“Is that car registered to you?”
“What?”
He gestured toward the front of the house, where the car they’d driven from Chicago was parked. “Is it registered to you?”
“No. It’s a friend’s.”
“A friend the FBI can trace?”
She shrugged. “Probably.”
“Then you need to speed it up. We’ll have to stop in the nearest city and steal another.”
“Steal? Why would we do that?”
“Because renting one requires a credit card and ID, and that would kind of be against the whole point, wouldn’t it? The more distance we put between us and the people who will be looking for us, the better.”
“We can’t steal a car. You’re a cop, and I’m an FBI agent.”
“I’m a former cop. And a former juvenile delinquent. I don’t have a problem with it.”
“Durango—”
“Get dressed, Gracie.” He reached out and touched the collar of her bathrobe, his eyes narrowing slightly even as they moved over the peak of flesh his touch uncovered. “Or should I call you Mags?”
“Call me whatever you want.”
“If I did that, we wouldn’t get very far. If I learned anything from my father, it’s that hostility is a bigger impediment to success than just about any other form of human interaction.”
He let go of her collar and turned away, his feet stomping on the treads of the stairs like little bombs going off in his wake. She watched him go, her chest hurting once again. She didn’t think it would ever stop.
They were on the road less than twenty minutes later. She climbed behind the wheel, and he seemed content with the situation, for the moment. She drove west, reaching Indianapolis a little before dark.
“Find a mall or a shopping center.”
She reached for her phone, automatically reaching for Google Maps. He snatched it out of her hand and threw it out the window.
“What did you do that for?”
“You’re not very smart for an FBI agent.” He made a gesture toward the roof of the car. “They can find us through the GPS on the phone.”
She knew that. She was just so fucking exhausted. She hadn’t slept all the way to Lorenzo. She hadn’t slept at all the past twenty-four hours. Excuse her if her mind wasn’t as sharp as it normally was.
“Head downtown. There’s always a mall somewhere near the center of the city.”
They found a massive Walmart tucked into a block long shopping center, the parking lot overflowing with working parents picking up a few things before finally heading home for the night. Gracie pulled the car into a slot between two massive trucks, her heart pounding as Durango got out and disappeared toward the back of the lot. She waited anxiously, the thought crossing her mind that he could find a car, hotwire it, and disappear. It was very possible she’d never see him again. But then a small SUV like a dozen others in the parking lot pulled up behind her. She could see him through the driver’s side door, impatiently gesturing toward her.
Gracie popped the trunk and grabbed their stuff, tossing it into the back seat of the SUV. They were back on the road in a matter of seconds, driving just below the speed limit as they joined rush hour on the congested highway.
“How did you learn to steal a car?”
Durango glanced at her. “Don’t you know everything about me?”
She thought she did, but he didn’t have a juvenile record. She’d never guess he was capable of such a thing.
“Billy and I used to steal cars from the lot where my father filmed a lot of his movies. We’d go cruising, pick up girls, all the things that teenage boys do. Sometimes we got caught, and father would make us work off whatever he assessed the damages to be. Most of the time we didn’t.”
“You were never arrested.”
“Are you kidding? Do you really think Jackson Chamberlain would have allowed that?”
She lowered her chin a little, hearing a tune she’d heard—or overheard—multiple times before. Jackson Chamberlain was a well-known Hollywood producer. His reputation was everything to him. He never would have allowed his sons to be arrested for something like grand theft auto, if only because it would ding his stellar reputation.
“Was it really that bad? Growing up in his shadow?”
Durango was quiet for a long moment. “You had two parents? A hardworking dad and a cookie baking mother?”
Gracie prickled at the over simplification of her parents, but couldn’t disagree. “My dad was a preacher. My mom stayed home, helped him run the church.”
He nodded. “Imagine that your father ran one of those massive, super churches. Imagine that he was Jim Baker or Joel Osteen. Do you think that would have been a good experience? Do you think you could have had the freedom to be the person you wanted to be? Do you think you’d have joined the FBI?”
