by Penny McCall
The farmer took a couple steps forward, stopping when he was beside Harmony. “You all right, Miss?”
“I’m better than all right,” she said grinning at Cole.
“A little help here?” he said through clenched teeth.
“He won’t hurt you. The Amish don’t believe in violence.”
“The pitchfork says otherwise.”
Not to mention the guy was built like the Hulk with ZZ Top facial hair. And he was pissed.
Harmony got to her feet, grabbed her duffel and laptop, and went to stand beside Cole. “Really, everything is fine,” she said to the farmer. “We’re together. No problem here. Everything was consensual.”
It wasn’t quite the tension defuser she’d hoped it would be. In fact, it had the opposite effect, the farmer looking at the flat spot in the hay, then at them, his face getting redder as he leapt to conclusions.
“Noooo,” Harmony said, “we weren’t . . . you know. We just needed a place to spend the night.”
“You English,” the farmer said, followed by something unintelligible in German. But when he stepped forward he got his point across loud and clear. It was a whole different dynamic, Harmony decided, when that pitchfork was aimed at her.
She put her hands up in the universal I-mean-no-harm gesture, making her jacket gap open—which made the farmer’s eyes bug out and his face go even redder.
“You bring a weapon here?” he thundered.
“Time to go,” she said, slipping her hand into Cole’s and backpedaling to the door they’d come through the night before. They hightailed it down the conveyor, Cole taking a precious moment to look it over in the predawn light.
“It’s horse-powered,” he said. “Pretty ingenious.”
Harmony rolled her eyes. “Nerd.”
“The Amish are really good at engineering,” Cole said defensively, following her into the cornfield, the dry stalks rattling around them like bamboo wind chimes.
“I’m just happy they don’t believe in guns. Or phones.”
“They believe in the police, and that one believes we snuck into his barn to have sex.”
“You speak German?” Harmony asked, surprised enough to look over her shoulder at him.
He waggled his brows back at her. “Didn’t need to understand German to get that.”
Neither did she, but she’d decided the subject of sex was off limits so she let it go. “Do you really think he’ll go to the police?”
“He was pretty mad. We probably aren’t the first couple to sneak onto his property for a booty call.”
“We’re not a couple, and that wasn’t a booty call. And why would anyone do that?”
“Don’t know,” Cole said with a shrug in his voice. “It’s probably like the Mile High Club.”
Harmony had never really understood that one, either. Why have sex in a tiny airplane bathroom or a scratchy hayloft when you could—
“You’re thinking about sex, aren’t you?”
“Yep,” she said, mostly because he wouldn’t expect it, “in a bed, with satin sheets and champagne, and all night so you don’t have to race through it, because if you’re with someone who counts, you don’t need some kind of stupid thrill to get in the mood.”
There was silence behind her. She glanced back. Cole had stopped walking—and breathing. He was about twenty yards behind her, his eyes on her backside. She turned the rest of the way around and his gaze rose about eighteen inches, so she crossed her arms over her breasts and waited until he made eye contact.
“You’re playing with fire,” he said.
“You’re the one who keeps bringing up sex.”
“And you’re supposed to keep shooting me down.”
“I’ll try to remember that,” she said, which wasn’t just a smart-aleck comeback. Testosterone might be making him forgetful, but there were moments . . . Take the way he was looking at her right now. Hot, burning her up, making her remember the heat and solidness of him against her last night and the way he’d kissed her, strong and hard. If she hadn’t been shocked enough to shove him away, she wouldn’t have cared if there’d been a bed. Hell, she wouldn’t have cared if there’d been a horizontal surface. The tree would have done just fine as long as she got him inside her, just as fast and hard—
“Stop looking at me like that,” he said, his voice even deeper than usual, impossibly deep, stroking over her nerve endings and throbbing in places she shouldn’t be thinking about in Cole Hackett’s vicinity.
“I will if you will.”
He let his chin drop to his chest, and she could see him taking slow, even breaths.
