Hot Pursuit (17 page)

Oh, God. It was as if he knew exactly the kind of chaos she felt when he so much as mentioned Afghanistan.

“Two weeks,” Dan said again, as if he also knew she was actually considering his crazy proposal. “I can’t promise you longer than that. I’m not going to lie to you—”

“Yes, you are,” she said. “You’re lying your ass off right now.”

“No, I am not,” he insisted.

“Yeah, you are,” she said again, “but even if you weren’t, you don’t know me. How can you sit here and know that day
… three
I’m not going to be driving you crazy because I laugh like a horse or … or …”

“You don’t laugh like a horse,” he said, laughing himself.

“Or do that awful baby talk thing and call you
pookie
in public,” she continued, “or… dress up your penis in Barbie clothes?”

He laughed again at that. “Wow. That’s, um …” Still grinning, he scratched his head.

Jenn was laughing now, too. “Crazy? Yes. It’s definitely crazy. And that’s my point. How do you know I’m not crazy?”

“I don’t,” he said. “But I think that Barbie clothes thing might really work for me.”

“Yes,” she said. “Right.
You
might be crazy. That’s an equally good point.”

“Okay,” Dan said. “Here’s the deal. If I turn out to be crazy, then you say—on day three—when the, um, fucking you’re getting isn’t worth the … fucking you’re getting, if you’ll pardon the crassness of my French, then you say,
Pookie, it’s just not working out
, and I’ll immediately slink off into the sunset.”

Jenn shook her head. “I just don’t—”

He kissed her again.

This time she didn’t see it coming. This time, he grabbed her and locked lips before she knew what was happening. This time, it wasn’t sweet or soft. This time it was a kiss for the record books, with his arms tightly around her, his body—all those muscles—against her, and his extremely talented tongue in her mouth.

And this time, that treacherous desire that had started heating
her from the inside out didn’t just shift in her chest. It slid through her, leaving her breathless and weak, clinging to him, her fingers and toes tingling.

“All the words in the world,” he said between kisses, “can’t explain this. It’s not rational. It’s fire—it’s hot and I
know
that it’s mutual.” He pulled back to look into her eyes. “And we can tiptoe around it and waste this precious time, or we can be honest about it, and have the greatest two weeks of our lives. You’re not looking for forever, and you know it. What would you do with a boyfriend who hung around for more than two weeks, anyway?”

She didn’t say anything, because she was afraid if she opened her mouth,
Kiss me again
would come out. And there was
so
much about this that absolutely didn’t work, she didn’t know where to start.

“Dan. I don’t—”

“If we do this,” he cut her off, “and right now, I’m praying that we do, because I like you and I really want you, but if we do this, it needs to be exclusive, because I don’t share well. And I know you have a crush on that detective—”

“What?” she said, pulling free from him—something she should have done many long moments ago. “I do not.”

“Yeah,” Dan said. “You do. But he’s all about Maria—”

“You’re
all about Maria,” she said. “Or you were, before you got stuck here, guarding me!”

“Okay,” he said. “You know what? Yes. I will cop to the fact that I noticed her. But I would bet my entire savings account, which is undeniably meager since I currently pay my mother’s rent, that Maria—and she is beautiful, that’s a fact—but she would never, in a million years, make a joke about dressing my penis in Barbie clothes.”

Jenn laughed. “Okay, the way you keep bringing that up is bordering on frightening.”

“I love that your brain came up with that. It’s the funniest thing
I’ve heard in a long time and … Jenni, I want to laugh,” he said, and it was, quite possibly, the most honest, most serious thing he’d said to her all evening. “I want to get laid, yeah, it’s true, but I also want to laugh. I got two weeks where I know I’m not going have to watch one of my friends die—which is
the
fucking worst thing that can happen to you. Trust me on that.”

“Oh, God,” she said.

And there they sat, just gazing at each other.

He broke the silence. “I want to kiss you again,” he said. “Please don’t say no.”

“Dan.”

He moved toward her.

“No.”

He backed down, but said, “Not a lot of conviction there, Jenn.”

“I can’t,” she said.

“But you want to.”

