by Rebecca York
Thankful that he hadn’t twisted an ankle, he took a moment to straighten his clothes, then headed for the street where he’d left the car, praying he was going to find Carrie waiting.
Chapter Ten
Carrie was nowhere in sight.
Wyatt’s heart started to pound again as he saw instead two cops standing near the car. The car that had an assault rifle hidden in the trunk.
Taking a deep breath, he reminded himself that the officers didn’t have X-ray vision.
Were they responding to the woman who had seen him come down the building? Had the detective upstairs come into the bedroom, found the women in the bathroom and called for backup? Or did these guys just happen to be checking the area? If he turned around and headed the other way, he’d seem suspicious. If he kept walking toward them, they might recognize him, but he figured his best option was to keep going.
Trying not to look as though his heart was racing, he passed the car. Once he’d gotten by the cops, he started trying to figure out where Carrie might be. Probably she’d seen the uniforms, too, and walked past. That was, if she hadn’t already been arrested.
He couldn’t stop doubts from chasing themselves around in his mind. He was supposed to be protecting her, and he’d gotten them both in a mess of trouble by going to Rita’s apartment. The way he had two years ago in Greece by sleeping late when he should have been on his toes. That slipup had cost his partner her life.
He shuddered. This wasn’t like that at all. He hadn’t made a mistake because he was too involved with Carrie. He’d wanted information from Rita Madison, he’d taken a calculated risk and he’d learned something they didn’t know before.
And now he had to find Carrie.
Trying to think the way she would, he headed for the shopping center, cursing himself for not giving her one of the untraceable cell phones. But when they’d left on this fact-gathering expedition this morning, he’d assumed they were going to stay together.
He reached the shopping area and started looking in stores.
As he walked past a coffee shop, Carrie came out, still wearing the maid’s uniform, as he’d assumed she would be.
He felt a flood of relief as he saw her and noted his own profound relief mirrored on her face. Their eyes met, and he fought the need to stop and take her in his arms. Instead, he kept on walking, hoping the moment hadn’t called attention to them.
She fell into step behind him as he kept moving down the street toward the main shopping area, hoping he looked as if he was a guy out killing some time—or maybe picking up something for his wife. When he turned into one of the upscale department stores, she followed him.
He paused inside the doorway, looking around as though he was trying to locate a particular department.
Several shoppers passed, and Wyatt pretended that he and Carrie had simply come in at the same time.
When they were alone for a few moments, she spoke. “What are we going to do?”
“Better not to be seen together. You spend about five minutes in the ladies’ room. I’m going back to the car and hope that the cops have moved on. I’ll drive over and pick you up at this exit.”
She looked down at her clothing. “I’m wearing a maid’s uniform.”
“Maybe you’re out shopping on your lunch hour. You can change into something else later.”
A woman with a shopping bag was approaching the exit where they stood, and he stopped talking abruptly.
As though they’d simply bumped into each other casually, Carrie nodded at him and started walking toward one of the clerks at the jewelry counter, where he presumed she was asking for directions to the ladies’ room. He walked toward the shoe department, stopped to look at a couple of oxfords, then exited the store. Turning back the way he’d come, he headed for the car. As he approached, he saw that no one was paying any attention to the vehicle. Was it a trap?
If he’d had an alternate means of transportation, he would have left the car where it was. But he hadn’t even thought he’d need one false identity—let alone more. The alternate driver’s license and credit card had simply been a precaution. Renting another vehicle under the same name wasn’t going to help. And stealing a car was too risky.
After unlocking the car, he climbed in and sat for a moment gripping the wheel before pulling out of the parking space and heading back the way he’d come. When he slowed near the store exit, Carrie came out and looked right and left before walking rapidly toward the vehicle and climbing in. Before she’d had a chance to buckle her seat belt, he drove off, turning down Western Avenue and then into a residential area.
Carrie sat with her head back and her eyes closed, and he couldn’t stop himself from reaching over and laying his palm over her clenched hands. She knitted her fingers with his, holding on tight.
“I was scared,” she finally said.
“So was I. When I came back to the car and found you weren’t there.”
“And I was frightened for you. What happened upstairs? How did you get away?”
“I tore up a sheet and used it to climb down from the balcony.”
She sucked in a sharp breath.
“I made it.” He laughed. “After I scared the bejesus out of an old lady in her underwear two levels down.”
Despite the gravity of their situation, Carrie laughed, too, and he liked the sound.
Wyatt kept driving, making several turns past upscale houses with well-kept landscaping. As far as he could see, no one was following them, but there was one more thing he had to check. He found a driveway with tall hedges on either side and pulled in.