“Chanting mantras?”
“Reminding myself you’re a pain in the ass,” he said, “with an FBI badge.”
“Whatever works for you.” Harmony started off into the corn again, but in a couple of steps Cole overtook her.
“I think you should walk behind me for a while.”
Harmony couldn’t help but smile over that, even if it was sadly unprofessional of her. Sure, she was a federal agent, but she was also a woman, and what woman wouldn’t be flattered to know she was so distracting to a man? Even one who’d been in jail for nearly a decade, working out every day and getting a butt she wanted to sink her teeth into—
“Do you think the farmer is going to report us to the police?” she asked, seizing on the first thing that didn’t have anything to do with Cole’s butt, flexing with each step in a nice steady rhythm . . . “I know they don’t have telephones, but he could drive his buggy into town.”
“The Amish take a lot of crap from tourists. Not to mention your gun might make him think twice about overlooking our visit.”
“He’ll finish his chores first, though. I mean, you can’t not milk a cow, right? That’ll give us time to get to a town and find some transportation.”
“You mean steal a car.”
She shrugged. “It’s better than walking.”
“It’ll get us arrested,” Cole said. “By now every cop in the state is on the lookout for us. We steal a car in a city smaller than Pittsburgh, and we won’t make it to the city limits. Why can’t you just . . .” He swirled his hand in circles, a forthcoming gesture that didn’t mean a thing to her.
“What?”
“You know, get a car the same way you got me out of jail? Use your FBI wiles.”
“Wiles?”
“Do what you do. Get us some transportation the cops won’t be looking for.”
“But the Bureau will. They’ll be watching the buses, airlines, trains, and car rental agencies in the area. I could use my FBI wiles, maybe arrange for a car using another agent’s name. But there’ll be no way of knowing we didn’t get away with it until we see the agents or cops in our rearview mirror, and I’d rather not be surprised that way.”
“So we steal a car.”
“Eventually.”
“Not liking the sound of that,” Cole said.
“Even if we could find a car, stealing one in farm country, where the crime rate is probably zero, would get everyone’s attention. And the state police have you on their radar. Much as I’d like to stop right here and put you to work on those bank accounts, the smartest thing we can do is get out of Pennsylvania before we do anything the cops might connect with your escape.”
“Then I guess we walk,” Cole said.
She knew it was the right decision, but that didn’t make the prospect of an all-day hike any more palatable. Not to mention the time they were wasting. Harmony took a deep breath and let it out, stiffening her spine before she set off after Cole. The kidnappers were expecting a call from her in less than twelve hours. When they found out she hadn’t gotten the money yet, they weren’t going to be happy, and Richard would be the only one they could take it out on. Walking a few miles was nothing to complain about.
By mid-afternoon wide-open spaces had lost of lot of their appeal for Cole. The morning had started off breath-steaming cold. They’d begun their trek at cow-milking
time, also known as four a.m. By the time the sun came up they were in heavy woodland that kept them shaded. And cold.
As they wound their way farther west, headed for Ohio, the terrain had gradually changed from hills and valleys to flatter country. There wasn’t a tree in sight or a cloud in the sky, just the sun, big and bright and hot, beating down on Cole, turning every inch of exposed skin into cracklings. His feet hurt, he had a couple pounds of dirt in his eyes, and car exhaust caught at the back of his throat. Every step took him farther from Lewisburg, USP. Otherwise the day would have been a total waste.
“We have to get off this road,” Cole said.
Harmony nodded, too busy concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other to form actual words.
Aside from a brief stop at a roadside fruit stand, they’d been walking for most of the day. The cornfields and dirt lanes had given way to paved roads a while ago, and the paved roads were getting wider, more lanes, more traffic. More cops.
“At least two police cruisers have gone by in the last hour,” he said. “It’s just a matter of time before one of them wonders why we’re walking down the side of the highway and takes a closer look.”
