Hold Me (2 page)

Luc slammed on the brakes when the line of cars stopped for a red light. One of the ’vette’s tires was shredded, thanks to a lucky shot by the assholes chasing him, so he lost control, went into a slide and ended up nose down in a drainage ditch on the shoulder. He tried to reverse, but the abused tires just spun in the loose dirt and gravel.

He jumped out. He’d managed to put a little distance between himself and the black sedan, but it was moving steadily closer now, pushing its way through the traffic. He tried to run, but his ankle was weak and didn’t support him. It slowed him down. Luc knew that he couldn’t escape on foot. He needed help. But to involve a civilian…

An old, green Chevy Nova suddenly roared beside him. For one brief, delirious second he even thought he recognized it, but then all old Novas looked alike, didn’t they? Still, Mama Allen would have said it was a sign. And, when it came right down to it, he didn’t have much of a choice. He put the rest of his energy into the final few steps, trying to think how he could convincingly ask for assistance.

The Nova’s driver gunned the motor again. It sounded fast.

He hoped it was.

Katie finally got the car started, holding her feet on the gas pedal and the brake at the same time so the thing wouldn’t stall out again. Then, without any warning, the passenger door opened and a disheveled, dark-haired man slid in next to her.

She stared at him, shocked.

“Hi,” he said.

“What do you think you’re doing?” The fear slammed into her. Her car doors. She’d forgotten to lock her car doors. “Get out of my car!” Everything her mother had ever told her about serial killers and rapists and carjackers raced through her mind so fast they burned it out and left it blank.

“Yeah. Well, see, I’d like to, but—”

“You’d like to? Get out or I’ll call the police.” Call the police. Yes, yes. Call the police. Katie fumbled for her purse and her cell phone, but he grabbed her wrist.

“Damn it, don’t panic! I’m not going to hurt you.”

“I’m not panicking.” Okay, so that was a lie, but he didn’t have to know it. “Just get out!” She struggled to unhook her seat belt. The buckle, naturally, refused to budge. Oh, God, she was trapped in the car with a stranger. The light turned green, but she ignored it and the car horns that blared behind them as she fought with the belt. “Take the car,” she panted. “You can have the car. Just let me go.”

“Would you listen to me?” The man tightened his hold on her arm and glanced back through the rear window. “Please. I swear that I’m not going to hurt you. I swear. Honest. I’m with the FBI. There are people chasing me who want to kill me. They’re almost here. I need your help. Please.”

Katie hesitated and looked right into the man’s beautiful dark eyes. He seemed sincere. This could be a scam, though. Her mother’s voice in her head was screaming at her not to be stupid. This could all just be a way to lull her suspicions. But his voice was deep and musical, and she thought she heard some real desperation in it.

“If you—”

There was a sharp sound like a firecracker. The mirror on Katie’s side of the car exploded.

She screamed. Loudly.

“Go!” the man yelled. He let go of her arm and she didn’t think, she just reacted. She grabbed the steering wheel, let up on the brake, and hammered her foot down on the gas pedal. The Nova screeched and faltered, then careened through the intersection.

“What…but…somebody’s shooting at us.” Katie sputtered almost as much as the car. Somebody was actually shooting at them.

“Yeah. Shit.”

Katie looked in the rearview mirror. A black sedan had appeared on their tail, gliding after them like a big shark. The supposed FBI agent moved, drawing her attention.

“Oh God, oh God. That’s a gun. You’ve got a gun!”

“Yeah.” He sounded distracted.

Well, duh. Of course he had a gun. Katie swerved around a propane tanker and ran a yellow light. The black sedan stayed close and one of its occupants shot at them again. Okay, those people chasing them were freaking nuts to shoot a gun around a propane tanker. She tried to go faster.

The FBI man rolled down the window and leaned out, apparently thinking that he’d shoot back at the other car, which meant he was nuts too.

Katie had to brake abruptly as she wove between two slower moving vehicles. The man grabbed at the window frame to keep from flying out onto the road.

“Would you be careful?” He jerked his upper body inside. “There’s too much traffic to get a good shot. You’ll have to lose them.”

“Trying!”

