Packing Heat
Page 27
“There’s nobody driving the car,” Cole yelled, but she was already scrambling over the console.
She dropped into the driver’s seat and took control of the car, pulling the door shut at the same time. They sideswiped a pickup parked along the street, but she eventually steered them straight again.
“Keep driving,” Cole said, waiting until she was a few miles away before he had her pull over. They kicked the other Russian out, Cole got in the front seat, and they headed back to the Sahara.
The valet took one look at them and tried to run.
Harmony caught him by the shirtfront. If he hadn’t been so scrawny, she’d never have hung onto him, but she was amped up on anger and adrenaline.
“I’m not even going to ask how much they paid you to keep us waiting,” Harmony said to the valet. “But if anything happened to our car, you’d better pray your future cellmate doesn’t think prison orange is flattering on you.”
Cole tried to intervene before Harmony throttled the poor guy. “Okay,” he said, “first you shove a guy twice your size out of a moving vehicle—”
“He was trying to kill me.”
“—and now you’re terrorizing a teenager.”
“Because he took a bribe from the guy who wanted to kill me.”
“Jeez, lady, get a grip,” the valet said, “it was only forty bucks.”
“Yeah, it’s so much better knowing my life is only worth forty—”
Cole pulled her off the kid. “No more red meat for you.”
She turned her glare on him, and he almost took an involuntary step back. Then some of the crazy started to fade away.
He still wasn’t all that eager to get in a car with her behind the wheel. “I don’t suppose you want to get a room for the night.”
“I want this to be over,” she said, looking at the valet again, not as furious as before but angry enough to have him quaking in his high-tops. “Car,” she said to him.
“O-over there,” he stammered, pointing in the direction of the Sahara’s parking garage. “Right by the exit.” And he handed Cole the keys, keeping well out of Harmony’s reach.
“Didn’t have time to sell it, huh?” Harmony said, her hand moving to where she normally wore her holster.
“C’mon, Dirty Harry,” Cole said, dragging her off before she could realize she wasn’t wearing her gun and go after the kid with her bare hands again.
The GT was parked right where the valet had said it would be. Cole deposited her in the passenger seat, then went around and climbed in the driver’s side, exhaling in relief as he put the key in the ignition.
“I’m tired, too,” Harmony said, “but we can rest when this is over.”
“True.” Cole pointed the GT toward I-15, and LA beyond. “I just hope it’s not six feet under.”
EVEN THOUGH COLE DROVE THE THREE HUNDRED MILES between Vegas and Los Angeles, Harmony didn’t sleep. How could she when her brain refused to shut itself off and her nerves were jumping around like a drug addict needing a fix. Adrenaline, that was the problem. Damn Russians. They got her all worked up and didn’t stick around long enough to help her work off the rush. Not that she wasn’t relieved they were gone, and not that she didn’t feel a small measure of satisfaction in shoving one of them from a moving automobile. But it wasn’t the same as beating Irina.
This Russian had been trying not to crash them into a building, for one thing, so he hadn’t given her his full attention. And she’d been enraged. Not just angry and sick of Russians interfering in her business, she was talking about mindless, last-straw, seeing-red fury. Berserker rage, the kind only violence could appease.
Not really what you’d call progress in her ongoing struggle to think first and emote later. Not that rage didn’t get the job done, but rage didn’t leave a lot of room for rationality, and an FBI field agent needed to be clear-headed at all times.
“Now what?” Cole asked her when they hit the outskirts of LA. “They won’t be in one of the better parts of town.”
“But we will,” Harmony said, redirecting her thoughts from past shortcomings. Okay, she’d been wallowing in self-pity. But it was time to focus on the final confrontation. A confrontation she expected to win. No other possibility could be considered. She still had hope. Not to mention a towering case of exhaustion. No way could she face another gang of Russians, especially a gang that included Irina, without some downtime.
