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What wasn’t there to like? She was blonde, sexy as hell and a kindergarten teacher. All those girl-next-door qualities that brought guys sniffing.
Just when had things started to take a bad turn?
He couldn’t really say. They’d dated for two years before moving in together and from the get-go, he’d joked about her control-freak tendencies. He’d found them cute. Sometimes, he’d even enjoyed it when she got grumpy about one thing or another, usually connected with some imagined infraction. And she was adorable. Her sexy pout was the stuff of which dreams were made.
Then he’d left his safe employment as an insurance salesman—a job that bored him all to hell—to take the position with Lazarus….
To say Julie wasn’t pleased would be an understatement.
“Come on, honey,” he’d pleaded with her for the umpteenth time when he’d left on his first assignment with a Lazarus team to search for a missing girl in Florida. “Just look at this as an opportunity for you to get in some important ‘you’ time….”
“I don’t need ‘me’ time. I need you,” she’d said. “Besides, how am I supposed to get ‘me’ time when I’m completely responsible for Brutus?”
Brutus was the puggle they’d adopted from an animal shelter. He’d been Jon’s surprise to her one Christmas morning.
Oh, she’d been surprised, all right. Shocked was more the word. And unhappy.
She never let an opportunity pass to pitch a bitch fit. “See, we could take a teacup Chihuahua anywhere we wanted to go. We wouldn’t have to worry about imposing on friends,” she’d said when he’d arranged a weekend trip to Catalina. “And there would be much less dog dirt to clean up….”
Of course, what had he been thinking? “Julie” time was all the time.
He grimaced.
When had her pouting become irritating?
The phone vibrated again.
Was it him, or did it seem weaker somehow?
Double damn.
Mara’s leg jerked.
He glanced at her. She hadn’t moved the entire time she’d been asleep. And he was sure she was sleeping. He could tell by her deep, even breathing and soft snores, the latter probably because she’d gone so long without quality shut-eye.
Still, the fact that she could sleep at all, given what was going on, was remarkable in and of itself.
Definitely military.
Or some sort of similar training.
He found his gaze trailing over her, appreciating her form. Where Julie was long-limbed and … well, elegant, Mara was toned and compact. Not that she was short. He guessed the two women were the same height. But where Julie rocked a pair of high-heeled shoes, he guessed Mara would look awkward in them.
And the opposite applied in the case of cowboy boots. At least true ones.
He looked at where Mara still wore her short, black combat boots. Suddenly, he could picture her as a child, the victim of schoolyard teasing: “Your mama wears combat boots.”
Likely Mara would have cocked a hand on her hip and said, “Well, that would make her more capable than yours, now, wouldn’t it?”
Julie, on the other hand, would have been horrified at the mere thought.
And so would her Stepford Wife mother.
Jon’s gaze traveled up the back of Mara’s jeans to where her bottom was rounded and pert, then to the small of her back where her T-shirt had ridden up a bit, revealing a stretch of firm flesh.
He swallowed. Hard.
Which seemed to be the word of the minute, because he found a certain area of his anatomy growing noticeably harder.
He caught sight of a tattoo on the back of her left shoulder where she’d rolled up the sleeve. He squinted, trying to make it out. A bird’s wing? Angel? He couldn’t tell. There wasn’t enough visible.
He heard sound outside.
Jon moved his head so he could see the warehouse interior. The sun slanted low, creating dingy, golden shafts of light against the gritty floor between him and the car some seventy-five feet away. He made out the shape of someone looking in the vehicle-access-door window much the same way he had hours before.
Competition for the bounty?
Made sense.
Then again, the Feds could be making another pass.
The sound of the individual trying the door echoed in the room.
Shit.
He heard the quiet dragging of something metallic across the floor. He realized Mara’s breathing was no longer deep and even. She had moved only her arm and was now pulling his 9 mm closer to her side.
Wow …
She slowly turned to look at him, nodding in the direction of the visitor outside the building. “With you?”
He shook his head.
The figure moved from the window. A moment later, Jon made out the sound of quiet footsteps on the stairs leading to her apartment.
Mara was on her feet in a flash, stuffing the blue plastic bag he’d seen her holding earlier inside the front waistband of her jeans and covering it with her shirt, then checking the ammo in the gun: he knew it was a full sixteen rounds. She stuffed that into her waistband, as well.
She stopped to look at him.
For a moment, he suspected she might leave him there. And he could tell she was giving it serious consideration.
Then she said, “If he’s not with you, then I can trust you’re not going to make any noise, right?”
He gave her a long look.
She yanked the tape from his mouth and then headed for the door.
“The hands?”
She came back, leaned over him much as she had earlier with the same tantalizing view. He heard the teeth give, but when she straightened a moment later, he found his hands were still restrained … only now without the post involved.
She stared at the question on his face. “You won’t be needing them. Now up, soldier. I know you know how to move with your hands tied behind your back.”
