Drive: Cougars, Cars and Kink, Book 1 (10 page)

Chapter Twelve

Once she was locked in the car, she texted Neil with the latest development:
They emailed. Want info on Frank’s projects. Drones?
He answered almost immediately:
Be careful.
Nothing more. Maybe there was nothing more he could say until he got more information himself. And God knows it was good advice.

Suzanne checked the rearview obsessively for the entire drive, but no one seemed to be following her on the highway. A car lurked behind her off the highway. A lot of them did, of course, but this one was right on her tail as she made her way to Neil’s street. That made her even more nervous than she already was, but it was a very ordinary looking Toyota Corolla with a replacement hood that didn’t match the rest of the car. You wouldn’t drive something like that if you were stalking someone, would you? The SUVs from yesterday were high-end, tastefully expensive, and powerful. The white hood and slightly battered blue body of this car were memorable and at the same time distinctly clunky. She’d think they’d want a car that could get away fast if it needed to, not what Frank would describe as a mom-box powered by hamsters—and judging from the looks of the car,
tired
hamsters.

But what did she know? Maybe it was protective coloration to fit into this working-class neighborhood and that ugly shell concealed a powerful engine and 007-type toys.

She’d seen too many damn James Bond movies because she could imagine the illusion of an old Toyota falling away to reveal something sleek, dangerous and armed.

To her relief, it had pulled into a driveway halfway down the block. A perfectly ordinary, non-scary young black woman got out and started fussing with the toddler Suzanne hadn’t been able to see in the back seat.

Suzanne breathed a sigh of relief when she pulled up in front of Neil’s. She was safe now.

By some strange alchemy of sleep-deprivation and terror, Suzanne was more awake and less foggy than she had been more than twelve sleepless hours ago. This time the details of Neil’s house registered on her.

His hands-on approach to cars extended to the house, or so she imagined. It was an older side-by-side two-family, nothing elegant, but both the pale yellow exterior of the house and the tiny yard were neat, well-maintained. The house had been sided recently, she’d guess. No flowers or anything frou-frou decorated the lawn, but one small, carefully pruned weeping tree of some sort, maybe an ornamental cherry, took up most of one half of the tight space.

She parked on the street, mentally noting that she’d have to move it that evening. Maybe Neil would have a better idea where to leave it, but she didn’t want to take up the driveway, not knowing who might be coming or going.

Before she got out of the locked car, she took a good look up and down the street, searching for anything that looked out of place. Not like she knew exactly what she was looking for, but she’d start with SUVs that cost more than the down payment on a house in this part of town or anyone who’d pulled in about the same time she did and was hanging out in their car for no apparent reason.

Especially an “anyone” in an expensive-looking suit, which again didn’t fit with the tone of the neighborhood. She liked the neighborhood that was so similar to Neil’s house: well-maintained, comfortable, but not the domain of men in custom suits and women in Jimmy Choo shoes. Nor was it hipster ironically gritty and retro, like the neighborhoods inhabited by artsy types who drank Pabst Blue Ribbon with their grass-fed organic $20 a pound buffalo steaks because the favorite beer of broke college students and underpaid blue-collar workers was suddenly cool again.

She didn’t see anything obvious. She looked again, because damn it, she’d feel like an idiot if she got kidnapped or died or whatever the mysterious “people” wanted because she missed something she should have spotted.

Her mouth and throat were desert dry and she hadn’t thought to grab any water in the flight from Bellwood. She swallowed hard, took a deep breath.

No fancy SUVs, no one in a suit or otherwise looking out of place. No one had any reason to know she was here. The break-in and the email both proved that whatever was going on, it was targeted at her, or more precisely at Frank through her, so they weren’t after Neil, had no reason to know who he was.

Probably. But who knew what resources the mysterious “they” had? If this was really all about drones, “they” might be honest-to-God spies with covert information sources she could scarcely imagine.

That train of thought would keep her sitting in the car all night, or at least until she swallowed her pride, phoned Neil inside the house, and begged him to come and get her—preferably armed.

And
that
would be taking her fear too far. Sure, she had every right to be scared. Terrified, even. But she could make it a few feet from the curb to Neil’s door without an armed escort.

She looked around one last time before she unlocked her door, thinking as she did that some neighbor was probably watching
her
and wondering if she should call the cops about the weird lady loitering on their quiet street.

