Edge of the Heat 5 (14 page)

She ground her teeth together and willed the emotions and thoughts away, her body half turned, so she could hide her face quickly if he turned her way. He didn’t. She steeled her mind and willed Miss-All-Business to take over completely. Miss-All-Business was happy to. She felt the steel will of the coldest, most frigid part of her seep strength back in to her body, completely chilling her wayward thoughts and emotions.

It was his turn at the desk. He spoke. His voice cut through the steel like it was butter. Ah God, she missed him. She missed his quick smile, his easy laugh, his handsome, open face. She wished— Miss-All-Business cut through her silly, soft thoughts with a horrible admonition.
Keep this up and you or him are going to die. Is that what you want?

No, it wasn’t what she wanted. She had forgotten who she was for a moment, but it wouldn’t happen again.

She overheard his room number: 1919, and in an instant she left the line and found the stairwell. She would beat him there. She sprinted up the stairs, glad she’d kept up her grueling workouts up even though she wasn’t working anymore. Well of course she did. Who knew when she would have to fight, to run?

She opened the door to the 19th floor, panting but not winded. It was empty, quiet. She spied the room number closest to her without stepping out into the hall. 1928. She wasn’t sure of the layout of this hotel. Were the elevators around a corner, or right at the end of the hall? No matter, she had to step out into the hallway, no matter what. The stairwell was too far from his room to wait here.

She strolled through the hallway like she belonged here, reading room numbers. As she passed 1919 on her left, she heard the elevator ding.  The hall opened up to the right and left, a balcony to the left and the elevators to the right. She walked past, then turned as the hallway turned. Hearing heavy footsteps behind her, she spun on her heel and went back to the initial hallway. There was Jerry, heading towards his room. He stopped at his door. She was 15 feet from him. He looked up at her and smiled faintly. Miss-All-Business was fully in charge now, and she didn’t even startle as his face turned towards hers. She knew he couldn’t see her eyes behind the sunglasses, so she acted as if she hadn’t seen him smile. He looked back down to the business of swiping his door key. She quickened her pace, and reached him exactly as he pushed the door open.

J
erry smiled at the woman walking down the hall, but she didn’t smile back. He wouldn’t have worked up the energy to smile at all, but she reminded him a little of Sara. Similar height, same confident walk. It would be a man’s heavy, straightforward, gait except her hips gave it a natural roll, making it a bit more feminine. Jerry had found it endlessly fascinating. If Sara really were here right now, would he smile at
her
? He wasn’t sure.

Jerry swiped his key card, looking forward to falling into bed. He’d driven for 8 hours straight, only stopping twice for food and bathroom breaks. He hadn’t felt safe until he got out of California. He didn’t think he was a big enough ‘criminal’ for Gagne to notify the state police, but he wasn’t sure. The drive had not been relaxing. His mind had played an endless loop of the last 4 days over and over in his head, trying to find something he missed, something he could have done different. He kept telling himself to give it a rest already, Sara left of her own free will and chances were he’d never see her again. And he was done with this secret agent crap. Done. When he returned from Vegas, he would call and see if they would let him go straight back to work. His leg was as good as it was going to get, and there would be no more physical therapy anyway. He was, to put it simply, done with this entire mess. Done with Sara, done with women, done with everything that didn’t have to do with his job. He even planned to shred his concealed weapons permit and sell this gun.
Lucky it is a multi-state permit so I can legally carry in Nevada
, he mused.
Otherwise I’d already be a criminal here too.

Jerry pushed his door open and put his hand out to flip on the light. The heavy weight of his fatigue had seemed to make things slow down for him. Swiping the key card and pushing the door open had all happened in a kind of surreal, slow motion. A bright, hot blast of pain in his right armpit and shoulder switched everything to fast motion in an instant. His arm ceased to function, falling limp at his side, but that didn’t stop the pain. It traveled down the right side of his body and wrapped itself up around his head. His leg wanted to collapse. His bleary mind tried to make sense of what was going on. Was he shocked by the light switch? Was electricity traveling through his body right now? Stopping his heart? Frying his muscles? But no, he hadn’t even touched the wall. The pain in his shoulder released and now that it was gone he could tell it actually had been in his neck, under his clavicle. The pain in his armpit intensified and he felt pressure in his back. Someone was assaulting him. He tried to twist away from the pain and reach out to battle with his attacker, but the pain followed him, and his hands found no one. The pain in his armpit lessened and a burning lance of pain in his right ear exploded a quarter of a second later. Hard steel was being pressed into his ear.