“What are you doing?”
“Making sure nobody put a tracker on the car.”
“Could they do that?”
“It’s not likely, but I need to be certain,” he said, thinking that a lot of things that weren’t likely had happened since he’d taken the job of protecting Carrie Mitchell.
* * *
CARRIE WATCHED WYATT get out of the car. Bending over, he ran his hand under the front bumper and along the sides, moving slowly and repeating the process in back and on the other side.
When he got back in, he looked relieved. “I think we’re okay.”
“Are we?” she asked, not just thinking about the transmitter.
They were sitting in a car screened by tall bushes on each side, making a private little enclave on a residential street. Before he could start the engine again, she shifted out of her seat and reached for him across the console.
Would he resist the embrace? She held her breath, waiting to find out what he would do. To her relief, he leaned into her, sighing as he gathered her closer.
“Lord, Carrie,” he murmured as he ran his hands up and down her back and into her hair.
“I was so worried about you,” she whispered.
“Yeah. Likewise.”
She was so relived he was all right. That she was all right. That they were back together again. And all she could think about was getting close to him, feeling the reassurance of his arms around her again. Craving as much of him as she could have, she hoisted herself over the console, into his lap. Because his legs were long, his seat was far enough from the wheel to make room for her.
She had never been wild and reckless, but she felt that way now. Without giving herself time to change her mind, she straddled his lap so that the hot, needy place between her legs was pressed to the front of his jeans.
He made a strangled sound. Before he could change their positions, she tipped her face up and found his mouth. The moment their lips met, the kiss turned so hot that it could have started a wildfire. The morning’s adventure had driven both of them to the edge of desperation.
What she needed was to close her eyes and focus on the man who held her in his arms instead of everything el
se that was happening to her.
He sipped from her mouth, then deepened the kiss. She loved the taste of him, the feel of his body, the way he clasped her tightly. She’d been craving this since last night, and the terror of the past few hours had only intensified her emotions.
She forgot where they were, forgot everything except the need to get close to him—as close as two people could get.
His tongue dipped into her mouth, exploring the line of her teeth, then stroking the sensitive tissue on the inside of her lips, sending hot currents curling through her body.
She knew he had tried to keep his distance from her because he thought it was the right thing to do. And she knew now that he had given in to the heat building between them. His hands stroked up and down her ribs, gliding upward to find the sides of her breasts, then inward, across her nipples. At the same time, she felt the erection that had risen behind the fly of his jeans pressing against the part of her that needed him most.
Earlier she’d been wearing slacks, but the maid’s uniform was more convenient. If she took off her panties and unzipped his fly, they could do what they both craved.
Her breath shuddered in and out as he undid the buttons at the front of the dress and slipped two fingers inside, dipping under her bra to stroke her nipple, sending heat shooting downward through her body.
She could do the same thing, she thought, as she unbuttoned the front of his dress shirt enough to ease her hand inside, playing with his crinkled chest hair. She found a flat nipple, feeling it stiffen at her touch. Sliding back a little, she reached for his belt buckle.
Before she could undo it, the sound of a car horn went through her like a shock wave.
Chapter Eleven
Jerking away from Wyatt and back into the passenger seat, Carrie looked wildly around for the source of the intrusion into the private world they’d wrapped around themselves and saw a Cadillac in the street behind them. As she turned to stare, the woman driver honked again.
Wyatt swore under his breath, turned the key in the ignition and backed out of the driveway, easing around the luxury car.
An older woman with dyed blond hair was staring daggers at them. Rolling down her window, she stuck her head out and called, “How dare you use my driveway for a dalliance with the maid!”
“The maid?”
Oh, right. She was still wearing the borrowed uniform.
Carrie felt her cheeks flame and ducked her head, trying to hide her face.
Wyatt slammed the gearshift into Drive and pulled around the circular driveway, his mouth set in a grim line.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Not your fault,” he answered as he sped away. “That wasn’t going much further anyway. The first time I make love with you, it’s not going to be in the front seat of a car in someone’s driveway.”
She digested that comment. “Did I hear you right?”
He gave her a sheepish look. “I didn’t mean to say that.”
“But it’s what you were thinking.”
“Forget it.”
“I don’t think so.”
She wasn’t going to forget something like that, because it was too good a window into his state of mind.
Wyatt wanted to make love to her. And he would. It was just a question of when.
She could continue the very interesting conversation, but she didn’t think that would get her anywhere. Instead, she filed it away for future reference. Very near future.
Changing the subject, she asked, “What did I miss upstairs after I left?”
“Just my daring escape.”
She felt a shiver go through her. He might joke about it, but it had been a very risky way to get out of the apartment.