She grabbed her little bag of clothes and got out of the car, looking up as she did at a graying late-day sky with a few red streaks toward the west, electric lines and, far overhead, a seagull.

For all she knew, that seagull might be a drone. She’d seen a few pictures of drones on TV, but there were many types. Wouldn’t it be genius to make a surveillance drone that looked like a common bird?

Just the kind of thing Frank would think of. She just hadn’t imagined him ever
doing
it.

With that unwelcome thought, she forced herself to walk toward the house rather than bolt for it. If someone was watching her, be it a spy or a nosy neighbor, she wanted them to see she wasn’t scared.

Even though she was.

By the time she got to the front door, she’d broken out in a light sweat, even though it wasn’t hot. She felt lightheaded, and she swore she could sense unfriendly gazes from every direction.

Deep cleansing breaths, like they did in yoga. Frank might have called her yoga “fluffer-nutter stuff” but they prescribed yoga breathing exercises for vets with PTSD. She’d take what she could get.

Breathe again, let it out with an audible sigh, then knock.

* * * * *

Suzanne steeled herself to see Neil again. Would he be in uniform? Lust bubbled up through the fog of her nerves, but she made herself prioritize. A good round of sex might soothe her anxiety, but she was here for her safety, not for a date. She wasn’t going to make any assumptions about how the night would go. Sure, he’d teased her on the phone, tempted her with pretend scoldings and talk of spanking, but they’d both been up for far too long and Neil had warned her he might pass out. She’d stay calm and strong, a tough woman, not a melting sub, unless she got a clear signal from Neil that the time was ripe to be that melting sub.

Yeah, she thought she was prepared for Neil.

She wasn’t prepared for the good-looking, gray-haired man with eyes as brilliantly blue as Neil’s who actually answered the door, or his determined expression and surprisingly sweet smile. All the defenses she’d put up fled because they didn’t apply here. Neil’s father wasn’t the frail old man she’d pictured. Mandatory retirement for cops must arrive relatively young, and he looked like he could eat nails for breakfast. “Mr. Callahan?” she said weakly.

“Call me Joe.” He extended a hand, which she numbly took. A good, big hand, a few prominent veins on the back, and even more beat up than Neil’s. “Come inside.” As he ushered her in, he bellowed, “Neil, she’s here! Want a beer?” Before she could answer, he added, “Bring another beer for the lady.” He was locking the door as he said it, and peering out the small window like he was checking for threats, though far more coolly and competently than she had. But of course, he’d been Boston PD himself.

Suzanne could have been strong for Neil. Could have pretended calm when on the inside she was a roil of panic. She hadn’t dated for a very long time, but she seemed to remember there were standards of behavior involved, including not getting all weepy and dependent this early in the game. But there didn’t seem to be any point in pretending with Joe. Wasn’t like she’d slept with him or anything. He was just a nice man who happened to be a tough one as well, the sort of guy who exuded trustworthy.

Which his son had inherited along with a dose of bad-boy sexiness.

That trustworthiness, the sense of safety, was enough to shatter Suzanne’s determined, precarious hold on calm. She dropped her bag on the floor and burst into tears.

“Thank you,” she mumbled. “I really need that beer.”

Joe patted her back awkwardly, but he sounded assured as he said, “You’re safe here, Ms. Mayhew. Neil and I have everything under control.”

She doubted that since this mess had escalated from a personal vendetta of some sort to a possible international incident. But the steadiness of his voice reassured her that maybe everything could be under control again sometime soon.

It took less than a minute for Neil to arrive with a cold bottle of Sam Adams and a concerned smile, and that was all the time she’d needed to get the urge to blubber out of her system. “I must look awful,” she said, smearing what little makeup she’d managed to apply that day in an effort to wipe away her tears.

“You look beautiful.” Neil was still in uniform, but he’d unbuttoned the top two buttons of the uniform shirt. The deep blue of the uniform brought out his eyes, and the formality of it suited him as well as the jeans, bad-boy leather jacket and T-shirt he’d had on yesterday.

“How many beers have you had?” she managed to quip. It wasn’t a good joke but she needed to say something a little lighthearted.

“Not as many as I’d like. You never told me your husband was a military contractor.”

“I didn’t know he was one. I still don’t know for sure, but it’s the only thing that makes sense.”

