by Karen Leabo
“I gave of my hospitality freely,” Otis said, as if offended by the offer. But when Joe didn’t insist, the old man added, “But I do normally assess a fine for trespassing.”
“I guess I can’t blame you. How much?” Joe asked.
The old man looked over his shoulder. “Opal, how much do you think?” He paused, apparently listening. “Ten dollars ? Okay.”
Joe quickly walked over to the man and handed him a crisp ten-dollar bill, grateful he hadn’t asked for more. Otis did have a gun. “Thanks a lot,” Joe said. “We’ll get out of your hair, now.”
Jenn and Cathy expressed their thanks, as well, and they were on their way.
They walked in silence for a while. Joe led the way, clearing the path for them, checking often to see if they were following. It was all very chivalrous, Jenn thought. She wondered when the other shoe would drop.
“Otis seemed like a nice enough sort,” Joe finally ventured. “Were you scared of him?”
“Nice?” Jenn squeaked. “He was going to put us into white slavery if you hadn’t shown up. He said he needed some womenfolk to clean and fix the place up. And didn’t you wonder who Opal was?”
“His guardian angel?” Joe guessed.
“His dead wife. He claims she’s still hanging around.”
“And he kills animals,” Cathy added.
“He has to eat,” Joe stated flatly. “Besides, we eat animals, too. We just pay someone else to kill them for us.”
“Not me,” Cathy said determinedly.
“Great,” Jenn said. “Otis has turned my daughter into a vegetarian.”
“I expect she’ll change her mind the first time she’s offered hamburger pizza,” Joe said.
Conversation waned for another few minutes. Joe showed them the place where he’d forded the stream. He carried Cathy across on his back, but Jenn was left to her own devices. She made a valiant leap, managing to get one foot wet again. The water was just as cold as the first time, and just as unpleasant.
“So, aren’t you going to say anything?” Jenn ventured.
Joe looked over his shoulder at her. “Like what?”
“Like what idiots we are for trying to escape in the middle of nowhere without a penny to our names? How we could have died from exposure or bear attack, or at the end of Otis’s gun? And how you’re going to handcuff me to the car from now on?”
“I was thinking all of those things,” he said in a deceptively pleasant tone. “But I guess I don’t need to say them. You already know how foolish you were.”
“Ha. I don’t think I was foolish at all. Our plan might have worked, if Otis had had a phone or a car,” she lamented.
Joe said nothing.
“Aren’t you mad?” she asked. “Ouch!” A branch snapped back and scratched her on the cheek.
Joe whirled around. “What happened? You okay? Oh, Jenn, you’re bleeding.”
She wiped at her face, perplexed by his obvious concern. “A branch got me.”
“Did I do it?” he asked, sounding horrified at the possibility.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “I didn’t see where it came from.” Any other man she might have accused of doing it on purpose. But not Joe. He wasn’t mean, despite the number of times she and Cathy had called him exactly that. She was surprised that she had reached such a conclusion about him.
“I‘ll be more careful,” he said.
“You didn’t answer my question. Are you mad?”
He paused a moment before answering. “I was,” he said, his voice filled with something akin to wonder. “But when I think about you two stuck with that strange old man, forced to eat deer stew, all I want to do is laugh.” He shrugged. “Go figure.”
“I only ate the potatoes,” Cathy said.
“And you were very polite about it, too,” Jenn added. As they fell silent again, Jenn pondered Joe’s reaction. Was he softening toward them? If she worked on him, could she get him to believe that she ought to go free?
Did he like her, just a little? And why did she care?
Hormones, she concluded. She hadn’t meant to hug him. She’d just been so overwhelmed with relief that she’d done it impulsively. Unexpectedly, her body had reacted to his in a very female way. Her stomach had swooped and her thighs had tingled, and she’d wanted nothing more than to simply hold him close and forget the mess she was in.
Of course, he was the cause of said mess, so how could he possibly provide comfort in the face of it? It didn’t make sense.
