Somewhere Outside McKittrick, California

 

Zeke knew she was gone before he heard the bells on the diner’s door. It didn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to realize this woman had left that hospital for a reason, and she wasn’t going to let him stand between her and accomplishing whatever that was. But what she didn’t understand was that he had chosen this diner intentionally. It was three miles south to the last town they’d passed, and ten miles north to the next town. She didn’t strike him as the kind of woman who could walk that far on four pounds of grease and sugar.

“Thank you, Fran,” he said to the waitress. “Another great salad.”

“We only keep that on the menu for you, Zeke.” She winked at him. “Don’t let it be so long before we see you again.”

“I’ll try.”

He took a toothpick and walked out, chewing on it as he slowly got into the SUV, adjusted his seat and seatbelt, and started the engine. He pulled out, pausing long enough to glance at the footprints in the blow-over that covered the asphalt along the side of the road. North. Interesting choice. She must have assumed he would go south first.

Clever lady.

He drove slowly along the two-lane highway, his thoughts drifting to a wound she’d opened with her questions. He’d call them innocent questions, but he wasn’t sure that they were completely innocent. He got the feeling she was testing him out, trying to find a vulnerable spot or a weakness she could exploit.

She nearly found one when she asked about his family.

He married right out of high school, the typical quarterback who married the head cheerleader. They went to college together, planning their life over the sink while they ate ramen in the middle of the night. She’d be a teacher, he’d be a lawyer, and they’d raise two or three kids together. A happy life. She got pregnant their senior year. He dropped out, worked dead-end jobs for a year until he was accepted into the police academy. It was a stepping stone, they told themselves. A good job with excellent benefits and decent pay, a job that would see them through until she could start working. But then came a second child and a mortgage and a promotion he couldn’t pass up. She managed to keep up her end of the bargain. She started teaching when the boys were both in school, raising their kids to be wonderful little men. But she did it mostly on her own while he lived his life on the streets, telling himself he was taking down the bad guys, making the city safer for his kids, so it was all right that he missed birthdays and anniversaries, that he rarely spent more than three or four nights at a time in his own bed, that he arrived home Christmas morning high as a kite.

It was the job, and the job was damn important.

She’d begun talking rehab and interventions ten years ago. The idea of a separation came up for the first time eight years ago. She didn’t actually leave until seven years ago, but he still couldn’t see what it was that she was telling him, what she was fighting against. All he saw was that she couldn’t see how important his job was.

The divorce went through six years ago. At first, he showed up to all the scheduled visitation dates, but then his undercover life began to interfere. Drug deals would be going down the night of his son’s little league game, meet-ups with the gang leaders when his kid thought he was going to show for the spelling bee. Gang members didn’t work banker’s hours. It was impossible to fit it all in, impossible to make it all work. The kids were better off…

And then she moved, and met a man who did work banker’s hours, a man who was willing to put the family first. And he spiraled.

First it was a closed-door reprimand. Then it was a change in assignments, a desk job that made him feel like a hamster caught in a cage. And then internal affairs got involved when evidence disappeared from lockup. If he left quietly, no charges would be filed.

A career—a good career, marked by dozens of arrests, reams of invaluable information—destroyed because of one act.

He was glad his kids weren’t around then. He didn’t want them to see their father disgraced, removed from the job that had both turned him into a hero and destroyed him all at the same time. But, even as bad as that was, it wasn’t the worst.

With the loss of his job went the loss of access to his drug of choice. He’d never paid for it before that moment, had never had to pay for it. But with his job gone, he had no choice.

Rock bottom for Zeke had been the morning a year ago when he woke in a crack house that he’d busted when he was new to the narcotics squad, lying on a filthy mattress with a needle in his arm. Addicts all around him, addicts he swore he had nothing in common with. Yet, there he was, lying on that mattress, mice scattering when he shifted, other sleeping addicts scattered around him in various stages of undress. Needles everywhere. He didn’t even remember going there, didn’t know how long he’d been there, didn’t know what drug he’d shot into his veins.