Neil’s tone of voice when he asked about Frank’s work went with the uniform, serious and authoritative, but the hand he placed on the small of her back was gentle as he guided her from the entry hall to a living room dominated by comfortable older furniture and a single-guy sized TV that took up most of one wall. The room had an 80s wallpaper border involving blue and mauve roses and discreet touches of silver foil. It didn’t go with him at all, at least what she knew of him, but it went with the history of the house. Definitely what someone’s grandmother might have chosen. And he did seem like the kind of guy who would take great pains fixing something broken, but who’d ignore something functional but dated.

She finished her thought as she sat in a comfortable, battered chair. “Like I said, I didn’t think of him as a military contractor, but there are so many things you could do with robotics, and I know he didn’t tell me everything. And his last project…” She outlined what little she knew and the bits she’d guessed.

Joe let out a long, piercing whistle. “This is way above our pay grade.”

Chapter Thirteen

Suzanne looked from one blue-eyed face to the other. Both were full of steely determination, tempered with an eagerness for a good fight that was apparently an Irish stereotype for a reason.
Above our pay grade
seemed like guy code for
exciting.

It thrilled a primitive core she didn’t know she had to realize they were willing to go to battle for her, but her more practical side kicked in. “We need to contact someone. FBI, NSA, Defense Department.”

“I’m sure they’re already on it,” Neil said, a trace of bitterness in his voice. “Probably have been since Frank died, just not getting you involved because until yesterday you haven’t had to be.”

“Safer for everyone,” his father said, “if you weren’t in the loop.”

She nodded numbly. “Yeah. If he was making whatever this was
for
the government, but some of the information’s gone missing, they’d be looking for it, and they’d know other people might want it too. Maybe the new CEO of Mayhew knows something. Ly Vo’s a good guy.”

“Or maybe he and the other execs are the ones who are stalking you. If they know Frank was working on something big and they’re missing some critical information…”

Her stomach seized. She hadn’t known the rest of the management team at Mayhew well—Frank had kept his work compartmentalized and she was starting to understand why—but she’d met them all, including Ly Vo, at least a few times. “The guys following us, who harassed us about the car, might work at Mayhew, but they aren’t Mayhew management. At least I’ve never seen them before.” It was lame, but she couldn’t bring herself to believe that men and women she actually knew would torment her and burglarize and vandalize her home without first even trying to ask if she had any of Frank’s work files.

Not that she had, or if she had, she hadn’t known it.

Neil and his father looked at each other, a look so weighted with bad things it made her want to chug the rest of her beer at the same time it tempted her to throw up what she’d already sipped. “Freelancers.” Joe’s voice was solid, certain. Scary.

“Or not connected to Mayhew at all,” Neil said. “Lots of possible players here. We don’t know the Mayhew head honchos are involved. We just don’t know they’re not.”

“You’re making it sound like the people who logically are most likely to be able help clear this mess up,” Suzanne pieced together, “are also the most likely to be involved. Ly Vo. The government.”

Joe just nodded. Neil put his arm around her, pulled her to his side. It felt good to be there, good to be in warm physical contact. So real and safe, when everything else was abstract and terrifying.

It suddenly struck her that just a few days ago, getting freaky with an experienced Dominant would be the most wild, crazy and scary thing she could imagine ever happening to her. Now the Dom was her oasis of safety in a world gone mad and the prospect of kinky shenanigans was her way of holding on to sanity.

She stifled a laugh that was halfway a sob.

Neil raised one eyebrow, half smiled. “What’s the joke?”

“Tell you later.” When his father wasn’t around.

Neil took a quick look at the email. Suzanne decided she couldn’t bear to read it over his shoulder then decided she couldn’t
not
look. She was surprised to find herself relieved when she actually read the note. “This sounds kind of amateur. Like whoever wrote this made it up but had no idea what he was doing.”

Joe glanced at it too, sniffed, and said, “Not your CEO, and not CIA or whatever. Either of those would write better. CIA wouldn’t email you anyway, just turn up like a bunch of ninjas.” There was a short hesitation before
ninjas
that Suzanne took to mean he meant
fucking ninjas
but was trying to tone down his language in front of a lady.

Another urge to giggle. If he knew what she and his son had been up to, he wouldn’t be worried about her delicate sensibilities. Then again, he might not know how kinky Neil was, but he must suspect they’d spent the night together, and probably not playing Scrabble.

