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He had his door open and was getting out when, in tones of astonishment, she said, “You brought me to get breakfast at McDonald’s?”
“It’s those golden arches,” he said. “They get to me every time.”
Chapter Seventeen
“They’re going into McDonald’s,” one of the Ansara watchers reported.
“Sit tight,” said Ruben McWilliams, sitting on the bed in his motel room. Why the hell didn’t motels put the damn phone on the stupid little table so a man could sit in a chair when he talked on the phone, instead of sitting hunched over on an uncomfortable mattress? “Keep them in sight, but don’t get any closer. Something spooked him. Let me know when they leave.”
Something had prompted Raintree to abruptly cut across two lanes of traffic and take the exit ramp at seventy miles an hour, but Ruben doubted it was a sudden urge for a McMuffin. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t have gone another couple of exits and found another McDonald’s, without the dangerous maneuver.
He didn’t think it was anything his people had done that had caused the aberrant behavior, but he wasn’t on-site, so he couldn’t be certain. His people were supposed to watch and follow, that was all. Raintree wasn’t a clairvoyant, so he shouldn’t have picked up any warning that way, but he could have had a premonition. Premonition was such a common ability, even ordinary humans had it. Raintree might have felt a twinge of uneasiness, but because he was one of the gifted, he would never dismiss the warning; he would act on it, where most ordinary humans would not.
Since there had been no immediate danger—that would come later—maybe he’d sensed an accident in his immediate future if he stayed on the interstate, so he’d gotten off at the next exit. That was possible. There were always variables.
Staging the planned incident hadn’t been possible on such short notice. They hadn’t known when Raintree would leave his house, or where he would go when he did. Now that they had a tail on him, they could direct the amigos to him wherever he was; then they would fall back and let the amigos do their job.
Over a McMuffin, Dante said, “Tell me exactly what you felt when you were in my office.”
Lorna sipped her coffee, thinking. After the weird feelings she’d had in the car, she’d wanted something hot to drink, even though Dante had dispelled all the physical chill. The heat of the coffee couldn’t touch the remnant of mental chill she still felt, but it was comforting anyway.
She searched through her memory. It was normally excellent anyway, but everything had happened so recently that the details were still fresh in her mind. “You scared the crap out of me,” she finally replied.
“Because you’d been caught cheating?” he prompted when she didn’t immediately go on.
“I didn’t cheat,” she insisted, scowling at him. “Knowing something isn’t the same as cheating. But, no, it wasn’t that. Once, in Chicago, I was going home one night and was about to take a shortcut through an alley. I used the alley a lot—so did a bunch of people. But that night, I couldn’t. I froze. Have you ever felt a fear so intense it made you sick? It was like that. I backed out of the alley and took another way home. The next morning a woman’s mutilated body was found in that alley.”
“Presentiment,” he said. “A gift that saved your life.”
“I felt the same way when I saw you.” She saw by his expression that he didn’t like that at all, but he’d asked, so she told him. “I felt as if this huge force just…slammed into me. I couldn’t breathe. I was afraid I’d pass out. But then you said something, and the panic went away.”
He sat back in the booth, frowning. “You weren’t in any danger from me. Why would you have such a strong reaction?”
“You’re the expert. You tell me.”
“My first reaction to you was that I wanted you naked. Unless you’re terrified of sex, and I don’t think you are—” he gave her a hooded look that had her nipples tightening again “—you weren’t picking up anything from me that would cause you to feel that way.”
Heat again pooled low in her belly, and it wasn’t from the coffee. Because they were in McDonald’s and there was a four-year-old sitting in the booth behind her, she looked away and forcibly removed her thoughts from going to bed with him. “At least part of it was from you,” she insisted. “I remember thinking that even the air felt different, alien, something I’d never felt before. When you got closer, I could tell the feeling came from you. You’re a dangerous man, Raintree.”
He just watched her, waiting for her to continue, because he couldn’t accurately deny that particular charge.
“I could feel you,” she said, her voice low as she became mired in the memory. “Pulling at me, almost like a touch. The candles were going wild. I wanted to run, but I couldn’t move.”
“I was touching you,” he said. “In my imagination, anyway.”
Remembering how she’d been snagged by his sexual fantasy, drawn in, stole her breath. “I knew something was wrong,” she whispered. “I wasn’t in control. I felt as if I’d been caught in a power surge that kept blinking out, and then coming back, pushing me off balance. Then I got so cold, just like in the car. Not a normal cold, with chill bumps and shivering, but something so intense it made my bones hurt. Then that feeling of dread came back, the same feeling I had in the alley. You were talking about how I was sensitive to the currents in the room—”
“I was talking about sexual currents,” he said wryly. “The summer solstice is in a few days, and control is more difficult when there’s so much sunshine. That’s why the candles were dancing. I was turned on, and my power kept flaring.”
