So, she sneaks out of her hotel room, and she goes for a drive.
A real long drive.
The hardest part is dodging the suits who follow her as soon as her Jaguar is on the road. Part of the whole appeal of a real long drive is not having guys sitting right behind her on the road with the glare of their headlights filling her car.
Losing them involves a few twists and turns, and she runs a few red lights. But after they’re lost in her rearview, she heads north, toward home. She’s got a place in Long Island and an apartment in the city, and either of those is better than pacing that gilded cage she’s staying at in DC.
An hour into her drive, she gets hungry for something more than the fear that’s been filling her belly, and she pulls off into an all-night diner that promises her greasy sandwiches and stout coffee.
The flow of coffee’s constant, but the sandwich takes a while. The waitress comes over three times, blushing profusely and apologizing.
“We’re just really backed up,” she says. Amelia’d be inclined to believe it if there were more people in the diner. But there’s just a family, a couple of teens at the counter, and a trucker.
The teens look over their shoulders to stare at her as if they know her, and she ducks her head, pours more cream into her coffee, and ponders skipping the sandwich.
Then, the kids pay and head out, and Amelia watches them for something to do. One of them goes to his car, while the other crosses the gravel lot to lean into the window of a car that’s only just come in.
Words are exchanged.
Cash too.
The kid straightens up, looks through the window of the diner straight at Amelia. She glances down at her coffee. She’s got her hands wrapped around the cup so tight the ceramic’s like to crack.
When she glances back up, the kid is gone and Laura God damned Wright is coming through the door of the diner. The bell rings overhead.
She’s dressed in something she must have worn to the office. Amelia herself operates in two modes—glamorous movie star and lady about to go weeding in the yard. But Laura…Laura’s just got the one mode. Sophisticated. Smart tailored dresses and perfect cashmere coats that don’t make her look like a sack.
It’d rankle Amelia if she wasn’t so damned head over heels for her.
When she’s close enough, Amelia hisses. “Did you really have two bobbysoxers spying on me?”
Laura chuckles. “More than two, actually. Any particular reason they had to follow you to Maryland?”
“I was bored.”
Laura brushes her coat aside to put one hand on her hip. She purses her lips.
Miraculously, Amelia’s sandwich arrives around the same time, and she opts to focus on it rather than the judgmental spy looming over her.
“Are you gonna sit,” she asks around a mouthful of patty melt, “or just keep standing there like a statue?”
“You’re being tried for treason—”
“Only haphazardly—”
“And stalked by federal agents—”
“Who I managed to lose—”
“And your first thought was, ‘Jolly holiday in Maryland’?”
The patty melt is definitely a two-hander, but Amelia switches to one hand so she can reach for her coffee and take another swig. In this particular moment she is playing the character of “flippant wunderkind” because if she doesn’t play that character, she’s pretty sure she’s gonna throw up all over the tabletop.
Jesus what was she thinking? She is being tried for treason. She promised a list that could get her killed. She is being stalked by federal agents—and bobbysoxers—and her sort of ex. A casual drive up to New York is not the wisest idea.
The flippant thing must work, because when she doesn’t respond, Laura huffs and collapses onto the bench across from her. “You can’t run,” she says, equal measures of urgency and sincerity. She looks at Amelia with those earnest dark eyes of hers. The same sort of look she gave her when she showed up in the Radio City Music Hall bathroom and professed her undying love.
Amelia swallows and sets the rest of the sandwich on the plate carefully. “I know.”
“So why all this?”
“I spend my whole life in front of cameras and microphones. Not really keen on it when I’m taking a dump.”
Laura wrinkles her nose. “Spectacular image there.”
“You asked.”
“Was it really the surveillance?”
“How screwed up is your life that you think I need more than that as a reason?”
Laura reaches across the table to snag Amelia’s coffee and take a sip. “Pretty exceptional currently. My husband gave me an ultimatum tonight.” It’s conversational. Laura’s always got a knack for taking the most terrifying of circumstances and churning out something… informal.
“How caveman,” Amelia says, “He threaten to cut off your allowance if you didn’t start shaping up?”
“No. He intimated, with stern looks, that he’d leave me if I chased after you.”
The look Laura gives her is enough to tell her how hung up on that marriage Laura isn’t. It also sets a furnace right in the center of Amelia, boiling away the last of her fear and replacing it with something much more pleasant.
“So, here you are,” Amelia says, surprised at how even her voice sounds. She crosses her ankles.
Laura’s just as even. She’s one of those steady gals. “Here I am.”
Amelia swallows. Looks down at her plate and offers the first piece of food she sees. “Pickle?”
They walk out of the diner together. Laura’s half a head taller than Amelia and keeps looking over at her as she scans the parking lot. She’s standing close too, and Amelia half expects her to put an arm around her waist as she escorts her to her car.
Amelia wouldn’t protest.
“You,” Amelia clears her throat, “you need a ride?”