He thought about making a smart-ass comment, but she was already through the door and ripping the tarp from the car.
He got up and began following her, then backtracked to get his cell and wallet from the desk, stuffing each into back jeans pockets. Then he spotted a click-top pen. Bingo. He palmed it and stuffed it inside the waistband of his jeans before joining her.
She climbed inside the car and reached to open the passenger’s door for him. He awkwardly got inside and was trying to figure out a way to close it with his foot when she reached across him, her breasts brushing against his thighs, to close it for him.
Then she reached behind him, taking his cell from his pocket and tossing it to the dash.
He had to give her credit; she didn’t miss a trick.
Which made him feel a little less bad about being taken hostage by her.
A little.
“The doors?” he asked.
She gave him a long look. “Blocked from the outside. The bastard parked on the other side.”
“Then how are we going to get out—?”
The engine started and the car was in gear before he could utter the next word. His neck jerked as she sped in Reverse, the old car’s monster engine roaring in his ears.
She reached across him and yanked the seat belt across his lap, shoving the latch into his hands behind his back before doing her own.
“Hold on,” she said, smiling in his direction.
She pressed a button on the visor. Even as he awkwardly secured his seat belt, he looked over his shoulder, watching as another door, this one a garage type, lifted some fifty yards behind them on the opposite warehouse wall.
“It’s not going to make it up in time,” he said over the engine’s growl.
“It’ll make it.”
Twenty yards … ten … five …
The top of the car hit the bottom of the door, but it didn’t slow them down.
She hit the brakes on the other side and did a one-eighty.
“Oops,” she said.
He couldn’t help shaking his head, amused.
The car was barely straight before she shoved the stick into Drive, roaring off before the guy in her apartment had any idea what hit him.
Or maybe not.
Jon stared back at a large man in faded, full-out desert military gear rounding the side of the warehouse a hundred yards away. Only, he didn’t look like anyone he’d ever served with. This guy had long blond hair tied back and a full beard. And his weapon was Russian, more specifically an AK-47.
Definitely not something an American soldier would be toting.
Militia? Or military-loving mercenary?
That meant their visitors numbered at least two: the one on the stairs and this one.
He caught Mara’s glance as she looked away from the same sight. She didn’t appear surprised. But if he was expecting any kind of explanation, he was sadly disappointed.
Jon shifted in the seat and worked on getting the click-top pen out of the waistband of his jeans, the spring of which he planned to use to pick his handcuffs….
4
AFTER TEN MINUTES, Mara slowed her speed on the mostly deserted roads for which she’d opted, checking her mirrors every few seconds for signs she’d been followed. She hadn’t been.
Or at least it appeared that way.
But it wasn’t empty, really, was it? The road behind her was choked with ghosts from her past.
She felt a breath away from having the Pop-Tart she’d eaten this morning hurl from her churning stomach.
Now that the urgency had passed, her worsening circumstances crowded around her, inside her, making it impossible to do much beyond keep the car on the road and stare at the glaring reality of her situation. It wasn’t enough that they’d set her up for murder … Now they were trying to kill her.
She checked the road behind her again. Still empty. But she didn’t expect it to remain that way.
She passed a slow-moving sedan on the two-lane highway then screeched to a stop on the right shoulder. Jon looked at her as if she’d gone mad. Which was okay with her; the more unpredictable she came off, the more she had the upper hand.
She’d learned early on that it wasn’t curiosity that killed the cat, but predictability. At least when it came to predators. So she made it a point to never do the same thing twice.
Of course, she would have been well served to remember that over the past few years. Instead, she’d allowed herself to be lulled into a false sense of security.
She ignored the horn blow of the sedan as it passed them as she got out of the car and slowly made her way around the vehicle.
Though it had been parked in the off-airport lot for months and, as an older vehicle, had no low-jack tracking device, that didn’t necessarily mean it was bug free. And it would certainly explain why she hadn’t been followed. If she was being tracked, then there was no need.
It made a tactical kind of sense, their targeting her now. They’d gone through all the trouble of setting her up for the prosecutor’s murder. The last thing they needed was for her to be hell-bent on proving her innocence.
If she was surprised and hurt to see an ex–family member standing outside the warehouse toting an AK-47 … well, she wasn’t about to cop to it.
She did feel a bit of relief that he hadn’t taken the money shot when he’d had the opportunity. But she didn’t kid herself into thinking she’d be as lucky next time.
So it wasn’t only the local and federal authorities, not to mention who knew what yahoos from private firms—she spared Reece a glance—on her tail. It was also the local militia. People who knew her better than any biological family members, if only because they’d taught her all she knew.
Well, not all. If that was true, she might as well surrender to her fate now.
At any rate, she also understood that it wasn’t so much what you knew, but what you did with that knowledge that determined the outcome of any situation.
She only hoped she wasn’t as rusty as some of her sculptures back at the warehouse.
