Time Bomb_On The Run Romance

by Madi Le

  "I got into my car and pulled into the street."

  "Had anything to drink in the diner?"

  "No," Grant said. "I don't make a habit of drinking regularly," he said.

  "Irregularly?"

  "Special occasions only."

  "What about your publicly-known issues with your wife? No reason to celebrate? Nothing to do with your girlfriend coming back?"

  "Jesus, Sloane. What's that supposed to mean?"

  "Can you just answer the question, Sheriff?"

  "I had a glass of Coke. I didn't even get a refill; I finished it and a glass of water, and was back on the road. No celebrations, regardless of whether or not I had a reason."

  "Good. Then what?"

  "I got into the car, looked both ways, turned into the road, and a guy with his lights off sped up to slam into me."

  "You're sure he sped up?"

  "Of course I'm sure."

  "Did you draw your sidearm?"

  He let out a breath. It was a tire to go through all this again. But there was no way out of it. "I did," he said.

  "And for what reason?"

  "There was a second vehicle, which pulled up momentarily afterward. Three men exited the vehicle, brandishing weapons. I drew my weapon. I fired twice in self-defense."

  "If you saw the men again, could you identify them?"

  "They wore masks," Grant said, knowing precisely how useless that made him sound. It was nothing compared to how useless it made him feel.

  "So you could not?"

  "I could not," Grant agreed. "Two of the three were injured in the ensuing gunfire. The third took the two injured men into the back of the van, and both vehicles, the sedan that hit me and the van that carried the gunmen, drove off."

  "And then?"

  "Then I drove here. Slow going, I think the axle is bent or something. The driver's-side front is practically falling off."

  "Anything else?"

  "They tried to take her, Sloane."

  "Who?" He gestured with his eyes. "State it for the record."

  "Misty Glenn," he said. "A woman who I apparently don't know much about."

  Six ♥

  *

  Misty dealt out three cards from the top of the deck. She looked at her situation. It was hopeless. She'd been through twice already, and there were no moves to be made. She was finished. Might as well shuffle the deck and try again. She looked in at Grant.

  The situation on the table mirrored the situation in the county. She was in up to her eyeballs, and Grant kept looking at her. Like he was worried about her. It was almost endearing, if it didn't mean that he was anything but confident about how he was going to deal with things.

  She pulled three more cards off the top. Nothing to do now but suffer. She knew it. She dealt three more cards off the top. Nothing to do but shuffle the deck and deal herself another game. If she tried again…

  She took a breath and shrugged the coat off her shoulders. Then she pulled her own coat on tighter, zipped up, and stepped out the door. It was the right thing to do. Deal out another hand. Maybe the next sap wouldn't get burned the second that she touched him. Maybe he'd be a little less smart to her games. Maybe she wouldn't have a history with the next one.

  It was only a matter of time until there was someplace that she could finally be safe. She'd been moving west because she didn't want to get caught at a border. But she'd made it most of the way north already. Just a scant few hundred miles separated her from the Canadian border. Maybe that was the way to go.

  She stepped out into the night, looked around. Nobody was waiting for her. She'd get caught eventually, if she stayed here. So she wasn't going to. She turned north and started down the lonely county road.

  She made decent time. She didn't have to hurry to make three miles an hour; by the time that it was really late, she'd made almost four miles. Her feet hurt, but they always hurt. She was used to it. Something in her past life had gotten her feet very used to moving long distances.

  Something lit up the road. She stepped off the side and watched a car go by. She hoped it wouldn't slow down, that she wouldn't have to come up with some excuse for not wanting a ride. It kept moving as if they hadn't even seen her.

  She held her breath until they disappeared over a hill. She kept moving. Further off the road this time, though. If there was going to be trouble then she wanted to be free from it.

  She finally laid her head down in a grassy field. Something in her pocket buzzed. She looked at it. A flip-phone. She hadn't had it before. She had it now, though. She didn't have any doubt where it had come from, but that didn't mean that she was comfortable with it.

  The name on the front left no doubt. Grant, it said. There was a number below it that she didn't know. But she didn't doubt that the caller ID was right.

  It rang in her hands as she laid on the ground. She wasn't sure she should answer. If anything, she was sure that she shouldn't. But something prevented her from just making the right decision and throwing it further into the field, and getting moving.

  Grant was a distraction for her. And worse, he was a connection. He was supposed to just be some random Sheriff. If she knew him in her old life, then there was no way that he wouldn't be the first person they looked at. At least, he would be on the list. If she came from there, her parents were probably somewhere. Parents she didn't remember anything about. She had to have some. Whoever they were.

  It all added up to her leaving. She reminded herself of that a dozen times. It still hadn't stuck an hour later when the phone buzzed again, pulling her out of a halfway sleep. She was physically exhausted, but her mind was alert. And if she was alert then it meant that she needed to be moving. She pushed herself to her feet and started moving again. There would be time to rest when she was clear of Franklin county.

  The next hour went smoothly. Three smooth miles. Her feet kept moving even when they threatened to riot if she didn't take a break. It was easier than she expected to push through the exhaustion. It was harder than she expected to justify leaving to herself. Her mental acuity dropped off quickly, but walking didn't take much.

