Piper wanted to pop him when she heard the tune “Pop goes the Weasel”.
“All right, ol’ girl. Pick your poison—peanuts or sunflower seeds.”
For once, Piper was thrilled with the nickname. Piper wasn’t common. If Solstice had called out her real name in his jovial bellow, they might’ve been in big trouble.
“Sol, it’s them. The agents who burned down my house,” Piper hissed as soon as Solstice closed his car door.
“Where?” Sol leaned forward to see the bandaged agent. Piper noticed out of the corner of her eye that the agent was replacing the gas cap on his car.
“Just one?” he asked.
“The other one went inside.” As she spoke, the bandaged agent finished his task and turned toward them.
Piper quickly averted her eyes and turned her head. Solstice started the engine and slowly pulled away. In the side mirror, Piper saw the agent follow his partner into the store.
She was relieved. They would be long gone before the killers came back to their car. Not being seen felt very much like winning a big lotto jackpot.
Her relief died as Sol whipped the car into a parking space on the other side of the building. They were now on the opposite side of the gas station where an ice machine hid them from view.
“They’ll hit the restrooms. Buy some grub. If we’re lucky, they’ll sit down and order a hot dog or some nachos.” Solstice was formulating a plan. She could see the wheels turning behind his twinkling blue eyes.
“Not while their car is blocking a pump,” Piper argued.
“Right. Killers would never be that rude.” The man beside her chuckled.
“What are you going to do?” She didn’t want to know.
“I’m gonna steal their car.”
“What?” She had known better than to ask. Why had she asked?
“I’m gonna jump behind the wheel and take that sucker across town. You follow me. We’ll dump it before we head to Harry’s.” He acted like a teenager about to pull a prank on a local gang of bullies.
“What good will that do, Sol? You know they’ll just get another car.” She had to try to reason him out of it.
“I don’t like that they’re this close to Harry’s place.” Now he was serious. Sol would be thinking of someone other than himself. He didn’t stop to think they were in more danger because they were much closer to the dirty agents than Harry was.
“We can’t stop them,” Piper argued.
“No, you’re right. We can’t stop them. But we can sure as hell can slow them down.” The prospect was so pleasing to Solstice that he grabbed Piper and planted a kiss right on her surprised lips. His beard scratched, but Piper found herself kissing him right back.
Sol pulled back and brushed his hand across her face.
For the first time since she had known him, his determined mischievousness disappeared and his sparkling eyes went dark. He focused, really focused on her. And he didn’t look like he thought she was too old for kisses. He looked like, maybe, he’d been thinking about kissing her for a very long time.
Piper had only been more afraid once in her life. Considering that the fear she had felt the day her home was burned to the ground was directly linked to her present terror, she decided to call it a draw.
She waited behind the wheel of the Jetta and hoped Sol wouldn’t see the keys in the ignition of the agents’ car. Surely an FBI agent knew better than to leave a car unattended with the keys in the switch.
While she waited, she thought about a few things. Things like cross-stitch and needle-point and quilting. It was definitely time to give up transcribing alien radio broadcasts and focus on something more suitable for a grandmother. What the heck. She might even take up knitting. Yarn came in red after all. She didn’t spend too much time dwelling on the quick kiss she’d shared with Sol just before he jumped out of the car. She needed to bring a sense of calm into her life and that meant Sol would need to be much less a part of it.
When the dark gray sedan popped into sight, Piper knew she had hoped in vain. The keys had been there. Ready and waiting for her lunatic friend.
Piper slipped the car into drive and followed. Her heart pounded. Her hands were slippery on the wheel. And she thought she just might need another pit stop after all. She didn’t know what Solstice Meadows was thinking, but she knew she didn’t like her first taste of going commando. She didn’t like it at all.
They left the gray sedan in a quiet residential neighborhood far from the gas station. Piper braked in the middle of the street and waited for Sol to jump into the car on the passenger side. His laughter eased her nerves only slightly as they pulled away from the scene of the crime.
“I wish I could have seen their faces when they came out and it was gone,” he hooted with customary jubilance.
“I don’t ever want to see their faces again,” Piper insisted quietly.
Her old friend reached over, suddenly solemn. His warm hand closed over hers where it gripped the wheel.
“I hope you won’t have to, Piper. But we have to do what we can.” His hand felt different somehow. It was awfully hard to think of knitting.
“I don’t have to like it,” Piper insisted, wondering why he left his hand on hers.
“We need to hotfoot it to Harry’s. If Silk and Davis made it that far, he’s gonna need our help.”
“Did you see the bandage on that agent’s face?” Piper asked.
“Yeah, I saw it.” Sol’s good humor evaporated. He looked like he was imagining the fight that might have injured the agent’s nose.
They drove on, both of them hoping that Silk was okay.
Davis threw his bag onto the back seat of the little hatchback he and Silk had bought the day before. The car was twenty years old and it had over one hundred and fifty thousand miles on the odometer. He had used what he had in his wallet because he refused to touch the money he’d found in Silk’s closet.
He slammed both hands on the roof as he stood by the open door. He didn’t relish the thought of folding his large frame behind the wheel. He sure as hell wasn’t looking forward to a cross-country drive.
