by Julia Harper
“Hey!” she yelled at him.
The dog paused and looked at her, head up, ears erect, the perfect picture of a noble Great Dane. At least he listened to her.
“Okay,” she called.
Squeaky went back to running in circles.
Her cell rang again.
She punched it. “What?”
“This is insa—”
She hung up.
A silver van with two canoes on the top pulled up to the stop sign where the off-ramp met the road. She watched carefully, but Squeaky didn’t go near the road. A little boy in the van waved at the dog.
The cell rang.
“What?”
“Don’t hang up, for God’s sake!” Brad sounded frazzled.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m your brother.”
Turner stared at the highway and frowned, trying to keep back tears. “You told me I was insane four years ago at Rusty’s funeral, and you called me insane just now. You thought he’d done it, that he’d embezzled from the bank he’d worked at all his life. You just blew me off.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Are you?”
A sigh. “What do you want me to say, Turner? That I’m glad you robbed a bank? Look, I’ve got a friend in the DA’s office. I can give him a call—”
“Brad—”
“Get him to recommend an attorney where you are—”
“Brad—”
“If you can’t afford it, I’ll cover the cost for now—”
Turner heaved a sigh and waited for her brother to wind down. She whistled to Squeaky. He cocked his head and looked at her. She whistled again, and he came galloping over.
On the other end of the phone, Brad squawked and sputtered. “What the hell is that? Why are you whistling in my ear?”
“I’m calling my dog.”
“Dog? What dog? You never told me you had a dog.”
“I have a dog.” Squeaky thrust his muzzle into her hand, sliming it with dog spit. “Look, Brad, I don’t need a lawyer. At least not yet.” She opened the Chevy’s passenger door and the dog leaped in.
“Yes, you do. When you come in—”
“I’m not coming in.”
Silence. Inside the pickup, Squeaky rested his head on the windowsill and looked out at her.
“I don’t understand,” Brad finally said.
“I know.” Turner walked to the driver’s side of the Chevy and opened the door. Squeaky immediately rushed to that side, and she had to muscle him back so she could get in. “You’ve never understood. Rusty didn’t do it.”
“Didn’t—”
“He didn’t embezzle from the bank.” She got in and shut the door behind her. The seat was hot enough to sear bare skin. Good thing she’d thrown a T-shirt over it to shield her legs. “He was innocent, Brad.”
“Even if Uncle Rusty was innocent, that was four years ago. He’s dead. What can you hope to do now?”
“Prove his innocence by catching the real embezzler, duh.” She dug under the seat for a bottle of water and poured some into Squeaky’s red water bowl on the floor.
“Even if you could—”
“Look, this is getting us nowhere, Brad—”
“Don’t hang up!” She could hear her brother taking a deep breath. “Maybe I should’ve listened to you at Rusty’s funeral. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize his death and the accusations of embezzling had affected you so much.”
“That’s because you weren’t here.” She was surprised at how bitter that sounded. Brad was seven years older than she and had left home long before Rusty had died. Had she been angry at Brad all this time?
“I said I’m sorry. I can’t apologize for having a life, though. California is where my career is, not the backwoods of Wisconsin.”
“You could’ve listened.” She knew she sounded childish, but she’d been alone a long time. Brad was her only family, as John had so kindly pointed out. Couldn’t he have supported her just a little?
“I’m listening now, Turn, and I hear that you’ve been planning revenge for over four years. That doesn’t seem very healthy.”
“You think it’s healthier to just forget?”
“Well . . . yes, actually I do.”
“To let everyone think Rusty was a thief and a liar?” She spaced her words deliberately. “To let the man who set him up get away with it?”
There was a pause at the other end, then Brad said quietly, “What will you do afterward?”
“What?”
“After you get Hyman. It is Hyman you’re talking about, right?”
“Yes.”
“So after you bring him down, make everyone see he set up Rusty, what are you going to do then?”
“I . . .” She took a breath and ran a hand through her short hair. What kind of a question was that? “I don’t know. Does it really matter?”
“Yeah, I think it does. You’re burning bridges right and left, acting like this is the end of your life.”
“Don’t be—”
“You’re not going to do a Thelma and Louise, are you?”
A laugh burst from her. “What gave you that idea? No, of course not!”
“Then maybe you should start thinking about the future. Your future. What happens afterward.”
“I don’t have time for that right now.”
“Turn, you’re only thirty-two—”
“Thirty-one,” she interrupted. Brad always forgot her age.
“Sorry. Thirty- one, then. You’ve got most of your life still in front of you. Rusty wouldn’t have wanted you to throw it—”
“You don’t—”
“Shh. Listen for a moment.” He waited.
“I’m listening.” Turner pressed her lips together impatiently.
“Okay. Rusty loved you. He of all people wouldn’t have wanted you to throw away your life on revenge for his sake.”
“I’m not throwing it away!”
“Have you dated in the last four years?”
Turner winced. “It’s not like there’s an excess of eligible bachelors in Winosha.”
“There’s enough,” he said gently. “If you wanted to date, you could. Is there anyone you can even talk to?”
