Todd insisted on waiting with Sabina outside the Green Elephant. Even though it was the gentlemanly thing to do, she had to grit her teeth to keep from telling him to go home. All she could think about was Luke and Carly off together somewhere. Where? Why? None of it made any sense.
While she waited for Roman, she called Carly’s mother, but got no answer. She left a message with an urgent request to call back right away. Other than that, she had no brilliant ideas.
It didn’t take long for Roman’s Jeep to come screaming up to the curb. He must have sped the entire way. He started to get out, but Todd stopped him with a hand gesture. He took Sabina’s crutches while she got in the passenger seat, then opened the back door and inserted them in the backseat.
“I hope you find them,” he said, addressing both Sabina and Roman. “Let me know if we can help. Any of us. We’re a big family.”
“Thanks, Todd.” Sabina smiled at him. “And thanks for dinner.”
“My pleasure.” His wistful smile held a little sadness, but Sabina didn’t feel too guilty. She had a feeling Todd Dane would be just fine.
Sabina stole a glance at Roman as he pulled away from the curb. He looked about as cheerful as a rock mountain surrounded by a thundercloud.
“So how do you know Luke’s with Carly? Did he leave a note or a message?”
“E-mail.”
“What did it say?”
“Here.” Roman tossed her his smart phone, which was displaying Luke’s e-mail. Sabina scanned it quickly.
Dear Papa,
I’m sorry but I have to do this. Carly needs my help. I promise to be very careful. I’ll call you as soon as I can. Please don’t call the police. Carly says they’re even worse. We’re going to find her father, then she’ll be safe.
Your loving son,
Luke
“Carly’s father? He left when she was little. She’s never even seen him.” She handed his phone back. “Have you tried Luke’s cell phone?”
“Off.”
“I tried Carly’s mother, but she isn’t answering.”
Sabina could see a muscle working in Roman’s jaw. “It sounds like Luke is trying to rescue Carly from something. What’s her family situation?”
Sabina felt sick to her stomach. Had she missed something? “Crappy. Her mother goes on a bender every so often. The boyfriends come and go. She’s had to grow up fast, but I didn’t think anything unusually bad was happening. But I haven’t . . .” She shook her head helplessly. “I haven’t seen her much since the fire. Whenever I asked, she said things were fine.”
“Same with Luke. Damn it.” Roman’s knuckles went white on the steering wheel. He looked wild in the glow from the dashboard. “He sneaked out on me. He knows I hardly ever check my e-mail at home. When I do, it’s first thing in the morning, never at night. But I was checking on a Christmas present I’d ordered and saw Luke’s message pop up. I thought he was in his room. I’d talked to him earlier in the evening. I even heard him go to bed. He yelled, ‘Good night Papa’ and turned everything off. When I got his e-mail I thought it was some kind of joke. But I ran into his room and he was gone. Out the back fucking window.”
“Roman.” She reached out to grip his shoulder, so tense it felt like a hunk of iron. “He can’t have been gone long. Get ahold of yourself.”
He gave a desperate sound, half laugh, half cry. “I don’t know how, Sabina. I keep telling myself the same thing, get a grip, calm down so you can think, but this is Luke. My Luke. The only—” He broke off. His throat muscles worked. Sabina’s heart ached for him. She kept her hand on his shoulder until she felt him relax. Glancing at the street ahead, she wondered if he should be driving in this state.
“Where are you headed?”
“The hell if I know. Police? Luke didn’t want that. Little peckerhead. Dio, what am I saying?”
Good Lord, the poor man was losing it. She kept her voice calm and practical.
“Anyway, this is a clear case of a runaway. We’ll spend hours making a statement.”
“Fuck.”
“Let’s go back to your house and see if we can find something that gives us a clue. Have you checked his computer?”
“No, I just . . .” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Lost my mind. Got in the Jeep and came to get you.”
“Good. You did exactly the right thing. You drive. Head for your house. Here, I’ll do that.” Sabina pushed his hand off his neck so she could massage the tense tendon that stretched between his neck and his shoulder. “They’re both smart kids. Carly’s dealt with dangerous situations before. And Luke’s from New York. They’re street-savvy, they know where they’re going. It’s not like they’ve been kidnapped.”