“The people who were tailing us had expertise. This is more along the lines of the break-in: subtle like a brick. Seems we’re looking at two different bunches of assholes.”

“That’s cheerful.” Suzanne felt the urge to laugh again, but this time she was clear it was hysteria.

“But if this bunch are amateurs, the email might be traceable without having to do anything too crazy. You should forward it to our new friends in Bellwood.”

Suzanne nodded numbly then took another slug of beer. Tired as she was, she’d have thought her brain would be completely muzzled by the beer and her body would seek the nearest soft, relatively flat surface so she could doze off. Instead, she was hyper-focused, hyper-aware, at the same time she knew she was exhausted and would collapse as soon as she allowed herself to do so. She might need Neil to help her unwind, though, to let go of the tension that was holding her together.

She wasn’t sure if that was good or not.

The two men were talking possibilities, suspects. Some part of her, the part that was truly exhausted and way out of her depth, wanted to leave it to them, and to the Bellwood police. It wasn’t her job, after all. Not Neil’s or his father’s, either, but at least they had the training.

Still, letting them take over would make her dependent in a way that didn’t feel right. Frank had left her set for life financially, but he’d also left her precarious—untrusting and yet too eager to trust. She needed to take responsibility for herself as best she could. Maybe there wasn’t much she could do in this situation. She’d have to rely on other people, including Detective Cardoza and other complete strangers in the Bellwood Police Department, to protect her and to actually solve the crime, track down the bad guys and press charges. But she could help collect her own thoughts, make sure the police had all the information they needed.

Even if that meant examining her marriage in ways she’d been reluctant to do until now.

“If one of you could grab me paper and a pen,” she said, “I’ll start writing things down. I was so rattled this morning I may have forgotten things. And now I have phone numbers the cops may need.” She patted her pocket, where the trusty cheap phone hid. She might have to get online again to grab some of Frank’s old contacts, but she could get started now.

Joe stared at her as if she’d suggested doing a stakeout singlehandedly, but Neil nodded, stood, and came back a few minutes later with a pen and a yellow legal pad stained with coffee and ornamented with the beginning of a grocery list: eggs, coffee, hamburger, fries. She tore off that sheet and handed it to him, stomping hard on the urge to recommend adding some veggies to the list.

She’d sat by herself in an overstuffed green and brown plaid recliner, outdated, worn, clearly much loved and deliciously comfortable—the kind of chair Frank would have hated—letting the two men take over the couch so they could bounce ideas off each other more easily. Instead of going back to his father, though, Neil perched on the arm of the chair and put one hand on her shoulder as if it belonged there.

In the midst of all the fear, the touch soothed her and aroused her at the same time. Just a hand on her shoulder. Nothing you couldn’t do in public, or, like now, in front of your dad. It wasn’t erotic or exotic on the surface, and it wouldn’t take up a thousand words in one of the books that burned up Suzanne’s tablet.

But maybe it should. He was so confident that she wanted the touch, that his hand belonged on her body in this casual, comfortable way without any discussion. His hand on her, in front of his father like this, seemed as proprietary and weighted with meaning as a wedding ring.

Or a collar.

Suzanne rubbed the ring finger of her left hand, where the pale indentation of her wedding ring had finally faded. She caught herself, forced herself to grip the pen with one hand, the notebook with the other. “So, what do we have so far for suspects? Frank’s company, the slick foreign guys, and apparently some extra-dumb frat boys who want to get their hands on drone technology.”

“Don’t forget the government,” Joe said drily.

Neil’s hand tightened on her shoulder. “Dad—”

“They’re not suspects. They’re not going to hurt you unless they think you’re selling intel to the other side but they’re an interested party. They might have set someone to tail you if for some reason they wanted to keep track of your husband’s cars. Think they’d do a better job of it than these guys did, but there’s no law that federal agents can’t be jerks.”

Suzanne dutifully made notes. “I still think my best bet is going to them.” Then she shook her head. “No, not yet because if I contact the wrong agency I’ll sound like a paranoid nutbar.”

“And if you contact the right one but don’t have answers when they start asking questions, you’ll sound suspicious and things will get worse before they get better. At least someone can arrest criminals and spies and get them away from you, but you’re stuck with federal agents.”

“
Dad
. She’s nervous enough already.”

