Pursuit

by ROBARDS, KAREN

  A moment later, her heart leaped into her throat as she realized he ’d found the bicycle.

  “Goddamn it, Jess! Answer me!” It was a roar that seemed to echo off the trees. He looked up again, scanning the darkness, the flashlight beam skimming the feathery tops of the grass. “Jess!”

  The flashlight lowered, circled, paused, then moved in her direction with uncanny accuracy. Jess realized to her horror that he was following the trail she ’d left through the grass. He would find her in a matter of minutes. If she ran, he would catch her. He was bigger and stronger and faster and in her present state she had no hope, no prayer, of getting away.

  Plus, he had a gun.

  At the thought, she broke out into a cold sweat.

  Maybe you can trust him. . . .

  “Jess!” He headed toward her unerringly, the flashlight beam leading the way. Her pulse thundered in her ears. Her chest tightened.

  He’s done everything he can to keep you alive so far. . . .

  He was still coming and was now just a few yards away. She could hear the crunch of grass beneath his feet above the pounding in her ears.

  “Ryan? Is that you?” She stood up on rubbery legs.

  “Jess?”

  He closed the distance between them in two long strides, caught her elbows, and pulled her against him, wrapping her tightly in his arms, hugging her close. She allowed herself to rest against him because there was no other choice, then found herself taking momentary insane comfort in the solid warmth of his body, in the muscular strength of his arms around her. If she hadn’t been leery about trusting him, she realized she would have been so glad to see him she would be dizzy with it. Much as she hated to acknowledge it, his arms felt right around her. Despite everything, she discovered that in them was just exactly where she wanted to be.

  “You scared the absolute shit out of me! Are you all right?”

  Her heart still pounded like a trapped bird’s. Her cheek nestled into his wide chest and her arms circled his firm waist while her mind raced a mile a minute, trying to decide what to do. His gun was in its holster at his waist; she could feel the hard protrusion of it hidden beneath his shirt. Comforting—or scary? She breathed in the scent of him—powder fresh, a hint of musk—as she realized that choice had been taken from her. Since she had no reasonable hope of getting away, she had to trust him . . . or at least pretend to.

  God, she wanted to be able to trust him.

  “Where are your friends?” she asked, her voice only slightly unsteady.

  Grasping her upper arms, Ryan pushed her away from him a little and looked down at her. If she hadn’t been wearing her heels he would have towered over her, and she still had to tilt her head back to see up into his face. She couldn’t read his expression: The night was too dark. She doubted that he was having any more success with hers.

  “Where do you think? Out looking for you.” There was a definite edge to his voice. “Wendell went upstairs to take a shower and felt cold air blowing out from under your door. She checked on you, and guess what? The window was open. You were gone. I take it you left voluntarily? Nobody dragged you out by your hair or anything?”

  “Could we talk about this somewhere else, please?” He was alone in the car, she was almost positive. Still, she was having hideous visions of one of the others showing up at any second. Driving away in his car with him felt a whole lot safer than standing here in the great outdoors waiting for that to happen.

  “That’s probably the best idea you’ve had all night.”

  Grabbing her hand, he started walking back toward the RAV4. Considering that her legs felt about as sturdy as rubber bands and her back ached like a sore tooth and she was so tired she felt wilted, keeping up was hard to do.

  “You okay?” He glanced back as she stumbled.

  “Yeah. They’re not, like, right behind you or anything, are they?” She kept walking even though it required a major effort of will, looking back up the road for any sign of another vehicle.

  His grip on her hand tightened. “Something about that make you nervous?”

  “I don’t trust them.”

  “Is that why you . . . ? Never mind. We ’ll have this conversation in a minute. Get in the car.”

  They had reached the SUV by that time. He opened the passenger-side door and watched her sink into the seat with more relief than she hoped showed. She hurt in places she hadn’t known she could hurt.