Laura looks at her as if she’s a very pleasant little idiot. “No. I’ll follow in my car. In case any of the agents from the hotel catch up to us.”
“We’re an hour away.”
“Yes, and you’re driving a sports car of which there are, what? Twelve in the world?” Laura motions to Amelia’s Jaguar XK120. It’s ostentatious, a little manly, and it’s hers. She’s tweaked bits and pieces of it herself and has promised Clark Gable a race next time he gets his older one in town.
She grouses. “There’s more ’an twelve.”
“Not on this seaboard.” Suddenly Laura turns and puts both her hands on Amelia’s shoulders. It forces Amelia to look up at her, right in the eye, forces her to see how calm and confident Laura is, like a soldier out of her last picture. “I’ll be right behind you,” she says. “Nothing to it.”
“You’re making me a little nervous, Laura. Like they might do something to me if they catch me.”
She steps closer. Pushes Amelia back toward her car and into the darkness that surrounds it. Their thighs brush. Amelia’s insides leap, and she can just see the kiss Laura’s about to plant on her lips. So, she looks up at her eyes wide, lips parted.
“Not as long as I’m here,” she says, and she leans in to kiss Amelia but stops when another car pulls into the lot and an old man hobbles out.
As soon as she’s gone, Amelia feels colder, and she buttons up her coat and pops the collar before climbing into her car.
They drive.
Laura hangs back far enough that Amelia loses her on some of the bends. The idea is to, at minimum, make it to Pennsylvania before Amelia needs to sleep. She’s had enough coffee, and she’s hopped up on enough fear that it isn’t too outrageous an idea.
Until she sees the headlights winking in her rearview. The other car is coming up fast—and it’s not the Cadillac Laura was driving. S
he’s just got a hint of its shape and those headlights to go on, but she thinks it’s a Chevy.
Like one of the ones she lost back in DC.
They slow down to match her speed when they’re close enough. She gives her car some gas. The Chevy matches.
She slows down.
The Chevy doesn’t pass her.
Laura’s headlights aren’t in sight—there could be a lot of reasons for that—but Amelia’s not gonna drive like normal and hope Laura’s just a little farther behind.
She hooks it down a farm road.
The Chevy follows.
Then their car leaps forward with a roar and slams into her backend.
Amelia’s a good driver.
She’s been chased down by more cars that most can count, and she always, always, gets away.
But this time it’s late, she’s exhausted, and she’s being chased down by a car apparently rebuilt like a goddamned tank.
The odds that she used to be so good at tweaking to her favor are decidedly against her. So, when he catches up with her on another curve and smashes the front end of his tank into the back end of her zippy Jaguar, she goes into a skid she never planned for in this car.
Doesn’t matter how wide her tires are when they lock up and lose traction. The whole car slides off the road and down into the slippery grass—wet from that midnight dew.
It doesn’t flip. Thank God. A sports car like this has a low center of gravity and she manages to direct it just enough during the slide that the front end catches and crunches against a boulder instead of the side that would have flipped them.
But it hurts. The whole world rattles and scratches at her and then clangs to a stop that sends her heart, stomach, and the rest of her insides right into her mouth.
She’s gotta go. She’s gotta get away. She tries to turn the car’s engine over, but it’s tick tick ticking and hissing like the radiator and engine block are both cracked.
She beats the steering wheel.
Stops.
Getting mad’s not gonna keep her alive.
There’s the creak of the other car coming to a stop, followed by doors opening and gravel crunching under expensive shoes.
Her headlights are smashed but theirs aren’t. They’re illuminating a field on the other side of the boulder. Freshly planted with big ol’ corridors of dirt that she knows will be a horror show to run through in her heels.
There’s something wet in her eyes—right below where her headache’s developing. She wipes it away. Doesn’t look at her hand because she doesn’t need to see the blood that’s likely darkening it.
She couldn’t have worn loafers tonight? Loafers would have made sense. And been comfortable. And—
A weapon. She needs something to fight these guys with.
Or a friend. A friend might be nice. Laura driving up like the cavalry and talking these fellas out of whatever murderous plans they’re harboring.
But beyond that one car there’s just the night.
Goddamn it, Laura.
“Put the gun away,” one of the men says. “No shooting her.”
“But she’s still alive.”
“But it’s got to look like an accident, you idiot. Bullet holes aren’t an accident.”
“So what—we beat her to death?”
Okay. Okay. Jesus.
Okay Amelia’s got a lump forming on her forehead and everything’s a little foggy, but the two goons who ran her off the road are definitely planning to kill her. Kill her real dead.
And it’s just Amelia.
Maybe about to die.
She carefully—quietly—undoes the seatbelt latch and reaches for the door. If there’s no plan to use guns, then they’ll have to chase her down.
She swallows because wow is everything wobbly.
She can run for it.
The whole car shakes as one of the goons falls into it.
