Almost Perfect (23 page)

He found her heaving a squawking peacock into the shed and slamming the door after it. The truck sat in the drive unprotected, displaced by the menagerie.

Cleo wasn't wearing her tinted glasses as she swung in his direction, and he could see the storm clouding her eyes as he drove in without the kids.

“You couldn't find them,” she said flatly as he climbed out.

“I found them, but the Perv was there first, with a note from their mother.”

Cleo scanned Jared's face, trying to read the message behind his strained tones and tense jaw. He radiated angry energy and a masculine charge that electrified every cell, drawing her like a paper clip to a powerful magnet. She stopped just short of reaching out to touch
his shirt, and only then because she didn't know if she was offering comfort or seeking it.

“What happened?” she demanded.

“A cop showed up, their teachers didn't know what to do, and I told Gene we'd be here. I think the kids will find some way of running. Maybe we can drive them inland once they show. Even if the hurricane strikes south of here, we're in for a bad blow.”

All right, Cleo, don't panic, think straight, don't go after Linda with a hammer.
Cleo wrapped her arms around herself and tried to nod calmly. “Okay, that's the best we can do for now. Thank you for trying. You'd better take off before the storm hits. If you don't have a place to go, I can give you directions to my sister's place near Charlotte. They have loads of room.”

Jared emitted a string of expletives she'd never heard him use. Before she knew what he intended, he caught her arm and all but hauled her toward the house.

“You dragged me into this; I'm staying. I still think we ought to call the cops, but they've got their hands full right now. So we wait. Unless you have a better idea of how we can go in there and pull them out.”

Cleo attempted to shake free, but his anger had focused on her. Watching this easygoing, always laughing man turn into a grim savior of kids was fascinating and had her insides doing flip-flops, but she couldn't afford fascination. She wanted him out of here, now, if not sooner.

“There's no sense in both of us hanging around,” she told him. “None of this is your concern. Get your computer and your work to someplace safe. I can look out for the kids.” She jerked her arm from his grip as he reached for the door.

Brown eyes were supposed to be soft, but his
hardened like lodestone. “I'm not leaving unless you call the cops.”

No way was she involving the authorities, and the damned man knew it.

Cleo stalked into the shuttered front room as Jared opened the door. A gust of wind nearly hurled the door after them. “This isn't your fight, McCloud. Linda is beyond reasoning. Social Services is apparently threatening her welfare check, and she's blaming it on me. I'm the one standing to get hurt here. If you just mosey on out, we won't miss you.”

Jared caught her wrist, turned her around, and hauled her against his chest so that her knees nearly buckled. She wanted to slide down and melt on the floor. She didn't like being manhandled like this. She didn't even like people touching her. She needed support so badly she wanted to wrap her fingers in his shirt and hang on for dear life.

“Don't lie to me, Cleo. You can be as honest as you like, and I won't run, but don't ever lie.” Dark eyes bored holes right through her. “Tell me you know how to handle this. Tell me you really wish I was dead and gone, if that's the truth. But don't say it if you don't mean it.”

Now was a fine time for the comic to turn into Stallone and get tough. She wanted to scream at him in rage,
pound him with her fists, drive him out of her life so she could go back to her steady, plodding method of picking out one step at a time. But who could fight Stallone? Instead, she twisted free, dropped on the couch, and buried her face in her hands. Where was the black rage when she needed it? Only fear and worry and total uncertainty boiled up inside her.

“I can't think,” she whispered. “I want to hit somebody. I want a smoke. I want oblivion. I want to tear Linda apart. But I can't
think
.”

Jared stood uncertainly in front of her for half a minute, then dropping down on the couch, he pulled her hands from her face and held them. Cleo looked anywhere except at him, but the strength pouring from his tough, hard palms warmed her.

“You
can
think. That's your whole problem,” he said steadily as she glared at the shuttered window. “You can think of too many things, and none of them are good. Stop thinking for a minute. Just sit there and wipe the slate clean. I'll hold you, if that will help.”

The strength for fighting was gone. Kismet had gone home with a rapist, and she was here dithering in fear. She needed a knife, not cosseting.

“All right, hit me,” Jared said with a sigh, pulling her into his arms. “Get it out of your system.
Then
we'll talk.”

She didn't hit him. She collapsed into his arms instead. Burrowed there like some small terrified animal. Heat and strength enveloped her. Hard muscles held her up so she didn't curl into a ball and cry. She just let his stability seep into her and tried not to think about the electric flashes jolting every nerve, screaming a more primal need than fear.

“The system stinks,” she muttered incoherently into a linen-covered shoulder that smelled faintly of male
musk. His muscles tightened as he crushed her closer, probably hoping to squeeze her brains out her ears so she would quit thinking. He was right—she couldn't quit thinking. Her brain whirled like a crazed dervish, and she couldn't stop it. “People stink,” she added for good measure.

“I'll buy a stronger deodorant,” he said dryly.

She liked it that he could joke and not go all sloppy sentimental or freeze up at the first sign of her meltdown. She liked it even better that he didn't take advantage of her temporary insanity. “This isn't working, McCloud. I've got to kill Linda.”

“Try calling me Jared, would you?” he asked in exasperation. “I feel like I'm back in school, and I hated school, I might add.”

She eased a palm between them, opening a space before she spasmed out. “I want to go get them—
Jared
. I don't want them running around out there in the storm.”

“You planning on taking a shotgun?” he asked, unlocking his arms slowly, as if reluctant to do so. She didn't know if that was because he didn't trust her not to run for a gun or because he liked holding her. There was a thought she wouldn't ponder.