She directed Cole to the Hotel Bel-Air in Beverly Hills, a Mission-style hotel with gorgeous rooms, beautiful gardens, and the price tag to go along with it.
“We can’t afford this,” Cole said, but since he’d stopped the car in front of the hotel’s main entrance when he said it, Harmony gathered up her duffel and laptop and climbed out. Cole had no choice but to do likewise.
“Great, another valet,” he said, handing the GT’s keys to a twentysomething in a hotel uniform.
“This one isn’t likely to rat us out for pocket change,” Harmony said.
“Unless more of Irina’s comrades are lurking around somewhere.”
“Irina didn’t expect us to get this far,” Harmony said with absolute certainty, because if there was one thing she was certain of, it was that Irina had underestimated them in at least that regard. “And this is the last place they’ll expect us to stay.”
“It’s the last place I expected us to stay,” he said, taking the laptop out of her left hand.
Harmony suppressed a smile as she dug into the duffel, looking for her purse. Cole was gawking at the lobby like a tourist from small-town Wisconsin, which, under other circumstances, he might have been.
“We don’t have enough cash left,” he said under his breath, eyes on the stuffed shirt staring down his nose at them from behind the registration desk.
Harmony placed her driver’s license on the counter.
The desk clerk typed her name into the computer, then said, “Welcome back, Miss Swift. What can we help you with today?”
“Is the honeymoon suite available?” she asked, never taking her gaze from Cole’s face. The adoration she pasted on wasn’t much of a stretch.
Cole didn’t seem to be having much trouble acting the part, either. He didn’t take his gaze off hers when the registration clerk said they didn’t have a honeymoon suite, per se, but the Bel-Air’s garden suites were very romantic.
Cole said, “Fine,” and when the clerk slid key cards and Harmony’s license across the counter, Cole gathered them in one swipe, took her hand, and pulled her toward the depths of the hotel, all without sparing anyone or anything else a glance. Until they were safely out of sight of the front counter.
“Honeymoon suite?” he asked, steering her toward the elevator.
“The garden suites are on the first floor,” Harmony said, “hence the word garden.”
“Which you already knew, so again, honeymoon suite?”
“You’re awfully freaked out about it,” Harmony said. “Not the marrying kind, huh?”
“No, I, uh . . . I guess I never thought about it. Considering my living arrangements, it wasn’t going to be an issue.”
Harmony just smiled and took the cards from him, opening the door to a room decorated in pale yellow and warm oak. French doors led to a secluded garden patio with wicker furniture, and there was a separate bedroom with a huge bed.
“Do you think it was a good idea to use your credit card?” Cole asked her, not appreciating the accommodations at all, which made Harmony sigh.
“Look,” she said, “I labeled us honeymooners so the hotel staff won’t be surprised if they don’t see us on a regular basis, and I chose this hotel because I have an account here. This is where I always stay when I’m in the Los Angeles area. Richard knows that, and if they . . . ask him . . .” She didn’t finish the thought. She didn’t have to. “I can’t use my credit card, even at a bank or ATM, because Treacher will have it flagged.”
“And you don’t want him to find us. But what about the Russians?”
COLE RETRIEVED THE ROOM SERVICE MENU AND DID AS she asked, but he kept an ear on her side of the conversation. It wasn’t a long one.
“They won’t agree to meet today,” Harmony said, not sounding particularly surprised. “And he asked for thirty million dollars.”
“They never mentioned a specific number before,” Cole said. “Why now?”
“The Russians are trying to stall us long enough to figure out where we are. He put a number to the ransom for the same reason. He knows we haven’t transferred that much, knows we’ll need time to meet his demand, so we won’t balk at waiting until tomorrow to meet. Except we won’t be waiting here to be found.”
“And when they realize we used this place as a decoy?”
She shrugged. “If I know my criminals, this isn’t the only hot water they have boiling.”
“The meet tomorrow.”
“Is a double cross,” Harmony said by way of agreement.