“Because if you can’t, we’ll both be dead soon.”

“We’ll be dead? How did this become a ‘we’? You’re the one they’re after, not me.”

“They’re shooting at you, too, aren’t they? Drive faster.”

“But… I can’t believe… Oh, jeez.”

Katie took a deep breath and tried to calm down. Okay, okay, okay. Two things were obvious.

One: whoever was in that black sedan wanted to kill somebody.

Two: whatever was going on, she was right in the middle of it.

She had to stay in control. If she did what she wanted to do and collapsed into a weeping pile of hysterics, the car accident alone would kill them. She concentrated on zigzagging like a maniac through the maze of traffic. The sedan stayed on their tail.

“I think they’re stuck to my bumper,” she muttered.

“This isn’t working.” The man grabbed her arm.

“No? Really?”

“Turn down a side street or something.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing because I sure don’t.” Katie saw a likely looking road up ahead. “Hold on.”

The man obediently clutched at the door and braced himself against the dashboard.

She waited until the last possible second, then jerked the wheel. Tired squealed and scattered as the Nova darted across three lanes of the highway to make the hairpin turn. For once the driver of the black sedan couldn’t seem to react in time because the other car kept going, hemmed in on all sides.

When she saw that she’d lost them, Katie sagged in her seat, trembling. Her hands ached from gripping the steering wheel. Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

“They’re gone,” the man reported after a moment. “You, um, can slow down now.”

It was only then that Katie realized she was still driving like a lunatic. She also saw that her unwanted passenger had a tight hold on the door handle and was looking more than a little queasy.

The surge of adrenaline pumping through her system made her feel reckless, powerful and pissed off. Instead of slowing down, she actually sped up. The man slid lower in his seat, jiggled the door handle and looked like he wished he could jump for it.

She smiled. Served him right. Jerk. Big, huge, hacking jerk.

“Do you do this sort of thing often?” she asked, admiring her own casual tone.

“What sort of thing?”

“Oh, you know.” She waved a hand, then grabbed the wheel again as they bounced over a pothole. “Shooting at bad guys, car chases through small towns, etcetera, etcetera.”

“Oh, that.” He shrugged and twisted in the seat to face her. “I don’t know. Pretty often.”

Katie glanced at him and saw that his eyes were twinkling. She blinked. The jerk really did have beautiful eyes. They were a rich, deep shade of chocolate brown, framed by incredibly long, dark eyelashes. Never in her life had such eyes actually twinkled at her. She almost steered the car into a ditch and the bump drew her attention back to the road.

He didn’t appear to notice anything unusual. Probably women drove into ditches whenever he walked by.

“Besides,” he said, and grinned, “how do you know I’m not the bad guy?”

Katie swallowed. The giddy high washed away, leaving her weak and shaken. This wasn’t a game, she reminded herself. She didn’t know this guy. She didn’t know the first thing about him. Thoughts of murderers and rapists raced through her mind again. What if she’d been running from the police all this time? Of course, she’d never seen the police driving black sedans, and one would hope they wouldn’t shoot at a car on a busy highway, but who knew?

As soon as possible, she pulled over to the side of the road.

“Get out. Now.” She tried to sound hard and powerful but didn’t think she’d pulled it off. That was the problem with being short—no authority.

“Hey, come on. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it,” he said, his voice soothing. He didn’t even try to move.

She swallowed and shoved her glasses higher on her nose with a shaky hand. What was she going to do? He was a lot bigger than she was and seemed to be in pretty good shape. His shoulders stretched the material of the black T-shirt he wore and his biceps bulged quite nicely, even though he wasn’t doing anything special with them at the time.

Now that she really looked at him, she noticed he had a long scar across his left cheekbone. She didn’t know how she’d missed it before. He had a tattooed band of Celtic knots wrapped around the arm closest to her, peeking out under the short sleeve of his shirt. And there was another tattoo of a snake farther down on his forearm. He looked dangerous.

All right. So, she probably didn’t have any hope of forcing him out of the car by herself. A surreptitious tug on the seatbelt confirmed that the buckle still wouldn’t move. But if she could reach her utility knife in the glove compartment, maybe she could stab him…

“Come on, I was joking,” the man said into the thick silence. “I’m not one of the bad guys. I swear. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Joking? And he expected her to believe that? How stupid did he think she was? She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him.