She bit her lip, remembering all the arguments she and her parents had because of her behavior in high school. She dated too many boys, spent too much time going to school dances and her friends’ parties on Friday nights. They heard too many rumors about her behavior every minute she was outside of the house. She skipped too much school, argued with her teachers too much. If her father had been Joel Osteen? All of that would have been magnified.
“Okay, I get it.”
“Do you? Now imagine your father had an argument with your mother that you overheard, and she died the next day. Imagine that you spent your entire childhood aware of you father’s guilt in your mother’s death. That you didn’t give a shit what your behavior did to your father’s reputation.”
“Durango—”
“And now you have to run to him for help even though he’s the last person you ever want to speak to, let alone ask for anything.”
“I’m sorry.”
He gripped the wheel hard between both hands, the car shuddering a little with the movement. Then he slowly relaxed.
“You should try to get some rest. I’d like to get a couple hundred miles between us and your folks’ place before we stop.”
“Okay.”
She watched him for a few minutes, watched the tendons pop in his jaw as tension continued to burn in him. But they slowly relaxed as they put the miles behind them. The movement of the car, the darkness, and the silence began to weigh heavy on Gracie’s shoulders. She closed her eyes and was unconscious within seconds. She didn’t even dream. The next thing she was aware of was Durango’s arms around her, lifting her from the car. She woke long enough to be aware that they’d pulled off the road and were at some sort of small motel. And then her head was on a soft pillow, and she was out again.
Chapter 6
Just Over the Border of Missouri
Durango stared up at the ceiling, aware of Gracie sleeping beside him. She made a soft mewling sound that wasn’t quite a snore but not the most ladylike thing, either. It might have amused him under other circumstances, but at the moment he found it a little annoying.
She’d lied to him.
Durango couldn’t get passed the lies. Every time he looked at her, he saw the awkward woman who worked in his office, the woman he’d dismissed on most occasions until recently. She was helpful, the one he turned to whenever he needed a new assistant when he needed something found, when he needed information on an employee. She was the one everyone went to; the one who knew almost as much about Mastiff as Kyle. But he’d never really seen her until Kyle died, and she lied to the police on his behalf.
Why had she done that?
She lied and told the police she hadn’t seen any tension between him and Kyle the night she died. But the truth was, he was arguing with Kyle when Gracie walked in on them that night, arguing over some stupid party he was supposed to attend but had bailed on. He couldn’t even remember why now. It was one of those stupid things that they say is for charity but was really just a chance for all the rich assholes who run that city to get together and pat each other on the back. He hated those parties. But he should have gone t
hat night. Maybe . . . He should have done it for Kyle.
Gracie lied to the police and saved him from getting his ass arrested right there and then. When he paused to thank her at Kyle’s funeral reception, he wasn’t sure why it happened. He kissed her. But, again, hadn’t it been her face slipping through his mind that had stopped him during a stupid, unplanned sexual encounter outside a bar that same night, the night Kyle died? The night she interrupted their fight? What was it about her that had suddenly wormed its way into his thoughts that night?
She’d worked for them for three years. She was there from the beginning, this mousy, unassuming little thing who somehow became the backbone of the whole company. People thought he didn’t pay attention, but he knew the operatives went to her whenever they needed something they couldn’t obtain legally. He knew the tech guys bounced ideas off her. He knew the financial department checked in with her whenever they needed something they didn’t want to go to Kyle or Durango about. She was more an executive at Mastiff than he ever was even though her title and her pay scale suggested she was somewhere closer to the bottom of the business hierarchy.
What was it about Gracie?
And this woman who practically ran his business was there under false pretenses. A fucking FBI agent! She was there to prove he was a killer, yet . . .
Yet, she was here, on the run with him.
Why?
