Hot Pursuit

by Julie Ann Walker

  “No cameras,” Philippe managed. He looked like the quintessential Frenchman. Thin, crooked nose. Neatly trimmed mustache. Severe lips that had gone white around the edges with pain. “Politicians and…celebrities fly from here, oui? Is why I choose this place, n’est ce pas? If you go now, your covers remain intact.”

  “Right.” Rusty nodded, the ends of his curly red hair shedding water droplets across his already soaked shoulders. “And then there’s the small matter of the truck. Someone could have reported it stolen by now. If we wait around for the authorities, we—”

  “I’m not leaving a dying man!” Ace thundered.

  “Non.” Philippe shook his wet head, chuckling dryly. “Not dying. Bullet went through and through. I will survive. But you must go.”

  As much as Christian hated to say it: “He’s right. We’d best be off.” The rain was still loud enough against the corrugated roof of the hangar that anyone inside would have difficulty hearing what was going on outside. But it might not be long before someone came to investigate what had become of Philippe.

  “Go.” Philippe shoved at Ace’s shoulder. Then he grabbed Christian’s undershirt and took over applying pressure to his wound. “I will tell the gendarmerie nothing. Say I lost consciousness and did not see what happened or who shot me.”

  “I hate everything about this,” Ace grumbled.

  “We all do, mate.” Christian clapped a wet hand on his soggy shoulder.

  For a long moment, they stared down at Philippe, none of them wanting to leave a man behind. All of them knowing it was the only way.

  Emily was the one to break the silence. “Christian,” she whispered, her voice hoarse, her big, brown eyes seeming to take up her whole face. Water had made her eyelashes ink-black and spiky. “Your clothes.”

  She held out his sodden sweater. He’d pulled it over his head when the distant cry of sirens sounded.

  “Fuck!” Ace cursed. His tortured expression said he was torn between saving himself and staying to make sure the Frenchman made it.

  “Go!” Philippe insisted again, sucking the rainwater from his lower lip. “Come back tomorrow. Same place. Same time. My partner will take you to Chicago.” He made the last sound more like Shy-cago. “I owe Boss a favor, oui? When you get home”—he panted heavily, the pain etching lines in his face—“Tell him…tell him we are even.”

  “Thank you, Philippe.” Emily chewed her lip. Christian couldn’t tell if it was rain or tears that gathered in her eyes.

  “Je t’en prie,” Philippe said, a ghost of a smile on his lips. “Anything for you, ma belle.”

  “Come!” Angel yelled, already running for the truck. “We must go!”

  Angel never raised his voice, so the force of his command had them all racing after him.

  They were in the truck, the old engine sputtering to life, when the rain stopped as quickly as it had begun. Like a giant fist in the sky had suddenly switched off the faucet.

  A delicate tremor shook Emily’s thin frame. Christian pulled her firmly against his chest. Taking his coat from her frozen hands, he draped it over her, creating a wet cocoon.

  Angel stomped on the gas, and Christian turned around as they skidded out of the parking lot. Behind them, Philippe, their chance of getting out of England, quickly disappeared from view. In front of them? A giant set of unknowns.

  Who was Douche Canoe? Who was Ben? Were they Spider’s men?

  Christian knew the answers to none of those questions. The only thing he was certain of was that he was holding Emily in his arms, and this time he wasn’t counting the seconds until he was forced to let her go. This time, there were no prime numbers. This time, he reveled that the incomparable Emily Scott was precisely where he’d always wanted her to be.

  * * *

  Saint Columb County Road…

  “Oh shit! Oh shit!” Ben shrieked. “I can’t believe I killed him!”

  Fury had a red film falling in front of Lawrence’s eyes when he whipped his SUV behind a billboard advert of some prick in a cowboy hat hawking Milkybars. The placement of the signage seemed ridiculous since they were on a narrow service road that couldn’t see more than a handful of cars even on its best day. Nosing his vehicle into the bushes, Lawrence winced at the screech of branches against the paint.