“Move into the room,” a muffled voice told him, and someone gave him a shove. Jerry stumbled three steps into the room, falling to his knees. Blessedly, all the pain was gone, although he could feel the remnants in his armpit and under his clavicle, oh yeah, and in his right ear. He put a hand up to his ear, but it came away clean, no blood.

He turned, half expecting to see Detective Gagne.

The woman from the hall stood just inside his door, holding a gun on him.
Wait, is that my gun?

Jerry felt shocked, completely fazed by what had just happened.  It had taken only a few seconds, and here he was inside his hotel room, with a gun pointed at him. He shifted his perception to the gun holster in the small of his back. Yep, it felt empty.

“Put your hands up,” the woman said.

Jerry floated his hands in the air, and his brain hit him with the next piece of information, hoping he could handle it.
That’s Sara pointing your own gun at you. Sara just simultaneously incapacitated you and took your gun out of your retention holster in about three seconds.

Jerry could feel he was gaping openly, but he couldn’t help it. There was nothing about this situation that seemed rational. Maybe he had been hit on the head during the assault, and he was now passed out on the floor dreaming all this.

“Back up,” Sara said. “Sit down on the bed.”

Jerry backed up, mouth still open. He sat down on the bed with his hands in the air.

“Let’s get something straight right now, Jerry. I will shoot you. Don’t think that if you rush me you’ll be able to overpower me. You’re bigger and stronger than I am, but you won’t win if you take me on. I promise you that."

Jerry’s mouth dropped open another inch. “Sara, Wha-what’s going on?”

“I’m going to ask you some questions Jerry, and you are going to answer them. That’s it.”

Sara took off her sunglasses and her scarf with one hand, the gun still trained on Jerry’s chest. She glanced around at the decent sized hotel room, her gaze stopping on the chair, then sliding off, then stopping on the bed. With a half-nod to herself, she turned part of her attention to the curtains. She turned on the lamp, then pulled the curtains closed.

“Do you have any other weapons?”

“No.” Jerry was starting to get his wits back, just a little bit. The situation still seemed completely unreal, but at the same time it also made a sick sort of sense. If Sara thought there was something dangerous about him, that would explain why she had ditched him. It wouldn’t explain why she was here and how she’d disarmed him so quickly though.

“Unlace your boots and kick them off. Slowly. If you move too fast or if I see a knife or gun or even a holster I’m putting a bullet in your kneecap.”

Jerry winced. She didn’t specify which knee. What would be worse? Getting a bullet in his good leg, or his bad one?

He leaned over with exaggerated slowness, doing as she said. While his fingers did the work they’d done a thousand times before, he stole quick glances at her face.

Her color was high, two blooming roses stamped on her cheeks. Her mouth was drawn into a tight little line. Her hair was tied back, so he couldn’t see it well, but it looked black, not her usual brown. Other than that, it was Sara. Beautiful, enigmatic Sara who he’d been searching for all week.

He didn’t know what made her feel like she had to hold a gun on him. Was she scared he would fight her? Run? Did she somehow think that he was carrying the gun to shoot her? He hoped that he could get some answers too.

“Stand up,” she told him once his boots were off. “Take off your pants.”

Jerry cocked an eyebrow at her. Even though he couldn’t think of a single funny thing to say, he felt an unmanly giggle build in the back of his throat.

Sara gestured with the gun. “Undo your buckle, drop them to the ground, and kick them off. Do it. Slowly.”

Like a striptease?
He wondered, but he didn’t say it. He didn’t know this Sara. Her reaction might be explosive.

Kicking his pants over to join his shoes he looked down at his underwear. Blue boxer briefs. Not exactly how he planned any sort of an intimate setting with Sara, but at least he looked presentable.