“I made it,” he said, as if reading her thoughts.
“Thank God. But now what are we going to do?” she asked.
“Try another approach.” He turned his head toward her for a moment. “Would you have called Patrick Harrison if I hadn’t gotten back to the car?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you were thinking about it.”
“What should I have done if you hadn’t come back?”
She saw him tighten his hands on the wheel, then deliberately relax them. “Withdraw a bunch of money from your bank account. Disappear.”
“I don’t know how to do that.”
“You’re smart. You’d learn,” he said, but she wondered if he really believed it.
“You can’t disappear forever.”
“Some people do. Like that woman who was in the Weather Underground who made a new life for herself. Or that mob boss who vanished for a decade.”
“Then you read years later that they were captured.”
“Or not. There are plenty you don’t read about.”
“Maybe you’d better give me some tips. You know, in case I actually need to do it.”
“Go to a rural graveyard, find a child born the same year you were and died when she was a few years old. Take her identity. Then move to another location where nobody would know about her. After that, say you lost your Social Security card and need a new one.”
She shuddered. “That’s awful.”
“It works.” He cleared his throat. “Back to Patrick. I don’t trust him.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t trust anybody. And because he’s close to this situation.”
“That doesn’t make him guilty. And I know he wouldn’t do anything to harm me.”
“Are you sure?”
She gave him a sharp look. “As sure as I can be of anyone. I told you—we grew up together.”
“And you always got along?”
“Didn’t we already talk about this?”
“I’m trying to get as much information as I can. I want to go back and question your father’s maid—and see what I can get off his computer. And I’m not sure I want Patrick around when we do it.” He checked the rearview mirror. “Give me some more background on him.”
She thought back over the years that they’d been together. “There was a period when he was a teenager when he...resented my father, and he did some things that you could consider rebellious. But I did, too.”
“Like what?”
“Him or me?”
“Both of you.”
“There was a boy in school that I liked. I sneaked off to see him and had a girlfriend cover for me.”
“That’s it?”
“Do I have to tell you everything?”
“No.” He glanced over at her. “What about Patrick?”
“Maybe the worst thing he did was borrow one of my dad’s cars—and drive it up on a curb. He whacked up the axle, and then he asked me to help him get it fixed without my dad finding out.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“Nice of you.”
“He’d done things for me.”
“Like what?”
She sighed. “Once when I was in sixth grade, I didn’t want to go to school. I got him to help me put a thermometer on a lightbulb, then cool it down again so it looked like I had a temperature of a hundred and one.”
He laughed. “You needed Patrick to help you do that?”
“Well, he caught me in the act, and then he said he wouldn’t tell my dad.” She swung her head toward him. “Your turn. What did you do bad?”
“So you can hold it over my head?”
“I don’t want to be the only one confessing.”
He thought for a moment. “There was a kid in my neighborhood who organized a bunch of us to steal car radar detectors and GPSes.”
“Did you get caught?”
“I felt bad about it and quit.”
She knew they were both using the conversation to keep their minds off their current problems.
“And what else? Did you seduce lots of girls when you were a teenager?”
“Actually, an older girl seduced me. Since you opened up the subject, who was your first? Not Patrick, I hope.”
“I told you, I didn’t think of Patrick that way. It was a guy in college,” she said in a clipped tone.
“A one-night stand?”
“No. We had a relationship. Then he decided it wasn’t working out.”
She hoped from the way she’d said it that he’d take the hint and stop the interrogation. “How did we get into this?” she muttered.
“We were trying to decide if we could trust Patrick. You think that if we went back to your house, he wouldn’t tell the terrorists you were there?”
“He wouldn’t.”
“You may be certain of that. I’m not taking a chance with your life. I want to talk to the maid, and I don’t trust him to know where you’re going to be.”
“Then what are you going to do?”
“Get him out of the house. I want you to call him and set up a meeting.”
“Where?”
He looked around. “We’re near the Macomb Street playground. That’s probably as good a place as any. We can scope it out first to make sure it sounds like a legitimate location for a meeting.”
They drove down Connecticut Avenue, then turned onto Macomb Street. The tree-shaded playground was empty, and Wyatt found a nearby parking spot.
“Be right back,” he said, getting out to look around the area.
When he returned, he said, “Tell him that you’re alone and that you’ll meet him in an hour at the closest picnic table to the gate.” He gave her a direct look. “Can you say that without making him think that you have no intention of showing up?”
“Yes,” she snapped.
“And see if you can make sure Inez is there.”
“I know what I’m doing.”
When he handed her the cell phone, she dialed her home number.