Fugitive Heart (10 page)

“Oh.”

She still doubted him? He made a frustrated noise deep in his throat.

Ames must have understood his inarticulate growl. She pulled back to study his face. “No, I believe you. You just seem so familiar with that whole…what goes on. How these guys think.”

“I grew up around those people, and yeah, they were the ones I partied with as a teen.” Before the mess with his father. “But I never lived like that.” That wasn’t entirely true, and he sagged a little, remembering.

“Okay, I can tell you’re upset. What’s wrong?” She seemed better able to read him than Lina, his girlfriend who’d lived with him for almost year while they were in graduate school.

He decided to tell her the worst about himself—why not? It wasn’t anything as horrible as she’d conjured on her own, like he’d kill Elliot. He touched a springy curl at her cheek. Just for luck. “The family likes to have something on people who know anything about their business dealings. You know,
quid pro quo
. So, um, you know…” His voice trailed off.

She bumped his shoulder. “I think you’re saying ‘you know’ a lot because you don’t actually want me to know. Go on. You were talking about business dealings.”

“Hey, how come you’re not a lawyer? I’m thinking you’d be a good prosecutor.”

She began to squirm against him again, as if trying to get even closer. “I didn’t go to college, and I like web design. Come on, Nick. Explain this quid pro quo.”

He wrapped the other arm around her and pulled her onto his lap. His body woke entirely, and for a second, the rest didn’t matter.

They exchanged a long, hungry kiss. He hauled her closer. She twisted, wiggled and then straddled him. He could feel the heat of her pressing against him. Yes, he did like skirts.

She nibbled his mouth, sank into another kiss and moved in his arms, restless and full of life. All of that soft energy so close, so ready for him. Maybe he could just slip his fingers into those panties and then into her. And then he could—

“What did you mean by quid pro quo?” she murmured against his mouth.

“Don’t you ever let anything go?” He kissed her eyelids and a clean spot on her cheek.

With a pained sigh, and ignoring her startled squawk, he lifted her up and off his thighs. “We don’t have time. I’ll do a quick cleanup, and we can talk in the car.”

She started to protest.

He held up a hand, palm out. “I’ll talk, I promise.”

While she waited for him on the porch, he went inside to get the worst of the dirt off himself. The cold water doused his body’s eager longing for Ames, temporarily. He put on jeans, a T-shirt and his easy-to-reach nylon holster again. He’d never gotten used to the weight and feel of a gun against his body and took a couple of minutes to practice pulling the gun from the holster. Nick’s dark wool jacket was off the rack and loose—the casual academic-nerd look, his father had called it. It hid the gun just fine.

They walked to the car without talking. He looked around the clearing, which was too frigging quiet, before sliding into the driver’s seat.

Ames clicked her seat belt closed and stared out the window as he started the car and drove up the bumpy driveway. Too bad there weren’t cameras along the dirt drive. He’d love to know what awaited him over the rise or around the next curve.

“Crap,” she whispered.

“What?”

“This whole situation.”

He stopped the car and studied her. Just as she seemed to know him, he figured he could read her better than most people. “Come on. I know you’re holding back, Ames. Tell me what you’re thinking, and then I’ll tell you what you asked me about earlier.”

She laughed then, for the first time in hours. A great sound. “I think I might be a little crazy. I learn my brother’s involved with criminals. I know we’re in danger. I feel sick with this, I feel like sobbing, but mostly I feel like having my way with you. That’s just creepy. If you hadn’t stopped us back on the porch, I would have had your pants down and my skirt up and… Good thing you took less than five minutes inside the house. I was this close to bolting inside and joining you in the shower. I ought to be worrying about the people who’re after Elliot and us. Instead, I spent the time imagining you naked.”

He had to swallow down the wave of lust her words conjured in his body. “Ever hear about how danger and sorrow make a person want to do something life affirming?”

“No.”