“I won't go up to their door. I'll park somewhere off to the side where the kids can see me from their bedroom. Linda will be too stoned to notice.” She stood up, shaking herself off as if he'd planted pheromone magnets all over her. She had a plan. Now she needed him out of here.

Jared stood, too. He loomed larger than Superman.

“
We'll
go get them,” he corrected. “You're good, but I don't want you punching Billy-Bob in the balls. That's my job.”

“None of this is your business,” she restated wildly. “There's a hurricane coming. Get out of here while you can.”

“Look, Cleo.” He grasped her arm and tugged her out the door. A bitter line cut across the bridge of his nose as he headed for the Jeep. “I'm not an incompetent ass, a lazy coward, or any of those other things you think I ought to be. Got that? This is
me
, not your ex or your father or whoever else did you wrong before. I'm doing what I think is right, and you have no say in it. Period. I'm willing to listen to your advice when I think you know more than I do, but right now, you're running on fear and you're not thinking straight, so I'm taking over.”

Well, guess that told her. Cleo stared at him in incredulity, unable to think of a single thing she could say to cut him down from whatever tree limb he'd climbed out on. Well, hell, it was his life. Who was she to tell him what to do with it?

She shrugged and strode toward the Jeep. “Whatever you say, cowboy. Let's get out of here.”

The gusty rain burst into a steady downpour as the Jeep navigated the narrow treacherous road to Linda's. Cleo dug her nails into her palms and tried not to let her teeth chatter. She wished she believed Linda and friend had the sense to run for shelter, but she knew they wouldn't. They were floating on clouds by now, secluded in their own little world and not seeing anything but the empty insides of their skulls. She wished she could wipe out her memory of living the same jackass existence.

Jared parked the Jeep behind a thicket of wax myrtle and palmettos. They could see the back corner of Linda's shack through a small hole in the hedge, but Cleo had no idea if the kids could see them. They would just have to watch for activity.

Rain blurred the windows, and the palms out by the beach whipped back and forth in the wind. She thought they were both insane to believe this would work, but
desperation caused people to do insane things. She knew that much for a fact.

The heat permeating the car wasn't entirely the result of humidity. Cleo didn't dare look in Jared's direction. She could no longer dismiss him as a cartoon character or another nameless, faceless entity passing through her life. Something very real pulsed between them that she'd rather not admit, but she'd stopped trying to fool herself some time ago. She didn't have to act on hormones like the misguided teenager she'd once been.

Jared turned the radio on low. “I don't think the causeway will take too much of this weather,” he commented cautiously. “If they don't come out soon, we'll not make it back to the mainland. Are you prepared for that?”

“I don't have a generator, if that's what you're asking. And the well operates on an electric pump. We'll have to put out pots and barrels to catch rainwater when the electric blows. I have a freezer full of food we'll have to eat before it goes bad. It's better than a snowstorm. At least we won't freeze.”

He sat silent after that, and the image of the two of them trapped in her small house without any other human contact for days rose unbidden between them. He couldn't go back to the beach. It would be inundated.

A slender figure shot out the back door, fleeing toward the cover of trees behind the shed. Kismet.

Cleo reached for the door. Jared touched her arm, halting her as another figure stumbled down the back steps.

“Billy-Bob,” Jared muttered under his breath. “I'm gonna break that man of a bad habit.” He turned the key in the ignition and shifted the Jeep into gear.

“Billy-Bob?” She hadn't inquired the last time he'd called Lonnie that.

Jared didn't answer but gunned the Jeep on an inter
secting path between Lonnie and his prey. Since they followed no road, this required a certain rearranging of shrubbery. Cleo held on to the dash and her breath.

Until she saw a third figure leaping from inside the shed, a hefty stick of kindling in his hands. “Gene,” she shouted. “Stop, Jared. That's Gene, and he'll kill him!”

She didn't specify who would kill whom, but Jared hit the brake just as Gene swung his weapon at the back of Lonnie's head.

They both jumped from the car as the stick connected. Lonnie staggered and Gene looked ready to swing again, until he caught sight of Jared and Cleo breaking through the bushes, shouting. The boy's hesitation gave his target sufficient time to right himself and come after him with a roar.

Gene took off like buckshot into the bushes, racing after Kismet.

Cleo heard Jared's curses through the cacophony of wind and rain, but she had only one goal in mind— preventing Lonnie from hurting anyone else, ever again.

She'd almost reached the stick Gene had dropped before Jared caught her by the waist and hauled her from the ground, kicking and screaming. She clawed at Jared's imprisoning arms as Lonnie glared blearily at them. Maybe she could connect with the bastard's balls if she kicked high enough.

Apparently a primitive instinct for self-preservation still functioned inside Lonnie's thick head. Avoiding Cleo's flailing feet and Jared's threatening demeanor, he lumbered back toward the relative safety of the dry house, leaving Kismet and Gene to fend for themselves in the threatening weather.

“Calm down,” Jared ordered, slowly lowering Cleo to the ground as the object of her rage disappeared from
view. “Will the kids run for your place, or will they double back here?”

Without rage to motivate her, she couldn't think again. Soaked to the skin, she tried without effect to pull from his grasp, but Jared seemed intent on keeping her from sinking into the mud. She scanned the bushes but could see no sign of either teenager through the driving rain.

“We won't find them unless they want to be found,” she said wearily, giving up her fight against his hold.

A roar of wind akin to the sound of a tornado rushed through the trees, and Jared simply nodded and steered her back to the car. Stumbling through the mud and debris, dripping wet and miserable, Cleo let him help her inside without any regard to the upholstery. Just the break from the wind relieved some of the misery, and she could turn her thoughts to the kids caught out in this. They'd be terrified.

Jared climbed in and shoved a soaking hank of hair from his forehead. The thunder of rain against the roof prohibited conversation.