“That one’s never going to start,” Jamie said. “That’s a male. Reason he’d have been free, eh.”
“Oh,” Karen said. “Really, Debbie? You’re a boy? How can you tell?”
“If it were a female, you’d have tossed her out the window by now,” Jamie said. “She’d be that loud. The females do all the talking, and they’re named ‘call ducks’ because they call to other ducks. Traitor ducks, more like, lead their mates straight into the trap.”
“Well, shoot,” Karen said. “I wanted her to be a girl. Oh, well. She’ll—he’ll—have to earn his keep by being adorable. Hear that, Debbie? That’s your job.” In response, Debbie-the-boy-duck peeped.
“Oh, aye,” Jamie said. “Affectionate little buggers, call ducks. Easy pickings, though, small as they are. Best have a stout pen for him at home. That where you’re headed?”
I shot a look at him. Second time he’d asked that. Karen said, “I was worrying about that. Because—no. We’re going to be camping out for quite a few days. We’re—”
I said, “How do we keep him from running off during the day? You seem to know your ducks. Got a suggestion?”
“Dead easy,” he said. “A bit of temporary fencing, and Bob’s your uncle. Take him inside at night for now, maybe. Put some bedding in the box so he can settle down and you can change it when it’s dirty, and you’re golden.”
“We don’t have any fencing,” Karen said.
“Aw, no?” Jamie said. “We could stop and get you some. Wouldn’t want the little fella getting lost. Here. I’ll find a place. Earn my keep, eh.” He pulled out his phone and started tapping away.
That was how we ended up in Mitre 10 in Thames, once Jamie had directed me around the side where there was more shade, and had suggested we lower all the windows in the car to halfway in order to keep Debbie cool, which defeated the purpose of locking the doors, but what the hell. We wouldn’t be long, and it was Thames, one of the sleepier towns on a sleepy peninsula. It was also how we ended up with Jamie climbing three tiers up the floor-to-ceiling shelving in a manner that had me putting my hand over his face, envisioning him bringing the whole thing down. Now, he tucked six two-meter lengths of plastic fencing under his arm like they weighed nothing, jumped down again with a force that threatened to knock the whole place flat, said, “Connectors,” and grabbed a fistful of plastic packages.
“No,” I said, and picked up a roll of flexible fencing instead. “That’s not fitting in the car. We’ll do this.” I found rods that stuck into the earth, and some clips to fasten it all together. Calm and sure, that was the ticket. I wasn’t fighting over duck fencing. I also wasn’t entirely sure why he was putting my back up, but it was happening.
“Right,” Jamie said. “Suit yourself. Shavings next, for bedding, so you aren’t smelling duck all night. You’ll want some feed as well. And maybe a couple dishes for food and water. Get a dishpan, like, and the duck can swim in it. Over here.”
He set off, abandoning his fencing panels right there in the aisle, and Karen called, “Wait. We need to put them back, and Jax can’t climb, not with his leg.”
Tasks that involved heaps of knee-bending weren’t the easiest, but that didn’t make it any more wonderful to hear. Why were we climbing shelves anyway? Also—what the bloody hell was going on?
“Oh, right,” Jamie said, turning back. “I’ve got it.” Up he went again, and I handed up the panels silently, got a grin from him in return, and started to get a prickling sensation at the back of my neck.
I didn’t feel anything violent from him, which made it odd. And yet—I trusted that prickle.
“If you’d chosen a more practical car,” Karen told me, “we could have put the fencing in the trunk.”
“Nah,” Jamie said. “That car’s a beauty. My dad’s got that same one. It’ll cost you a fair dollar, now. What’s that go for, two hundred thousand?”
“Wait,” Karen said. “Are you rich, too? Is everybody rich?”
“I’m not rich,” Jamie said. “My family’s rich.”
Karen said, “Tell me your dad’s the laird.”
“He is that,” he said.
“Is there a castle?” she asked.
“Oh, aye. A drafty one, mind.”
Karen said, sounding absent-minded, “I had a thing about an English lord when I was sixteen. I was planning on marrying him.”
