“I don’t really know why I want you in my life, Wrath.” She squirmed in her seat as though she would have been pacing if there had been room. “You’re so adamant that it’s a bad idea, and yet there’s still a part of me that insists nobody else has ever made me feel like you do.”
“How?” he demanded. “Physically? Get a fucking vibrator!”
“Well, there’s that.” She slugged him in the shoulder. “First of all, I have a vibrator. It doesn’t even begin to measure up. Secondly, you make me feel like a real person. You don’t care who my father is or what my family name is. You don’t ever let me act like a snob, and you never encourage me to either. I can be real with you. Do you not get how valuable and rare that is?”
No. Wrath had no idea. It was totally foreign to him. Both the existence of such a need and the ability to fulfill it seemed very minor to him. Or perhaps minor was the wrong word. Perhaps it was just that he was in a much different spot on his hierarchy of needs. His days were consumed with the basics. Food. Shelter. Don’t get shot. Maslow would have put him so far down on the road to self-actualization that he basically hadn’t even started.
“You’re too good for me,” Wrath told her roughly. “I can’t give you want you want.”
“So I’m supposed to look to guys like Judson to fulfill my needs?” She shook her head. “Just get back on the road and drive, please? Take me home. I should have gone to my study group instead of meeting Judson. That was already a waste of time, and I can’t afford to squander the rest of the day listening to you tell me all the reasons you don’t want to be with me.”
Yes. This was better. She would go home, which meant he would go back to work. This is what Wrath understood. The job. That was his life. He put the car in gear and prepared to pull back into traffic. Because it was Boston, there seemed to be about a million cars on the road. Wrath forced his way out onto the road because Massachusetts drivers were notorious for never letting anyone in. Moments later, they were tooling along toward Back Bay at a nice clip.
Wrath glanced into the rearview mirror more to keep himself from looking over at Tegan than anything else. That was when he noticed the two nondescript black sedans closing in fast.
“Hang on,” Wrath told Tegan. “I have a feeling the ride is about to get really bumpy.”
Chapter Nineteen
No sooner had Wrath made that strange comment, then Tegan felt as though her neck was going to snap right off her spine as their car was slammed from behind. She swung around, straining against the seatbelt as she tried to see what was happening.
Wrath reached over and pushed her more firmly into her seat. “Don’t do that. You make yourself a target if they’re thinking about taking a shot.”
The back window suddenly shattered. A bullet buried itself in the dashboard only inches from Tegan’s hands. She snatched her hands back into her lap. The radio was making strange high-pitched noises. It was obviously dead, the victim of the shooting. It was like these jerks were listening to their conversation. Tegan almost told Wrath to just shut up and stop making suggestions, but he was a little busy.
They were now weaving through traffic at a terrific rate. Tires squealed, horns beeped, and angry drivers were trying desperately to get out of their way. Tegan heard the crunch of metal on metal as they sideswiped a city bus. Wrath seemed intent on putting as many cars between them and the two black sedans as possible.
“Are they gone?” Tegan demanded. She just wanted it over.
“Nope.” Wrath shoved her head down. “Get down in your seat. Here they come!”
Tegan was vaguely aware of a car pulling up on her right. It seemed to surge forward and then fall back. It would swerve to avoid other traffic and then pop up again. A bullet shattered the window beside her. The pop pop of gunfire made her put her hands over her head. Thick shards of glass covered her lap. She squealed and tried not to pass out. Her heart was pounding so fast that she couldn’t get a full breath.
Wrath jammed the gearshift down. The engine whined loudly and they started to pull ahead of the black car. Through the sliver of the windshield that she could see, Tegan spotted the gaping mouth of the tunnel looming head.
“Oh God!” she gasped. “We’re going to die in there!”
“No, we’re not.” He sounded mean as hell.
They jinked left and then right. She felt the impact as their car bounced off the black sedans. There was a prolonged squeal and then the shattering sound of a vehicle flipping end over end. Horns echoed through the tunnel.
The overhead lights flashed by, and Tegan started to feel dizzy. In seconds, she was going to need a barf bag.
WRATH HAD TO bring this to a finish and fast. Tegan was looking green, and if she threw up in the passenger seat, he was going to have a whole other set of problems on his hands. Their pursuers were not showing any signs of wanting to give up. What was with these guys? He’d seen some motivated killers before, but that usually involved multimillion-dollar contracts. It didn’t involve a small-time Boston mafia boss who had decided he was mad that someone had turned down his business proposal.
“We’re going to ditch the car,” Wrath told Tegan.
She popped up straight in her seat, and he had to shove her back down. “What? Why?”
Wrath glanced at the dash. There was smoke seeping out from around the edges of the hood, and the oil pressure had dropped painfully low. The corresponding temperature was shooting through the roof, and Wrath was pretty sure they’d done something to both the radiator and the oil pan, but there was no need to detail that for Tegan.
“The car’s dead, all right?” he told her tersely. “I’m going to give that car on our right one last bash, and then we’re going to park it in the middle of this tunnel and head for the access door on the right. It’s coming up at the very end.”
“Okay?” Her voice was shaky, but she seemed coherent. That was a bonus.