Roman said nothing, but she thought his neck muscles eased just a bit. God, she prayed everything she’d just said was true.
She must have made sense to Roman, because he took the next turn, which led to his house. When they got there, he flung himself out of the Jeep, grabbed her crutches for her, tore inside, and went right to the computer.
“He’s got a Facebook page,” he muttered as he moved the mouse around on a pad with a picture of Nolan Ryan on it. “He thinks I don’t check it, and usually I don’t. But now . . .”
The Facebook search turned up nothing. Neither did a search of Luke’s e-mail. But the cached searches turned out to be a jackpot. Luke had recently searched for the name Raphael Sandovar, the California State Public Defender’s office, and the Rancho Berendo State Penitentiary in Bannon.
“Maybe that’s Carly’s father,” said Sabina, reading over Roman’s shoulder. “I didn’t know he was in prison. But it makes sense.”
“Is her last name Sandovar?”
“No, it’s Epps. Carlotta Epps. But why else would Luke do this search? I bet you anything they found out he’s getting out of prison and they’re going to meet him.”
“At a prison? Hell no.”
Roman surged to his feet, sending Luke’s chair skittering across the room. “You ready?”
“Wait. He also checked the Greyhound schedule to Bannon. Two buses a day, last one left at six.”
“Two hours ago.” He groaned and ran a hand through his hair.
“So let’s get moving.” Sabina headed for the door, flicking aside a pair of shorts that threatened to trip her crutches.
“Wait.” Roman settled his big hand on her shoulder. “What am I thinking? I’m being selfish. You don’t have to come. You should be resting your ankle, elevating and icing and—”
“Fuck that, Roman.” She aimed one crutch at him. “I’ve got crutches and I know how to use them. I’m coming with you.”
He studied her with those black eyes, the overhead light picking out hints of deep midnight blue and stark fear.
“Besides, you need me, you big jerk. You’re not thinking straight.”
A wisp of a smile loosened the deep grooves next to his mouth. She noticed the black stubble already starting on his jaw. The taste of his lips came back to her with sudden erotic intensity.
“I thought of you, didn’t I?” he said.
She swallowed. “Yes. That was smart. Now don’t get stupid on me. Let’s be practical here. Do you want to grab anything before we go? It’s a long drive out to Bannon. We may have to spend the night.”
“Spend the night,” he answered blankly, running his hands through his hair.
“Well, we don’t know when or where we’ll find them. It might be three in the morning by the time we do. If you want to bring a toothbrush, now’s your chance. Maybe we should bring Luke’s laptop. A picture of him. That sort of thing.”
“Right. Laptop. Picture. Toothbrush. But what about you? Your toothbrush?”
“Don’t worry about me, I’ll pick one up.”
“But—”
“Are we really going to argue about toothbrushes? Come on, get the stuff and I’ll meet you in the car. Really, it’s a damn good thing you called me. Someone’s got to think of these things.” She swung past him with a cheeky wink—anything to keep that hunted, terrified look off his face.
They drove east, into the desert. Sabina gave him extra-precise directions that would have been irritating under normal circumstances. But Roman didn’t mind. He appreciated her “In a hundred yards, turn right onto the highway” and “You have three seconds to beat that light.” Ever since Luke’s e-mail he’d felt stuck in a time-warp nightmare; the only thing that cut through the fog was Sabina’s bright presence.
As soon as they left San Gabriel, the dark-as-velvet night closed around the Jeep, lending it an atmosphere of intimacy that Roman found both soothing and arousing.
Sabina punctuated the silence with brisk commands—they too were both soothing and arousing. “You drive while I watch the road for hitchhikers. Hopefully they’re on the bus, but they might have decided to hitch. And if you start freaking out again, I’ll distract you with random lines of Taffy dialogue.”
He growled at her. “I don’t ‘freak out.’ But I might if I get some Taffy McGee out of it.”
She slanted a skeptical look his way. Fine. He’d freaked out. No sense in pretending otherwise. This was Luke. His son, his entire life. Alone on a desert highway heading for a fucking state penitentiary.