  “Stay put.” He shut the door on her. Shivering from some combination of cold and nerves, Jess cast a quick glance at the ignition—no keys. Not that she had expected to get that lucky. Would she really have driven away and left him there beside the road anyway? She didn’t even have to think about that: Yes, she would.

  Her life was on the line here. And just whose side he was on was still very much up in the air. The question was, how much did she tell him when he got back in the car? If she went with the truth, the whole truth, told him how deeply she felt the Secret Service was implicated in this, would he openly turn into the bad guy she feared he secretly might be?

  The interior light flashed on as he opened the back cargo door, making her jump. He lifted the bicycle inside and closed it again. A moment later the driver’s-side door opened and he slid in beside her, tossing her purse into her lap. By the car’s interior light, she could see that he was looking tired, stubbly, and decidedly grumpy. Angry, even.

  “Thanks.”

  “So talk.” He gave her an assessing look as he closed the door and thrust the key into the ignition.

  “Like I said, I don’t trust your friends.”

  “I kind of gathered that.”

  It was once again dark inside the car. That didn’t stop her from admiring the clean, classical lines of his profile. She was just like her mother, she realized dismally: a fool for good-looking men. Getting a glimpse of herself in the sideview mirror, she was reminded that she was still wearing her glasses. Well, so be it.

  “You didn’t tell them what I told you?” Not that she supposed it mattered now. At least one of them clearly already wanted to kill her, and giving him an additional motive wouldn’t make her any more dead. Ryan shot an unsmiling glance at her.

  “Did you think I would?”

  “I wasn’t sure.”

  Hesitating, Jess thought frantically. Should she tell him the rest? Of course, if he was a bad guy, she had already talked way too much and he already knew enough about what she knew to seal her fate. But she felt the opposite of threatened by him. In fact, she realized that somewhere deep inside, she was glad he had found her. Whether it was foolish or not, she felt safe with him.

  “Good to know.” There was a definite edge to his voice. The RAV4 had already pulled back onto the pavement and was starting to pick up speed as it headed back around the curve. With another glance at her, he turned on the heat and cranked it up, and she realized he must have noticed the fine tremors that shook her. “So, you want to tell me what you were thinking to do something as stupid as climbing out a window and deliberately running away from a protected environment?”

  “Just so you know, I wasn’t feeling all that protected.”

  “You think you’re safer out here? On your own? You’ve got to be nuts.” He sounded like his patience was wearing thin. “Just for the record, I about had a heart attack when Wendell told me you were missing. You know why? Because there may very well be a killer out here somewhere who’s just waiting his chance to take you out. If you’re right about the First Lady’s death, then you know what that makes you? The only thing standing in the way of somebody getting away with it.” He glanced at her. It was too dark to see his expression, but his tone left no doubt that he was getting angrier by the minute. “Jesus, I thought somebody had gotten to you.”

  He was driving too fast, handling the car like a weapon. The distance that she had covered on the bicycle was, she realized as the tires ate it up, really ridiculously short. Her heart started to speed up as they passed the place where s
he had made the phone call to Solomon. Another few minutes and Ryan’s driveway would come into view.

  She wrapped her arms around herself in an effort to banish the shivering, and saw his mouth tighten. Maybe she was making a mistake, but she was going to go with her gut and trust him. He ’d had ample opportunity, after all, and she wasn’t dead yet. And he’d cranked the heat. You didn’t crank the heat for a woman you were preparing to kill. She thought.

  “Okay, you want to know why I went out the window? Because I think one of the agents you brought in might be the person who attacked me in the hospital.”

  “What?” He cast an incredulous glance at her. A shaft of moonlight spilling in through the car window allowed her to see that he was frowning, disbelieving, and, yes, angry—but not suddenly self-conscious or guilty-looking, as she would have expected him to be if he had some kind of prior knowledge that what she was telling him was the truth.

  The hard knot in her stomach relaxed a little. The shivers started to ease. Trusting him just might have been the right thing to do.

  “I’ll tell you the whole story, but you’ve got to turn around first. I can’t go back to your house.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “Turn around.”

