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About how pretense had become reality.
She shook the thought away. Or rather, she almost shook it away. Something in it didn’t want to leave. “We should probably exchange names,” she suggested. “Make it look like we know each other. Then maybe you should tell me who’s out to kill you—and why, don’t leave that out—and therefore by default me and…did you call him Sasha?”
The grin came this time before he could stop it, wry—and a mite sardonic. “Yeah, I did. That’s what his mother called him when she sold him to her dealer. I was there. Jeth Levoie. Special Investigator for the Tucson prosecutor’s office.”
“Tucson, Arizona?”
“Yeah. You want some ID?”
She ignored the irony in favor of keeping her wits from deserting her. Daughters’ lives were not supposed to parallel their mothers’, they really weren’t. But here was hers apparently paralleling the single deciding event that had happened seven years ago in Alice’s right down to the finding a man at the side of the road and the you-just-happenedto-be-there-and-I’m-from-out-of-town-and-need-your-help coincidence of it. “Please.”
Muttering something about her being a piece of work, Jeth rummaged around in his bag until he found the flat leather case that contained both his picture identification and his badge and tossed it to her. Allyn inspected it carefully, trying not to let her face betray her while her heart thudded hard against her ribs and her breath went short. Unless it was an elaborate fake—and really, since she’d had her nose stuck in her books and lab work for the best parts of the past seven years, how would she know?—he really was Jeth Levoie out of the Tucson prosecutor’s office.
She flipped the case into the front seat. “Allyn Meyers,” she said. “You’re a long way out of your jurisdiction, Jeth Levoie.”
“Hopefully not for long,” he said grimly. “And anyway—” he slanted a glance over his shoulder at her, giving her another glimpse of a profile she’d have really enjoyed looking at and meeting, getting to know and perhaps flaunting at Becky under other circumstances “—what do you know about jurisdictions?”
She made a face. The subject was at least as distasteful to her as being kidnapped by him. Or rather, actually, as often as she’d heard Gabriel fume over the subject of “co-operative efforts between the jurisdictions,” it was more disagreeable than being abducted by Jeth Levoie. “More than enough to fill a thimble, but not much more. Enough to know that Tucson and Baltimore are a long way apart, and I don’t just mean geographically. So what are you doing here?”
“Exchange program. Nobody knows me here. Same with the guy they sent to Nogales to work undercover in my place down there. You know anything about the Russian Mafia?”
“No.” Thank God. Or maybe not, since it appeared she was about to learn more than she ever wanted to about it.
“What about drug cartels?”
Allyn felt herself blanch. “This is about drug cartels?”
Jeth nodded unhappily. “Yeah, indirectly. Mostly it’s about territory. The Colombians have it, the Russians want it. There’s a war on. Sasha’s mama stuck him in the middle of it. Her ex is with the Russians. Courts gave her full custody in the divorce, but Daddy wants his heir. Her addiction of choice is Colombian cocaine. Her dealer found out who Sasha’s daddy was, sold the information to his source, who instructed him to offer Mama a deal. Sasha in exchange for clearing up the debt from her habit and a few days’ worth of highs. She took it. Sasha’s a hostage. His daddy’s supposed to trade for him, but everything goes kerflooey, and my guys tell me to get Sasha out. Only then I’m told they’ll be the ones exchanging Sasha to the highest bidder for information. I tell ’em no way I can live with that, I’ve seen the shape the kid’s in, so they pull me.”
“But you didn’t stay pulled,” Allyn said.
“No.”
Something warm and unexpected fuzzed through Allyn. Maybe the body matched other things she’d wanted to see in him, after all. “Good for you.”
He snorted. “If you say so.”
“Hey,” she told him flatly, “I was brought up by practically the Good Samaritan of all Good Samaritans and her sisters and mother and other relatives. I don’t think a whole lot of the way you involved me in this, but I can appreciate the sentiment big time. Accept a compliment when you get one. I bet it doesn’t happen often. Now when are we going to stop and take care of Sasha?”
A chuckle, dry and unwilling, spilled from Jeth. “You don’t quit, do you?”