  The phone rang again. She ignored it again. Made another mile. This one was slow. Thirty minutes. Then she sat down on the side of the road and told herself that she was just going to rest a little. If she wanted to sleep she could. There was plenty of space. But she was just sitting. It didn't mean anything, at that point. If she said it more times, then it would be more true.

  The phone rang again. It felt like it had been a hundred times. She had seven voicemails. Her thumb slipped into the mechanism automatically before she knew what she was doing. The phone flipped up. The screen was old, but it had a blue box in the middle of it, and it said the same thing that the front screen had said: "GRANT." Then there was a phone number.

  She needed help. She knew it. But there was no way that Grant was the help that she needed. The more that she reminded herself of it, the less that she actually believed it. But she wasn't about to give up. After all, she'd gotten this far. If she'd let herself get lax in Virginia she'd have been dead. Nothing had changed since then except the zip code.

  Lights lit up the night. She scrambled to her feet, moved a few yards off the road. The car pulled up to a stop. She hoped that she was hidden in the grass. Someone stepped out. The lights made it impossible to see him in the darkness. His voice told her who it was, though. Joe Greene. He'd worked with her more than anyone.

  "Misty, you don't have to do this."

  She said nothing. There was a long moment of silence.

  "I don't like having to do this any more than you do," he said again.

  Another door opened. And then another. Men came out. They stepped towards her. She could see the guns in their hands. And she knew that they knew, at least generally, where she was. Which meant that she was caught. She mourned herself for a moment. And then she bolted.

  The men saw her. They fired their guns. They weren't men who made a habit of missing. />
  Misty's leg burned. She thought she'd been hit, but if the leg was still moving, then so was she. There was no time to spend checking to make sure that she was okay.

  She could hear them behind her. Last time she'd dared to look over her shoulder, she'd had almost a hundred yards on them. To hit a moving target at that range took a great deal of skill; they had it. She wasn't sure if they wanted to keep her alive, or if they weren't sure of their ability to hit her in the dark. She didn't stop to ask.

  Her chest hurt. Her feet hurt. Her leg hurt. All three of them had been threatening to collapse under her weight for what felt like forever. She kept running. A shot rang out. She heard a 'thump' in the earth an instant later, a foot to her left. She didn't bother to wonder about it.

  Her feet were starting to slow. She could feel it. Any minute, whatever energy that had kept her moving all this time was going to be gone, and she was going to be left in the dust. She let out a breath and kept her head down, kept moving.

  Something moved ahead of her. She tried to cut left, to move around it. She felt her body make the attempt, and then she felt it fail entirely. She could force it, but it would slow her down to a crawl. So she settled for drifting left. The movement kept pace with her. She hoped it wasn't what she thought it might be, but she knew better than to believe anything was going to go right. She was in it deep, and it was only a matter of time before they had her dead to rights.

  She broke clear of a stand of trees, and the road in front of her clarified. A car. The driver's door was open. A man leaned out. She got closer. She recognized him. Grant Holloway, the Sheriff from Franklin County. The one who said he knew her.

  "Get it," he shouted.

  She didn't need to be told twice. She kept her shoulders tight and kept moving. Behind her, she could hear the men getting closer. A shot rang out. The pang of the bullet hitting the car was audible. It also didn't get across the fact that it had gotten to the car door through the flesh on her hip. She grabbed the handle, yanked, and fell into the back. The door smacked her on the flank as the car started moving. And then they were gone.

  Misty laid on the seat and tried to breathe. It didn't come easily. The back seat of the cruiser was tight, like the back seat of all police cars she'd ever been in. But tight was better than whatever she was running away from. She wasn't about to voice the complaint. Her chest still burned. Her forehead felt as if it were soaked. She rubbed her face on the seat of the cruiser, knowing it was disgusting. Her hands refused to do what she asked of them.

  "How did you find me?"

  Her hands slid under her body. With a great deal of effort she managed to sit up. The car rocketed down a country road at what must have been well over the speed limit. Grant didn't answer her.

  "Who were those guys?"

  "Who do you think they were?"

  "I think that whatever you're afraid of me getting into, I'm in it now."

  Misty got her first full breath in what felt like an hour. It might have been twenty minutes. She stretched out in the back seat.

  "How did you find me?"

  "GPS," he said. "In your phone."

  "You're a motherfucker," Misty told him.

  "Not last I checked."

  "I'm glad that you're so confident. You have no idea who you're dealing with, do you?"

  Grant looked at her in the rear-view. He looked surprisingly confident when he answered her. "Not a clue. Now, are you going to clue me in, or should I just assume it's the entire God damn United States Army?"

  "It'd be a good assumption," she said. "Easier to figure it that way than to do it any other."

  "Luckily I've got someone here who can explain the whole thing."

  "It's pointless," she said. She let out a breath and laid out as much as she could. It wasn't much more comfortable than just sitting up, but it made her feel better to be trying to get comfortable. "You coming here and getting me. I'm sorry you stuck your neck out. I tried to warn you."

  "You tried to get me involved, too," Grant said.