Wrath stared at the remaining black sedan. They were coming up fast on the opposite end of the tunnel. Fifty yards. Forty yards. The black sedan was surging ahead of them. They split to go around another car then came back together with a resounding crash and a teeth-rattling jolt. Finally, Wrath steered hard to the right.
The nose of Wrath’s car caught the rear door of the driver’s side of the black sedan. The vehicle spun sideways. The crazy speed caused it to spin. It bounced off the center support column between the two sides of the road in the tunnel. The car was folded nearly in half by the force of impact.
Wrath hit the brakes. There was almost no traffic now in the tunnel. The first sedan’s annihilation had seen to that. Now, traffic coming in the other direction had squealed to a halt as the second sedan sat perched on the center divider. Wrath brought their car to a complete stop.
“Go. Go. Go!” he called out.
Wrath threw off his seatbelt and reached over to snatch the extra gun from the glove compartment. Tegan was already out of the car. Thank God she’d worn somewhat sensible clogs today instead of those damn heels. Wrath had briefly considered making her wear boots in the car, but that had seemed extreme. Now he wasn’t so sure.
He reached for her hand as they both came around the hood of the car. Their fingers twined together, and Wrath gently tugged her on behind him. He could see the access door ahead of them. In the distance he heard sirens. Wrath had no desire to tangle with Boston PD again. Besides, he could see at least one person trying to push their way out of the black sedan just twenty yards from their position, so there was no time to stand around and wait for the cops to figure out what to do.
The door loomed large. He hit the metal barrier and grappled with the knob. It was locked. He should have expected that. Shoving the gun into his waistband, he pulled his picks from his hip pocket and set to work. His hands were shaking. There was so much adrenaline in his blood right now he was shocked that he could even stand still.
“Oh, hurry, Wrath. Please hurry!” Tegan urged. “They’re coming. He’s coming. Oh God,
he’s coming.”
TEGAN HAD NEVER felt such a sense of urgency. She knew she wasn’t helping, yet she could not shut up. Settling for pressing her lips together and biting her lip, she tried not to dance around quite so much.
Finally, the door opened. They both stumbled through the entrance to the access tunnel, and Wrath slammed it closed. He shot the lock and grabbed her hand. It was dark and smelled dank and musty in here. They were standing on some kind of metal grating, and the only light came from a dingy overhead industrial fixture.
They were in what amounted to a tunnel. It suddenly occurred to Tegan that there was a river overhead. She felt the pressing weight of all that water. What would happen if they were trapped down here? Would they eventually become lost beneath the river?
Wrath pulled her along behind him. They’d made it less than ten feet from the door when something heavy slammed against it. Then again, and again, as it became obvious that someone was determined to pummel their way through.
“They can’t break the door down,” Wrath murmured. “I promise.”
“We’re stuck down here,” she whispered. She clenched his hand in both of hers and tried not to shake as she walked behind him at a ground-eating pace.
“No. We’re fine.” He stopped walking. Turning around, he cupped her face and very gently pressed a kiss to her forehead. “These tunnels lead to pump house sort of structure, where they manage water pressure and that sort of thing. It’s fine. I promise. We’re going to get out of here.”
Tegan spontaneously threw her arms around his neck. She buried her face against his chest and inhaled the scent of him. It made her feel instantly better. Right here, she could shut her eyes and forget everything else. He rubbed her back very slowly and gently.
“Okay.” Tegan took a deep breath. “I’m fine now. Really. Let’s go.”
“You sure?” He brushed his lips over the sensitive shell of her ear. “Because I’m willing to distract you if you want to start making out or something.”
Tegan swatted his arm. “You! You’re such a perv!”
“But I made you smile, so I’m okay with that.”
Tegan followed along behind him. The tunnel seemed to stretch forever. “How long until we find an access point? Which way are we going anyway?”
“We’re actually heading back the way we came,” he told her in a deceptively mild tone.
“Oh God. We’re going back?” Her chest tightened in fear.
“It’s the only way to make sure that we can throw them off the trail. They’ll expect us to pop out right on the other side in the same direction we were heading.”
“Will Nash come? Who will come and get us?” Tegan wanted to know. She needed to know that there was a cavalry coming eventually.
“We’re on our own, sweetheart, but it’s going to be just fine. Promise.” He was actually swinging her hand now as though they were taking a walk in the park somewhere instead of mincing along with a million gallons of water overhead.
“You’re disgustingly certain about things. You know that?”
“And you are super pessimistic,” he shot back. “You would have been annoying as hell over in the Middle East. You would have been seeing IEDs on every street corner.”
“You were over there?” She was suddenly fascinated by this notion. The only overseas traveling she’d experienced had involved very isolated resorts. “What’s it like?”
“Hot.” He seemed to reconsider when she gave him a pouty look. “If it will keep your mind busy to think about it, I guess I can say it was also colorful and a total culture shock. The people are very different than you would think. They’re not a bunch of heathen devils. They’re a lot like us and yet so very different that you can almost immediately understand why it’s so hard for us to understand each other.”