“We’re talking about people who do bad things for good reasons, people who do the jobs the rest of us don’t want to think about in order to keep this country safe. They’re taking care of some greater good, but that doesn’t mean they’ll take care of
you
.” Joe’s face hardened as he spoke.

Suzanne swallowed hard, writing a few random words to cover her agitation. “Fine. Nothing like trying to do the right thing and getting in even more trouble. I’ll hold off until there’s more info, or until the police say it’s time.” Neil started making small circles on her back with his hand. It was almost too soothing, sapping her energy and resolve, but she forced herself to think through the bliss that radiated out from that simple contact. “I’d told the Bellwood police I thought it might be something to do with the cars themselves, some kind of crazed car club rivalry or just thieves. That seems less likely now, but I know the cars are involved somehow. The foreign guys seemed determined to get their hands on the Mustang, and whoever robbed the house tore the Chevy apart.”

Joe shook his head tightly. “Animals, treating a classic car that way.”

Neil bent down. His lips brushed Suzanne’s ear, his hot breath tickling. “Thanks for distracting him from the government thing. He was about to rant. He was on detail at the Marathon finish line the year of the bombing and had to deal with way too many feds because of it.”

The words were about the least sexy ones she could imagine, but the intimacy, the way he had to bend close and press against her to whisper, the movement of his lips on her skin, was like blowing on banked coals to set them aflame. Heat flared. She clenched, despite everything. For a second, she leaned back against him, just enjoying the warmth, the solidity of his body. It took willpower to resist the urge to pull him down for a kiss, to touch him in ways that weren’t appropriate in front of his father.

Neil’s body went still as granite when she leaned back against him, his hands frozen in place, and she realized he too was fighting temptation.

Damn, that was gratifying.

“Write down cars with a question mark. There’s some connection, but what?”

Suzanne’s turn to shrug. “Anyone who knew Frank knew he was all about the cars. Probably anyone who’d done any research on Frank or the company knew it, because every time he got interviewed the collection came up. He was always a car buff, long before he started Mayhew, but I can see where someone might think it was about something more than him loving anything pretty, shiny and mechanical. Maybe they think he hid something in one of them.”

“Neil, you have a chance to go over the Mustang before all hell broke?”

She felt Neil shrug. “It’s a sweet car. Handles great. Engine purrs like a happy lion. But…”

He hesitated for less than a second. Suzanne almost wouldn’t have noticed it except his father chortled, his previous dark mood seemingly forgotten. “But you were too busy looking over the lovely lady to notice every detail of the car.”

This time, Neil sounded like exactly like a teenager as he sputtered, “Dad!” Then he, too laughed. “Priorities, Dad. A man’s gotta have priorities!”

Suzanne felt herself blushing, but it was a good feeling.

“In any case, the car’s in our garage now. It’s not going anywhere on its own.”

“We hope,” Suzanne added pointedly.

“We’ll check it out together, kid. If there’s anything there, you and I should be able to find it without trashing the car the way those idiots did. Crime to destroy a dead man’s work that way.”

“I know, Dad. There’s more at stake here than cars, but I’d want to get those bastards even if they were just a bunch of vandals. Whatever else Frank may have been up to, he did great work on his cars.” He kissed the top of Suzanne’s head, squeezed her.

“He did great work, period.” After all the bitterness, the years of frustration, it felt important to say that. “Frank might not have been the greatest husband for me, but he was talented. At anything mechanical, he was a genius. People who know about that kind of thing said he was the best in the robotics game. I suppose if that wasn’t true, if he was just good at restoring cars, we wouldn’t have this problem.” She snorted. “Just like old times, Frank. You’re causing me trouble and you’re not around to take care of it—and this time it’s way worse than a souped-up vacuum that didn’t work quite right.”

“There’s a story here,” Neil said drily.

“You know those robot vacuums? Frank had a similar idea a while back, not long after we got married. Only it hit him when I was off having a girly weekend with Janice, so he decided to experiment with our vacuum. Let’s just say it was self-propelled by the time I got home, but he hadn’t worked out a guidance system. And oh, he didn’t
tell
me he’d been playing with it. Two lamps, a glass-topped table and a cat with a run-over tail later… For some reason, he never pursued that idea. Got mad as hell when someone came out with one a few years later, though. Especially when they showed cats in their ads.”