“Stubbornness is, like, one of my worst features,” Allyn agreed tongue-in-cheek, reverting to the Valley speak practiced in one of her favorite movies. If Sasha was all right, she might actually discover she was enjoying herself—except for Jeth Levoie’s assertion of danger waiting in the wings, of course. “Now when are we stopping? I think he’s starting to wake up. When he does he’s probably not going to be happy to be wet and cold. If he’s sick… I don’t know if you’ve ever traveled with a cranky two-year-old before, but I have. It’s not pleasant.”
“Was it your two-year-old?” Jeth wasn’t sure why it made a difference—except from the standpoint that he didn’t want to deprive another child of its mother. But it was also more than that. It was that ringless left hand niggling uncomfortably at the back of his mind.
Whether this was the time and place or not.
“Not mine, no. Single, never married, no kids.” Then wickedly, because in her estimation he deserved the dig, “Just lots of relatives who’re expecting me to show up in Kentucky sometime tomorrow or the next day. You?”
He heard the denial with a sort of peculiar relief that fastened in his mind on many fronts: no child awaited her return, and neither did a husband. That made her fair game. Reaction to the part about relatives awaiting her arrival was delayed, made his gut wrench when he heard it. No way could he let her go tomorrow or the next day. The only place he felt certain Sasha would be safe was deep in the Grand Canyon reservation where Jeth had grown up, and where tourists needed to schedule visits well in advance and where there was only one real access open to non-natives. It was a place where those who didn’t belong were noticed at once, and where tribal members were friendly but closemouthed and didn’t encourage contact between themselves and the outside world. All of which meant that he had over twenty-three hundred miles to travel before he could even begin to feel Sasha might be safe, and public transport of any sort was out because it was too damned easy to trace. A car, a family off on a summer vacation, that was the way he’d intended to play this, and paying cash all the way. But if she had family that’d be looking for her…
Nuts. He didn’t even have a car seat for Sasha, nor much in the way of clothing for either himself or the baby. Grabbing opportunities when they arose didn’t leave a lot of time for the kind of planning traveling cross-country with a toddler required. He needed this blasted woman he’d stuck himself with—a trace of something soft and elusive swirled around his senses, and he felt himself tighten suddenly—in more ways than he cared to admit.
A lot more ways.
He couldn’t go with her to meet her family. He knew nothing about her, and they sure as hell wouldn’t be expecting their darling Allyn to turn up with a strange man and a sick baby in tow. Not unless they hadn’t seen her in a while, which he doubted, because that wasn’t the way his luck was running today.
But he couldn’t exactly just avoid the issue, either, now, could he?
Damn. You’re tired, but no falling apart. Sort it out, he ordered himself. Take it one thing at a time. You’ve bought a few hours, at least, before anybody figures anything out. Stop for food, clothes and a phone book with a list of free clinics. Make the rest of your plans from there.
He drew a breath. “There any place we can get clothes, food, diapers and a car seat all in one stop?” he asked.
Allyn rocked the beginning-to-whimper Sasha and shook her head. “This is your temporary stomping grounds. I’m just passing through.”
“Pig whistles,” he muttered.
Allyn swallowed the beginnings of a grin. She didn’t think she’d ever heard that particular expression before. “Excuse me?”
“Had to pick a damned out-of-towner. No use whatsoever.”
“I didn’t ask to be picked, you know.”
He grimaced. “True.”
She waited a few beats. “Where have you shopped while you’ve lived here?”
“Corner liquor store, corner grocery store, corner pharmacy.”
Allyn cleared her throat, trying hard not to laugh at how disgruntled he sounded. “I see.”
“I doubt it,” he assured her darkly. Then he sighed, checked the Saturn’s side mirrors and switched lanes, zigzagging through the city toward the expressway where he hoped to find an exit labeled Shopping.
Chapter 3
They stopped fourteen miles from Baltimore at a super-store in Ellicott City.
After a fair amount of negotiation over who would go in, Allyn bundled Sasha into the smallest zip-front sweatshirt she had with her. Then all three of them went into the store.