“You were going to get married at sixteen?” I asked.
“I was precocious. Also, he was imaginary.”
I looked at Jamie, then back at her, and told her, “Go wait in the car.”
Her eyes did some shifting around of their own. “We do still need shavings,” she said slowly. “And feed.”
“I’ll get them. Go wait in the car.”
Jamie said, “What are you on about, mate? Stay here, Karen.” He put out a hand and grabbed her upper arm.
She froze for a moment, then said, her voice tight, “No, I think I’ll wait in the car.”
Jamie didn’t let go of her. I didn’t look at him, just shot a fist straight into his solar plexus before he could notice me thinking about it. As soon as he doubled over, I took Karen’s hand and said, “Let’s go.”
We went. Out the front doors of Mitre 10 and around to the side of the building. That was when I started to run. Both car doors were open, and so was the boot, exactly like I should have anticipated. Duffels lay on the pavement, spilling their contents, my wetsuit was flung down like a shapeless body, and Debbie’s box had been tipped out and was lying on its side. A backpack that didn’t belong to either of us sat on the ground, no doubt ready to receive anything worth taking, and Debbie was wandering around amongst the cars, peeping loudly and looking as nervous as it was possible for a duck to look.
As we approached, one fella turned from his interested perusal of the car boot, caught sight of us, grabbed the backpack, and took off. Karen kicked off her jandals and went after him barefoot. I shouted her name, and absolutely nothing happened in response.
The other fella had half his body in the back seat and hadn’t seen us coming. He got the idea, though, when I grabbed him by the waistband and hauled him out.
He could’ve fought. He didn’t. Instead, he wriggled out of my grasp and ran around the back like the hounds of hell were after him, which they were. It was the same direction the other bloke and Karen had gone, and he jumped a fence like he knew where he was going. I was after him, already leaping, grabbing at the top, cursing the leg, but even as I did it, Karen came pelting up on the other side, said, “Here,” and handed me the backpack.
She was a mess again, I saw as I helped haul her over. Her forearm was covered with red scrapes, and both her palm and the knee she’d hurt rescuing Dougie had gravel embedded in them.
I asked, “All right? What did you do?”
“Caught up with him and tackled him, of course,” she said, breathing hard and looking fierce. “Same thing you would’ve done. I may also have kicked him in the kidneys and the face, which you wouldn’t have done. Ow. Never tackle on asphalt. Or kick somebody in the face barefoot. I think I broke my toe. They took my tablet and my camera. Bastards. That’s why I kicked. Ow, my feet.”
I had one eye on her and the other on the car, in case “Jamie” came back. He didn’t, which wasn’t a huge surprise. I was fairly sure he’d have run off as fast as his oversized legs would carry him, the moment the plan had turned to custard.
Karen didn’t seem to be remembering him at all. She followed the direction of my gaze, said, “Oh, no. Debbie!” and started to run again. With a limp. I went with her, found the duck wandering between two other cars and peeping, and handed him over.
“Aw,” Karen said, cuddling him. “Poor Debbie. That was pretty scary, huh? You’ve had a bad day, but it’s all going to get better now. I’m going to be much smarter from now on, you’ll see.”
I started cleaning up the mess, putting gear back into duffels, and after a moment, Karen said, “Right, he was over the t
op. Especially naming himself ‘Jamie.’ The red hair, and the accent? The laird was too much. I was getting it, finally, though I just thought he was having some fun. How did you get it faster?”
“Explosives isn’t just about the technology,” I said, starting to load the car again. “It’s about the eyes. There’s a person wearing that suicide vest or driving that truck, and you need to know what he’ll do. There’s no clutch in a car with a semi-automatic transmission, which he’d know if he’d actually ever seen one, and he thought in New Zealand dollars. Also, the chief of Clan MacDougall isn’t a man, it’s a woman. We did a joint training exercise with the Highlanders regiment once. The chief of the clan does have at least one son, but he doesn’t have that accent. Rich boys, even Highlanders, go to posh schools.”
“Good memory,” she said. “To remember his name.”
“Possibly.”