That was when he knew he was either going to shake his addiction or die. And he didn’t want to die.

Rehab wasn’t Zeke’s scene—all that loss of control, sitting around talking about how his mother spanked him far too often when he was a kid…disgusting!—so he called in a few favors with friends who had yet to abandon him. A nurse whose kid thought the drug scene might be exciting until Zeke set him straight, a cop whose back he protected when a gang member tried to jump him in a dark alley, a doctor who kicked his own addiction after Zeke blew his cover in order to explain to the guy what kind of darkness he was walking into. Those three people saved his life. And Narcotics Anonymous was keeping him on the straight and narrow.

He lost his kids when he chose the addiction over them. He had no right to drop into their lives now no matter what Little Miss Insanity thought. The best thing he could do for them was stay away.

He sent money every month. That had to be enough.

He nearly missed Finley. She was walking inside the tree line, but she was wearing a bright pink cardigan that didn’t exactly blend in with the dark bark of the bare winter trees. He slowed to a crawl as he pulled onto the shoulder, rolling down the window as he waited for her to catch up to him.

“Feeling sick yet?” he called over to her.

She ignored him, pretending she hadn’t heard him.

“All that heavy food can’t be feeling good in your belly right now.”

“I’m fine!”

He almost laughed, she sounded so much like a petulant child.

“Think you can make it another nine and a half miles? That’s how much farther you have to go.”

She glanced at him, nearly walking straight into a tree for the effort. He had to bite back another bray of laughter.

“I’m fine. Why don’t you go back to Los Angeles and tell them you couldn’t find me?”

“Because that would be a lie, and it’s my policy not to lie.”

“Oh? Then you must be the first honest man to live in the twenty-first century.”

“And you’re the most stubborn woman to live in it!”

She ignored that barb, walking still at a steady pace. He followed, allowing the SUV to basically idle along the side of the road. He kept an eye on her while trying to look like he didn’t really give a shit what she did. They still had more than ten hours before they’d be at their destination, and that was only if she gave up and got in the car so that they could go at a more appropriate speed. He was anxious to get this thing going, afraid that if he spent too much time in her presence she might have another psychotic break. Or get under his skin. He wasn’t sure which would be worse.

Finley was a beautiful woman. Even in her state of defiance, she held her head up high and walked with a posture that a runway model would find enviable. The memory of her nudity was still burning just out of sight in his thoughts—those full hips and perfect teacup-sized breasts!—but it was her pushy, determined behavior that was getting to him more than anything else. He admired strong women. His mother had been weak, but his wife was one of the strongest women he’d ever known. Even as she destroyed him by leaving their marriage and falling in love with someone else, he couldn’t help but admire the balls it took for her to do it.

He didn’t want to like Finley Calloway. He wanted to deliver her to her destination and leave it at that. But he could already feel her fingers prying at the cracks in his walls.

About two miles from the diner, she hesitated in her step. He put his foot on the brake, watching as she glanced almost wistfully toward the SUV.

“Is it really nine miles?” she asked.

“Eight and a half now.”

She grunted, doubling over as she held her stomach. He expected her to be sick, but she wasn’t. The color was gone from her face when she straightened again, though.

“Are you going to get in, or do you want to wait until all that fried food makes another visit?”

She glared at him, her hands on the small of her back. “You’re an ass!”

“Thank you. Now get in the car.”

She sighed, clearly aware she had no other choice. She climbed the slight embankment to the edge of the road, climbing into the SUV with quite a bit of fanfare, her butt shaking the whole vehicle as she threw it into the seat, the slamming of the door only adding to the vibrations, her hands smacking against the tops of her thighs with a sharp sound that made it pretty clear how annoyed she was.

“Seatbelt.”

“What?”

“Seatbelt. Put your seatbelt on.”