This was what he’d wanted when he’d started out this morning, wasn’t it? Jeth thought. A woman whose mother tiger instincts would come straight to the fore once she took a look at Sasha? He simply hadn’t bargained on finding one who was quite so…uniquely qualified to hand him his head and stir up his senses at the same time.
Or quite so enthusiastic about helping him shop.
As Jeth watched, Allyn spent a fair amount of his cash on hand with a certain flair he found both impressive and frightening—as though she’d been trained by a take-no-prisoners master in the art of procurement. Other than for staples, he shopped as infrequently as possible.
But when she headed into the men’s department, Jeth had the most disturbing sense that he was doomed.
In the parking lot, she’d ransacked his duffel bag, then her suitcases in search of something to diaper Sasha in. What she found had made her roll her eyes and tsk disgustedly at him.
“What?” he’d asked, feeling a certain impatience and paranoia to be moving—and also feeling suddenly daunted by the fact that she found his wardrobe wanting.
She’d blinked at him. He looked at her eyes and was suddenly more afraid of her than of the people from whom he’d retrieved Sasha. Because what he saw there told him better than anything she’d yet done that she was not some timid flower he’d plucked on a whim; she was the wind that blew the flower.
“These all the clothes you’ve got with you?”
“Yeah. You got a problem with it?” Oh, good, be belligerent. Show her the tough guy. Intimidate the hell out of her.
Yeah, right. As if. Instead of being either intimidated or impressed, she’d offered him exaggerated patience.
“How far do you plan to travel with me ’n’ Sasha?” A two-beat pause, then she did a little fishing. “Or at least since you’ve already said you don’t trust me, I presume you’re not planning to let me go until this thing of yours comes to some sort of resolution?”
He bit down on his temper, at once wanting to strangle her and, surprisingly enough, kiss her until she couldn’t speak.
He gritted his teeth against the unwanted impulse. Blast, in one way or another this entire trip was going to be hell, he just knew it. “As far as it takes to make sure I can keep him safe. And no, even though you’re the most annoying woman I’ve ever car jacked, I’m not letting you go any time soon.”
“You’ve car jacked other women?” Innocent. Unremittingly interested.
God save him, he was definitely going to kill her. “No.” The patience he had to exert in order to say it calmly was galling. “You’re my first and my only.”
“Oh.” Clearly, if cheekily, charmed. “What a nice thing to tell a girl.”
Understanding for the first time that the only way to win here was to remain silent, Jeth crossed his arms and stared at her.
She pursed her lips and stared back, giving him a look that stated as clearly as words, You’re behaving like a child. Cut it out. You’re the one who kidnapped me so I could help you—now don’t give me dense. “You do have a destination in mind?”
“Yes.” The paranoia of his experiences of the past several weeks caused him to glance about, looking for enemies, to not want to tell her more than he had to. He hadn’t really intended to tell her anything at all; she was simply to have been a tool. Not to mention that the less she knew, the safer she’d be.
“Jethro,” she said patiently, mildly.
“Jeth,” he snapped. “I don’t care how much my mother liked Max Baer. I’m neither a Beverly Hillbilly nor a Clampett.”
Her turn to stare at him somewhat nonplussed but waiting, tapping her fingers on the car door. As though he was the one wasting the time here, not her.
“Fine.” He shut his eyes, unwillingly granting her another win. “I’m taking him home.”
“Tucson?” she asked.
“Close enough.”
“Family on vacation?” she guessed, taking his plan a step further than he’d taken it himself.
Surprised at how easily she made it fall into place, he’d nodded cautiously.
“Okay.” She’d pursed her lips and nodded. “Okay. Now we know you’ll need stuff, too, and I know how to shop.”
And that had been that. They had two shopping carts full of toddler supplies that were certain to deplete his hastily scraped together escape fund, and she was off to buy him clothes, too. When he tried to talk her out of the extra purchases, she canted her head and eyed him with more of that apparently trademark patience.
“We’re a family on vacation?” she’d repeated, automatically rearranging the sweatshirt around Sasha while she looked at Jeth.
