Pinups and Possibilities (15 page)

I popped the hood and waited, cursing myself for promising Polly safety, then immediately being on the verge of letting her down. I didn’t have long to dwell on it. Less than two minutes later, the crunch of crushed rock carried through the air as a car cruised up and parked three feet behind us.

Its lights were conspicuously out.

I heard the door open, and the driver’s feet weren’t quite soundless as they hit the ground.

The smell of stale cigar, which I recognized as Smith’s signature scent, wafted through the air.

Show time.

I banged lightly on a random part of the engine, then swore as if it weren’t cooperating.

I’d debated whether or not to have Polly and her son wait inside the old restroom, but in the end, I couldn’t stand the thought of them being out of reach, and the ruse of a broken-down car had won out over that of a pit stop. As Smith approached, I refused to second-guess my decision, but tensed when silence let me know he’d stopped beside the car. I pictured him peering into the windows of the Mustang, and the thought of Smith’s eyes on Polly and Jayme made me sick.

If he hurts them…

I shoved down the violent, unfinished thought and focused on the task at hand.

I knew the man well enough professionally to be sure he wouldn’t go after his targets until he took care of me. I also knew that while he was brutal, he was lazy, too. It translated poorly into his expectations—he assumed that everyone was as unmotivated as he was. It wouldn’t occur to him that I would be faking the car trouble.

“Dammit!” I said loudly.

I dropped the wrench down the side of the car into Smith’s sight line, then bent as if to retrieve it.

He moved quickly, seizing what I’m sure he believed to be my moment of weakness. As he darted around toward the front of the Mustang, I stepped away, drew my arm back and clocked him solidly on the temple. His mouth opened comically before he slumped to the ground.

I pushed him with my booted toe, then slapped the handcuffs on him and dragged him toward the trunk. I popped it open, thanked God he was a small man, and hoisted him up. With a grunt and a great deal of effort, I folded him into the cramped space.

Then I wiped the sweat from my forehead and stood back for a moment. As I waited for my heart rate to normalize, I narrowed my eyes at Smith’s still form. If it wasn’t for his rancid breath, wafting from his slack jaw, I might’ve thought he was dead.

Which would almost be more convenient.

I pushed off the urge to hit him again. I was a lot of things, but I sure as hell wasn’t a killer. At least not a cold-blooded one.

Quickly, I gave him a thorough pat down. Smith was in the habit of trusting his fists over a real weapon, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t carrying. I went through his pockets and his boots until I was satisfied that he was clean. Then I yanked a roll of duct tape from beside the other man’s knee, tore off a strip with my teeth and secured it over Smith’s mouth, moustache and all. Then I bound his wrists and ankles, closed the trunk softly and climbed back into the driver’s seat. Polly’s eyes were tightly closed and her hands quivered on top of the gun case.

“Polly?” I said softly.

“Jeanine Louise Harriet Duncan,” she breathed.

“What?”

“If my legal name still applied, that would be it.”

“It’s a mouthful.”

The tiniest smile hovered on her lips. “I know.”

“I like Polly just fine.”

“Me, too.”

She opened her eyes. “Are you okay?”

I reached over to run my finger down her face, enjoying the blush that trailed behind my touch. I couldn’t resist the urge to bring up my other hand and cup both her cheeks in my palms. I leaned in slowly, cautiously, and I brought my lips to hers. Her eyes flicked in Jayme’s direction, but she didn’t pull away. When I exerted a bit more pressure, she released a sigh and closed her eyes.

Her soft exhale shot heat through me. Spurred on by adrenaline and desire, I locked my teeth onto her bottom lip, tugging her mouth open so I could taste her tongue with my own. For a moment she was still, allowing me to explore at leisure, and then her hands found the back of my head and her fingers gripped my hair tightly while she kissed me back hungrily.

I dragged my palms down across her shoulders to her waist and pulled her closer. When she didn’t resist, I slid one of my hands to the hem of her dress and up the curve of her thigh. My fingers made their way to her hip and spread out possessively. She released my mouth and buried a moan in my shoulder.

She was sweet and tempting and I had to force myself to stop, or I was going to lose control, the kid in the back be damned.