“Sounds about right, though, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe it sounds right to you. To me, it sounds crazy.” She tilted her head back, exposing her pale throat. Nick could really do with more life affirming about now, starting with licking that throat.

He pulled out of the driveway and onto the back road instead. No sign of traffic was a nice change for him, but the dirt and badly maintained roads wreaked havoc on a car. In his constant city versus country contest, car travel ended up a draw.

Her eyes still closed, she said, “Tell me.”

He didn’t bother to pretend he didn’t know what she meant.

“When I hit eighteen, I was past the easy time.”

“I don’t understand. From everything I know, the early teen years are far less easy. Eighteen is past the really tough adolescent years.”

“I mean the easy time in jail. If I broke a law, I wasn’t going to get off easy. It would go on my permanent record.”

“Oh, right.” She gave him a swift, narrow-eyed look.

“Look, it’s not that big a deal. It’s not like I killed or even hurt anyone.”
Back then.
“I just ended up as part of a group of guys who robbed a liquor store after closing. We went out drinking, and suddenly there was Bert, messing with the alarm code. He had some new toy he wanted to use, he told us. A code breaker.”

They’d been laughing and playing. Nick had been drunk, and the whole night felt like they were flying with the power of being young and with a group of guys he’d known forever. Laughing and…

He scowled when he saw how she stared at him, as if she thought he was as despicable as a child rapist. Sure, the night’s memories felt scummy now—but he still felt the need to argue with her and his conscience.

“We didn’t get any money. Not much, anyway, maybe fifty bucks because the business had closed out the cash drawer. And we grabbed a couple of six-packs. It was more just messing around and seeing what we could do. That’s what I thought. But even though we’d knocked out the cameras—disabled them, I mean—don’t glare like that, Ames, we didn’t even break the cameras, for God’s sake. Anyway, the cameras there weren’t working, but Bert had a camera of his own.”

The next part embarrassed Nick, but Ames had stopped frowning. Now she just waited and watched him, so he continued. “Bert managed to take video and shots of me in the store—incriminating stuff. A day later, I got a call explaining the concept of what Bert called mutual leverage. Along the lines of ‘we’ve got your dirty secret, and that helps us feel better knowing you’ve got a couple of ours.’ It felt like crap being dicked around by a guy I thought was my friend, but I understood. This was how they’d feel safer about me. I’d made it clear since high school that I wasn’t interested in any aspect of the business, not even the legitimate side. So in a way, Bert helped me go on my own merry way.”

He turned from the bumpy country road onto the highway. “After that night, I learned my lesson. I’d go out clubbing with them now and then, but no more partying hard. No more drinking a lot. No more extracurricular activities.”

“That all sounds horrible.”

Nick tried to explain. “They could have threatened me with violence or framed me for something I didn’t do, whatever—but Bert liked to make it real.” Also, Bert enjoyed messing with people’s minds on a small scale. So did his dad, Cesar, who was far more likely to use violence to get the message across.”

“So you still stayed friends?”

“Not really. After my father unsuccessfully tried to call it quits, I broke away completely. I went to school full-time, worked a lot. I’d left that life behind. For good, I believed.”

“Until my brother.”

“Until your brother.”

“Oh, Elliot,” she muttered under her breath, and it sounded like both a prayer and a curse.

Chapter Nine

Ames slipped into the back door of the diner and headed to the break room—fast. She wished she had an invisibility cloak to shield her from curious eyes, but she didn’t, and so of course Marty spotted her and trailed after her.

“What the heck happened to you? You look like you’ve been wallowing in dirt.”

“Took a long hike in the woods. Got a little sweaty. No time to talk.” Ames grabbed her extra uniform out of her locker.

“No time to shower either? What’s up?”

“Nothing. I’m in a hurry, that’s all.” She stripped off her top and skirt and shimmied into the brown dress.

“Too much of a hurry to go home and get some clothes.” Marty stood in the doorway, arms folded, barring her way. “This has something to do with that Sam guy, doesn’t it? First you go to the movie with him, then today you go out and…what? Mud wrestle?”