God, he was arrogant, but he was also right. She didn’t stand up. Didn’t take her plate and his back into the kitchen. Didn’t put some distance between them—between herself and the most attractive man she’d ever met, let alone who wanted to kiss her.

She just shook her head.

He nodded as he took a pen from his pocket, took her hand, uncapped the pen with his teeth.

“Dan,” she said, letting her exasperation sound in her voice. What was he doing? “Don’t.”

But all he did was draw a very small
X
, right in the middle of her palm.

“That’s me,” he said after recapping the pen, as he repocketed it. “Right there. Right in the chaos of your fate line, between what you really want to do, and what you think you
should
do—based, I would bet, on someone else’s set of rules—rules that have nothing whatsoever to do with Jennilyn LeMay, who is independent and strong enough to recognize that a two-week relationship with a man
who will be the best lover—and the best boyfriend—she’s ever had, is exactly what she needs to bring balance and passion and vitality to her equally chaotic life.”

She laughed, because … dear God … She had to give him huge points for persistence, creativity, and sheer chutzpah.

He let go of her hand, and she looked down at that mark, despite her attempt not to.
That’s me …

And he wasn’t done slinging the bull. “Just because it’s not serious, just because we’re not going into this with the idea that it’s forever, doesn’t mean it’s not special. Because it is. It will be.”

“God,” she said again. “You are
so
good.”

“Two weeks,” he said. It had become his refrain. “Please, Jenn. I don’t get a chance like this very often. I really like you. And I want to spend this time with you before I go back to the war.”

T
he crazy-ass bastard started screaming at them, his speech slurred and his words almost impossible to understand. “Don’t touch her!” Sam had thought the man was saying, over and over. “Don’t you touch her!”

He’d first spotted the homeless man quite a few blocks back, as he and Alyssa had walked—slowly, because his entire right side was stiffening up and hurting like a bitch—from Margaret Thorndyke’s digs, which overlooked Central Park, to this comparatively crappier neighborhood where Maria Bonavita resided.

And that
crappier
was a relative one.

Because it was a case of super-fucking rich versus merely fucking rich, with a universal truth that the streets below both majestic buildings belonged to everyone. Including Don Quixote de la Crazy-Face, here, who was shouting what definitely sounded like, “Don’t you dare touch her!”

It was Sam’s fault, completely.

He’d stopped with Alyssa, there on the sidewalk a few blocks shy of Maria’s apartment building, because he hadn’t had time, during the long, frozen walk from Central Park, to say what he’d wanted to say.
I’m not going to ask you not to go to Afghanistan. In fact, I think you should go. But as much as it scares me not to be part of your team
and go with you, I think it would be selfish to do that. It would be unfair to Ash
.

He’d stopped Alyssa from walking those last few blocks, and he’d pulled her close and kissed her—something else he couldn’t do once they were inside. He’d gotten as far as a variation on
In fact, I think you should go
, when old Don Q made himself known by starting his tirade from way down at the other end of the block.

He and Lys weren’t the only ones there on that sidewalk, but Sam knew that he wore his Texas roots pretty much stamped on his forehead. Yeah, he could conceal it when he wanted to. He’d learned to blend in to his current environment, both as an operative in the SEALs and working for Troubleshooters, but this job wasn’t about blending so he hadn’t bothered to try.

And right now, what he was trying to do was have a conversation with his wife.

When he’d first noticed the homeless man, he’d dismissed him. And although he’d learned early on in his life never to dismiss anyone completely, his training and instincts had told him that Don Q wasn’t a threat.

Sam had first thought the dude was a lady, with that froth of wild gray curls exploding out from beneath his grungy knit cap, with its dingy Marines patch sewn on, right in the center. The puffy purple-and-grime-colored woman’s down-filled overcoat that flapped around his legs helped with the whole gender-bending effect. But the guy had a beard—unkempt, sparse, and gray. That and his shoulders-former linebacker wide, despite the fact that he now walked hunched over—screamed dangling genitalia.

He was African American, and about the right age to be a Vietnam vet.