  There was a moment of silence during which Jess could feel the issue hanging in the balance. Then, thank God, he braked, turning the car around in another wide U-turn so that the tires crunched on the gravel berm. His driveway couldn’t have been more than a few minutes ahead.

  She let out a sigh of relief.

  “Okay, cut the crap.” He was still driving too fast, but at least it was in the right direction. This time Jess was thankful for the speed that ate up the distance. “Why would you think something like that?”

  “Because in the hospital, just as he started to put whatever was in that needle in my IV line, the person who attacked me said, ‘This will help you to go back to sleep, sugar.’ And tonight I heard that same voice say ‘sugar’ again. I woke up, had to go to the bathroom, and when I came out I was standing at the top of the stairs and heard him downstairs saying something like ‘It ’s not too early for breakfast, sugar.’”

  “You heard a man saying that? We’re talking Fielding or Matthews here?”

  “I’m not clear on the names. It was somebody who was downstairs in your house about twenty minutes ago. And I’m almost positive it was a man.”

  “I didn’t hear anybody say anything like that. Of course, I wasn’t with them all the time.”

  “I know what I heard.” Her tone dared him to doubt her.

  “Fielding or Matthews, then.” He paused, seeming to think it over, then shook his head. “That ’s not possible.”

  “What do you mean it’s not possible? It’s true.”

  “Do you know how many guys go around calling women ‘sugar’?”

  “It was exactly the same. Same voice, same intonation. What, do you think I’m imagining things again?” She put some bite into her voice on that last.

  They had passed the place where she ’d hidden from him now and were swooping on down in the direction of the 7-Eleven. Jess spared a passing thought for Solomon, who was undoubtedly barreling in their direction at that very moment. She still meant to give him his exclusive, although she was sure that Ryan was going to hit the roof when he found out she’d called a reporter despite his warning. Still, she had to rely on her own best judgment, and going public was the only thing she could think of that might have any chance of making this whole thing just go away. But maybe, after talking to Solomon, she would stay with Ryan until she felt safe again.

  If he would let her, that is.

  “If you believed that, why the hell didn’t you come tell me?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, maybe because you were downstairs with the person I heard saying ‘sugar’ and you’re a Secret Service agent, too?”

  “You thought it was a better idea to jump out a window and run away into the dark?”

  “I was kind of short on options.”

  “You should have come to me.” They were rounding another bend, and Jess saw, just faintly, the lights of I-95 glimmering in the distance. Soon they would be off the dark country road and heading toward—where? Time to work that out when she’d convinced him of this. “You know, I’ve known those three back there for years. They’re good people.”

  “One of them isn’t.” Jess realized she was no longer shivering. The heat was working—and so was the idea, however wrongheaded it might be, that she was safe with him. “Why are you having such a hard time believing me?”

  “There ’s never been a traitor in the Secret Service. Never.”

  “So this is something new. Get your mind around it. I’m telling the truth.”

  “I’m not saying you’re not. I’m just saying that maybe you’re mistaken. If one of those guys tried to kill you in the hospital, the reason would have to be to perpetuate some kind of cover-up of the First Lady’s death, which means they would have to be involved in that. I don’t buy it. I can’t.”

  To Jess’s ears, it sounded like he was trying to convince himself.

  “There ’s something else,” she said. “After the crash, those people I told you about who went rushing down past me with flashlights? The ones who surrounded the car and either set it on fire or watched it burn?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I think they were Secret Service agents, too.”

  Dead silence greeted that. Jess looked at him, trying to read his expression in the shifting darkness. All she could see was his profile, and all of a sudden it looked like it had been carved from stone.

  “Why would you think—?”

  Jess jumped as the “William Tell Overture” blared out of nowhere, interrupting. It took her a moment—and the sight of him digging his cell phone out of his pants pocket—to realize that it was his ringtone. It seemed to her that after looking at the caller ID he hesitated for a moment before he flipped the thing open and pressed the connect button.