“I think that’s the case a lot of times, don’t you?” Tegan could not help but think about the two of them when she said this. “We assume a lot of things about someone because of their lifestyle or where they live, but until you actually get to know them, you can’t possibly know what their goals are or what they really want out of their life.”
“Ah.” He laughed. “I believe you mean to teach me a lesson about thinking that you have certain expectations of your life just because you have money and I don’t.” Wrath sighed. “I suppose that’s fair, Tegan. But you have to understand that I’m not the type of man that’s ever tried to be in a long-term anything. I’m transient at best and always have been.”
“But don’t you want a home?” she wondered out loud. “Don’t you want to have a place to put down roots? You could get rid of your storage unit.”
“I don’t know.” He sounded at least as if he were trying to not be judgmental and immediately discount her point of view. “Let’s just get out of this tunnel. All right?”
“Hey!”
They turned around. Wrath immediately put his body between her and whatever it was that had called out. But Tegan could soon see that it was a man in a city worker’s outfit.
“You’re not supposed to be here!” The man was jogging toward them.
Wrath gave her a wink. Then he faced the worker. “I’m so glad to see you, man! Can you help us get out of here? We were having some issues in the tunnel and wound up in here.”
“Oh? That big accident?” The worker looked almost excited. “That was crazy! Let’s get you guys out of here. I’ve got a truck parked right outside this hatch. Come on. You can just catch a ride with me.”
Wrath gave her a little squeeze. “See? Things are going to work out fine.”
Chapter Twenty
Things are going to work out fine? Wrath almost wanted to kick his own ass even thirty minutes later when they were finally on their way back to Tegan’s brownstone in Back Bay. Telling people that everything was going to work out fine was pretty much the catchall attempt to make someone feel better when the truth was that everything had gone to hell and there wasn’t really anything to be done about it.
What was wrong with him that he would be so desperate to make Tegan feel better that he would use such a trite attempt at comforting her? The cab sped along, and Wrath stared out the window and tried to decide what to do next.
“I just want to get home,” Tegan murmured. “I need—I don’t know what I need, but it’s something, and I know I’ll be able to figure it out at home.”
Had Wrath ever felt like that before in his life? He could not recall ever getting the sense of certainty or assurance from his surroundings that Tegan seemed to be craving. Perhaps he’d never had a place to call home for long enough to ever achieve that. Perhaps he just wasn’t wired that way. It was difficult to tell.
When the taxi pulled up at the curb in front of the brownstone, Tegan tumbled out before Wrath could even get a hand on her. He scrambled to follow. Throwing the driver some bills over the seat, Wrath hurried out onto the curb.
He grabbed Tegan’s arm. “Are you insane? You don’t just bolt out of a taxi like that!”
“But I’m home.” She looked around and gestured at the surveillance truck still parked across the street. “It’s not like they’re watching.”
“It would be very unusual for someone to be in there when I’m with you and we’re not here,” Wrath said irritably. “You cannot just assume anything!”
“Fine.” She at least looked contrite. Or at least he thought she did. Then she ruined it all by bounding up the front steps.
Wrath hurried to follow. He plucked her keys from her hand and opened the door. Then he stepped inside. Grabbing her shoulders, he kicked the front door closed and pointed right at her face. “Stay. Do you understand? I’m going to go sweep the house, and I swear, if you’ve moved one inch, I’m going to throttle you.”
“Fine.” She actually looked pouty. “But it’s my house.”
Wrath made a sweeping gesture with one hand. “Then, by all means, go die peacefully in your house.”
Finally, that seemed to sink in. He lef
t her grumbling at the front door and did a quick tour of all the rooms. It was funny, really. The idea of trying to sweep a building or structure for intruders was and always would be a bit of a fail. There was just no way to look in every possible place that someone might try and hide.
Wrath could remember trying to teach young marines overseas how to perform a sweep. He would always explain that what you were looking for wasn’t actually a person or a bomb or something that obvious. You were searching for evidence that things had been tampered with. You were searching for that indefinable something that told you beyond reasonable doubt that an unfriendly or unfamiliar presence had been around.
So now Wrath found himself looking for footprints in the thick pile of Tegan’s carpets. He searched for doors left half open or papers that had been moved by a breeze wafting by. But there was nothing. Not on the first floor, not on the second, and most definitely not on the third, where he had a terrible time not standing there staring at the bed and wishing things were somehow different.
Forcing himself to be realistic, Wrath turned and headed back downstairs. He wound up standing dumbly in front of the door where he had left Tegan with orders to stay. She wasn’t there. He wished that he could say he was shocked. Unfortunately, that would have been a lie.
“Tegan?”
“In the kitchen!” she called back. She emerged with two mugs of what smelled like peppermint tea. Handing one to him, she had the nerve to offer him a huge smile. “Don’t give me that look. You already checked the first floor. There was nobody down here. I decided I wanted a cup of hot tea. And you’re going to sit in the living room with me and try to relax and enjoy one too.”
“Hot tea,” he muttered.
She was insane. That was all there was to it. Wrath stood at parade rest in the open doorway between the kitchen, hallway, and living room. He was trying to watch for Nash. He had sent his boss a text outlining what had happened and requesting a meet to discuss continuing strategy.
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