She sighed, but she put it on. Zeke pulled hard onto the highway and sped up to the recommended speed limit as quickly as he could, anxious to get this show back on the road. Finley settled back against the seat, clearly defeated. He was almost relieved when she closed her eyes, her head turned away from him, feigning sleep. He preferred a silent drive.

In a short time, it became clear that she really was asleep. He turned on the radio, playing it just loud enough for him to hear it, preferring the music to his own thoughts. But it was hard to keep his mind quiet.

He glanced over at her, struggling to relate this determined, stubborn woman to the one he’d read about in the file Andres had handed him back at the office. She looked like the woman in the photograph—except for the twenty or so pounds she’d clearly lost—but she didn’t act like the woman described in her doctor’s notes. Zeke had spent a lot of time around homicidal maniacs and psychotic criminals during his time on the streets. He knew mental instability when he saw it. He didn’t see it in her.

She must hide it well.

 

***

 

It was fully dark before they passed Los Banos. She slept for several hours, breathing softly, her head bouncing with each bump they hit. He finally felt sorry for her and balled up a shirt he pulled from his bag, slipping it under her head so that it wouldn’t bounce quite as much. He took off his sports coat and draped that on her lap, too.

He was humming with the radio, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel, when she suddenly cried out, throwing her body forward as she tried to escape something in her dreams. He reached over to touch her arm, and she cried out, jerking away from him.

“Hey, you’re fine. It’s just a nightmare.”

She slid her hips toward the door, moving as far from him as she could get. He glanced at her, feeling guilty for reasons he didn’t understand.

“Just a nightmare,” he repeated.

She rubbed her hands over her face, making a sound against her palms that was almost a growl. “Where are we?” she mumbled when she dropped them to her lap again, staring out the side window.

“Somewhere outside Stockton.”

She sighed. “We’re making good time.”

It didn’t sound like a compliment—even with her lilting Irish brogue, it sounded more like a criticism.

“I thought we’d get a hotel in Sacramento, start again early in the morning.”

“That’d be great. But…”

“But what?”

“But I don’t have any clean clothes. You didn’t let me grab anything before we left.”

“You didn’t ask.”

“Yeah, well, I’d like to have a clean pair of underwear to put on in the morning.”

“What would you like me to do about that?”

“Can’t we stop and buy some?” She looked him up and down, this judgmental look on her face that made his skin crawl a little. “I’m sure Norman is paying you quite well. You can put it on your expense account.”

“And you can try to escape again.”

“To go where? We’re still, essentially, in the middle of nowhere.”

“You could hitch a ride to Sacramento. From there, you could go anywhere in the country.”

“Then handcuff me.”

His eyebrows rose. “And walk through a store that way? I’m sure that would go over well with the small town locals.”

She crossed her arms hard over her chest. “You were married. Didn’t your wife ever explain to you what it’s like for a woman to have to wear the same pair of underwear twice in a row? Especially on two days that require sitting in a car for six hours or more?” She glanced at him. “It’s not just about comfort. It’s about health, too.”

He groaned, her words making him think of things he didn’t want to think about. He was here to protect her from herself and the public from her, not to think about the underwear she was wearing under those jeans.

“All right,” he finally said, not really in the mood to discuss the issue any further. “We’ll stop at a department store or something. But you have to promise you won’t slip out the back door.”

“Promise.”

Zeke knew it was a mistake to trust her, but he also knew that she’d be easier to handle if he did what he could to make her happy. So, when he spotted a Walmart on the other side of the highway, he pulled onto the exit ramp.

“Fifteen minutes. Straight to the women’s section and straight back out.”

“Awww!  I can’t look at the new toys, Daddy?” She pushed out her bottom lip to mimic a pout. “I really wanted something new!”

Zeke just shook his head as he climbed out of the SUV and walked around to her side. He helped her out, keeping his hand on her upper arm to keep her from straying too far from him on the walk to the front of the store.