Just somebody’s mom discussing something mildly irritating with somebody’s dad.
Jeth’s jaw tightened with the unsought observation. No, hell, no. He was playing a role, and she’d done stage work in college maybe, understood theater, too. And yet…
Deliberately he ignored the sensation of rightness that scurried through him with the mom-dad-baby image, instead gladly noting that Sasha seemed to be responding to whatever it was Allyn was doing for him and was more with it than before. Marcy would have liked her. If Marcy could have met her. “That’s the idea.”
“Well, then,” Allyn said, as if that explained everything. When she saw that it didn’t, she elaborated, “I have a full two weeks’ worth of luggage, Sasha’s now outfitted for travel, but you look like you’re on the run. How safe will any of us be if people don’t see what they expect to see?”
Jeth paled, once again jolted by her seemingly instant insights. “What?”
“How safe—”
“I heard you. Where’d you learn that?”
“It’s true, isn’t it?”
“What undercover school did you go to, and where’s your badge?”
“Don’t have one.” She smiled, a flash of slightly crooked teeth in a small mouth bordered by dimples. He found himself suddenly and dangerously captivated by her mouth, fascinated equally by its shape as by what came out of it. “I just listen to my mother and read undercover non-fiction a lot. Makes a break from studying sharks and coral reefs and things like that. Now, what kind of underwear do you like, boxers or briefs?”
At that, and in spite of himself, Jeth nearly lost it. Before Marcy’s death and even before he’d arrived in Baltimore his sense of humor had been excellent, but lately it had been a tad…lacking. Obviously such would not be the case for long with Allyn Meyers around—regardless of the circumstances under which he’d forced their meeting.
“Boxers,” he managed to say, strangling on laughter. Lord, yes. Marcy would have had a ball with her and so would the rest of his siblings. The thought almost made him sober; the kidnappee with the odd sense of humor didn’t offer sobriety a chance to take root.
“Ah,” Allyn said, plainly pleased, leading the way to the section of apparel in question. “A man who intends to have children—unless you already have children?”
Laughter wheezed out of him, astonishment edged with painful humor. God, she was killing him, and the worst of it was, he was pretty sure he’d be more than happy to let her.
Especially if she continued to go about it like this.
“No. No children,” he said when he could speak. “No wife. No anything.” And no intention of ever having either, of getting close enough to anyone who could be taken away from him again.
“Probably a good thing,” Allyn said. “I can already see where you might be hell on a relationship of that sort.”
He should have been beyond amazement by now, but he wasn’t. “Do you always talk to strangers like this?”
“Only those who car jack me,” she told him, at the same time she supervised him to make sure he added an adequate number of boxer shorts to her cart. “Then I find it’s mandatory not to let them think they’ve ever got the upper hand. Take them by surprise, that’s what my stepfather says, keep them off balance, make them think you’re one with them. Makes it so much easier to get away when they won’t listen to reason and just take your car without you in it.”
With which pronouncement she left Jeth standing openmouthed in the aisle behind her while she sashayed ahead of him to men’s jeans.
He had to admit that, bust-him-in-the-chops personality or not, she had one hell of a spectacular sashay.
She floored him only once more during their shopping expedition. She stopped in front of the jewelry counter, looked at the wedding rings, then leaned into him for all the world like an excited wife who’d gone too long without and whispered for his—and the sales clerk’s—ears only, “It’s been almost three years since we eloped. We can afford them now, can’t we, honey?”
Torn between mirth and total disbelief, Jeth could only nod. Even as briefly as he’d known her, he should have realized that if she’d decided to play the part of family on vacation, she’d play it to the hilt, wedding rings and all.
With the two thoughts, Talk about one-stop shopping, and Judas, what have I gotten myself into?—which seemed to be his mantra of the day—he helped Allyn choose slim silver rings formed into Celtic knots, then on his own chose a small but lovely sapphire engagement ring that surprised genuine delight out of her and fit very neatly on her finger atop her wedding ring.
When she turned, raised herself on tiptoe and planted a shy kiss on his cheek, it was all Jeth could do to maintain his rather shaky equilibrium.