By the time they reached the car it was late afternoon. Jenn was cold, sore, hungry and tired. The leg she’d injured in the accident was aching like someone had hit it with a hammer. Cathy had long given up the ghost, and Joe had been carrying her piggyback for the last couple of miles. She was almost asleep, her head resting on Joe’s shoulder.
Jenn felt an illogical urge to apologize. She didn’t, of course. She was fighting for her daughter’s well-being, and she would attempt another escape as soon as an opportunity presented itself. But in a way, she felt sorry for Joe. He was just trying to do a job, one that he already admitted he was losing money on, and she was making his life pretty miserable.
“Our first day on the road,” Joe said fatalistically, “and we went a grand total of one hundred and ten miles. At this rate, it’ll take us a month to reach Rhymer.”
“Suits me,” Jenn said, forcing herself not to commiserate. “The longer, the better.”
Joe opened the car door and gently deposited Cathy on the seat. She regarded him sleepily. “We home?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Joe said. “You bad quite a day, didn’t you?”
Jenn felt a lump forming in her throat, and she wasn’t quite sure why. It might have been because the way Joe talked to Cathy, so concerned and gentle, reminded her a little bit of Doug.
But she didn’t really think that was it. Other men had treated her daughter kindly—Rudy, and Ernie the maintenance man. She was just tired and her guard was down, she decided. But for the first time since she’d found out who he was, she couldn’t muster even an ounce of disgust for Joe Andresi. He was just so damn decent, for the moment, anyway.
“Y’all must be hungry,” Joe said. “Or did you fill up on venison stew?”
Jenn made a face. “I didn’t touch the stuff, and I still can’t believe Cathy did, even if she only ate a couple of bites of potato. We can only hope she didn’t catch anything from it.”
“I take it that’s a yes?”
“Yes. I’ll make us all some sandwiches.” Satisfied that Cathy was securely buckled in, Jenn walked around to the passenger side and climbed into the front seat.
“You might want to clean up that scratch,” Joe said as he got in. “It looks kind of nasty.”
“Really?” Jenn had forgotten all about it. She flipped down the visor and looked in the mirror. There was dried blood smeared all over her right cheek. “Yuck. I don’t think I have anything to put on it.”
“We’ll stop and get something, next town.”
Jenn stared at him, puzzled. “I wish you’d get mad and yell or something. You’re making me nervous, being so nice.”
“I just don’t want you to get gangrene,” he said. “Dennis will not be pleased if I deliver you in anything other than pristine condition.”
“Oh.” Damn Dennis Palmer, anyway. Sometimes it was easy to forget that Joe was in her stepfather’s employ. She would do well to remember that Joe probably wasn’t being nice out of the goodness of his heart. “I guess Dennis would have your hide if you mistreated us.” Silently, she added that the bastard reserved that right for himself.
They’d just crossed the Washington-Idaho border. As they approached the town of Coeur d’Alene, Joe debated whether to stop or press on to the next town. He’d driven late into the night, wanting to put some miles behind them and make up for the afternoon’s delay. But his eyes were gritty and he was yawning every thirty seconds. He supposed he ought to find a hotel.
&nb
sp; Or maybe they could just sleep in the car. It would serve his escapees right.
One glance in Jenn’s direction, though, and he took back his uncharitable thought. She’d been dozing for the past hour or so, one knee drawn protectively against her chest, her arms wrapped around her leg. Her head was cocked at an awkward angle—she would have a crick in her neck before long.
Even in repose, the exhaustion was evident on her face.
He knew something of the life she’d been living the last six months; he’d done a pretty good job of reconstructing her movements. She’d put a lot of miles on her truck, eaten a lot of macaroni and cheese, worked a lot of late nights. Her employment opportunities were limited, given the fact that she couldn’t use her social security number or her real name. She’d washed dishes, mopped floors, baby-sat, and served beer.
He wondered, then, what kind of work she was qualified for. Had she worked before the accident? Dennis hadn’t mentioned anything about that.