I pulled away reluctantly, and Polly drew in a ragged gasp. I caressed her face once more and held her hand tightly.

“To answer your question,” I said. “Yes, I’m okay. But we need to do something about our extra cargo in the trunk. And quickly.”

Her eyes widened.

She was quiet for a moment, then asked, very softly, “Did you kill him?”

“Polly, I’m not a murderer.”

“Have you ever been?”

The direct question caught me off guard, and I had to fight the urge to tell her the truth right then and there.

Yes. But not on purpose.

“Painter?” she pushed.

I resolved to explain when I had time. When
we
had time. But right then we had none. We needed to plan our next move.

“No, I haven’t,” I said firmly, then steered the conversation away from my questionable history. “Smith is unconscious, but he won’t stay that way forever. We have maybe an hour. I need to find a place to dump him.”

Polly gave me a thoughtful look. “What would you do with him if I wasn’t here?”

I shrugged. “Pull out to some main stretch of road or a well-trafficked parking lot and leave him there. Somewhere Smith could bust out alive and well, but not cause too much of a scene without alerting the authorities.”

“You’d ditch the Mustang?”

The fact that Polly sounded so surprised, and the fact that she latched onto that rather than the problem of what to do about Smith made me laugh.

“Maybe I’ll get a minivan,” I teased.

Before I could stop myself, I envisioned Polly with the window rolled down and her pretty feet hanging out her window while singing along to “Baby Beluga.”

“You seriously want to buy a
minivan
?” she asked.

“Or something equally practical,” I agree. “Cohen knows my tastes and he knows this car. Technically speaking, he owns it. So if he reports it stolen, or decides to track it some other way, we’re screwed.”

“Right.”

“Right,” I repeated.

Polly tapped her thigh. “What if you didn’t
buy
a minivan?”

The emphasis wasn’t lost on me and I raised an eyebrow. “What are you suggesting?”

Colour lit up her cheeks, but when she replied, her voice was firm. “I was just thinking about Barry the car salesman.”

“What about him?”

“He had more than a few vans for sale.”

“You want to ask him to help us out after you already robbed him once?”

The red in her face deepened.

“Oh. You want to rob him again.” I couldn’t suppress a grin. “Are you asking me to commit a felony with you?”

“He
liked
the Mustang,” she pointed out. “And you wanted a public place to dump Smith.”

I stared at her. It really was a near-perfect plan, and I had to stifle an urge to kiss her once more. I eased the car into a U-turn and accelerated on the dirt road.

“I know it’s a bad idea,” Polly said. “It’s in the opposite direction we’ve been going, and—”

“It’s not a bad idea, Polly. It’s fucking brilliant one.” I winced and eyed Jayme in the rearview mirror, but he was still sound asleep. “Sorry. Bad habit. It’s true, though. Not Barry himself, of course, but some other Barry-like car salesman can have the Mustang for a steal of a deal—pun intended—and we’ll throw in Smith in for free.”

I directed my attention to the windshield, wondering if she noticed I’d switched from saying
I
to saying
we
, but she was silent for several minutes.

When she spoke again, it was hesitantly. “Painter?”

“Yes?”

“You said Cohen could probably track this car.”

“Yeah, but it won’t matter once we’ve ditched it. We’ll be long gone before he IDs our new vehicle, and by then we’ll probably have switched it out once more. Once we’re far enough gone, we’ll move onto public transit and from there we’ll be in the wind.”

Polly hesitated. “That’s how he found me, though, isn’t it? Tracking my cars?”

There was no point in lying about it. “Yes.”

“Tell me how it happened.”

I cringed a little. The thought of recounting how I stalked her and her son on Cohen’s behalf turned my stomach. Still, she deserved an explanation.

“A few months ago, I walked into Cohen’s office and found him drunk at his desk. There was a dead man on his floor and blood spatter everywhere. Cohen was waving a gun around like he wanted to use it again. In all the years I worked for him, I never saw the man lose control. Not once. But that day he was a disaster. He was raging about death and women and getting screwed over and suspicions being confirmed. He told me that the dead man had been lying to him.”

I paused, remembering the disgust I felt at Cohen’s drunkenness, and the horror at the sight of the man he’d murdered, and the pain when I realized who it was, lying on the floor there.