  "I know what I tried to do," Misty said, a rough tone to her voice. "And I know that you're in it on your own, now. Can't blame me."

  "I wouldn't dream of it, sweetheart." The car slowed. Then it slowed more. Then it came to a stop.

  The driver's door opened. Then the back door. Her legs, pressed up against it, fell out entirely.

  "Up and out. Come on."

  She didn't make a move. He reached in and grabbed her hands, pulled her upright.

  "Alright, alright," she said. "I'm moving."

  "You're hit," he said. His eyes lingered too long on her hip, where the red was spreading across the jeans that used to be blue in the corner to match the rest of them.

  "I'll be fine if we just get something on it."

  Grant pulled his shirt off without a word and pressed it into her hand. Misty tried not to think about the taper from his broad shoulders down to his narrow waist, and the cut lines between the two where his muscles stretched against his skin.

  "Come on," he said. "You can be fine in the front seat. It's a little roomier."

  She limped around the rear of the car, leaning harder on Grant than she knew she needed to. His skin was hot under her touch, and she liked it. She thought again about how she'd like to have him. He'd refused her once. Nothing much had changed since then. She reminded herself that she wasn't looking for anything from him. The more that they got involved, the more trouble he'd have. It wasn't going to solve any of her problems.

  "You should leave me here," she said. "I'll be fine."

  "Like you were fine back there?"

  "Yeah. I just about lost 'em."

  "I saw," Grant said. He lowered her into the seat. Misty yelped as the muscles in her legs stretched and pulled at her wound. She pressed down with the shirt. Red stained white. She let out a breath and pressed her head back against the headrest and grit her teeth. She was good at that. Used to it, even.

  Grant slid into the driver's seat. Closed the door. The car started rolling. They had almost made sixty miles an hour when Grant's phone rang. He picked it up from its place on the dash. Looked at it. Misty watched his face. He didn't look pleased.

  Seven ♥

  *

  The phone rang. Grant was tired; when he saw the number, though, he picked up in spite of himself. He was tired of the bullshit, but he wasn't about to get any more of a federal manhunt going after him than he'd already called down on his head.

  "Yeah," he said.

  Sloane was on the other line. She had a hard tone to her voice. Grant knew that she was putting it there at least in part for the sake of whoever was listening. But he knew there was something in her that was pissed at him. Maybe she thought he was overstepping the bounds of the law, or something. He didn't know and didn't much care.

  "You need to come in."

  "That's a negative," Grant said. He looked over at Misty. "I've got trouble out here."

  "You don't understand. We're swamped, Grant. You need to come in, and you need to do it yesterday."

  "What's the situation?"

  "I can't say," Sloane told him. He pulled the phone away from his mouth a moment. Stepped harder on the gas.

  "I'm not coming in," he said. "But maybe if you tell me what's going on I can help advise you on what your next move ought to be."

  "That's no good, Sheriff," she said. Grant gambled that she wasn't really arguing with him in any serious way. That she was just trying to hide the fact that she knew he wasn't going to budge.

  The fact that she'd let him go, and that she'd given him the keys to another cruiser to 'get home' suggested that he was on the right track. But Sloane was a hard woman to read. It worked in his favor right now, but it didn't make things any easier even when he did know that.

  "So what's the situation?"

  "If you don't come in, these Feds are going to be up my ass so far they see daylight. They're pissed, boss. They say the girl's a fugitive from justice. Whatever the issue is
, they're not telling. Way above our pay grade, they said."

  "I'm sure it is," Grant said. "So keep them busy."

  "You're coming in?"

  "Negative," Grant said.

  "Thank God," Sloane said. Grant hung up the phone.

  Misty looked at him. He hooked the phone into its cradle on the dash and kept on moving. Then he thought better of it and turned around.

  There was no chance they were going to believe that little charade. Not hook line and sinker. Which meant that they probably cover all their bases: what if he comes in? What if he runs?

  The way Grant saw it, the answer was obvious, and it was somewhere in between.

  "Where are we going?"

  Misty looked at him with only a trace of the pain that he guessed must be exploding through her body, with a bullet hole straight through her hip. If anything she seemed to be managing it pretty well. He needed to get her someplace safe. And he had a place just like that, a few miles off. His place. At least, it was now.

  "My place," he said. "We need to lay low for a while."

  "They'll be right there," she told him. "They're going to be waiting for you."

  "Then we'll be on the lookout," he said flatly. "But we can't keep moving with your leg like that."

  "I'm fine," Misty protested. It was weak and it was almost entirely unbelievable. That she tried to pull it off at all was almost a surprise.

  "You've got a hole in you big enough for me to stick my thumb in," Grant said. "I'm not telling you that you have to go to the E.R. if you don't want to, but I'm not letting you bleed all over my cruiser. We're getting this settled."

  She didn't put up a fight. He was surprised by that. It must have been a testament to how much pain she was in. Every step of the way, Grant had been contradicted by everyone around him. This was the weakest protest he'd gotten to anything all night, short of ordering his dinner.

  "So, we get to your house. Then what?"

  "We take the next couple hours to recoup," Grant said. He hadn't thought any further out. Anything he came up with was bound to be a bad idea. He was physically and mentally exhausted.