Back about seven blocks, before the shouting had started, Sam had assumed that they were being approached not just because of his Texas tourist attitude, but also because both he and Lys were former Navy. Even though neither of them advertised that fact the way
some folks did, with the word NAVY stitched across their jacket or the seat of their pants, there were just some people, usually former servicemen or women themselves, who simply
knew
.

So yes, Sam had assumed that the Don had targeted them as compatriots
—and
as likely candidates in his quest for donations to buy tonight’s swerve-on, in its delivery vehicle of a bottle of Wild Turkey.

And while Sam would’ve been fine with buying the man a roast beef sandwich, he had more than his share of friends and family members who were recovering alcoholics, so the idea of funding this man’s addiction didn’t sit well with him.

So he’d picked up their pace, because La Mancha Man had a bad leg. His gait was unbalanced and although he could manage a surprisingly quick shuffle, he couldn’t possibly keep up with them—even with Sam’s pain-in-the-ass cracked rib.

He’d made another mistake then—he’d believed that they’d left the Q-ster far behind. Part of it had to do with Sam’s being distracted by a wide variety of discussion topics—none of them easy or fun.

It had started with a phone call Alyssa had received, back at the beginning of their walk, before Don Quixote had appeared, as they left the lobby of Margaret Thorndyke’s swanky apartment building, over in the
super-
fucking rich part of town.

Unlike other fairly important breaking news of the day—such as the info about the impending A-stan trip coming directly out of the Oval Office in Washington, D.C.—this time, Alyssa relayed the news from her call to Sam as soon as she got off the phone.

“Margaret Thorndyke’s cell phone was traced to Nicco’s, a restaurant not too far from Maria’s office, where she lunches somewhat regularly,” Alyssa had told him, her unhappiness clear in her tone. “It was on the floor, under a table—its ring set on silent. The proprietor couldn’t remember if she was in today or even yesterday. We should get a cab.”

She stepped to the curb, probably because she knew that the
arm motion necessary for flagging down a taxi might make Sam vomit from the pain. As it was, the cold was making him shiver, which wasn’t working well for him, either. Of course, with the weather being what it was, there were no unoccupied cabs in sight.

Sam zipped his jacket up and tucked his scarf more securely around his neck. “I’m okay to walk. It’s not that far.”

She gave him her
what kind of fool do you think I am
look—the one that he’d learned not to laugh at—so he tossed a little truth out there. “It’ll feel better to walk. It’ll help me keep warm. This shivering shit is killing me.”

He headed south, and she fell into step beside him.

“So,” he said, before the main topic of conversation became his rib, “Maggie’s cell phone. They find any prints on it?”

“It’s at the lab,” she said. “They’ll run fingerprints, and a DNA test.”

Lotta DNA and other crud on a cell phone.

“That’s good,” he said. “And the restaurant… ?”

“It’s a popular place,” she told him. “Upscale. Good food. Gourmet Greek, and always crowded. Lots of regulars, including Maggie Thorndyke. The owners are checking their records, see if whoever sat at that table paid with a credit card. If she was there with a date …”

“We might also want to check to see if anyone sat at the bar, running up a tab, waiting for a table to empty so he could plant that phone,” Sam suggested. “We should talk to the bartender, too.”

Alyssa was silent as they maneuvered their way around an oncoming woman with a double stroller, which held an obvious set of twins, a little older than Ash. God help the poor woman. He loved his son dearly, but if there were two Ashes, he’d have long since been driven mad from sleep deprivation.

“I’m not saying that it happened that way,” Sam continued as they waited at an intersection for the light to change. “But it’s definitely possible.”

“I prefer the scenario where Maggie Thorndyke had lunch there today, with her new boyfriend,” his wife said. Sam had told her that Mr. Jackson reported that when “Miss Maggie” was younger, every so often—every two months or so—there would briefly be a new man in her life. Very briefly, and usually accompanied by two or three days of massive alcohol consumption and possibly even drug use.

It was a pattern that the doorman had seen again and again through the years.

But he’d also reported that it had been years since she’d last run that pattern.

And this time, although the disappearance felt familiar, he hadn’t seen her with anyone on the day she’d vanished—not man or woman.