  Goddamn Ben! Goddamn Ben! Not only had Lawrence’s cockup of a brother shot a man in cold blood—a man who wasn’t Christian Watson—but now Lawrence’s brand-new Peugeot was taking a beating because of the appearance of Ben’s latent homicidal tendencies.

  Slamming his SUV into Park, Lawrence turned on his younger brother. “You sodding wanker!” he roared. “Why did you have to go and shoot that bastard?”

  Instead of answering, Ben glanced around, his eyes rolling wildly. “What are you doing?” His face was a dark shade of red. Ben had a vein that ran up the center of his forehead like a garden snake. When he got mad or scared, it grew to the size of an anaconda. “We don’t need to hide! We need to get the feck out of here!”

  “And go where?” Lawrence gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. “You wanna hop a flight and flee the country? And then what? Live on what money?”

  “Jesus.” Ben rubbed a shaking hand over his face. “I’m buggered. I’m well and truly buggered.”

  “Yeah, mate,” Lawrence agreed. “And you’ve buggered me as well. You’re a murderer, and I’m an accomplice.” He posed his initial question again. “Why did you hafta go and shoot him?”

  “Didn’t mean to. Was an accident.” Ben looked like a wild Scottish pony ready to bolt. “I was nervous. Didn’t expect you to act like you were gonna slot Watson.”

  It hadn’t been an act.

  In that moment, fury—and the memory of their older brother—had outweighed all of Lawrence’s rational thoughts. That Watson had been standing there, so defiant, so arrogant, when the eldest Michelson brother couldn’t because he was rotting six feet underground—not to mention what had happened after the Michelsons had covered his casket in dirt—had struck Lawrence as the ultimate injustice. He had been determined to balance the scales. An eye for an eye, and damn the consequences.

  He hadn’t snapped out of his bloodthirsty trance until he heard Ben’s weapon bark and turned to see some wanker in a white shirt go down like a sack of potatoes.

  “And those blokes…” Ben shuddered. “Did you see how quickly they moved? That whole time I thought we were seconds away from having them waylay us and turn our own weapons against us. When I heard that door open and that guy shout…” He swallowed. “Instinct took over. I protected my six and took a shot before I had time to think.”

  “And a helluva shot it was.”

  “You say that like it’s a good thing.”

  “Not good that you’ve screwed us over, but good that all those hours at the firing range paid off.”

  Ben laughed, but it wasn’t a happy sound. “I guess they did, didn’t they?”

  “Yeah.” Lawrence shook his head in wonder. Of all the things for his twat of a little brother to excel at. Too bad it’d landed them in a world of trouble. “But now we gotta figure out what we’re gonna do.”

  “I could say it was self-defense.”

  Lawrence snorted. “With five witnesses who will claim the contrary? Not sure any jury will believe you, Brother.”

  Ben shook his head. It caused a curl of hair to flop over his left eyebrow, reminding Lawrence of when Ben was a boy with big eyes and a penchant for lying in their back garden to watch the butterflies flit around their mother’s rosebushes. The two eldest Michelson boys had always been sword fighting with sticks or playing at being soldiers by hiding in the bushes and ambushing their fat tabby cat, but Ben had been the gentle soul. The dreamer.

  All the anger drained from Lawrence in that moment. He knew without a doubt that he would do whatever it took t
o save Ben’s sorry hide. He hadn’t been there for his older brother. He would make up for that by being there for his younger one.

  “But wait…” The fire of an idea sparked in Ben’s eyes. “We could say we went to Port Isaac to confront Watson about our brother after we saw the news program. And then we could say we heard the explosion and saw Watson and his mates acting suspicious. And then we could say we decided to follow ’em to see what they were on about. We could say that when we saw they were about to hop a flight and flee the country, we thought it was our duty as constables to stop them and ask them some questions. We can say one of ’em attacked me, and in the confusion, I fired a wild shot and accidentally slotted that bloke. It’s close enough to the truth to be believable.”