He knew Silk wasn’t headed for New York.
Unless they triple guessed each other, Silk and Harry would head for Vegas.
Now Davis didn’t just suspect that Silk was involved in something criminal. He had seen her commit a horrendous crime right before his eyes.
His gut clenched as he remembered the coldness he’d seen in her violet blue eyes. Davis put both hands on the roof of the car and rested his forehead against them.
He had let her walk away.
Forget for a moment that Harry had aimed some kind of homemade death ray at his chest. He should have done something to stop them.
Davis pushed off from the car and prepared to squish himself behind the wheel. Just then, he noticed another car headed his way. It came slowly down the deserted highway toward the silo. Davis paused and reached for the gun hidden beneath the rumpled jacket of his suit.
The car was moving slow. Too slow. Suspiciously slow. Davis waited. He was ready to draw his gun when he noticed the woman behind the wheel.
“Davis Rule as I live and breathe. What brings you to Pennsylvania?” Piper Jo Harding looked gray around the gills. He imagined he might look a little like that himself. Her voice was as chipper as ever, but she looked worn and tired.
“Where’s Silk?” Solstice asked.
Davis was surprised to see Solstice Meadows. He wasn’t surprised that the man had a one-woman, one-track mind. Silk seemed to have that affect on every man she met.
“Is she okay?” Piper asked. Every person she met, he amended.
“Just dandy. On her way to Nevada.”
“Harry too?” Solstice asked. The older man’s eyes were narrowed to almost a squint. And the sun was not that bright.
“Harry too.” Davis replied.
“If she’s goin’ there, what are you doin’ here?” Piper wondered.
Davis kn
ew he was dealing with fanatics. Some likeable like Piper, some militant and dangerous like Harry and Solstice. He decided to tread carefully around the truth.
“We had some trouble this morning. I stayed behind to clean up.”
If possible, Piper’s face went a little whiter, and Solstice looked crestfallen as if he was crushed to have missed the action.
“IL-Bah. Two big ugly ones. Silk took both of them out.”
He almost choked on the words. Solstice nodded, but he didn’t smile.
“Can we do anything to help?” Piper looked like she hoped he’d tell her to go home.
Davis glanced from his little white car to theirs. Neither vehicle looked like it was ready for a cross-country trip.
“You could give me a lift,” he said with the biggest smile he could muster.
He realized a break when he saw one. On his own, he would be flying blind. But he figured Solstice knew just where to go.
Davis grabbed his bag from the back seat. He locked up the little hatchback and threw the keys as far as he could throw them into the tall grass of the nearby field.
He didn’t miss the suspicion on Solstice’s face when he rounded the car to climb in behind them. He noted it for future reference. He would travel with them to Nevada, and when they hooked up with Silk he would figure a way to arrest them all.
Chapter Sixteen
William Kale hadn’t been an ugly man. The face in the mirror looked back at him and it was only marred by anger. The thick brown hair, the hazel eyes, even the hawkish nose were all acceptable. The events leading up to the drawn lips and furrowed brow were not.
“You didn’t tell us she was some kind of magician. I’m tellin’ you, one minute she was defenseless and the next minute she had a gun in my face.” Larkin spoke from the corner where he had perched patiently waiting for Kale to speak. Kale’s silence made him lean forward and gesture with his hands in an effort to gain his superior’s sympathy.
“In his face,” Steele repeated. The smaller man was oblivious to the narrowed eyes and tightened jaw showing on Kale’s face in the mirror. It looked impressively furious.
Imbeciles. Incompetent imbeciles. Davis Rule should have been here by his side. Rule had been in a perfect position to bring Silk to him.
“And Rule helped her?” he asked with deceptive calm.
“He broke my freakin’ nose,” Steele exclaimed, for once beginning and ending his own sentence.
“And your car was stolen at a gas station in Pennsylvania?” he reiterated.
“I know it looks bad, Mr. Kale—” Larkin began.
“It looks exceedingly bad, gentlemen.” He turned from the mirror. “My other…resources have also failed to take this woman into custody.”
“Take…” Steele grabbed at the word and shot his partner a look that Kale intercepted.
“What? Is there something else I should know, Mr. Larkin?” He waited as the two men leaned back in their chairs. Steele poked his tongue into his cheek and gave an enthusiastic nod to his friend.
“She’s got Rule panting after her, sir. They had just finished a little mattress tango when we busted in on them.” Larking grinned. “Five minutes sooner and we could have seen what she had under that sweater.”
“That sweater,” Steele groaned, shifting in his seat.
Kale felt his vision blur in a momentary rush of discovery. He had assumed that Rule was taken with his quarry. But he had not even begun to imagine that it was reciprocated. Who could fathom woman’s fickle heart?
He came around his desk, leaving the mirror behind in favor of envisioning the woman he hunted in his mind’s eye. This was a revelation almost too surprising to credit.
Silk and Davis.
Davis and Silk.
Partners in so many ways.
Suddenly, he knew he no longer needed to focus all his energy and resources on Silk. Davis would do just as well.
