No, she corrected herself. Not frumpy. Never again. She’d vowed to change her life, and that’s exactly what she would do. She might not have Michael in her life, but she’d survive.
“What are you thinking about?” Michael’s breath tickled her ear. “You look so solemn.”
“I hope the crooked cops get what they deserve,” she said, her voice hot with anger. “And after they do, I hope they rot in hell.”
“You’re so fierce,” Michael whispered, pulling her closer to him. “I’d be shaking in my shoes if I didn’t know what a marshmallow you really are.”
She turned on him. “I’m not a marshmallow, Reilly. I’m as tough as you.”
He leaned over and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “No, you’re not,” he murmured. “You’re a lot tougher.”
Her anger withered and died. She didn’t want to waste any of their precious hours together in hard words and anger. She wanted to create memories that would last a lifetime.
“I’m sorry,” she said, pressing closer to his side. “I get angry every time I think about what they’re doing to you.”
He curled his arm around her and gave her a fierce, tight hug. “You never cease to amaze me, Eleanor Perkins.”
They stood together hip to hip for the rest of the trip, not speaking. There was no need for words. Michael knew as well as she that this would be their last night together.
When the train reached the stop where they’d left the car, they merged with the crowd of people exiting the train and making their way down the stairs. Once on the street, she and Michael hurried to the car.
He motioned for her to stay back as he examined the vehicle carefully. Finally he nodded. “Nobody’s touched it. Let’s go.”
They’d bought a map, and she used it to navigate to the park the FBI agent had named as a meeting place. The neighborhood was an odd mixture of rundown buildings, some clearly abandoned, and brightly painted ones, obviously remodeled houses and two-flats.
A few minutes later they stood surveying the small park. Michael’s face hardened as he looked around.
“This won’t work,” he said, his voice flat.
“Why not?”
“It’s too open. There’s nowhere to hide.”
“Isn’t that good? If there’s nowhere for us to hide, it means there’s nowhere for the Midland cops to hide, either.”
“There are too many abandoned buildings close by.” He nodded at one across the street from the park. “They could hide in any one of those and ambush us.” He compressed his lips. “Hell, they could have a sniper waiting in that building and we’d never know what hit us.”
“What are we going to do?” She glanced at the backpack slung over his shoulders, then looked away. She wanted to fling it away from him, so far that no one would ever find it. She wanted to free him of the burden of the information, so he wouldn’t have to worry about snipers and being killed.
But one of the reasons she loved him was because he was so determined to do the right thing. So she took his hand instead of clawing at the pack.
“We pick a new spot,” he said, turning to look at the park from all angles. Then his eyes came back to the vacant building across the street. “Like that building.”
IT HAD BEEN DARK for a while when Michael hung up the pay phone and scanned the street behind him. There was no way the Midland cops could know where he was. Logic told him that. But tension hummed through his nerves and the back of his neck itched. There was trouble ahead. Nothing had gone right since he’d stood between those buildings and watched Rueben Montero die.
He took a roundabout route back to the motel where he’d left Ellie, but his foot pressed a little harder on the accelerator as he got closer. She would be anxious, he told himself. He wanted to let her know that everything was settled.
Ellie. He felt his mouth curl at the corners, in spite of the mounting tension. If he was honest with himself, he’d admit that Ellie herself was the reason he was hurrying back to the motel. He didn’t want to be away from her any longer than necessary.
Only so he could protect her, his mind immediately protested. He grasped at that straw, skittering away from the rest of the truth. He couldn’t bear to take it out and examine it. In spite of everything they’d been through together, in spite of the fact that he would trust her with his life, he insisted to himself he would handle everything better alone.
That included their rendezvous tomorrow with Givens.
Somehow Michael had to convince her to stay in the motel while he dealt with the FBI agent.
It wouldn’t be easy.
“I DIDN’T KNOW you were a fan,” he said, entering the motel room and nodding at the screen.
She snatched up the remote control and turned off the soap opera. “It was the first channel that came on.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he drawled. “I’ve heard all the excuses. Admit it, Ellie. You just have a taste for the dramatic.”
But instead of rising to the bait, as he had hoped, she scooted closer to him. “What happened? Did you get hold of Givens?”
“Yeah, I did.” He snorted. “He thought my objection to the park was ‘brilliant.’ We’re meeting in that abandoned building across the street. And we’re meeting earlier than we’d planned. I made it for 5:30 a.m., just in case.”
She frowned, her eyebrows puckering. “Isn’t an empty building even more dangerous? There must be all kinds of corners to hide there.”
“There are. I went through the place before I made the call to Givens. But if I arrive early enough, I can make sure there aren’t any unpleasant surprises waiting for me. And if there are, I have a better chance of avoiding them than I would out in the open.”
“What is this ‘I’ stuff, Reilly?” She’d picked up on the thing he’d hoped she’d miss. “Shouldn’t it be ‘we’?”
“It will certainly be ‘we’ tonight,” he murmured, allowing himself to do what he’d ached to do from the moment he’d walked in the door. Gathering her in his arms, he pressed a kiss to the soft, fragrant spot beneath her ear. “Believe me, Ellie, I won’t be thinking of anything but you tonight.”