Almost before the words were out a white Lincoln Town Car pulled off the road a little way ahead of them, tires crunching on the gravel. The car was a late-seventies model, big as a parade float, and tricked out with tinted windows, lots of striping, and enough shiny chrome to be visible from outer space. Moby Dick with wheels. One of the windows slid down and an insanely beautiful woman stuck her head out, jet-black hair, porcelain skin, cheekbones like razorblades.
“She looks like Snow White’s evil stepmother,” Harmony said under her breath.
“Y’all need a ride?” the woman called out.
“No—”
“Yes,” Cole overrode Harmony. He wrapped an arm around her waist and propelled her to the car, stuffing her into the backseat before she could object again. He’d intended to take the front passenger seat until he realized it was already occupied. He slid in beside Harmony instead.
Harmony poked him. Cole ignored her, busy making eye contact with the woman behind the wheel.
“Where y’all headed?” she asked, her voice deep and slow, her gaze mesmerizing. A visual invitation.
“Cleveland,” Cole said without giving it any real thought.
Harmony elbowed him in the ribs. He hissed in a breath and fielded the look she shot him. Definitely not happy about something, he deduced, but at least she was keeping the disagreement to herself. He was in for it when she got him alone, though.
“Y’all have names?” the woman in the front seat asked in a slow, husky, Deep South drawl.
“Janet and Dick,” Harmony said before Cole could make that decision, too. Cole suspected she’d given him that name for a reason. “How about you?”
“You can call me Irene. This is my brother, Leo.”
Cole took his first good look at the guy in the front seat, and thought, Brother, my ass. Irene was supermodel material. Leo belonged in a circus sideshow: no neck, shoulders up around his ears. His body consisted of roll on top of roll, starting with his three chins and ending with the spare tire in his lap. Leo looked like a seven-footer accordioned down to troll size. On top of which he had hands the size of dinner plates, a hairline so low it blended in with his unibrow, and several personalities, at least one of which he was conversing with in a constant under-the-breath mutter that began to rise in volume.
“Leo!” Irene snapped out before he got to an audible level.
Leo had what appeared to be a minor seizure, and subsided into his seat, silent but staring daggers at Irene. Not someone he’d like to meet in a dark hallway, Cole thought. Leo was scary. Cole didn’t want to know how Irene was keeping him in line, but he had to give her credit.
“He has these outbursts,” Irene said. “He’s really not a bad person.” And she put Moby in gear and they floated out into traffic, her eyes meeting Cole’s again in the rearview mirror. “Y’all been together long?” she asked him.
“It feels like forever,” Cole said.
“Oh, honey.” Harmony slipped her arm through his and snuggled up to him, laying her head on his shoulder.
Cole understood it was just an act—mentally. Physically he went into full-on, heart-thumping, white-hot hormonal overload. Some soft part of her was pressing against his arm, there was a bunch of really nice-smelling blond hair tickling his chin, and he could feel her hands shaking. Either she was royally pissed off, or she wasn’t as unaffected by him as she pretended to be.
“Lovers’ quarrel?” Irene asked.
Harmony lifted her gaze, narrowed, to his. Cole grinned down at her.
“Everything’s fine,” she said with a bright, sunny, completely believable smile. Whatever Dick’s investment in their fictional “relationship,” Janet was clearly living in a shiny, pink heart-shaped bubble of love-conquers-all.
“So, Cleveland, huh?”
“I know, right?” Harmony said. “Who lives in Cleveland? I mean, Ohio, what’s up with that? We broke down and we couldn’t even get a cell phone signal.”
“We’re still in Pennsylvania,” Cole pointed out.
“Huh, Pennsylvania. Don’t even get me started. Did you know there are people here who don’t believe in electricity?”
“Cleveland?” Irene prompted.
“His parents live there,” Harmony said, making it sound vaguely accusatory. “You can drop us at the nearest bus stop and we’ll take it from there.”
Irene waved off that notion. “Gotta go right by there,” she said. “Y’all just set back and enjoy the ride.”