This was his fault. He should have talked to Luke more. Opened up to him. He should never have let Maureen go to work that day. He should have stayed in New York where his parents could help watch over Luke. He shouldn’t let him play baseball or own a computer.
He didn’t share any of these crazed thoughts with Sabina. Instead they piled up inside like thunderclouds.
After a couple of hours, Sabina directed him to a rest stop where the buses usually took a snack break. No one had seen anyone resembling Luke and Carly.
“That’s okay,” she reassured him as they stocked up on peanut butter cups and big bottles of iced green tea. “They probably didn’t get off the bus.”
“Maybe they’re on a different bus.”
“Remember, we checked the schedule? There’s only one bus they could have taken.”
What if there was a different bus line? What if they’d gotten on the wrong bus and were headed for Mexico? What if someone hijacked the bus and drove it into a . . . Stop. This isn’t helping. Listen to Sabina. She was talking again. He hung onto the bright, confident sound of her voice as if it were a rope dangling in a subterranean cave.
“Back in the Jeep. The bus is too far ahead for us to catch up with it. We’ll have to look for them in Bannon. Come on, move it, Roman.”
It took three more hours to reach Bannon. Sabina kept up a stream of talk designed to keep him alert. She told him crazy stories from the set of You and Me. She told him about her own father, a bit actor she hadn’t seen since she was little. Roman told her a few disjointed anecdotes about the Roman family—how they were descended from the rulers of an Italian city-state and seemed to have leadership bred into their bones. Luke had the gene too, maybe that was why . . . But as soon as he mentioned Luke he started to lose it. So Sabina launched into more Taffy routines, cute Taffy voice and tomboy mannerisms included.
“I wouldn’t do this for anyone else, you know,” she told him. “Once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
It was after one by the time they crossed the city lines of Bannon. Everything was closed except a 7–Eleven and a Motel 6.
“Let’s check at the 7-Eleven,” Sabina said. “I bet they got hungry on the bus.”
Roman nodded tightly. He couldn’t imagine sleeping, but he knew he ought to try. His eyes stung from staring at the dark road. His neck felt tight as a drum. Poor Sabina must be even more exhausted, but no one would ever know it from her confident manner.
She hadn’t mentioned her ankle once, but it had to be hurting her. Tenderness flooded him as he pulled into the parking lot of the 7–Eleven. “I’ll go in. You stay here and rest. Any requests while I’m in there?”
“I’ll take a snack. Anything, your choice.”
When he slid back into the driver’s seat, he felt like a new man. “The clerk saw Luke and Carly. They’re definitely here. He said they were staying at a motel in town, he didn’t know but he guessed the Motel 6, since it’s the closest. But they’re fine. Having an adventure, it sounds like. They bought beef jerky and pink Sno Balls. And a gallon of water.”
“Oh, thank God.” She slumped against the seat, her eyes closing for a tiny, revealing instant.
Dio, she’d been just as worried as he was. But she’d put all her energy into keeping his spirits up, keeping him on track—getting them to Bannon.
“Oh, Sabina,” Roman said, cupping her face in one hand. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?” She blinked at him wearily, her eyelashes brushing his palm.
“Shh. Never mind. I got it from here.” Now that he knew Luke was okay, the whole world looked different—bright, wonderful, and inhabited by the incredible woman in the passenger seat. He drove to the Motel 6, then made her stay in the Jeep while he booked a room and talked to the clerk.
In the lobby, he showed the sleepy clerk his driver’s license and a picture of Luke. “Is my son staying here? He would have checked in with a dark-haired girl.”
When the clerk made noises about guest confidentiality, Roman pulled out his fire department credentials, a ferocious scowl and a mutter about runaways. That did it. Room 232.
“They’re fine,” said the clerk anxiously. “The girl’s ID said she was eighteen. Looked like they were having a lark, is all. No harm done. Nothing fishy. You want to wake them up?”
Yes. He wanted to wake them up and yell at them. Then hug them. Or maybe the other way around. He followed the clerk to Luke’s room. A soft knock on the door got no response. The clerk inserted the key card and ushered Roman in.