He felt her gathering herself to protest, but he cut off her words by pressing his mouth to hers. Her taste swept all other thoughts from his head. There was only Ellie and the hours they had together. He intended to make every minute count.
LATE IN THE NIGHT he opened his eyes to peer at the clock on the night table. Two o’clock. Time to go.
But before he disentangled himself from Ellie he allowed himself one more taste of her mouth. He skimmed his hand down her side one more time, memorizing the shape of her hip and the silky texture of her skin. When she murmured in her sleep and tried to get closer to him, he felt desire stirring again.
They’d made love several times already. He’d held her and kissed her and caressed her each time as if it was the last. And he’d gloried in her response, losing himself hopelessly in her embrace until he wasn’t sure where Ellie ended and he began.
It had been the most soul-shattering experience of his life.
But it was time to go. Time to put his need for Ellie away, to hide it so deep inside that it would be lost forever.
He eased out of bed and moved silently to the bathroom, picking up his clothes from the floor on the way. It took him a few minutes to find everything. He’d been so frantic to be inside her, so desperate to hold her, that he’d torn off his clothes and tossed them aside without thinking.
Now he had to collect them in the dark without waking Ellie.
He was almost at the bathroom door when she said sleepily, “Michael?”
“I’m right here, Ellie.” He cursed himself for lying to her. “I’m just going to the bathroom.”
“All right.”
But when he came out of the bathroom, dressed in his dark clothes, she was sitting up in bed, lamplight from the night table pooled around her, the sheet clutched to her breasts. “I thought you said you were just going to
the bathroom,” she said quietly.
He couldn’t bear the disappointment in her voice. “It’s too dangerous for you to come with me,” he answered softly.
“So you were just going to abandon me here?” Her wide eyes were full of anguish. “Just walk away and never come back?”
That had been his plan, God help him. “I thought it would be easier,” he muttered.
“Easier than what? Telling me to my face that you didn’t want me with you?”
“Ellie, you know I don’t want to drag you into my mess.”
“I’m already in your mess all the way up to my neck. Admit it, Michael. After everything that’s happened, you still don’t trust me.”
“That’s not true,” he protested, but even to him his denial sounded weak. “It has nothing to do with trust. I’m trying to protect you.”
“Maybe you just don’t trust me enough to let me make my own decision. Either way it boils down to the same thing. You aren’t about to let anyone get close to you.” She held his gaze with hers. There was no anger on her face, just hurt resignation.
“I thought we’d been pretty damn close for the last few hours,” he said, trying to lighten the mood.
She merely continued to stare at him. Finally he sighed.
“I do trust you, Ellie,” he said, sitting down on the bed next to her but refusing to look at her. “And it scares me to death. I’m not sure how to handle it. I thought it would be easier for both of us if I just disappeared.”
“That’s the coward’s way out. And I never thought you were a coward, Michael.”
“I’m a coward when it comes to you,” he said. “I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you.”
“Don’t you think I feel the same way about you?” she said, her voice softening. “If there’s a chance I can help you, I want to be there.”
“It’ll be a lot safer for you to stay right here.”
“I don’t care about safe,” she said, leaning toward him. “I already told you I’m not interested in safety as much as in doing the right thing. And the right thing is making sure the backpack and your evidence get delivered to the FBI.”
He was losing control of the situation. He knew it. But had he been in control of anything since the moment he’d kidnapped her?
“It’s going to be dark in that building,” he said, desperate to find a way to convince her to stay behind. “Completely black. And we won’t be able to turn on any lights.”
Even in the dim room he saw her face pale. Then she straightened her shoulders, still clutching the sheet to her chest. “I don’t care. As long as I’m with you, I can deal with it.”
“All right,” he heard himself say. “You can come with me. But you have to promise to do everything I tell you. Exactly the way I tell you.”
He was horrified that he’d agreed. But an enormous weight lifted off his shoulders. He wouldn’t have to leave her for a few more hours.
She scrambled out of bed, a mischievous grin flickering across her face. “Don’t I always do exactly what you tell me?”
“Yeah,” he muttered, “that’s what I’m afraid of.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE DOOR OF THE ABANDONED building squealed on rusty hinges as Michael pulled it open. He froze, looking for any movement in the surrounding blackness. But all the houses remained silent, and nothing moved on the street.
“Let’s go,” he whispered.
Ellie clutched his hand tightly, clamping her fingers around his. As she hesitated at the entrance, her fear throbbed like a living thing. Then she squared her shoulders and stepped through the door.
The darkness wasn’t complete. Streetlights cast a dim glow on the floor and created distorted shadows on the wooden boxes and shelves that filled the room.
“I think it was a warehouse,” he whispered, hoping to distract her. “There’s an office on the second floor that looks down onto this room. It’ll be the perfect place to watch for Givens and make sure he’s alone.”
“How do we get up there?”
There was a slight quaver to her voice, but she straightened her shoulder and looked him in the eye. Awed at her courage, he paused long enough to give her a reassuring squeeze. “You’re something else, Ellie,” he whispered.