Cole was prepared to do just that. He hadn’t slept much the night before, for the same reason he couldn’t relax now. He pried Harmony off, told his hormones to heel, and slouched down in his seat, eyes closed, arms crossed over his chest.
Unfortunately, Irene kept asking questions. And Harmony kept answering them.
“How did you meet?” Irene wanted to know. “No offense, but y’all don’t exactly seem . . . He’s . . . And you’re . . .”
“Oh, I know, but Dick didn’t used to look all”—Harmony fluttered a hand in the air—“muscular. He used to be, like, sensitive. We met in college. I was pledging this sorority because, well, they needed me. I mean, those girls were totally clueless when it came to makeup and clothes. It was like they thought sororities were all about academics or something.
“Anyway,” she continued, ignoring the part where Irene wanted to get a word in edgewise. Leo kept up a constant low-key mutter. Everyone ignored him.
“I went to this frat party with Tommy Morrison,” Harmony was saying. “He turned out to be a complete loser. Why do men think they’re Tom Cruise in a white naval uniform when they get drunk? Like I’m going to be all hot for some guy who will either throw up or pass out halfway through, you know?”
“I kn—”
“So there I was, like, stuck at the frat house with a bunch of drunk Casanovas, and there Dick was. He was a grad student at the time, and he didn’t look like this, either. He looked smart.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Just between you and me, he was kind of a geek, you know, crazy smart but a little flabby and pasty. He was like this big, clumsy puppy you can’t help but love. He gave me a ride home and that was it for me. I think we’ll be together for a really long time.”
“What do you think, Dick?”
“He’s asleep,” Harmony said. “He does that all the time. I just remember where I left off and pick up the conversation when he wakes up. We’re going to visit his parents, and I’m kind of hoping it’s a sign. I’m not getting any younger, you know.”
“You’re what, twenty-five?”
“I don’t want to be one of those forty-year-old moms. I want to have kids and still look good. I want to be a MILF.”
“MILF,” Leo shouted.
Irene reached over and gave him a shot to the arm, which Cole saw because he’d g
iven up trying to sleep, and not just because of the constant chatter. Harmony was up to something, and he felt a need to keep his eye on her.
Leo was back to muttering, Harmony was back to talking, and Irene’s foot seemed to be getting heavier on the gas pedal. Irene wanted to get to Cleveland bad.
Cole couldn’t blame her. Harmony managed to talk the entire four hours without stopping.
“You can drop us off here,” Cole said to Irene as soon as he saw the WELCOME To CLEVELAND sign.
Irene took the first exit ramp, barely slowing down long enough for them to jump out at the first intersection. As soon as Cole’s feet hit pavement, she peeled off, back door still hanging open, leaving an inch of rubber on the pavement.
“I think Irene is happy to hear the last of you,” Cole said.
“Irene could have let us off any time she wanted.”
“She didn’t have much use for you, but she liked me.”
“Everything female within view likes you. And hey, at least that one was human. I think.”
Cole gave her a look, but he wasn’t all that insulted.
“We should get moving before Boris and Natasha come back.”
“Boris and Natasha? Irene had a Southern accent.”
“Southern accent, my aunt Fanny. They were Russian.”
“You’re being paranoid.”
“If you’d been paying attention instead of thinking with your hormones, you’d know I was right.”
“Jealous?”
“Puh-lease. If I wanted you, I could have you.”
That was true. And annoying. He took off, keeping his strides purposefully long so Harmony had to trot to keep up. But walking away in a snit wasn’t going to keep him out of jail. Neither was the FBI. The only protection he had was knowledge. “How do you know they were Russian?” he asked grudgingly.
“A Russian accent is hard to lose completely unless you mask it with another accent. Southern is the strongest.”
Cole thought about that a minute, tried to replay some of Irene’s conversation in his head, which wasn’t easy since all he could remember was Harmony talking incessantly. “Why didn’t you say something?”