Blown Away (A Romantic Comedy) (Five More Wishes Book 1) (9 page)

“You didn’t answer the question,” I say.

Cade shushes me. “Do you hear that?”

“Sorry,” I say, embarrassed. “The doughnut burrito is tearing through my colon.”

“Not that. Listen.”

Sure enough, I hear a man speaking in a strong accent. A mixture of French, Spanish, and Moon Doggy surfer. “Samba,” I breathe. “He’s here.”

We tiptoe along the side of the building. There are two other Antonio Banderases somewhere, along with Samba, and the two inside will be conscious any second. We don’t have a lot of time to make our escape.

We sneak a peek around the corner. Olivier Samba, the deposed dictator and fugitive from justice, is sitting cross-legged in a cage, which is just big enough to fit his folded body. “Let’s work this out,” he’s telling them, but they don’t seem to be receptive to negotiation. One of them is holding a cattle prod, and I don’t think it’s because he’s a rancher.

“We had a deal, and you broke it,” one of them growls.

“There’s a large block in the balloon.”

“Where’s the other three blocks?”

“I had some unforeseen expenses,” Samba says.

“What a moron,” Cade whispers to me.

The three cars are now parked behind the cage. “How do we get away?” I ask. Cade looks ahead of us and then behind us. Somehow we have to sneak around the two Antonio Banderases or sneak behind them. We decide on taking the behind them route, but a second later, we hear the echo of the men’s footsteps inside the building, and they’re coming for us. We’re trapped between two pairs of Antonio Banderases. No way out.

“Uh,” I say.

“I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you,” Cade whispers.

“You mean like crash-landing a balloon and getting abducted by drug runners?”

Cade scowls. “Everyone’s a critic.”

The footfalls in the building get louder as they get closer. Cade takes a deep breath, grabs my hand, and we run toward the cage and the other two kidnappers. It’s like running into a hurricane. It’s insanity, and I’m sure we’re going to die.

But Cade has other plans. The two kidnappers don’t see us until we’re on top of them. As we get near, Cade shoots the cattle prod guy with his Taser and takes his cattle prod and zaps the other guy.

Zap. Zap. They’re unconscious.

“What did you do?” I ask Cade.

“I saved you. I’m a hero.”

I look at him differently. Suddenly I see him as dressed in tights, a cape, and boots. No, not the drag queen kind of tights, cape, and boots. The superhero kind. His long, lean, muscly Hugh Jackman body leans over his victims, emanating masculinity from his body. His face is earnest and strong. Resolute. While I search his face, he searches mine, and that’s when I see it: The emotion. The caring. The love. I understand him now. I don’t know why I didn’t notice the real Cade before.

He holds out the key chain and pushes a button. The Mercedes’ lights flash, and its doors unlock. “Come on. Let’s get out of here,” Cade says, squeezing my hand.

“Take me with you,” Samba urges, rattling the bars of the cage. In my goo-goo cloud of Cade rapture, I almost forgot about the despot in the cage. There’s no doubt that Samba deserves prison time, but I don’t believe that a small cage behind an abandoned factory is what the justice system had in mind.

“No way,” Cade says, pulling me toward the car. I pull back.

“We can’t just leave him here in a cage.”

“Are you kidding? He left us in a balloon to die.”

“Not true. Not true,” Samba says. “It was programmed to land safely. I just used the pretty lady to prevent suspicion and give me time.”

“Come on,” Cade says, pulling me toward the Mercedes. Too late. The two men burst out of the building and run right at us. There’s no way to outrun them, and surprise is no longer on our side.

Cade drops my hand, and for a moment I fear that he’s abandoning me. But Cade surprises me, again. He dives for the cooler, which sits next to one of the unconscious men. He opens the cooler and pulls out the large package of cocaine, raising it high above his head with one hand and points at it with the cattle prod in his other hand.

“Stop, or the cocaine gets it!” he shouts.

The two Antonios stop. “Don’t do it!” Felipe shouts back at him.

Cade moves the cattle prod closer to the bag of cocaine. “Get back! We’re leaving here, and you’re going to let us go.”

“He’ll do it! He’s crazy!” I shout. Cade shoots me a look and purses his lips. “We don’t know where the other cocaine is!” I add, nodding toward Cade.

“You let us go, and I’ll leave this with you,” Cade says.

“You let us go, and he’ll leave this with you,” I repeat.

“Millie,” Cade hisses. “Shh!”

“I’m helping you.”