“Now lift your shirt up, and turn around slowly.” He lifted, and turned. Was she looking for a wire?
What in the world
?

“Sara, can you tell me what’s going on? Why did you take off on me? Why are you in Vegas? What do you think I did?” Jerry asked.

Sara ignored him. She fished her phone out of her bag with one hand and glanced at it, then put it back and pushed a stray lock of hair off of her forehead. Jerry watched her hands, those strong hands that had kneaded his sore spots and coaxed healing into his muscles, and felt his body heat rise and tingles march up and down his spine.  The ridiculousness of the situation struck him, and again he wondered if he were actually passed out on the floor. Here he was, running from the law, hiding out in Las Vegas, and being held at gunpoint by a woman who had gotten him into this mess in the first place. A woman he found infinitely attractive. A woman he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about for months now. Oh, and don’t forget that she’d just had him strip down to his underwear.

Jerry felt a half grin slide onto his face and he shook his head. Sara’s eyebrows pulled down and together. In irritation? In consternation? He wasn’t sure. She shoved her hand into her bag again and pulled out some sort of a white plastic wire. She threw it to him. It fell on the floor in front of him.

“Put this on your wrists and lock it, but not too tight.” He looked at it curiously. It looked like a plastic zip tie, but there was a stretch of plastic in the middle. What it really looked like was handcuffs. And he supposed that’s what it was. Some sort of plastic handcuff.

“Hey, Sara, is this really necessary? Ask your questions. I’m not going to lie, or run away, or try to fight with you, I promise.”

She nodded. “I’m sure you won’t. Just humor me, OK?” She wasn’t smiling, but her voice was light. OK.

He put the plastic cuffs around his wrists, then fed the plastic ends through their locking mechanisms. “OK stop, now push it farther up your arms.” He did, pushing the ‘cuffs’ about a quarter of the way up his forearms.

“Take these, then sit up there on the bed.” She gestured towards the pillows on the far side. He walked to near the wall and sat down, looking at the second pair of cuffs she had tossed him curiously. Why did he need two pairs?

“Now put your wrists on both sides of the leg of the headboard.” Jerry looked at the obviously heavy, and probably fastened to the wall headboard. Now he got it. She was going to handcuff him to the headboard, but he was already handcuffed once as extra security. She was wily, careful, smart. His admiration for her grew, in a crazy, dreamlike way. If she didn’t shoot him, maybe she could give him tips on how to escape being arrested again.

He glanced at her. She watched him closely, eyes narrowed and unreadable. “Sara, I swear I won’t do anything. You don’t have to tie me to the bed. I’ll just sit here like a good boy and answer any question you ask of me.”

And he meant it too. He couldn’t think of anything he would want to lie to her about. Well, except maybe the depth of his feeling for her. He’d been trying to lie to himself about it all week, but now, seeing her here, he knew he was a goner. Even the fact that she was holding a gun on him and about to tie him up didn’t change the fact that he thought he might be painfully in love with her (painful because she was obviously the most unavailable woman in the world). If she shot him, that might make him feel differently about her, but just pointing the gun at him? It bothered him, but he still loved her.
God. He loved her.
The weight of the realization hit him in the chest. Maybe she had been right to ditch him. Maybe she was right to tie him to a headboard. Because he wasn’t letting her just walk out of his life now. If she left now he would follow, gun or no gun.
What a cluster fuck this was turning out to be.

“Just do it Jerry. I’ll feel better and we can get this done with. I’m not going to hurt you if you cooperate. I’ll even cut these things off you when we’re done. I promise.”

What the hell?
Jerry thought.
You’re supposed to trust the one you love, right?
Another sick, alien smile slid across his face. He put his hands on either side of the bedpost and maneuvered the flexi-cuffs until they were around his wrists. It took him a few minutes from the awkward angle but he finally managed.

“Now pull the locks tight.” She waited while he did, and then went around the other side of the bed, tucking the gun into her waistband. She yanked the blankets to the foot of the bed. “Now lay down.”

Jerry did. His hands went over his head. He had to sit, then scootch his body down. Sara pulled the blankets on her side halfway up the bed, then tucked them in.