He turned onto his side on the double bed and studied her as she slept peacefully beside him. In sleep with her hair tangled around her face, she looked more like the Gracie he’d known. But the clothes were wrong. Gracie wore bulky skirts with odd waistlines and wide pockets, blouses that fit loose and added to the appearance of lumps that the skirts created. But this woman wore a pair of low rider jeans that fit tight, revealing long legs and slender hips, her soft cotton tee pulled up just enough to reveal her flat tummy and perfect navel. He traced his finger around her navel, a piece of perfection he’d seen once before. The memory of it was burned in his mind, the taste of her a touch of nirvana he’d never let go.
He couldn’t consolidate that moment with all he knew now. Sure, he’d known there was something off about Gracie. There were moments when she seemed too confident, too aware. And that afternoon when he managed to partially strip her of her homely clothing, he’d seen the perfection she hid underneath. He knew there was more to her story than she was telling, but he’d never imagined it was this. That she was a spy out to perpetuate the nightmare he thought he’d escaped when he was acquitted of Sarah’s murder.
He hadn’t even known her real name.
Was any of it real? When she came to his condo and read him the riot act for the way he’d been behaving, for his relationship with Hyde, was that the fed talking, or was that the woman he thought was his friend? When she lied for him, was that a fed protecting her case, or a friend protecting another friend? When she kissed him, was that an undercover agent protecting her identity, or was it something more?
And when she pulled away, was that because he’d called her by a name that wasn’t her own?
Margaret Grace Franklin. He studied her face, thinking it fit her. But so had Gracie.
He pressed a hand to her flat belly, an ache settling in his balls that couldn’t, or wouldn’t, listen to the struggle going on his heart. No matter what she might have told him, no matter what she might have done, his body still wanted her. He’d wanted her since that afternoon when he tasted her for the first time, when he brought her to orgasm and burned to allow her to do the same. He still wanted her. He wanted her in a way he hadn’t wanted any woman since Sarah. It scared him a little, that need. And it pissed him off because it clouded everything, making it so hard for him to judge if he could trust her.
His fingers slipped down, brushing the tender area just above the top of her jeans. The sight of her naked with just a thin bathrobe covering her wet body yesterday had made him angry because of the way his body responded. His taste buds flooded from the memory of her juices tingling on the tip of his tongue, his cock remembering the brief touch of her fist wrapped around its shaft. If things had been different, they would have spent the night in that musty old house, but they wouldn’t have done much sleeping.
But he couldn’t allow himself to get distracted like that, could he?
He sat up, pulling his hand from her, forcing his thoughts to shift to a cold shower, and some food he really didn’t want and wasn’t sure he could keep down even if he managed to swallow it. There was one thing that he couldn’t forgive even if he could somehow reconcile everything else she’d lied to him about.
She’d seen the killer. She’d known for five years little details about him that he could have used to find him before Kyle died, before Hyde was murdered, before his assistant and Felicity had met up with the Harrison Strangler. She’d known, and she’d kept it to herself.
That was unforgivable.
“Durango?”
She reached for him as he rolled toward the edge of the bed. Her hand rested on his wrist, her fingers applying just enough pressure to get his pulse to rise. She pulled herself up, resting her chin on his shoulder.
“Go back to sleep.”
He tried to brush her off, but her grip on his wrist tightened. She brushed her lips against his shoulder, the heat of her breath washing through the thin material of his shirt. And then she moved closer, her lips finding a swath of flesh low against his throat. He closed his eyes, his body responding with a fierceness that startled even him.
“Stop, Gracie.”
But she didn’t listen. She moved higher on his throat, her lips hot and soft, just moist enough to create a contrast of heat from her flesh and coolness from the air touching the moisture that she left behind on his skin. It sent a shiver through his body that landed deep in his balls, creating a stiffness he couldn’t deny. And she knew it quick enough, her hand releasing his wrist to move around his belly, slipping possessively down along the front of his jeans.