“But you knew before that,” she said. “When he was asking whether we were going home. The second time he said something about that? That was when you changed.”
“Ah. You heard that, too. It was a niggle, that’s all. And I started thinking about how well he knew Mitre 10, maybe, and why we had the car parked around the side. Pity that wasn’t until we were inside.”
“I heard it, too,” she said slowly. “I didn’t pick up on it fast enough, and I should have. Hemi worries about his wife and kids. He used to worry about me, but I’m not that much of a target. All I really do is be quiet online, and I’m not even sure that’s necessary anymore. I have a different name than the rest of them, and anyway, the bad guys wouldn’t be sure he’d pay.” She put that out there like it didn’t matter, but I thought it did. “He has a driver who taught me a few things, though.”
“Like not to pick up hitchhikers,” I said.
I could swear she winced. It could have been the scrapes, or it could have been something else. Thinking about impulsivity, maybe. Thinking about judgment. “Yeah,” she said. “Nobody will be happy to hear about that. I’m not that happy myself. We have to call the cops, and hand over the backpack, but I sure wish we could just drive off and leave it behind. I thought it was OK. It’s New Zealand, not Philadelphia, and I thought—I’ll just go ahead for once. There can’t be anything wrong with somebody that big, I thought. He’s too recognizable. Like somebody with a facial tattoo.”
She’d put Debbie back in his box and was folding clothes hastily and stuffing them back into her duffel, her movements quick and jerky. Toiletries as well, all of them scattered around like the blokes had emptied bags by the fistful, which they probably had. No silk or lace to be found, and nothing as stirring as that black bra she was wearing today, probably because this was meant to be an adventure outing. Red and purple and blue cotton undies and bras, that was all, showing nothing but a fondness for color, and a few tampons spilling out of a box. A comb, a lipstick, and a pink case that was probably something pretty intimate. All of it looking too personal, lying there. Like a violation, possibly.
She went on, her voice tight with the effort to keep it from trembling, “I hate that he went through my clothes. I hate that he touched my underwear. Why should that matter? And you don’t have to say it. I was stupid. I’m from New York. I know ‘wrong’ when it’s in front of me, or I should. Jamie texted a friend, because of your car. Because of me.”
“Target of opportunity,” I said. “Here. Maybe it’ll be better if I pick up those things for you. What d’you reckon? Better than one of those blokes being the last to touch them?”
She sat back on her heels with a sigh and ran a hand through her hair. “Yeah. It shouldn’t matter, but . . . it would help.” She watched me tucking the tampons back into their box, and her throat moved as she swallowed.
There it was again, that glimpse of something wounded, something naked. In another second, she’d start talking and cover it up again. That was one of the worst things about crime. The way it left its victims feeling guilty and ashamed, like they were the ones who’d done something wrong. The way it made them second-guess and doubt themselves.
I could be going through a bit of that myself. I didn’t want to tell her how I’d felt when Jaime’s hand had closed over her upper arm, or when I’d been running after her, not knowing what would happen when she caught up to the bloke in the lead. Or when his mate joined them. The adrenaline was making me do some shaking myself, and I was used to it.
I didn’t want to tell her? I needed to tell her. She needed to hear it. “I’m guessing I feel the same way you do,” I said. “Questioning my judgment. Wondering why I didn’t catch on quicker, and what I could’ve let you in for. The worst was when you ran off, and the other bloke ran as well.”
“It wasn’t your fault, though,” she said. “It was mine.”
“I let Jamie into the car,” I said. “I don’t much want to share this episode myself.” I tucked the last bra into the duffel and zipped it shut. “Say we both made a mistake. Say there was no harm done. We’re not the ones waiting for a knock on the door, hoping the cops don’t show up. We’re all good.”
She was trying to roll up my wetsuit now, but her hands were shaking, and she wasn’t looking at me. “You’re being kind.”
“No,” I said. “I’m being somebody who’s made his own mistakes. The ones you make from a generous heart are the least of them.”