He should stop, Joe decided, before he got so sleepy he drove them off the road. There didn’t appear to be much in the way of hotels in this town. He supposed he would have to break down and stay in a motel. He would get two rooms and handcuff Jenn to the bed again. He didn’t know what else to do.
Jenn stirred. “We there yet?” she asked drowsily.
“Depends on what you mean by ‘there.’ We’re in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.”
“Are we stopping here?”
“Yeah. There’s a Country Inn somewhere around here, if I remember.”
“You’ve been here before?”
“So’ve you. You worked as a waitress at a truck stop for a couple of weeks.”
“Oh. All those jobs run together in my mind. I’d just as soon forget them.”
“Did you work before?” he asked, wanting to satisfy his curiosity. “Before the accident, I mean.”
She was quiet a long time before answering, and when she did, her voice sounded wistful. “Doug and I ran a lawn care and gardening service. I have a degree in landscape architecture.”
“Hmm.” He wouldn’t have guessed that. He could see her running a posh boutique or a stationery store, or something, but mowing lawns and planting shrubs? “What happened to the business?”
“I had to shut it down. There was no one to run it.”
Though she said this nonchalantly, he heard the note of despair in her voice.
“You could start it up again,” he said. Not that it was any of his business what she did with her life, but he hated to see anyone’s dreams go down the tubes.
“Can’t,” she said. “Even if I had the money to start over, I can’t do that kind of work anymore.”
“Why not?”
She grimaced. “I have a pin in my hip and a titanium knee. I can’t do the bending and stooping and carrying that’s required.”
How ignorant of him, he thought. Given the seriousness of her injuries, why hadn’t it occurred to him that she would have some long-term ill effects? She looked whole and healthy. He hadn’t noticed a limp.
“Couldn’t you hire people to do that for you?”
“And sit up in my ivory tower giving orders? It doesn’t work that way.”
He supposed she knew what she was talking about, if she’d had such a business before. “Does it still hurt?”
“Sometimes.”
“Do you take any medicine for it?”
“I used to have some.”
“But?”
“Ran out.”
And she probably couldn’t afford to see a doctor to get more. She just did without. Dammit, why was he even worrying about this? She’d made her choices.
“You feeling sorry for me, Andresi?”
Ah, hell, he was too transparent. “I’m trying not to.”
“Don’t. In a lot of ways, the last six months have been a good time for me. I lived by my wits. I met challenges head-on. I was independent for the first time in my life. Sometimes it kind of gave me a rush. And I’ve bonded with my daughter.”
“You were destitute,” he observed.
“Having a lot of money is overrated. Sure, it would have been nice to live in a pretty house, drive a nice car, buy new clothes. But those things don’t make you happy. The people in your life do. Who do you have in your life, Joe?”
He wanted to squirm under the intensity of her gaze. “I have family.”
“How often do you see them?”
“Often enough.” Holidays. An occasional birthday. He and his parents and his brothers and sisters all lived within a fifty-mile radius, but they didn’t feel compelled to get together more than a few times a year. It’s just how they were. There wasn’t anything wrong with that.
“How often?” she persisted.
“There’s the motel.”
“You’re ducking my question.”
“Every couple of months, okay? Any more often than that and we’d be at each other’s throats. As it is, we get along great.”
“Anybody else? Girlfriend?”
“Unh,” he replied noncommittally. He’d been dating a woman on and off for about a year, casually. But he’d seen less and less of her the more involved he’d gotten with this case. In fact, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d talked to Diane.
“Well, you already told me you’ve never been married, so I’ll assume you don’t have any kids.”
“Nope.”
“So, I bet I’ve been happier over the last six months than you have—poverty, pain and all.”
“Maybe,” he conceded as he pulled the Monte Carlo in front of the motel’s office. “We’ll never know, since no one has devised a definitive way to measure happiness.” He turned off the engine and pulled out the key. “Coming with me?”
“Do I have a choice? We can’t leave Cathy in the car.”
Joe sighed. That kid was getting heavier all the time, it seemed. He got out, pushed the seat forward, and unbuckled Cathy’s seat belt, preparing to carry her inside.