One lamp was still on. Like a beam of heavenly light from above, it illuminated the sleeping face of his son. Luke sprawled across one bed, Carly snuggled in the other, turned away from the lamp. Both slept deeply, as if they were utterly exhausted. Roman drank in the sight of his son, his mouth half open, his arms wrapped around a pillow. Sweet relief swamped him, a kind of bone-deep gratitude.
He put his finger to his lips, warning the clerk not to make a sound.
His first instinct was to wake them up and read them the riot act. But something—maybe their deep sleep—held him back. He stepped softly to Luke’s bedside and bent down. As he reached over to shake his son awake, a sheet of notepaper on the nightstand caught his eye. It lay haphazardly across the faux-walnut surface, a pen abandoned nearby.
In the dim light from the parking lot, he could barely read it. Some lines were crossed out as if he were trying to get it just right.
Papa, I’m really really sorry. I was trying to help a friend. I had to protect my friend. She needed me. Don’t be too mad. It’s okay if you ground me. If you want to ground me, that’s okay. If you ground me, I won’t complain. I’ll take it like a man. I’m more grown up than you think.
At that point, the writing trailed off. Luke must have fallen asleep while writing it, and never switched off the lamp.
Roman took a deep breath, gazed at his son for one more long, lingering moment, then backed away from the bed.
Outside, he gestured to the clerk, who followed him down the hallway.
“I’m going to let them sleep. But I don’t want them leaving the motel without me. Are you here all night?”
“Until six.”
“I’ll be up before then. If they try to leave, don’t let them. Keep them in the lobby and call me. Put me in the room closest to them.”
The clerk nodded doubtfully. “I’ll do my best, sir.”
Back in the parking lot, he slid into the driver’s seat and met Sabina’s anxious look.
“I saw them. They’re fine. Sleeping. Separate beds, not that I was worried about that. Luke was practicing what he’s going to say to me when he fell asleep.”
The relief on her face mirrored his. “You okay letting them stay the night?”
“No. Not really. But they need their sleep. They have to deal with me first thing in the morning.”
He took her hand and squeezed it tightly, unable to express all the emotion welling through him. “Thank you for being here. Thank you for coming with me.”
“Of course, Chief. Where else would I be?” She gave him a bright wink, as if trying to lighten the moment. He lifted her hand to his lips, pressed a kiss into it, then let her go.
When he’d parked the car close to their room, he came around to open the passenger door.
He held out his arms. “Come here.”
“Excuse me?”
He maneuvered her out of the passenger seat and into his arms, holding her like a baby. A slightly outraged baby. “I’ve done this twice before, you know. And once you had all your gear on.”
“Yes, but . . .”
“Shh.”
He carried her inside the motel, used the key card to enter their room, and placed her gently on the beige striped bed. He put a pillow under her ankle. “Elevate before sleep. You want a blanket? Are you cold? Hot?”
She threw a pillow at him. “I’m fine. I’m not your ailing Aunt Mildred.”
“That would be Zia Maria. No Mildreds in the Roman family. I’ll be right back. Gotta get your crutches. Which reminds me . . .” He folded his arms across his chest and speared her with a stern look. “Todd Dane . . .” He couldn’t finish the sentence.
The corner of her mouth twitched in a way that made him want to fall on her like a junkyard dog. “It’s nothing.”
With that settled, he went back to the Jeep to collect her crutches and the overnight bag he’d brought. In the parking lot, he stood for a long moment, breathing in the clear air of this desert dot-on-the-map. Luke was okay. Grazie a Dio, he prayed silently. And grazie to Sabina, who’d guided him here like the North Star. Without that bright-eyed, truehearted, clearheaded woman in there with her foot on a pillow, he’d still be driving around San Gabriel like a lunatic.
Grazie, grazie a tutti gli angeli.
Back inside the motel room, Sabina had fallen asleep. Carefully, tenderly, he extracted the bedcovers from under her body and settled them over her. Then he took off everything but his boxers and crawled in next to her.