“Stop helping me.” The two men take a couple steps forward, and Cade sticks the cattle prod closer to the cocaine. “Stop right there. Millie, get to the Mercedes.”

“What about you?” I ask. “Don’t be a hero.”

“Don’t argue. Go to the Mercedes.”

“What about you? I can’t leave you.”

“I’ll be right behind you.”

The men on the ground are moaning and waking up, and the other two men are shifting on their feet, as if they’re preparing to attack. “I’m not going without you,” I insist. “And what about Samba? We can’t just leave him here.”

Cade rolls his eyes and looks up at the sky. “Fine,” he growls. “Let him out, Millie, but Mr. Samba, if you’re going with us, you’re going to jail. Do you hear me?”

“And you’re giving us the exclusive,” I add.

Cade’s mouth drops open in surprise. “’Us?’ Why, Millie Mossberg, does this mean you love me?”

He’s right. Sharing the exclusive with Cade does mean I love him.

“Of course I don’t love you,” I say, but a smile gives me away. I open the cage, and Cade instructs me to zip tie Samba’s hands behind his back. We run to the Mercedes, and when we get there, I turn around.

Cade is still standing with the heavy brick of cocaine over his head. I know that he doesn’t work out normally, but he’s sure in shape. The defined muscles of his shoulders and back show through his thin T-shirt, and I bite my lower lip. There’s something about being close to death, having a boatload of pregnancy hormones running through my veins, and getting an eyeful of Cade’s perfect body to make me crazy horny.

“Not another step!” Cade shouts at the men, waving the cattle prod at the cocaine.

“Don’t do it!” Felipe shouts back. “Leave it here, and you can go.”

It’s a dicey situation. Somehow, Cade has to hand over the cocaine and not get killed in the process. Damn it. He forgot to give me the keys.

Samba’s eyes are riveted to the scene, as well. It’s like waiting for a car wreck to happen. I don’t want Cade to be in a car wreck. We’re just starting to get along, and then there’s the whole baby thing.

The two Antonio Banderases who Cade zapped unconscious stand and take stock of the situation. Now it’s four against one. It’s worse odds than the Alamo, and look how that ended. I try to figure out how to help Cade. Nope. I can’t think of anything.

“Don’t come any closer,” Cade warns, but now with the overwhelming odds and the lull in the action, they don’t seem to believe him. Uh oh. I begin to cry. Nothing loud, but a few tears. The men advance, and I prepare to throw myself on them and save my sort of lover, maybe husband to be, and can’t deny the father of my child. But just as they get within an arm swinging length to Cade, he cattle prods the cocaine.

I don’t know what I expected to happen. Maybe barbecue the cocaine or something. Maybe nothing. But the prod makes a loud crackling noise, as it hits the brick of cocaine over Cade’s head, melting the thick plastic that binds it and releasing the illegal powder in a cloud.

“Holy smokes,” Samba says next to me.

A light breeze blows, and the cloud of cocaine completely covers the five men. It’s a cocaine tornado. A white out.

“So many kilos,” Samba moans.

“That’s a lot of blow, right?” I ask, trying to sound cool.

“It’s pure. If it’s cut, it will buy you ten of these SUVs.”

“That’s a lot of SUVs.”

We stare at the white cloud. “They might be dead,” Samba says and leers at my breasts.

I hope they’re not dead, and not just because I don’t want to be stuck alone with Samba. Even with his hands tied behind his back, I think he can get handsy. Even so, I’m more worried about Cade.

The white cloud still covers Cade and the bad guys. I’m tempted to run into the powder to try and save him, but I’m reasonably sure pregnant women should stay away from ten kilo clouds of cocaine. I shift on my feet, growing more desperate by the second, when Cade finally bursts through the white out.

He swings his arms. “Get in the car! Get in the car!” he shouts, shaking the cocaine out of his hair.

“I don’t have the keys!”

“It’s open.”

Oh, yeah. I forgot. I open the back door and shove Samba in. Then, I get in the passenger seat, as Cade flies for the driver’s door.

The Antonio Banderases are after us, but Cade is the Bionic man of fleeing journalists. He starts the car, and peels away.

“I didn’t think I was going to make it,” he says, talking a mile a minute. We drive away from the building as if we’re Jeff Gordon on his best day and rush head-long toward the gate. “A gate. Like that’s going to stop me,” Cade continues, gunning the engine. “If four ninja drug runners with killer zebra cheetahs with death stars can’t stop me, a gate isn’t going to stop me.”