“So what are we going to do about that?”
“First we’re going to eat breakfast. Then we’re going to hang the do NOT DISTURB sign on the door and take off. We’ll find somewhere else to stay and get some more money into that account.”
“And we’re going to talk about Richard, right? Try to come up with a plan.”
Harmony bumped up a shoulder. “There’s no way to plan for the unknown.”
chapter 26
THEY SLIPPED OUT THE GARDEN ENTRANCE OF THEIR room at the Hotel Bel-Air, careful not to be seen, then walked a couple miles, give or take, to Sunset Boulevard. They picked up public transportation from there. Harmony figured their best bet was to lose themselves in an area of the city that catered largely to tourists, and Santa Monica fit the bill. She chose a hotel on the lower end of the price scale, one that would accept cash without insisting on identification. It wasn’t right on the beach, or even the next level of accommodations away, but it wasn’t so far off the beaten path that they’d stand out.
“Why don’t you transfer the rest of the thirty million,” Harmony suggested when they got into their room. “They won’t set up the meeting unless the account balance is what they want.”
“I think I ought to wait until tomorrow,” Cole said. “There shouldn’t be any problem getting into the FBI system. Hell, Treacher will be waiting for me to show up again. It’ll be better to move the funds just before we leave when it’s too late for anyone to track us down.”
“Then I guess we rest.”
Cole looked toward the bed. “How exhausted are you?”
“Exhausted.” But she couldn’t settle. Her nerves were jumping around under her skin, and she couldn’t hang onto a thought for more than a few seconds at a time. “I have to get out of this room,” she said. She’d spent too much time in cars and cheap rented rooms, racing a mile a minute and still feeling like she wasn’t doing enough for Richard. And now she couldn’t do anything but wait.
She took one of the key cards and made a quick trip to the gift shop, stopping at the front desk on her way back to the room. Cole was channel surfing when she got back. She dropped a bag in his lap, said, “I’ll meet you at the pool,” and disappeared into the bathroom.
COLE WASN’T REALLY A SUN WORSHIPPER, SO HE TOOK A detour around the hotel. Not much to see. It wasn’t the kind of place that boasted a restaurant, or even a seating area in the lobby. Just a bored desk clerk who barely stirred out of his stupor when Cole walked by.
The pool, however, was a pleasant surprise. For a low-rate hotel, the pool was beautifully kept, clean and calming, surrounded by flowering, tropical plants and palm trees, with the requisite umbrella-shaded tables and plastic-strung chaise lounges.
When Cole arrived, he found Harmony sitting poolside, on the edge of a towel-covered chaise, rubbing sunblock on all her exposed skin, which was a lot, considering she was wearing a bikini composed of metal rings holding small triangles of white cloth together so they barely covered the critical parts of her anatomy. And he wasn’t the only one who’d noticed.
Cole sat beside her, taking the lotion and rubbing it on her back. “I thought we were trying not to attract attention.”
“Speak for yourself,” Harmony said.
Cole looked around. He met an alarming number of gazes, female gazes, and they weren’t interested in Harmony—at least not most of them.
Harmony took the sunblock out of his hand and squeezed some on his back. He jumped, the cool lotion a shock on his hot skin.
“Jail pallor is so over,” Harmony said, rubbing the lotion in. “Relax, this is LA. We aren’t anything out of the ordinary.”
She had a point, Cole thought. The pool patrons looked like a casting call for porn. But so did Harmony.
“And now that it’s clear we’re together, there’s nothing to worry about.”
She was right about that, too. The other sunbathers had gone back to minding their own business. Harmony lay back on her chaise and closed her eyes, sighing blissfully. Cole tried to do the same, but he’d never been one for idleness.
“Having a hard time shutting your brain off?” Harmony asked him the third time he sat up and looked around the pool.
“Something like that,” he said. “I was never very good at doing nothing.”
“Jail must have been hell, then.”
“I managed to keep myself occupied.”