  Ben looked altogether pleased with himself. But the merits of his argument flew out the window when the sound of an engine reached Lawrence’s ear and a flash of green caught his eye.

  The old truck.

  Watson and his friends were loaded inside and flying down the access road like the hounds of hell were baying at their heels. They were fleeing the scene. They were fleeing the bloody scene!

  Suddenly, the solution to all Lawrence’s problems presented itself.

  He shoved his Peugeot into gear and slowly backed from behind the billboard, careful to wait until the farm truck was too far ahead to see his maneuver. Once he could barely keep sight of the vehicle, he stomped on the gas in pursuit.

  “What the hell?” Ben blinked in astonishment.

  “Your idea ’bout how to handle things is good.” Lawrence gave his brother only half a mind. He was too busy getting details sorted. “But I have one better.”

  “What’s that?” To say Ben’s tone was leery would be an understatement.

  “We kill ’em all. Get rid of the witnesses.”

  “Oh Jesus.” Ben turned as white as a ghost.

  “Best leave him outta this one, little brother.” The fire of upcoming battle burned through Lawrence’s veins. Watson would pay. Watson and all those with him would bloody well pay! Lawrence had already lost his family because of that fecking tosser. He refused to lose his freedom too. “Today, we do the devil’s work.”

  * * *

  “Who the hell were those guys?” Emily demanded.

  She was shaking. But she wasn’t sure if it was because she was soaking wet. Because she’d recently been oh-so-lucky to have her head introduced to the business end of a loaded weapon. Or because Christian had kissed her, and as a result, her whole world had gone wonky.

  Surely it wasn’t that third thing. In the universe of kisses, his hadn’t been all that groundbreaking. In fact, she’d barely had time to react when he’d pulled back, looked at her like she’d kneed him in the gnads, and then swore it would never happen again.

  Of course, she couldn’t deny his lips had been hot and dominant. Truth was, she couldn’t recall ever being kissed like that before. It was part possession, part concession. All need.

  So, yeah. Okay. Maybe in the universe of kisses, his had been pretty groundbreaking. And if he’d given her a damn second to get over her shock, she could have sunk in and enjoyed his oral onslaught while simultaneously conducting one of her own.

  A voice in her head piped up, reminding her of what had happened the last time she’d decided to throw caution to the wind and knock boots with a coworker. It was interrupted by Christian saying, “All we know for certain is that they’re brothers.”

  “And likely Spider’s men,” Angel added.

  Christian’s tone was skeptical when he said, “Perhaps. But when I brought up Spider, neither of them flinched. And what did that one say? Something about me being responsible?”

  “Maybe they’re just good actors,” Ace suggested. “And all of that about you being responsible could be because they’re blaming you for what happened last week. For being part of the team that took down Spider’s money launderer.”

  “Perhaps,” Christian said again.

  “So what the flippin’ freak are we supposed to do now?” Emily asked. “And, Angel, why are you going the wrong way? Shouldn’t we be headed back in the direction we came?”

  “The authorities will come that way. So we go this way,” Angel said.

  “Right.” She nodded. “And hope this road doesn’t dead end and screw us over royally.”

  “It doesn’t dead end. It turns into a proper provincial lane about a mile ahead, meanders through the countryside for another three miles, and then splits into a Y,” Christian said. “If we go right once we’re there, we’ll be on our way toward the motorway. If we go left, we’ll end up at Trenor Manor.”

  Emily frowned back at him. “First of all, how did you know all that? You a walking GPS or something? And second of all, what’s Trenor Manor?”

  “When I was a boy, my parents used to bring me ’round this way after visiting my uncle in Port Isaac. As for Trenor Manor, it’s an old Elizabethan manor house. It’s been kept up by the National Trust for years. They used to give tours a few hours each day.”

  “The motorway it is,” Ace said determinedly.

  “But first we need to exchange this vehicle for another. If the truck has not been reported stolen yet, it soon will be,” Angel added in that stiff, overly formal way he had of speaking. Emily knew it was an affectation. Angel was careful with slang, contractions, accent, anything that would give anyone an idea where he was originally from. “The local police will start looking for it by combing through CCTV footage,” he continued. “The last thing we want is to be spotted in this thing.”