Howell.

The man who’d saved my life and nursed me back to health. His eyes stared up at the ceiling with that lifeless, unseeing gaze that only the dead have. Polly didn’t need to hear all that.

I tightened my grip on the steering wheel and took a steadying breath. “Cohen shook the gun at me and hollered that it had been almost six years. At first, I thought he was talking about something to do with me, because that’s about how long I’d been working for him. It took me a few minutes to figure out he meant Howell.”

“Howell?” Polly’s face was pale.

“You know him?”

“I did. He—I liked him.”

I waited for a further explanation of her stumbled reply, and when she didn’t offer one, I went on with my story. “Cohen switched topics then, and told me he would find Jayme Duncan if it was the last thing he did. At that point, he calmed down a little, and I managed to get him to give me the gun. I called down to have some of the guys clean up Cohen’s mess. Before they were even done, Cohen had passed out. The next morning, he called me back in. He made no mention of the scene the night before. He didn’t say anything about Howell or his murder. He just did what he always does when he wants me to find someone. He handed me a slip of paper and a last-known location.”

“It was Jayme’s name?” Polly asked.

I nodded. “Jayme’s name, and the name of a run-down car dealership in town.”

“Junkyard Joys.”

“That’s the one.”

“Howell got me a car from them,” Polly told me. “It was a piece of crap, but I just needed it to get me to the next town. The guys at Junkyard Joys weren’t exactly above line. And they weren’t too picky, but they wanted a name to register it to, and we couldn’t use mine. Even if I went with my fake ID, having them remember my face was too risky.”

“So Howell gave them Jayme’s?”

“Howell panicked. He was taking a big risk, helping me. So he told them he
was
Jayme. He thought it would easier for me to remember. And since Cohen didn’t know Jayme’s name…it seemed safe enough. I’ve used it for every car I’ve bought since, just transferring insurance when I’ve needed to.”

“Cohen didn’t know your son’s name?” I was careful to avoid saying
his
son’s name since Polly had denied his parentage, but I couldn’t quite keep the surprise from my voice.

“Only Dr. Howell did. He took care of me for the past three months of my pregnancy and was there for Jayme’s birth. Cohen never saw him.”

I frowned, feeling like I was still missing a part of the story. I wanted to push for more answers, but the guarded look on Polly’s face made me hold in the urge.

“Did you know that the office in Junkyard Joys burned to a crisp?” I asked instead.

Polly inhaled deeply and nodded. “Howell was trying to cover up the records, just in case. He didn’t tell me that part of the plan until I was about to leave. And I still managed to get him killed.”

“You didn’t get him killed. Howell wasn’t a saint. He was in deep with Cohen, saving the lives of criminals who undoubtedly went on to commit more crimes.”

“It doesn’t make me feel any better.”

I knew as well as anyone what it felt like to be laden with the burden of someone else’s death.

Not the same,
argued a voice in my head.
You
actually
killed some. She just feels like she did.

“Howell was a grown man,” I reminded her gruffly.

I glanced over at Polly. Her mouth was pinched, and even though she had her face cast down, I could see the trail of tears on her cheeks. It was the first time I’d seen her cry since we met, the first sign of true vulnerability. A rush of protectiveness surged through me, and I moved my foot to the brake, and eased off the road. With the engine in idle, I reached across the console to squeeze her hand.

“Hey,” I said. “This is
not
your fault.”

“It was self-centred of me to run away and leave Howell behind to deal with my mess.”

“You were young and pregnant. You were living with a tyrant. Running wasn’t self-centred—it was self-preservation.”

“But Howell…”

“Would’ve known what the risk was when he defied Cohen,” I filled in firmly. “I’m sure he thought it was worth it.”

“Was it?”

Polly’s question was small and insecure, but there wasn’t a shred of doubt in my answer.

“Hell, yes.”

Her eyes finally came up. I unthreaded my fingers from hers and used my thumb to wipe away her tears before I stroked her cheek. Her mouth opened like she was going to say something, and the sight of her flushed cheeks and parted lips was more than I could take. I leaned toward her, prepared to crush her to me and to show her just how worth it she really was, but a tired voice piped up from the backseat, forcing me to hold back.