Lorna thought about that. She’d been attracted to him from the first moment she’d looked him in the eyes. Regardless of the fear and panic she’d felt at first, when she had met his gaze, she’d fallen headlong into lust. The debilitating coldness had come afterward and hadn’t affected her physical response to him, because when the coldness left, the attraction remained—unchanged.
“The cold went away,” she said. “Like something had been pressing me into the chair and then suddenly was gone. I thought I might fall out of the chair, because I’d been pushing back so hard, and all of a sudden the pressure was gone. That was it. We talked some more, and then the fire alarm went off. End of scene, beginning of even more weirdness.”
“And you felt the same thing in the car?”
She nodded. “Exactly the same. Except for the sex. The farther we got from the house, the more anxious and depressed I felt, as if I were really exposed and vulnerable. Then I got really cold.”
“You were definitely picking up on external negative energies, probably from the traffic around us. You never know who’s in the car beside you. Could be someone you wouldn’t want to meet even on a crowded street at high noon. What puzzles me is why you felt the same way in my office.” He shook his head. “Unless you sensed the fire that was about to burn down the casino, which is possible, if you have some precognitive ability.”
“I think I might, but only as things relate to numbers.” She told him about the 9/11 flight numbers, and the fact that she hadn’t had any visions of airplane crashes or buildings burning, just the flight numbers interjecting themselves into her subconscious. “What I felt before the fire was different. Maybe it’s because I’m—”
She stopped and glared at him. He raised his eyebrows. “You’re…what?”
“I have a hang-up about fire.” He waited, and, exasperated, she finally said, “I’m afraid of it, okay?”
“Anyone with any intelligence is cautious of fire. I’m cautious with it.”
“It isn’t caution. I’m afraid of it. As in terrified. I have nightmares about being trapped in a burning building.” He might be cautious with fire, she thought, but it still turned him on. He would make a jim-dandy firebug. Standing in the burning casino, she had felt his fascination and appreciation for the flames, felt his excitement, because he had expressed it very physically. “Anyway, maybe that’s why I felt so panicked then, and so anxious. But why would I feel that way today—unless you’re going to force me into another burning building in the next hour or so, in which case tell me now, so I can kill you.”
He laughed as he gathered up the debris of their meal, loading it on the plastic tray. She slid from the booth, walking ahead of him as they left the restaurant. “Where to now?”
“The hotel.”
They were back on the interstate within a minute. Dante slanted a glance at her. “Feeling okay?”
“I feel fine. I don’t know what was going on.”
She did feel fine. She was riding around in a Jag with the most unusual man she’d ever met, and she was thinking about going to bed with him. She glanced over at him, thinking of how he’d looked wearing just those boxers, and feeling the pleasant warmth of anticipation.
She liked watching him drive. Sunday night, going to his house, she hadn’t been in any shape to appreciate the smoothness, the economy of motion, with which he handled a car. Good driving was very sexy, she thought. The play of muscles in his forearms, bared by the short-sleeved polo shirt he was wearing, was incredibly sexy. He had to work out somewhere, on a regular basis, to keep that fit.
They were cruising in the middle lane. A car with a loud muffler was coming up from the right, and she saw him glance in the rearview mirror. “Idiots,” he muttered, smoothly accelerating into the left lane. Lorna turned her head to see what he was talking about. A battered white Dodge, gray smoke belching from its exhaust, was coming up fast. She could see several people inside it. What had prompted Dante to move over and give them plenty of room was the blue Nissan right on the bumper of the Dodge.
“That’s an accident waiting to happen,” she said, just as the blue Nissan swung into the middle lane, the one they had just vacated, and shot forward until it was even with the white Dodge. The Nissan swerved toward the Dodge, and the driver of the Dodge slammed on his brakes, setting off a chain reaction of squealing brakes and smoking tires behind him. The Nissan’s motor was screaming as the car drew even with Dante and Lorna. Inside, she could see four or five Hispanics, laughing and pointing back at the Dodge.
Traffic on the interstate was fairly heavy, as usual, but not so heavy that the driver of the white Dodge wasn’t now rapidly gaining on them.
“Gangs,” Dante said in a clipped voice, braking to let the rolling disaster that was unfolding get ahead of him. He couldn’t go faster, because there was a car ahead of him; he couldn’t get around the car, because the blue Nissan was right beside them, boxing him in. No one in the Nissan seemed to be paying attention to them; they were all watching the Dodge. If anything, the Nissan’s driver let up on the gas pedal, as if he wanted the Dodge to catch up.