He grabbed her wrist, pulling it up against his chest where she instead became aware of the crazy pounding of his heart.
“You wanted me before,” she whispered in his ear. “Why not now?”
She was creating a fever in his mind that stood up and nodded defiantly. Why not now? His mind wanted to know, too. He struggled for a second, trying to remember as her tongue began to play with the sensitive lower lobe of his ear. And then he stopped trying.
Durango flipped around, grabbing her by her wrists and pinning her to the mattress, her hands caught above her head. She looked up at him, excitement dancing in her eyes as she licked her bottom lip, all innocence and naivety gone. Once again, he was reminded that this wasn’t the Gracie he’d once thought he knew.
Suddenly raging with a primitive anger that came out of all the frustration and fear and grief he’d been carrying around for most of his life, he wrapped her thin shirt around his fist and jerked, ripping it at the seams. Fear joined the excitement in her eyes, but she didn’t make a sound, her eyes never leaving his. He tossed the remnant of cloth to one side and shoved her bra up, exposing her full breasts, the fact that one was noticeably smaller than the other only making them more erotic. He drew a nipple between his teeth, the soft groan slipping from her lips only adding to the pleasure of the feel of her pliant flesh in his mouth.
He bit her breasts, her ribs, her belly, the red marks of his teeth on her pale skin an artistic masterpiece. She moved against him, her hips rising against the weight of his body, her wrists fighting his control. He ignored those movements, wanting to inflict pain on her with excruciating patience. Every moan, every little grunt, only fueled this need. It was a punishment, a bit of torture that was fucking satisfying!
His mouth remembered the taste of her as he reached the top of her jeans, the musky scent of her need impossible to ignore. He bit her there, too, through the thickness of her jeans, forcing her hips to press hard against his face, her moan coming from deep in her diaphragm. If he hadn’t known it befo
re then, he knew it now. She wanted him as desperately as he wanted her.
He let go of her hands only because the need had grown so intense that he simply couldn’t ignore it anymore. There wasn’t time for games now. He yanked at her jeans, forgetting to unsnap them in his fevered rush. They caught on her hips, refusing to budge. She reached down to help him, doing a little dance on the bed to help as he yanked them from her body. She was wearing the teeniest pair of panties he’d ever seen, this thong that was basically a string with a triangle of cloth that barely covered the narrow line of hair that pointed directly to her swollen clit. He made it all disappear with jerks and tugs, not sure the panties had survived his ministrations. But she didn’t seem to care. She was sitting up, her hands all over him, pushing his shirt up over his head, her hands tugging at his jeans like it was Christmas morning, and his pants were the wrapping paper on her most anticipated gift.
He grabbed her hips and twisted her around, shoving her face down into the pillows as he raised her hips high. Her ass was slightly flat, but round at the bottom, the kind of ass that was good for holding onto in certain positions. But like this, it looked like a sculptor’s perfect model, the kind of ass that could only be made by a master artist’s hands.
Her cries were muffled when he forced himself inside of her, no preamble, no warning. Her fists curled around the thin fabric of the pillow cases and her hips pressed back into him, her cries turning into something more like moans as he began to move, thrusting in slow, awkward movements at first, then settling into something like a heavy bass beat. He closed his eyes for a moment, the feel of her warm, moist body closing in around him almost more than he could handle. He hadn’t had this much trouble controlling himself since he was a teen experimenting with a pretty schoolmate in her bedroom. But he was an experienced man now. He got control, and then he took them both for a ride he knew she would never forget.
He opened his eyes, watched her hands clench and unclench against the pillows, listened to the muffled sounds that came from her throat. When she turned her head, he reached down to tug the hair from her face, loving the sight of her slightly open mouth, her closed eyes, the unmistakable pleasure on her pretty face. He’d imagined this moment for weeks—maybe even months if he was honest with himself—but nothing in his imagination could have prepared him for how erotic it would prove to be.
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