He began to share his rapidly forming plan with Larkin and Steele. Steele’s hand reached up carefully to tap at his bandaged nose, but he didn’t protest. Which was fortunate for him. Until this latest revelation, until he had discovered a new course of action open to him, he had planned to kill them both for their incompetence.
This news had bought them one more try.
Silk braided her hair as Harry unpacked a miniature version of the computer system he had left behind. Miilos had loved the long professional braid that fell to her waist. She had not worn her hair in this regulation style since the day of his death.
“I am seriously in need of an online fix. I haven’t gone this long without e-mail in four years.”
Silk didn’t mind her companion’s addiction to data ports. For the first time in a week, the hotel she sat in was clean and modern by this world’s standards.
“We will rest here for six hours. Then we will continue.” Silk rose to pull the curtains on the window.
“No time for sightseeing, I presume?” Harry teased. “You know, there’s more to America than interstates and hotel rooms.”
“Yes, there is hamburger and rice,” Silk teased back and shuddered to illustrate her point.
“Don’t forget strawberries and peanut butter.” Harry paused as he opened his small, portable computer and pointed a finger at the stack of empty green baskets on the table beside Silk’s bed. They had purchased several plastic containers of strawberries for her dinner. She had dipped them into a jar of peanut butter while Harry had eaten something called chicken nuggets.
“And chocolate,” Silk added to be fair. Finished with the braid, she reached for a foil-wrapped second course.
Harry chuckled.
“There’s not a woman in America who wouldn’t kill for your metabolism.”
Silk finished the chocolate bar in several bites and washed it down with a cool mouthful of milkshake. It wasn’t minty, but the sweet vanilla was good alone.
As Harry tapped on his computer keys, she lay back and prepared to drop into a deep sleep. A JR was trained to recognize their body’s signals. Hers needed to shut down. She would need every ounce of energy she possessed for what was ahead.
Unfortunately, even her training couldn’t stop the images of Davis that flickered behind her eyelids once they were closed.
She saw him as she’d first seen him, gasping from their fight with his eyes wide in shock and that thick curl flopping over his forehead. Her fingers twitched against the sheet as she also remembered what it was like to brush his hair out of his eyes when they were more heated than shocked. She remembered him beneath her, joining with her, as if they had been made to join by a divine hand. So perfect, that moment. How could she forget? How would she forget? His distrust stood between them. She forced her eyes to remain closed as another image of Davis made her want to open them. The Davis she’d last seen. Hard, angry, hating her because of what he thought she’d done, and hating himself for not hating her enough.
Harry typed nearby blissfully oblivious to her pain as she fought against the urge to cry. Worse than that urge was the urge to jump up and go back to find Rule and make him believe in her. Harry had told her about the tests he’d run. He’d been apologetic and more than a little bit sheepish, but science didn’t offend her. She wished she’d known. She wished she could have shown the results to Davis.
But forcing him to believe with cold, hard scientific facts wouldn’t have achieved what she most desired from him.
Trust.
The need for it was like the need to breathe. She’d been bred to have complete and utter trust in Miilos and him in her. It was part of what made them function as a team. She had found a feeling of partnership with Davis that she’d never thought she would experience again. But their partnership lacked trust which meant they’d found nothing together at all.
Silk accepted it. She accepted the loss of Davis and the startlingly fierce bereavement of it. The ache filled her and she lay quietly shivering. She was determined to handle it, deal with it. She was hurting, but she was a
lso determined to go on. That determination had saved her when she’d lost Miilos. Surely it would help her survive the loss of Davis. And yet, even as she began to drift into a restless slumber, she somehow couldn’t stop the images of the FBI agent from following her into her dreams.
Davis and his odd traveling companions made it as far as Indiana before they had to stop. The car was overheated, they were exhausted, their stomachs rumbled and Piper had been asking for a pit stop since Pittsburgh.
They pulled into a gas station that was combined with a fast-food restaurant. It wouldn’t provide much opportunity for rest, but two out of three wasn’t bad.
They had been on the road for nine hours. He figured Silk and Harry were ahead of them by three or four.
“We need to stick together. You two sit tight while I pump the gas.” Davis jumped out before they could argue.
“I’ll go with Piper and stand outside the ladies room,” Solstice opened the passenger side door. Apparently, he didn’t intend to argue. He intended to do as he pleased.
Davis watched the older couple walk toward the station. He didn’t want to protest. He couldn’t afford to make waves. They had an uneasy truce at best, and he needed to keep it from busting apart. If Solstice Meadows knew why he wanted to find Silk, the man would be a problem.
Even surrounded by the bustling action of the popular service station, Davis couldn’t get those last moments with Silk out of his head. He hadn’t pulled the trigger and it hadn’t been a struggle. Truth was, he wouldn’t have pulled the trigger if his life depended on it, or if ten other lives depended on it. Why? He’d never had a problem putting duty and justice first. Never before. For some reason, Silk came first, middle and last now. If killing her was his duty, then to hell with duty. And he hated that she’d done that to him. His priorities were so screwed they should be setting up a nursery and preparing for quintuplets.
Only with her somewhere other than beside him was he able to convince himself that he could do the right thing. Not kill her. Ever. But he could arrest her as he should have done from the start.
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