  “Yeah?” he said into the phone.

  “You got your problem fixed yet?” The voice on the other end belonged to a man. It was faint and crackly and unknown to her, but Jess could hear every word.

  “Taken care of.”

  “You found her?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She with you now?”

  “Yeah.”

  Jess didn’t need the glance Ryan slanted at her to realize that she was the topic of conversation. She stiffened, watching him intently. From the brevity of his responses, Jess gathered that he didn’t realize she could hear both sides of the conversation.

  The voice continued. “She’s been talking. To a reporter.”

  Jess went cold with horror. How could anyone know that?

  “I don’t think so,” Ryan replied. They were nosing into a sharp curve, and Ryan tapped the brakes, slowing the car. Now she could almost see the individual trunks of the tall pines as they whipped past the window. Pale gray moonlight filtered in through the windshield, dappling the interior of the car. The changing light made him look like a stranger.

  “It ’s true. He ’s on his way to meet with her now.”

  The look Ryan directed at Jess was sharp. “What?”

  “Yep. There’s more going on here than you know. It stinks, but we’ve got to take care of this.”

  “I am taking care of it.”

  There was a stop sign at the bottom of the curve. She remembered it now: Stop at that sign, cross an intersection, and then they were on the road that led to I-95 and the 7-Eleven.

  The voice crackled again. “She can’t talk to any reporters.”

  Another glance came her way from Ryan, this one unmistakably grim. “She won’t. You have my word.”

  Jess thought she heard a sigh through the phone. “I’m afraid that ’s not good enough anymore. Why don’t you go on and take her back to your house? I’ll meet you there.”

  “How do you know I’m not at my house?” Ryan�
�s voice suddenly had an edge to it.

  There was the briefest of pauses. “I think you know the answer to that. You’ve always been a team player, Ryan. We appreciate it, too. Don’t think we don’t. And we ’ll remember this.”

  Jess watched Ryan’s hand tighten on the phone.

  “You have anything to do with what happened to Davenport and his secretary?” His tone had an ugly undernote now.

  Jess couldn’t help it. Her eyes widened on his face. She could feel her heart slamming against her rib cage. Her palms turned clammy and she wiped them on her skirt in response. They were almost at the stop sign, she saw out of the corner of her eye. The RAV4 was slowing down.

  “No. Hell, no. Look, just bring the woman back to your house. I’ll meet you there, and we ’ll talk this out.”

  Ryan glanced her way once more. His face was in shadow again, and she couldn’t read his expression at all.

  Oh, God, please let me be able to trust him. She was suddenly terrified that she ’d made a mistake, that she couldn’t, that she’d let her attraction to him cloud her judgment. Her mouth went dry at the thought.

  “Yeah, okay.” The ugliness was gone. He sounded perfectly normal again. “As long as we ’re both clear that talking is all we ’re going to do.”

  Jess took a deep breath. Her stomach plummeted clear down to her toes. She wasn’t letting him take her back to his house. No way in hell. She would be killed. She was as certain of that as she was that the sun would come up in about forty-five minutes.

  And Ryan was in on it. That thought was almost more horrifying than anything else.

  “Absolutely.” The man sounded relieved. “It’ll take me maybe half an hour to get there.”

  “All right.”

  “Keep her with you. Don’t let her out of your sight.”

  Ryan wasn’t looking at her now, but the new tension she could feel emanating from him in waves spoke volumes. “You got it.”

  His answer struck fear into her soul. There was absolutely no emotion in his voice at all. Coupled with the suddenly fraught atmosphere in the car, that told her everything she needed to know. Swallowing, she pulled her gaze away from him to their surroundings with real effort. A four-way stop. A small slope leading to a strip of tall grass like the one she had just hidden in, leading to a strip of woods. The woods couldn’t be very deep because of the road cutting through them that intersected this one in a T. Pass through the intersection, and you were on the road leading to the 7-Eleven. Solomon was waiting there, or would be soon. If she could just get to the 7-Eleven . . .