“I’ll do it,” Jenn said, zipping up her jacket.
“I don’t mind.” And after what she’d told him about her injuries, he’d be damned if he’d let her carry around a forty-pound kid.
“You think I’m going to bolt across the parking lot with her and thumb a ride?” Jenn asked defiantly.
“Wouldn’t shock me,” he said. Cathy murmured something sleepily as he lifted her out of the car and draped her over his shoulder. “But, actually, I was trying to be gallant. I’m not a Neanderthal.”
“Could have fooled me,” she said. But the insult lacked bite, as if she was saying evil things more out of habit than out of any real conviction.
The motel’s office was warm and welcoming. Joe deposited Cathy on a small tweed love seat. Jenn collapsed beside her daughter. She was really dead on her feet, he realized.
“We need two rooms, adjoining if possible,” he told the young woman behind the registration desk.
The woman, who wore an excess of frizzy red hair and clashing red lipstick, eyed Joe speculatively. “Two?”
“Yes,” he confirmed, giving her a hard stare that he hoped would forestall any nosy questions.
“Don’t have any adjoining,” she said. “Have two next door to each other.”
“That’ll do.” He whipped out a credit card. While he waited for her to process it, he pondered his security dilemma. Even if he handcuffed Jenn to the bed, she could enlist Cathy’s help again. Cathy could call an ally with a hacksaw, and Jenn could be freed while Joe slept blissfully, ignorantly.
Mentally he swore. He’d tracked down murderers and rapists, computer geniuses, professional athletes both bigger and stronger than him. And in all those cases, in the course of escorting fugitives of every description back into custody, he’d never had to worry like this before. He’d never encountered a suspect who would try so persistently, determinedly, to escape.
“Two thirty-five and thirty-six,” the clerk said, sounding bored since Joe had made it clear he wasn’t
in a chatty mood. She handed him two keys and told him how to find the rooms.
He shuffled his two prisoners back into the car and followed the directions the clerk had given him. Their rooms faced into a vacant lot and a deserted building.
He handed the keys to Jenn. While she unlocked one of the doors, he scooped Cathy up again, then carried her inside and laid her gently on the bed. “She sleeps like a rock.”
“Yeah. Fortunately she’s not one of those kids who frets every time she has to sleep in a strange place.”
Joe imagined the kid had slept in a lot of strange places over the past few months, poor baby. She was really the victim in this case.
Or was she? She certainly hadn’t seemed unhappy with her circumstances, only with recent developments. Damn, when had things become so complicated?
“Are you going to handcuff me to the bed again?” Jenn asked. She sounded resigned. “It’d be easier if you just slept in here with me.”
The image that popped into Joe’s mind certainly couldn’t be the one Jenn had in mind.
“With us, I mean,” she added quickly.
Ah, so he wasn’t the only one reading prurient meanings into everything. “It would be simpler, I agree.” He sighed. “But I can’t.”
“Because of Dennis? You think I’d tell him? I won’t talk to the bastard if I don’t have to.” She glanced guiltily at Cathy, who appeared to be sleeping soundly.
“It wouldn’t be proper.”
“To hell with propriety,” Jenn said. Joe could hear the almost-tears in her voice, and they ate at his conscience like acid. “I’d like to get some sleep, and I can’t while I’m handcuffed to a bed!”
He had to be strong. He had to stand firm. “I’m sorry, but even if slept in here, you could still sneak out on me. I’m a pretty sound sleeper, too.”
He could see the wheels turning in her mind. Suddenly she grabbed her purse and shoved it into his arms. “Here, take my purse. It has all my money.” She looked around some more. “Take our shoes. Our jackets. All our clothes. Take the phone. Just let me sleep, please. This whole thing is hard enough to deal with when I’m not exhausted.”
He sympathized with her, he really did. And at this point he wanted to believe she wouldn’t run. But she probably would, and he couldn’t take another chance. She’d fooled him several times before.