She thought suddenly of the FBI agent. Him. I can talk to him, an idiot part of her brain whispered. “Why—” A sheriff’s car went by on 53. Turner felt a jolt of anxiety. “Look, I need to keep moving. I have to go.”
“Okay, good.” Brad spoke rapidly as if he were afraid she would hang up on him before he could get out the words. “But think about what I said.”
“Fine.” She started the Chevy.
“And Turn—?”
“What?” Impatience was making her snap.
“I, um, take care.”
She grinned. What a dork. “You, too, Brad.”
She hung up and put the truck in gear. Squeaky sat up to stick his head out the window and let the breeze flatten his ears, until she got up to speed on the highway and he had to bring it in again. She wondered what, exactly, John had said to Brad to get him in such a dither. Her brother could be high-strung, but he didn’t usually notice that much around him, including other people. He must be really worried to have called her. And the questions he’d asked about her future . . . Turner shrugged. She didn’t have the mental energy to think about all that right now. She pushed aside the questions and the nagging uncertainty they produced. After she proved Calvin was a crook, she would deal with them.
For now, she’d concentrate on the job at hand.
Chapter Nineteen
T hank God for air conditioning. Whoever invented the stuff should be nominated for sainthood. John cranked up the Crown Vic’s AC until it practically blew ice crystals in his face. Tuesday’s late morning sun shone into the car and turned it into a solar oven. He didn’t know how Turner was standing it in a ’68 Chevy pickup. There was no way a vehicle that old had air conditioning.
He was on 53, driving south toward Rice Lake and
State 8. He hoped he wasn’t on a wild goose chase, but there wasn’t much else he could do. He had to drive to where he thought Turner would go next. She was after Hyman—she’d admitted as much. She’d already searched his safe deposit box and his house. That left Hyman’s lake cabin near Rhinelander. Ergo, he’d find her at the cabin.
Unless, of course, she’d given up her quest for revenge and had lit out for Las Vegas to start a new career as a showgirl. John smiled at the thought. Turner in a tall feathered headdress and not much else, a secret little smile on her lips. Then he frowned as another thought interrupted his fantasy. Or she could be heading in the opposite direction of Rhinelander for an entirely different motive. Because, when you got right down to it, he still didn’t have a handle on what Turner Hastings was thinking.
John sighed and popped a Johnny Cash tape in the player. For now he’d just concentrate on what he did—
His cell rang. He fumbled it out of his pocket and pressed the answer button without looking. “MacKinnon.”
“You’ve got my brother all worried now.” Turner’s tone was peeved.
John smiled at the sound of her voice. Talking to her was becoming strangely addictive.
“He called you, huh?” He wasn’t surprised. In fact, he’d purposely pointed the man in that direction when he mentioned Turner had her cell phone with her.
“He was nearly hysterical. Brad was talking about getting me a lawyer.”
John’s eyebrows shot up. At least the man cared about his sister, even if he hadn’t bothered staying in touch. “Well, now, that’s not such a bad idea—”
“What did you say to him?” she demanded.
“Not much. I just informed him that his baby sister the librarian had robbed the local bank.”
“I did not. I robbed Calvin, not the bank.”
His lips twitched. “’Fraid most law-enforcement types won’t see it that way—”
“Humph.”
He raised his voice to finish his sentence. “And that includes me.”
He heard her tense breathing from the other end and wished she could’ve started the conversation with something else.
He sighed. “Where are you?”
He didn’t know why he asked her the same question every time they talked. He knew she wouldn’t tell him. But something inside him insisted he had the right to know. He deserved fundamental information about what space she occupied in the universe. And wasn’t that the most ridiculous way to think about a suspect?
“It’s none of your business,” she answered wearily, as if she were as tired as he of the question.
He shrugged his right shoulder. It was aching again today, and Turner was pushing all his most basic buttons. “Actually, it is,” he growled back. “My business, that is.”
For a moment he thought she’d hang up, and he had a sense of impending loss. A sudden eerie howling came through the phone. “My God, what’s that?”
“Squeaky,” she yelled over the sound, just as it ended on what was indeed a squeak. “I left him in the truck. Shut up, you goof.” He hoped that last was for the dog.
“His name fits him.”
“He’s a big baby.” She sighed softly. “What’s your favorite food, John? When you eat out, I mean? Where do you like to go? What do you like to eat?”
He wished she’d say his name more often. “It kind of depends on who I’m dining with.”
“Just answer the question, Special Agent MacKinnon,” she snapped impatiently.
“I’m pretty partial to steak.”
She snorted. “Oh, that’s a real surprise.”
“Now, now. I also like little Mexican restaurants with cozy booths. The kind of place where they make the tortilla chips and the salsa themselves so it’s fresh. Where they don’t skimp on the peppers, either.” He braked as the Crown Victoria came up behind a slow-moving semi.
“Ew, peppers.” She sounded disgusted and reluctantly fascinated at the same time. “I bet you like the salsa really hot, too.”
“The hotter the better.”
“Places where they have sombreros and black velvet paintings hanging on the walls? And that liquor with worms in it?”