I have no idea what Cade is talking about, but he doesn’t take a breath and give me an opportunity to cut in and ask him.

“Wow, is it hot in here?” he continues. “It’s like live butt lava from Kilauea surfer hot in here. Going to melt Harrison Ford’s face. Boy, Princess Leia won’t like that. I’ve got a great idea for a story. Space alien reporters… I think I’m going to start running, do the Ironman but double it. You know?”

“Your boyfriend is tripping snowflake,” Samba says from the backseat.

“Do you think he’ll be okay?”

“Sure. It might take him awhile, though.”

“Good,” I say, relieved.

“Or he’ll pop a few vessels in his brain,” Samba continues. “It can go either way.”

We crash through the gate and make it onto the highway in record time, and I put my seatbelt on. I don’t know if we’re being pursued, but if we are, they won’t catch up to us unless they’re using jet fuel. Cade is driving like a bat out of hell. He doesn’t shut up, either.

“High school teachers can go to hell,” he says. “I deserve a B in chem lab. Look at that cloud! Can you turn down the radio? Turn it down, now.”

“The radio isn’t on,” I say.

“Then why is Prince singing?”

Cade talks all the way through New Mexico and Arizona and begins to crash when we cross the California border. We stop at a gas station, and Cade takes Samba to the bathroom. The prison is just outside of Yuma, and we’re only a couple of hours away. Samba wants to go to the Cracker Barrel before he has to show up to spend a decade behind bars, and we’ve been negotiating for hours. Since Cade is in dire need of pancakes and grits in order to wipe away the last remnants of cocaine in his system, we finally agree to take Samba, and I promise to spoon feed him while he remains bound with the zip ties.

Cade looks awful as he walks out of the bathroom. He rinsed off the cocaine back in Arizona, but he’s obviously just dunked his head under the faucet, again.

He looks used.

It might just be that he’s fed up zipping Samba’s fly after he pees, but I think it’s the blow crash that’s got him haggard. I probably look worse. I’m half naked, barefoot, and covered in dirt. Hopefully, I’m glowing, though. I hear that moms-to-be glow.

We pile back into the car, and Cade starts the motor.

***

Cracker Barrel is worth the time and the expense. They seat us in a corner, far away from the other diners, but at least they serve us. I wasn’t sure they would at first since we look like we escaped from an episode of The Walking Dead. More than likely, it’s the first time they ever had a customer with his hands zip tied behind their back.

We order a feast, and it’s exactly what we need. We don’t stop chewing until our plates are wiped clean. “I’m starting to feel my face, again,” Cade says, happily, touching his chin.

It’s been a long trip.

With our bellies full, we finally make it to the prison. There’s a lot of hullabaloo about us capturing a fleeing war criminal. The warden lets us to take a selfie with Samba with all three of us dressed in orange jumpsuits, and we’re allowed a six hour exclusive.

After the interview, I call my mother to tell her I’m fine, but she’s not aware that I left the island. In fact, nobody was suspicious about the balloon at all. After the protest, everyone went about their business, assuming that the balloon landed safely. No one was aware that the balloon even left the island.

While we talk to Samba, the DEA tracks down and captures all four Antonio Banderases, who are still higher than Everest when they’re arrested. Cade and I file our story, putting it out on the wire, after a big fight about whose byline goes first.

I win.

Nobody seems to mind when we borrow the Mercedes to drive home. Outside, the fresh air seems fresher. We stand by the Mercedes in the prison’s parking lot and take it all in. We’ve had the adventure of a lifetime. We almost died, we captured a fugitive, thwarted four drug smugglers, and wrote a Pulitzer-worthy article.

There’s only one thing we haven’t had closure on.

The biggest thing.

“You look good in orange,” Cade says, leaning into me. He pushes my back up against the Mercedes.

“You look pretty good in orange, too.” He’s very handsome, even more handsome now than he was a few hours ago. I feel a wave of happiness that I’m with him, even if it’s just for this moment.

“So,” he says and arches an eyebrow.

“So.” Obviously, we suck at closure. “The thing is…”

Cade interrupts me, capturing my mouth to kiss me ever so tenderly. He breathes into me, and I take strength from his essence. My hands wrap around him, and he deepens the kiss. So sweet. So gentle. We’ve gone from excitement to passion to tenderness. I’m a fan of all three, but the tenderness wins me over completely. A sadness bubbles up in me as I think about our agreement. Objectively, I know it’s stupid to jump into commitment.