He touched her face, his fingers lingering on her cheek. Then he drew away, disturbed by her ability to distract him from what he had to do. “The stairs are over here,” he said, his voice harsher than he intended. “I checked them out while it was light. They’re in good shape.”
He led her silently up the wooden staircase, holding tight to her hand. He brushed his lips over their joined fingers just before they reached the second floor.
The office he’d checked out earlier was dusty and depressing. An old steel desk sat against one wall, listing to one side. There were two office chairs next to it, both of them equally unappealing. But there was a wide window that looked down over the open area below. He’d be able to watch Givens come into the building. And he could make sure the FBI agent was alone before he approached him.
“There are a couple of chairs here,” Michael whispered. “Sit down in one of them. We’re going to be here for a while.”
He heard her fumbling in the darkness, then she said, “How do you know Givens didn’t have the same idea as you? Maybe he’s here already, too.”
She was trying hard to sound helpful and professional, but he could hear the fear beneath her words.
“When we walked around the building before we came in, I was checking little things I’d left behind yesterday afternoon. None of them were disturbed.”
“Okay.” He heard a tiny sigh in the darkness. “So now we just wait.”
“That’s it. With any luck at all, by 6:00 a.m. you’ll be heading for home.”
Instead of answering, she reached for his hand again and held on tight. Hers felt cold and clammy, and he prayed that he was right. He wanted her out of this situation as soon as possible. His neck still itched and his gut was jumping up and down with a warning. Something was wrong. He just didn’t know what it was.
He went over every minute of yesterday, examining everything they’d done and everything that had happened. He couldn’t find any flaws in their plans. His reluctant conclusion was that he couldn’t change the arrangements now. They wouldn’t find a better spot to hand over the evidence to the FBI. And the longer they waited, the closer the Midland cops would get.
So he moved the other chair close to Ellie and sat down in it. Picking up her hand, trying to reassure her with his touch, he asked her about her work. She answered his questions and asked him about his job as a detective. And as they talked in whispers, he felt her gradually relaxing.
Incredibly, he found some of his own tension easing. It would be all right, he told himself. They would get through this.
It wouldn’t be long before the first hint of light would penetrate the inky blackness of the warehouse. Knowing it was time to get ready, he touched his finger to her lips and stood up. It was still too dark to see to the first floor, but soon they would be visible to anyone who walked in the door.
He moved their chairs to the other side of the room, out of sight, then pulled Ellie to the floor, squatting next to her.
“You need to stay here,” he said, his words barely a breath in the still, heavy air. “In fact, I’m going to pull the desk out from the wall and I want you to get behind it. Stay there and don’t say a thing. Don’t come out until I tell you to.”
He felt her nodding, then eased the chairs away from the wall. She scooted into the space he’d created and sat silently. Not even a rustle came from her hiding place.
“Good,” he said, reaching out blindly to touch her one more time. “Stay right where you are. With any luck at all, this will be over in an hour.”
“Okay.”
Her voice trembled in the darkness, and he leaned closer. “It’ll be light soon,” he said. “Can you hold out for a little longer?”
Her hesitation was just a moment too long. “Of course,” she said. “I’m fine.” He knew she was lying. “You don’t have time to worry about me. Concentrate on what you have to do.”
He groped in the darkness until he found her hand. “Do you want to tell me why you’re afraid of the dark?” he asked quietly. “It might help to talk about it.”
He was sure she would refuse. But to his surprise, her breath came out in a ragged sigh. “I’m not sure anything will help. I know I’m being silly, but being wedged behind this desk is making it worse.”
“I’m sorry, Ellie, but you have to stay there,” he said, squeezing her hand. “The desk isn’t much, but it’s your only protection.”
“I know.”
After a long pause, she began speaking again. Her voice was so low that he had to lean close to hear her.
“My mother used to lock me in the closet as a punishment when I was young. Usually it was only for an hour or so, but a few times she forgot about me and I was in there all night.” She cleared her throat and gripped his hand more tightly. “I’m an adult now and I know it’s silly, but then I guess most fears are, aren’t they?”
“It’s not silly at all.” Rage rolled through him in huge, scalding waves as he pictured Ellie as a terrified child, forced into a tiny space and enveloped in smothering darkness. “Your mother was a child abuser. I’d like to lock her up in the deepest, darkest hole on the planet and throw away the key.”
He felt her fingers skimming lightly over his face. “It sounds as though you have some personal experience with child abuse.”
He’d never told his secrets to anyone. Not even Charles, although he was sure his friend suspected. But the darkness made Michael feel oddly free, the intimacy less threatening. And Ellie wouldn’t judge him or pity him. It was the one thing he was sure of.
“My mom died when I was twelve, and it was just me and my old man. He was a Midland cop.” He paused as the memories skittered away like bugs, afraid of the light of exposure. He worked to gather them back to him.
“He’d hit my mother when she was alive, mostly when he came home late at night after he’d been drinking. After she died, he went a little crazy.” The remembered pain tore at Michael’s heart. “Not because he missed her. But because he’d lost his punching bag.”
Two on the Run (Harlequin Super Romance) Page 19