“Tequila.” He glanced over his shoulder to change lanes. “I take it you don’t like Mexican.”
“Well, margaritas.” Her voice was doubtful. “And if they have good shrimp dishes.”
“Of course,” he said solemnly. Who ate shrimp at Mexican restaurants? “So, what’s your favorite food to eat out?”
“Sushi.”
He winced. Figures it would be sushi with Turner. Raw fish—now, that was disgusting. “Where do you get sushi in Winosha?”
“I don’t. I have to go to this little place in Madison. I found it when I went to college there. It has only two counter stools, and you can watch the chef make the sushi fresh. They have the most divine salmon, sliced so thin it’s translucent pink.”
To his mind, she wasn’t describing a very appetizing place. But her husky voice was dreamy and slow, and John found he was getting hard just listening to her. “I’d like to try that place.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“You like sushi?”
“We-ell . . .”
“That’s what I thought.” Her voice was brisk again. “How about Thai?”
“Now, that’s more like it.” He’d let the conversation stay casual if that’s what she wanted.
“There’s a really good Thai place in Madison, too. They make the best Pad Thai I’ve ever tasted, with tiny dried fish in it.”
Gross. John bit the inside of his cheek to keep from chuckling. What was it with Turner and fish? “Ever had those little bitty Thai peppers? Hot enough to singe the hair on your—”
“Is that all you think of? Heat?”
“When I’m with you, it is.” He said it before he had time to think, but it was true.
There was an awkward pause before she whispered, “You’ve never been with me. Not really.”
His cock jumped at the smoky timbre of her voice. John flipped on his turn signal and pulled to the side of the highway before he drove head-on into a semi. “But I will be soon.”
“You scare me.” Her voice was so low he almost didn’t catch the words.
“Why?”
She gave a little husky laugh. “Well, you are chasing me to arrest me.”
“Yeah, but I don’t think that’s what scares you.” He squinted through the windshield at the heat waves coming off the highway. “I think it’s something else.”
“What, then?”
He shrugged, even though she couldn’t see. “Maybe you’re scared because I won’t quit.”
He heard her catch her breath. “What do you mean?”
“Haven’t they all quit? The men in your life?”
“I don’t—”
He raised his voice to talk over her. “Your father left, your brother moved away just when you needed him most, Rusty died—”
“Now, listen—!”
“And your fiancé didn’t even bother arguing when you said it was over.”
On the other end, Turner breathed. John braced himself for her to hang up on him.
But she didn’t. “You’re very sure of yourself.” Her voice was cool. “And of me.”
He smiled tightly. Oh, honey, you have no idea. “You’re anxious because I’m not going to quit until I have you in my hands.”
“How do you know I’ll let you get that close at all?”
“You’ll have to.”
“You want to arrest me.” Was there a question in her voice?
“I want to get to know you,” he said very gently. “I have to arrest you. It’s my job.”
“You can’t do both things. You’ll have to pick.”
She was right. He knew that. But . . . “Maybe.” Maybe he’d gone insane. “Maybe I can have both.”
She caught her breath. “I have to go.”
“Turner—”
But sh
e’d hung up.
Shit.
John punched the End button and shoved the cell back in the holster on his belt. Then he noticed his hands were shaking. He stared for a moment at his own palms before barking a laugh. The more he talked to the woman, the more intrigued he became with her. A vigilante, for God’s sake. But maybe that was it—the reason he’d been so turned on by her initially. She’d done the forbidden. She’d taken the law into her own hands. How often had he listened to other agents grumbling about the judicial hoops they had to jump through to see justice done? How often had he seen the longing in those other agents’ eyes? The longing to just take a shortcut and bring a criminal down without the law. John had never been one of the guys who’d pined for vigilante justice, but he sure was fascinated by Turner’s form of law enforcement, wasn’t he? In a way, she was living every law officer’s dream. She was going after the truth and damn the system. And he was going after her with more than professional interest.
He sighed and looked around. A red tanker passed, making the Crown Victoria rock in its wake. If he didn’t move soon, he’d attract the attention of the highway patrol. John put the Crown Vic in gear and pulled out onto the road. Was she on this stretch of pavement, in front of him or behind, heading in the same direction? There was no way to tell. He had to simply keep going and trust it was the right way. But he hoped she was nearby, because he had to find her.
Soon.
Chapter Twenty
T he problem with feeding a really big dog while on the run from the law was finding suitable food of a sufficient quantity.
Turner stood in the aisle of the Rice Lake Kwik Trip and contemplated her choices. She could buy Squeaky half a dozen stale donuts, which no doubt he would enjoy, or a box of saltine crackers. There was a bag of peanuts, but that might not be a good choice, dog-digestive-system-wise. She could go for the entire rack of beef jerky, but that would probably use a good chunk of her money and make her memorable, as well. She glanced at her watch. She’d already been in the Kwik Trip four minutes. Time to go. Saltines it was. She grabbed four bottles of water, the pack of crackers, and a hot dog off the little rotating self-serve heater thingy and took her bounty to the cash register.
“That it?” The mullet-haired teenager behind the counter looked at her purchases and then up at her.