  “And then what?” she asked. “Do we rent a motel room and lie low?”

  “Too risky.” Ace shook his head. “We don’t want some front-desk clerk to hear from the local news that a pilot was shot at the airport. He or she might decide that the five soaking wet people who checked into Room 8B seem suspicious and call the local five-o.”

  “Right,” Rusty agreed. “Better to stay off the grid. I say we find some field or derelict underpass to park under, then stay put and do our best impression of a can of sardines until tomorrow.”

  The thought of spending the rest of the day and all night wedged into the stolen truck out in the middle of nowhere—with nothing to eat, nothing to drink, nowhere to wash up or change into dry clothes—had Emily’s top lip curling in distaste. Not that she expected room service or silk sheets when running for her life, but still…

  She suddenly wished she’d eaten a few more slices of bacon for breakfast. And maybe said yes for once to a helping of baked beans.

  Had she remembered to restock the granola bars in her backpack?

  Christian checked the time on his big, black diver’s watch. “I might have a better idea.” He tugged his phone from his hip pocket and brought up his mobile web browser.

  “What are you thinking?” Emily asked, wiggling into a more comfortable position.

  Christian wasn’t exactly a contender for the title of Most Comfortable Lap. He was far too solid. Too hot. Even the freezing rainwater soaking her clothes wasn’t enough to combat the sheer magnitude of the heat coming off him.

  Glancing over her shoulder, she expected an answer to her question. But instead, she discovered herself on the receiving end of the most sexually aggressive, completely carnal, totally hungry looks she’d ever seen.

  Her breath sawed out of her so fast it almost hurt. Then the look on his face was gone, and she was left wondering if she’d imagined it in the first place.

  She convinced herself that of course she had. Given her poor performance when he lip-locked her, there was no way he was considering a repeat. Which, okay, yeah, that made her pride prick up. She was overcome by the oddest urge to grab his ears and lay a doozy on him. You know, just to prove she could.

  “I’m thinking there’s a way we can avoid the motorway, avoid being crammed into a motel room or t
his truck, and instead each have our own bed tonight,” he said, and she found her eyes glued to the dimple in his chin. She’d always wanted to press a finger into it.

  “Color me intrigued,” she said.

  “Trenor Manor is in the middle of nowhere. It’s nestled back in a thick wood. And according to the website”—he pointed to the screen on his phone—“the house should be empty of sightseers in ten minutes. If things are still run as they were twenty-five years ago, the caretaker will lock up and set off soon after. We could break in and stay until the place opens up at oh-nine-hundred tomorrow.”

  A manor house set back in a thick wood? Emily got the oddest impression that she was poised to enter a fairy tale. Would the clock and teapot come alive? Would she find herself dancing around in a yellow ball gown?

  Beneath Christian’s smooth facade definitely lurked a beast. Trouble was, no amount of makeup or hair product would ever turn her into Beauty. She had none of the soft curves or cushiony flesh that men seemed to go goo-goo-gah-gah over. Well, except for maybe her ass. Any extra weight she carried seemed to end up there. But even if you took her out of her leggings and sweatshirt and slapped on some lip gloss and mascara, the most she could hope for was passably pretty.

  “It could work.” Ace’s expression was contemplative. “As long as we could get in and disarm the alarm system. I mean, this place has to have an alarm system, right?”

  “Hi.” Emily waved to Ace. Then she pointed to Angel. “Have you met Angel? I don’t think he’s met an alarm system he can’t disarm.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence.” Angel took his eye off the road to glance into the rearview mirror. If she hadn’t been watching him, she might have missed the slight narrowing of his eyes.

  “What?” She tried to glance through the back window, only to be met with one of Christian’s perfected scowls.

  Obviously she had imagined that carnal, hungry look on his face earlier. Because now his fierce green eyes held a familiar irritation that raised her hackles.