“Shit!” Dante swerved as far as he could to the left as the Dodge pulled even with the Nissan. Lorna saw a blur as the left rear passenger in the Dodge rolled down his window and stuck out a gun; then Dante’s right hand closed over her shoulder in a grip that seemed to go to the bone, and he yanked her forward and down as the window beside her head shattered in a thousand pieces. There were several deep, flat booms, punctuated by lighter, more rapid cracks, then a soul-jarring impact as Dante spun the steering wheel and sent them skidding into the concrete barrier.
Chapter Eighteen
Somehow Dante had pulled her shoulder free of the seat belt’s shoulder strap, but the lap belt tightened with a jerk. Something grazed the right side of her head and hit her right shoulder so hard and fast it slammed her backward, and she ended up facedown, with her upper body lying across the console and twisted between the bucket seats. All the horrible screeching noises of tires and crushed metal had stopped, and a strange silence filled the car. Lorna opened her eyes, but her vision was blurred, so she closed them again.
She’d never been in a car accident before. The sheer speed and violence of it stunned her. She didn’t feel hurt, just…numb, as if a giant had picked her up and body slammed her to the ground. The hurting part would probably arrive soon enough, she thought fuzzily. The impact had been so ferocious that she was vaguely surprised she was alive.
Dante! What about Dante?
Spurred by that urgent thought, she opened her eyes again, but the blurriness persisted and she couldn’t see him. Nothing looked familiar. There was no steering wheel, no dash-board…
She blinked and slowly realized that she was staring at the back seat. And the blurriness was…fog? No—smoke. She heaved upward in abrupt panic, or tried to, but she couldn’t seem to get any leverage.
“Lorna?”
His voice was strained and harsh, as if he were having difficulty speaking, but it was Dante. It came from somewhere behind and above her, which made no sense.
“Fire,” she managed to say, trying to kick her legs. For some reason she could move only her feet, which was reassuring anyway since they were the farthest away; if they could move, everything between there and her spine must be okay.
“Not fire—air bags. Are you hurt?”
If anyone would know whether or not there was a fire, Dante was that person. Lorna took a deep breath, relaxing a little. “I don’t think so. You?”
“I’m okay.”
She was in such an awkward position that pain was shooting through her back muscles. Squirming, she managed to work her left arm from beneath her and push with her hand against the back floorboard, trying to lift herself up and around so she could slide back into her seat. “Wait,” Dante said, grabbing her arm. “There’s glass everywhere. You’ll cut yourself to shreds.”
“I have to move. This position is murder on my back.” But she stopped, because the mental image of what sliding across broken glass would do to her skin wasn’t a good one.
There were shouts from outside, coming nearer, as passersby stopped and ran to their aid. Someone beat on Dante’s window. “Hey, man! You okay?”
“Yeah.” Dante raised his voice so he could be heard. She felt his hand against her side as he tried to release his seat belt. The latch was jammed; he gave a lurid curse, then tried once more. On the third try, it popped open. Freed from its restraint, he shifted around, and she felt his hands running down her legs. “Your right foot’s tangled in the air bag. Can you move…” His hand closed over her ankle. “Move your knee toward me and your foot toward your window.”
Easier said than done, she thought, because she could scarcely maneuver at all. She managed to shift her right knee just a little.
The man outside Dante’s window grabbed the door handle and tried to pull it open, shaking the car, but the door was jammed. “Try the other side!” she heard Dante yell.
“This window’s busted out,” said another man, leaning in the front passenger window—or where it had been—and asking urgently, “Are you guys hurt?”
“We’re okay,” Dante said, leaning over her and pushing on her right ankle while he turned her foot.
The trap holding her foot relaxed a little, which let her move her knee a bit more. “This proves one thing,” she said, panting from the effort of that small shift.
“Point your toes like a ballerina. What does it prove?”
“I’m definitely—ouch!—not precognitive. I didn’t see this coming.”
“I think it’s safe to say neither of us is a precog.” He grunted, then said, “Here you go.” With one last tug, her foot was free. To the man leaning in the window he said, “Can you find a blanket or something to throw over this glass so you can pull her out?”
“I don’t need pulling,” Lorna grumbled. “If I can shift around, I’ll be able to climb out.”
“Just be patient,” Dante said, turning so he could slide his right arm under her chest and shoulders and support her weight a little to give her muscles some rest.
They could hear sirens blasting through the dry air, but still some distance away.
A new face, red and perspiring, and belonging to a burly guy wearing a Caterpillar cap, appeared in the broken window. “Had a blanket in my sleeper,” he said, leaning in to arrange the fabric over the seat, then folding the excess into a thick pad to cover the shards of glass still stuck in the broken window.
“Thank you,” Lorna said fervently as Dante began levering her upright into the seat. Her muscles were screaming from the strain, and the relief of being in a more natural position was so intense that she almost groaned.