They’d offered him a room with two beds, but he hadn’t seen the point of that, since the chances that he’d be able to keep his hands off her . . .
He settled one hand on the warm curve of her hip.
Zero.
Sabina woke up next to a radiator. A breathing, rumbling radiator. She felt warm all the way to her core, inside and out. The long, broad body next to her belonged to Roman, and it was exactly where it ought to be. Next to her. The only thing wrong was that she had way too many clothes on, and so did he.
A few fumbling, broken ankle–impaired moves later, she was naked. She pressed herself against him, nearly delirious at the divine sensation of his bare flesh. She snaked one hand under the waistband of his boxers. But before she could find out if that particular part of him was awake, a hand clamped onto her wrist.
“Oh no, you don’t. You’re injured.”
“So?” She wanted to cry from frustration. After all the nights she’d dreamed of being with him like this again . . . now he was going to go all protective on her?
“So . . . you just lie back. Let me do the work. I got this.”
“Work?”
“I pride myself on my work.” He reinforced his sexy growl with a menacing raised eyebrow.
She giggled, unable to stop the goofy sound. After the long, drawn-out tension of that endless drive across the desert, to be in bed with Roman, naked and joking, was some kind of miracle. And then the miracle soared into a whole new realm. Roman rose above her, tenting the covers over them. He bent to her lips and kissed her from the furthest depths of his soul—or at least that’s how it felt to her dazed brain. On and on went the kiss, until her blood ran like honey and her skin prickled from the oncoming storm. She kissed him back with everything in her, every dream from every lonely night, every fantasy she’d ever indulged, every moment she’d longed for him, since she’d met him . . . and maybe even before.
The depth of her response frightened her.
She tore herself away from his kiss. “Why didn’t you come see me in the hospital? Everyone else did. Even One dragged her ass in.”
He stilled, then touched his forehead to hers. The intimate touch, as if they were thought to thought, made her shiver. “Oh, cara. I thought about you the whole time. Every second.”
“Tell me why.” She poked him in the chest. “You said, if you want honesty, come find me. Well, here I am.”
He lifted his head and searched her face. Stubbornly she held his gaze. The air between them seemed to sizzle. Finally he dropped his head. “I . . . I couldn’t. I haven’t been in a hospital since . . . since Maureen died. I went to every single one in New York, looking for her. The morgues too. Never found her.”
Oh God. A vise seemed to tighten around her throat. Why hadn’t she thought of that? She was an idiot a thousand times over. Someone ought to just shoot her now. “I should have known. I’m sorry.”
Mortified, she tried to slide out from under him, but his immovable body kept her right where she was.
“No, Sabina. I’m no good at this shit. You started this, now stay still and let me finish.”
“Good at what shit?”
“Vent holes.”
Vent holes? She went still, letting herself be captured by Roman’s dark, deep tractor beam of a gaze.
“I got to you in time,” he said in a low growl. “But not her.”
She sucked in a sharp breath. Everything in her wanted to flee. Out, out, she wanted out, wanted to run while she still had a scrap of self-defense left.
But Roman kept her caged between his powerful arms and his massive chest. “Fuck, this is hard. Maybe if I’d done all those counseling sessions I’d know the right words. It’s in my blood. I’m the leader. I’m supposed to lead the way. Take the fall. I’d sacrifice myself for any one of my crew. And Maureen was my wife. I would have put myself in her place in a second, so she could live and Luke would have a mother. It should have been me in the Pile, not her.”
“Oh, Roman.” Tears slipped down her face. What did her selfish feelings matter compared to a loss like that? “You don’t have to talk about this. It’s okay.”
“I’m not done, damn it. When you were in that falling-down building, I was like a wild man. No one could have kept me out.”
Her heart was doing funny things, speeding up, jumping, perhaps stopping entirely. She tried to breathe evenly, but it was no use. “That’s what they said. People kept telling me about it.”
“Well, they didn’t know this part.” He leaned in even closer, so his warm breath surrounded her and the feral light in his eyes outshone the dim glow filtering through the curtains. “There was no way in living hell I was going to watch another fucking pile of concrete take a woman I love.”