what was approximately a sixty-by-one-hundred-foot rectangle. The sounds of the woods at night—a symphony of whirring insects, rustling leaves, scurrying creatures, and distant animal cries—were surprisingly loud, even there in the clearing. The air smelled damp, which wasn’t a surprise: unless she was mistaken they were on the edge of one of the bayous. Lafourche, she thought, from the direction in which they’d traveled, although it was always possible that she was mistaken, that she’d gotten turned around.