Then there’s grunting and groaning and the sound of a fist hitting a sack of meat.
Amelia turns around in her seat and watches as Laura Wright beats the ever loving shit out of two men twice her size.
All while in heels.
As fights go—Amelia hasn’t seen many outside of a ring—it’s vicious and quick. Laura’s all efficient with eyes alight like murder.
Watching her repeatedly bash a man’s head into the side of a car, she can just catch a glimpse of the resistance leader and spy that made the war a living hell.
She stops her savage beating when Amelia finally climbs out of the car. The two of them stare at each other. Laura’s hand is wrapped around an unconscious man’s collar and her knuckles are all bruised, and Amelia just stands there, clutching her bag and working like hell to keep herself upright.
Because things. Things are real wrong. Like standing up too fast from the couch. Or walking ’round with a fever.
Laura suddenly looks very concerned. Her lips form a wide O of surprise, and then she disappears as darkness sort of grapples with Amelia’s head…
Shit.
She’s fainting.
Amelia’s gonna blame it on the head wound.
When she comes to again, she’s wrapped up in Laura’s coat, and it smells like heaven come down to earth. Laura’s got one hand on the wheel, and the other on Amelia’s shoulder.
“What’d I miss,” Amelia asks.
Laura must have been tense, because suddenly she deflates. “Thank God. I thought you were…I was worried.”
“Maldonados have hard heads.”
“I’m aware.”
She tries to twist in her seat to look around but regrets it and settles back against the cushion and her nice cocoon of Laura’s coat. “Where’s my car?”
“Back where you crashed.”
“Where are we?”
The curve of Laura’s smile then is intoxicating. The kind of endearing little thing Amelia could happily spend half her life trying to see again and again. “Not there,” Laura says.
“You saved me.” Usually, it’s Amelia doing the saving of people.
There’s a stiffness in the curve of that smile now. “I promised you I would.”
CHAPTER 21
When she wakes up again, the car’s stopped, and she’s all alone. Garish green light comes in through the glass from a big sign overhead. She has to twist to see the whole sign.
A motel.
They’ve stopped for the night.
Laura comes out of the lobby, slapping a brochure in her hand and looking somewhere between wildly irritated and exhausted. She opens Amelia’s door without asking and then sighs.
“You’re awake.”
Very obvious.
She kneels by Amelia’s seat, and her hand goes up to her hairline. “How do you feel? Dizzy still? Woozy?”
Amelia feels as if a tank parked on her head. She grumbles as much, and Laura ducks into the car to press warm lips to her temple. Amelia can’t stop herself from leaning in to the touch.
Laura doesn’t carry her to the room, but she keeps a hand around her waist and holds her close.
All it took to get her to cuddle was a little attempted murder.
She’s real gentle as she puts Amelia to bed. She carefully removes her shoes before she brings the blanket up under her chin.
Then she pushes the one chair in the room in front of the door, sits in it, and stares at the door to the bathroom as if it’ll burst open any minute and bad guys will come in with guns a-blazing.
“Can’t be a comfortable way to sleep.”
Laura’s even got a gun out. A shiny looking pistol clutched in one hand. “Technically, I’m in the room next door.”
“For appearances.” Amelia assumes.
Laura nods.
“You’re just gonna sit there all night?”
“If they come again, I want to be ready.”
“I can think of more comfortable places to be ready from.”
Laura’s shoulders shift. “I’m half the reason for this mess,” she says quietly.
Amelia just pats the few inches of mattress between her and the edge and gives Laura her best “come hither” stare. The one that got her labeled a sexpot for the whole summer of 1948.
That shatters a little of the resolve Laura’s built since their reunion stopped being flirty and turned deadly. Laura trudges over to the bed as if she’s headed down the corridor to the electric chair.
She’s real careful about removing her shoes, taking each one off by hand and placing it on the floor at the foot of the bed. Then she goes and puts a pillow between ’em before she takes her seat on the mattress.
“Afraid I’ll make a move?” Amelia scratches at the fluffy barrier between them.
Laura’s gone prim. “Just being polite.”
Amelia pats the pillow. “I don’t bite.”
“I want to keep my eye on the door.”
If she’s got her gaze on Laura and not on the door, it’s almost easy to forget about the killers. She can almost wrap herself up in Laura’s presence like she was wrapped in her coat earlier. She curls up into a little ball and hugs the blanket to her shoulders. “You really think they’ll come?”
“We’re no longer on a main road, and we’re no longer headed north, so the odds are more in our favor.”
“The gun probably helps.”
“They’ll be armed as well, and now that their first attempt didn’t succeed, they might be—”
“More inclined to shoot me in the head.”
“I’m sorry.” It’s a very sincere apology, as if Laura’s to blame, which is fair. The timing of the original accusations is just too good to not assume Amelia’s being targeted because she’s Laura’s “friend.”
The Lavender List Page 17