“Here you go,” said the truck driver, reaching through once more and grasping her under the arms, hauling her out through the broken window before she could do it under her own steam.
She thanked him and everyone else who had reached out to help, then turned and got her first look at the car as Dante came out with the lithe grace of a race car driver, as if exiting through a window was something he did every day.
But as cool and sexy as he made his exit look, what stunned her to silence was the car.
The elegant Jaguar was nothing but crumpled and torn sheet metal. It had skidded almost halfway around, the front end crushed against the concrete barrier, the driver’s side almost at a T to the oncoming traffic. If another car had plowed into them after they hit the barrier, Dante would be dead. She didn’t know why no other vehicle had smashed into them; traffic had been heavy enough that it was nothing short of a miracle. She looked at the snarled pileup of cars and trucks and SUVs stopped at all angles, as if people had been locking down their brakes and skidding. There was a three-car fender bender in the right lane, about fifty yards down, but the people were out of their vehicles examining the damage, so they were okay.
She wasn’t okay. The bottom had dropped out of her stomach, and her heart felt as if someone had punched her in the chest. She had a very clear memory of Dante spinning the steering wheel, sending the Jaguar into a controlled skid—turning the passenger side away from the spew of bullets and his side toward the oncoming traffic.
She was going to kill him.
He had no right to take that sort of risk for her. None. They weren’t lovers. They’d met less than forty-eight hours before, under really terrible circumstances, and for most of that time she would gladly have pushed him into traffic herself.
How dare he be a hero? She didn’t want him to be a hero. She wanted him to be someone whose absence wouldn’t hurt her. She wanted to be able to walk away from him, whole and content unto herself. She didn’t want to think about him afterward. She didn’t want to dream about him.
Her father hadn’t cared enough to stick around, assuming he’d even known about her. She had no real idea who he was—and neither had her mother. Her mother certainly wouldn’t have risked a nail, much less her life, to save Lorna from anything. So what was this…this stranger doing, putting his own life in danger to protect her? She hated him for doing this to her, for making himself someone whose footprint would always be on her heart.
What was she supposed to do now?
She turned her head, searching for him. He was only a few feet away, which she supposed made sense, because if he’d moved any farther away than that she would have been compelled to follow him. He wouldn’t lift that damned mind control he used to shackle her, but he’d risk his life for her—the jerk.
He normally kept his longish black hair brushed back, but now it was falling around his face. There was a thin line of blood penciling down his left cheek from a small, puffy cut high on his cheekbone. The skin around the wound was swelling and turning dark. His left arm looked bruised, too; the span from his wrist almost to his elbow was a dark red. He wasn’t cradling his arm or swiping at his cheek, any of the things people instinctively did when they were hurt. His injuries might as well not exist for all the attention he paid them.
He looked in complete command of himself and the situation.
Lorna thought she might be sick, she was so angry. What he’d done wasn’t fair—not that he’d seemed concerned about fairness before now anyway.
As if he were attuned to her thoughts, his head turned sharply and his gaze zeroed in on her. With two swift strides he was beside her, taking her arm. “You don’t have any color at all in your face. You should sit down.”
“I’m fine,” she said automatically. A sudden breeze blew a curtain of hair across her face, and she lifted her hand to push it back. Two RPD patrol cars were approaching on the other side of the highway, sirens blaring, and she almost had to shout to make herself heard. “I’m not hurt.”
“No, but you’ve had a shock.” He raised his voice, too, turning his head to watch the patrol cars come to a stop on the other side of the barrier. The sirens died, but other emergency vehicles were approaching, and the din was getting louder again.
“I’m okay!” she insisted, and she was—physically, at least.
His hand closed on her arm, moving her toward the concrete barrier. “Come on, sit down. I’ll feel better if you do.”
“I’m not the one bleeding,” she pointed out.
He touched his cheek, as if he’d forgotten all about the cut, or maybe had never noticed it in the first place. “Then come sit down with me and keep me company.”
As it happened, neither of them got to sit down. The cops were trying to find out what had happened, get traffic straightened out and moving again, albeit very slowly, and get any injured people transported to a hospital to be checked out. Soon a total of seven patrol cars were on the scene, along with a fire engine and three medic trucks. The drivers of the damaged cars that were still drivable were instructed to move their vehicles to the shoulder.
There were several witnesses to what had happened. No one knew whether road rage had caused the shooting or if the whole thing had been a conflict between rival gangs, but everyone had an opinion and a slightly different version of events. The one thing they all agreed on was that the people in the white Dodge had been shooting at the Nissan, and the people in the Nissan had been shooting back.
“Did anyone get the plate number of either vehicle?” a patrolman asked.
Dante immediately looked at Lorna. “Numbers?”