“You’re with the FBI?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Don’t you have to show me some kind of a badge or something?” She’d seen enough cop shows on television to know that much.

“I don’t have one with me.” He squirmed a little in the seat. “I am, was, working undercover.”

“Okay.” She raised her eyebrows to show him she didn’t buy it. “Then just tell me what’s going on.”

He coughed. “I can’t.”

“All right.” Katie studied him, refusing to let his beautiful eyes distract her, refusing to notice how he took up most of the room in the car. “So, let me see if I’ve got this straight. You’re telling me that you’re with the FBI, but you can’t prove it. You’ve carjacked me, gotten me shot at, and generally scared the heck out of me, but you’re not going to tell me why. About cover it?”

He hesitated, then nodded. “Uh, yeah.”

“Buddy, if you think—”

“You really did save my life. I can tell you that much.” He smiled at her fully, and the temperature in the car went up about ten degrees. His face had a fierce quality that, combined with the scar and his obviously once-broken nose, saved him from being merely handsome. But when he smiled, these attractive brackets showed up and framed his long, full mouth. In a softer face they might have been called dimples, but it was ridiculous to call them dimples on this man. They bothered her.

Katie looked quickly away, but that just made her more aware of the warmth of his body in the seat next to her. She felt him shift, saw him glance out the rear window. Then he stiffened and cursed.

“What?” She looked, too, and her eyes widened when she saw a very familiar black sedan speeding up behind them. “Oh, no.”

“Move!”

Katie didn’t think. She didn’t stop to wonder whether the people in the black sedan really were the police. Somewhere, deep down inside, she knew that they weren’t and that whoever was chasing them wanted them dead. So she grabbed the steering wheel and stomped her foot on the gas pedal. The Nova spun gravel, hesitated a split second, then took off.

“We’ve got to lose them again,” the man told her.

“Hello! Figured out that much, okay? You’re making me nervous.”

“Great. At least there isn’t any traffic around here.” He leaned out the window and shot repeatedly at the sedan. His face was grim when he ducked back inside. “The car shakes so much that I can’t keep my aim.”

“Well, I’m sorry!” They were out of town now, and the road was narrow and winding. “Maybe you should have thought about that before you jumped into it!”

“You don’t have to shout,” he muttered.

“I AM NOT SHOUTING!”

“Sorry, I must have mistaken you for the other screaming banshee in the car.” He paused and looked at her. “Are you all right?”

“All right? Oh, yeah, yeah. Sure. Fine.” She tried to rein in her hysteria.

“Just hold it together.” He leaned back out the window.

The countryside was becoming increasingly rural. With no real logic other than panic, Katie made a sharp turn at a crossroad in an attempt to lose the sedan. She almost succeeded in dislodging her passenger, but the sedan stayed on their tail.

“Would you give me some warning before you do that?”

“Sorry.” Katie swept around another curve and practically unseated him a second time. She cleared her throat. “Um, I don’t suppose this is a good time to mention I don’t have the slightest idea where we are.”

“What?” He jerked himself back into the car just as there were more gunshots from behind them. The mirror on his side shattered. “What do you mean you don’t know where we are?”

“I mean that I don’t know where we are.” They spun around another sharp turn and teetered on the edge of a ditch. “So sue me if I don’t have a great sense of direction.”

Katie saw a wooden barricade across the road. She jammed on the brakes and the car pulled up in a cloud of dust. They were at the entrance of a stone quarry.

“Why are you stopping?” the man next to her shouted. “Go in! Go in! Crash the gate!”

“But—”

He said something and shoved his foot over hers on the accelerator. The Nova flew, burst through the barricade, splintering the old wood while Katie clutched the steering wheel and tried to avoid hitting quarry trucks and gaping workers.

He removed his foot and grabbed her arm.

“Just drive as fast as you can, okay?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

He started shooting at the sedan again. Katie crouched down as far as she could, shoved the pedal to the metal, and sent the car racing up one of the narrow trails winding around the quarry pit.