Ames faced her. “Look, if anybody, any stranger comes around here asking about Elliot or me, do me a huge favor and say nothing.”

“Say nothing,” Marty repeated. “What the
hell
is going on? You’re starting to scare me. Is this about Elliot? Have you tracked that fool down yet?”

God, she never could keep anything from Marty, but she was going to do her best to keep the facts to a minimum. “You know Elliot. Always in hot water. Seems he may have dived in really deep this time. The less you know the better.”

“Jesus. Is this something you need to go to the police about?” Marty reached out and grasped her upper arms. “Ames?”

Good question.
“No. I promise I will as soon as I can. I don’t have anything concrete to tell them, just speculation. Forget I said anything.” Before she spilled everything to Marty, she pulled away and nudged past her.

“By the way, would you be willing to cover early shift tomorrow? Or if you can’t, call Donna or Jillian for me. I’d really appreciate it.”

“Sure, I can do it. What are you going to be up—”

“I’m sorry to impose, but it’s important.” Ames hurried out the door before Marty could ask any more questions.

Nick had pulled the car around back and leaned against the side. He looked criminally hot in the jacket that emphasized his broad shoulders. He didn’t look like the guys in Arnesdale, that was for sure. More cosmopolitan or something. She gave herself a mental kick in the pants for taking even a second to think about Nick’s hotness in the middle of a crisis.

“Sexy uniform. I’ve always had a thing for waitresses.” He smirked, and she gave him a quick punch as she walked past on her way to the passenger side of the car. Okay, so they could distract each other.

The sky had darkened to a purple dusk by the time they pulled up in front of the Greely’s house. Her stomach growled at too many missed meals.

“I still think it would be better if you waited in the car. It’s not like somebody’s going to shoot me in Mrs. Greely’s kitchen.” Ames tried once more to convince Nick, but he was as stubborn as…well, as stubborn as she was. This new, very determined side of her nature seemed directly related to the strange new dangerous world he’d brought to Arnesdale—or maybe it was Nick who brought it out.

“I can play it cool. I’m new in town, so you’re being nice and introducing me to some people. Plus, I think Mrs. Greely liked me when we met last night.”

“Fine. Whatever.” She got out of the car and shut the door harder than she needed to. The problem was that she intended to flirt with Jake a little if necessary to learn whatever she could from him, and she didn’t really want to do that in front of Nick. Why was that? Did she like him a little too much?

Ames didn’t want to think about the reasons, so she stalked to the front door and stabbed the bell with her finger.

By the time Nick caught up with her, Alice Greely was framed in the doorway. “Ames! What a surprise to see you two nights in a row. What brings you here?”

“Actually, I was hoping to catch Jake at home.” She jerked a thumb at Nick. “Sam here doesn’t know anybody, and I thought Jake would be the perfect guy to introduce him around. Maybe stop by the sports bar or something.”

“Jake’s in the garage, tinkering with that old wreck of his. You go on around back.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Greely.” Ames felt suddenly sixteen again. That was probably the last time she’d been here, sent to drag Elliot home and finding him and Jake in the shed that passed for a garage. “Fixing” Jake’s rust bucket had been code for smoking pot.

The rusty vintage Mustang looked exactly as Ames remembered it from all those years ago. Unsurprisingly, Jake wasn’t tinkering with the engine but sprawled in a ratty recliner, beer in hand, eyes glued to pro wrestling on the little TV on the workbench.

He sprang up when he saw her, footrest dropping, beer sloshing. “Ames! Hi.” His gaze slid to Nick.

“Hi, Jake. How you doin’?” Ames said. “This is Sam Allen. He moved into the Old Place.”

“Oh, yeah. I heard about that.” Jake offered a hand, and the two men gave a one pump shake. So far, so good. Jake ran a hand over his thinning blond hair. “Want a beer?”