“It would be less awkward if you just held my hand.”

He caught sight of a woman watching them and realized how this must look. That was the only reason he did as she suggested, sliding his hand down to hers. She immediately pressed her fingers between his, making it as intimate and uncomfortable as she could. Like shopping for underwear wasn’t going to be uncomfortable enough.

The store wasn’t terribly busy. They got turned around once or twice looking for the lingerie section, but finally found it tucked into the center of the store near the dressing rooms. Finley pulled away from him, picking up a flimsy thong made of nothing more than bright red lace.

“What about this, darlin’?” she asked, dancing them around in the air. “Do you like?”

“Finley,” he warned under his breath, but it did nothing to deter her. She turned and began digging through another bin of panties, pulling out a pair that had nothing but a transparent triangle attached to thin pink strings.

“This looks like fun.” She tossed them at him. “Wouldn’t you just love to see me in those?”

Zeke grabbed them, feeling his face burn as he shoved them back into the bin she’d taken them from as he followed her to the next display.

“You need to tone it down,” he hissed near her ear. “Pick a pair so we can get out of here.”

“Oh, I’m not buying any of these.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder as she continued to pick through them just the same. “Who wants to wear unwashed panties that some stranger’s fingers have been pawing at? Or some guy has sniffed for whatever reason men do that.”

“They don’t usually do it to clean underwear.”

She glanced at him, a look of complete shock on her face. It took him a second to realize it was a feigned look. “That’s just nasty!”

He snagged her hip and dragged her up against him, pulling her toward the display of packaged underwear. She moved against him—whether it was accidental or on purpose, he wasn’t quite sure—brushing her back across his crotch. He grunted, pushing her forward just slightly.

“Are we a little shy?” she wondered aloud.

“Stop playing games, please.”

“Didn’t you ever go underwear shopping with your wife?”

“That’s none of your business.”

She turned suddenly, nearly catching him off balance because her body was so close to his. They were pressed together for a moment, her lower belly pressed hard against his quickly growing erection, her small breasts against his ribcage. They must have looked like a loving couple in an embrace to anyone who happened to choose that moment to pass them, down to the way his hands had somehow ended up on her waist.

“You don’t seem like a shy guy, Zeke,” she said, her breath brushing against his throat. “Why do you refuse to talk about yourself? If we don’t get to know each other, it’s going to be a very boring, very awkward drive up to Waterfall Springs.”

“Is that what you’re really after? Entertainment?”

“Perhaps.” She focused on his chest for a second, pressing her hand to the center of his shirt and then sliding it under his sports coat, her fingertips slipping under the strap of his holster for a brief moment. “Or maybe I’m just interested in fulfilling other needs that will be forced into dormancy once I get back to the hospital.”

The suggestion in her words took the breath from his lungs. He knew she was only manipulating him, but he was only human. It’d been more than a year since he’d been with a woman—nearly a decade since he’d been with a woman completely sober. She was starting a fire that she couldn’t contain.

Zeke pushed her back, his hands rough on her upper arms. “Cut it out!”

She seemed startled for a moment. But then something behind him caught her attention, and she suddenly cried out.

“He’s attacking me!”

Zeke spun around to find a manager, a bewildered look on his face, staring at the two of them.

“This isn’t what it looks like,” he began, his hands raised in a gesture of peace.

“You saw him! He pushed me! He’s a damn maniac, thinking he could force me to go to the bathrooms with him!” She walked right up to Zeke and slapped him hard across the face. “Pervert!”

“Finley! Stop this!”

“My name isn’t even Finley! It’s Rebecca!” She paused beside the manager. “He’s insane, I’m telling you! Do you always let insane perverts into your store?”

The manager grabbed a walkie talkie off his belt and began calling for security. Finley, standing out of the man’s view, blew Zeke a kiss and walked away.

Zeke cursed under his breath. She’d done it again!