She looked over at him and smiled. “What are you going to do after this is all over?”
“If I’m still out of jail? I don’t know.” He hadn’t actually given it much thought, he realized. Staying out of jail, sure, but what would he do with his freedom? He had no idea. And when he did put his mind to the future, it didn’t take long for his thoughts to become depressing. He’d still be an ex-con, for starters. “No one in my field will hire me,” he said.
“The FBI will be needing an IT security specialist.”
“They won’t hire me, either.” Even if he’d consider working for them. “What about you?”
She shifted back and closed her eyes. “I’m not going to worry about it right now.”
Because it might not be an issue, Cole reminded himself. But it did seem to be the end of their conversation. He spent another twenty minutes in the sun before he moved to a table with an umbrella. Harmony stayed out in the sun alternating between the chaise and the pool, coming out with water sluicing off her slender body, nipples peaked, looking amazing.
At one point she disappeared for a little while, and not long after she came back a guy delivered a pizza loaded with every topping under the sun and a couple of sodas that were ice-cold going down, but did nothing to cool him off.
By the time they’d wiled away the rest of the afternoon and had a takeout dinner from a nearby restaurant, his internal thermostat was set at slow simmer. And when Harmony went off to take a shower to wash the chlorine from her skin, he was pretty sure a shower would help with his problem, too.
HARMONY STEPPED UNDER THE HOT SPRAY, HOPING IT would make her relax. Nothing else had worked, basking in the sun, swimming, talking with Cole about everything but Richard. She should have known it wouldn’t be so easy to distract herself with the endgame only hours away.
She squeezed shampoo onto her palm and lathered her hair, shrieking when she felt something at her waist.
“It’s just me,” Cole said.
She stepped forward long enough to duck her head under the water and rinse the shampoo out of her hair and face. Cole followed her, one hand curling around to her breast, the other slipping down her belly. Harmony leaned back, letting her head rest on his shoulder and trying to throw herself into it.
Cole was in such a state of need he was shaking with it. She felt like a block of stone. Where was the oblivion she needed so desperately, the spike of heat and hunger she alwa
ys felt for Cole? He was offering her sex—hot, animal sex—so why was she even able to think?
“What’s wrong?” he asked, and she realized he’d stopped what he was doing.
She turned into him. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice muffled against his shoulder. “I’m just so . . .”
“Tense.” He lifted his hands to her shoulders, kneading and rubbing, his large hands surprisingly gentle.
Harmony looked up, Cole met her eyes, and there was a connection, nothing she could put a name to, but it hummed between them. He stooped and hooked his hand behind her knee, lifting it along his hip and slipping into her, never taking his eyes from hers, taking her heart as he took her body. And she surrendered.
She loved Cole, and with the admission something broke free inside her. Sensation swamped her, coupling with emotion, freeing her from the prison of thought and letting her simply feel. Cole’s hands on her breasts, his body moving against hers and inside hers, the sweet friction sending heat rushing through her veins, settling in to throb at pulse points, pleasure making her draw together and fly apart at the same time, so that all she could do was hang onto him while her senses flew, and her muscles shuddered and jumped until she could stand no more. And still he moved, taking her mouth, drawing more from her than she’d ever imagined possible, until he pulled her tight against him while his own orgasm overtook him.
He let her leg go and gathered her against him, resting his chin on the top of her head. And she tumbled even further—nearly too far. “I—” she said, barely managing to catch back the rest of the sentiment before she put them both in an uncomfortable position.
“What?” Cole murmured, easing back far enough to look into her face.
She turned around before her verbal control deserted her completely. But she could feel him staring at her back, waiting for her to finish her thought. Which wasn’t going to happen. She might be foolish enough to fall in love with Cole, but it would be complete idiocy to tell him because he didn’t love her. Knowing it and seeing it on his face were two different things. There was a good chance she wouldn’t live to see another sunset, so why get her heart broken tonight?