She took a deep breath, finished with the wetsuit, and handed it to me. Nothing wrong with her courage, and nothing at all wrong with her heart. “You could say my judgment isn’t great right now,” she said. “But I think Jamie grabbed me, in there, because he didn’t want me to come out here and possibly get hurt. And he really did know about ducks. I’d swear he liked Debbie. He didn’t feel wrong.”
“You’re right,” I said. “An opportunist, not a villain. Most people are a mixture, eh. He had more gray in him than he showed, that’s all. I’m sure he is headed up to a job on a mussel boat. Not much else up in Wilson Bay. And he’s got mates in Thames, because he’s no Scot. And then there’s the car. Lexus or not, it’s tempting, if you’ve got those gray spots in you. Good thing the engine won’t start without the fob, or we would’ve lost everything, I reckon.” I stood up. “I’ve got a first-aid kit in the car. We’ll find a toilet, get you cleaned up, and call the cops. Buy our fencing and feed, too. He was right about that, anyway. We need it.”
“Why am I not surprised about the first-aid kit?” she asked. Getting her spirit back, then.
I slung the last two duffels into the boot and handed her the first-aid kit that of course I had in the car. We were going to be pretty remote. Who wouldn’t take a first-aid kit? After that, I made sure the windows were up, like any other man locking the barn door after the horse had gone, and picked up Debbie’s box. “We’ll be smarter this time,” I said, “and take our duck with us. With any luck, there’s a phone in that backpack, or a utility bill. Something lovely and identifiable for the police. And we weren’t such easy pickings after all. Good on us.”
She’d started to smile, finally, and lose the shakes. “You weren’t intimidated in there, were you? You were waiting. How did you know you could take him? The guy was enormous.”
“Yeh,” I said. “But I was trained. Training wins every time, just like it did for you. Somebody taught you to fight, eh. And what’s even more important—they taught you to win.”
Karen
Jax called the cops. While we waited for them, he insisted on cleaning and dressing my scrapes in the Mitre 10 restroom, which felt about as wonderful as you would imagine somebody picking out pieces of gravel from your palm and knee with tweezers would feel. Or maybe a little better than that.
When I told him I could do it myself, he looked up at me from where he was studying my various wounds and said, “Could be you’ll be a baby and not go after them properly, though. Be a pity if I had to cut my holiday short to take you into Urgent Care,” smiled at my huff of outrage, and kept on giving me directions in an absolutely calm, extremely assured sort of
way that was surprisingly erotic.
What, you don’t find it erotic to have a guy telling you to hold still while he tweezes gravel out of your knee, with a teenaged duck peeping and quacking from its cardboard box beside a hardware-store toilet? Maybe I had too much imagination, or maybe Jax was starting to fire it up, what with the scars and the decisiveness and the sweetness and all.
Josh had acted tough. Jax actually was tough, which seemed to make him want to be gentle with me. The combination was making me a little weak in the knees, and he was way, way too close not to notice.
Hope had babied me often enough—too many times, as far as I was concerned. At least until I’d put up a fight against being fussed over, and she’d had her own kids to divert her attention. When I had my bare foot on Jax’s warm thigh and my hand on his shoulder, though, and was letting him take over the serious business of making sure I was protected from parking-lot bacteria, I discovered that there was something strangely seductive about having somebody want to keep you safe. And something seriously hot about it, too. It wasn’t a dance, and it sure wasn’t a sex act, but when I gripped the hard muscle of his shoulder and he held me a little tighter around the calf with a big hand, looked up at me, and said, “Keep it there, and don’t move, or I could hurt you,” I could’ve had to hold my breath. Fortunately, he misinterpreted that, saying, “Soon be over. Better if you breathe, though,” and gave me some more of his sweet smile, like he had absolutely no idea what he was doing to me, or like he didn’t care.
I didn’t want to be anybody else’s little sister, or his fun pal, even though that was what men always seemed to want from me, and exactly where I was comfortable right now. It wasn’t like the thing with Josh had worked out that well, when I’d occasionally tried to be something else. But I couldn’t help it. I wanted Jax to be thinking about how much he wanted to slide his hand up my thigh.
You know what they say, though. You can’t always get what you want.
Kiwi Rules Page 11