Kill the Competition (4 page)

"I see you discovered Tom," Libby said, gesturing to the radio. Her tone was tentative, as if she were offering an olive branch.

"Yeah." Belinda smiled, softening toward the woman. It was nice of them to try to include her, and it wasn't their fault she was barely holding herself together. She wracked her brain for something girly to say. "I think his voice is kind of sexy."

Libby laughed. "You and every other she-type in Atlanta." She pronounced it
uh-lan-uh,
the sign of a true native.

Alternating between gas and brake, Belinda eked into the engorged lanes of I-285, locally known as The Perimeter, since its eight lanes girdled the city. One grueling mile until the spaghetti intersection of I-85 southbound, which would deliver them into Midtown. She might make the meeting after all. Perhaps she could have a private moment with Margo before the meeting to explain her concerns about Payton's financials. Her boss might have noticed the discrepancies herself and had already secured an explanation.

So why couldn't she shake this prickly feeling of impending doom?

"Speak of the devil," Carole said, pointing out the window. "There's the traffic chopper with Mr. Sexy Voice."

Belinda leaned forward. "Where?"

The reply was drowned out by the sickening crunch of metal against metal as her car hit something bigger and more solid than itself. Her seat belt brought her up short, then whipped her back against the seat. She inhaled sharply and experienced a flash of gratitude that the impact hadn't been fierce enough to trigger the airbags. Her mind reeled, registering a sparkle of pain in her neck. "Is everyone okay?"

Breathless yesses chorused around her, but her initial relief was replaced with a stone of dread when she looked up to see what she'd collided with.
Yilk.

"Good gravy," Libby murmured.

Belinda closed her eyes and imagined the dollars draining from her savings account, just as a breaking traffic report boomed over the radio.

"Oh, no! Folks, just when things were clearin' up on I-85 southbound, now there's a crash on I-285 eastbound. I saw this one happen—some poor driver in a Honda Civic rammed a police car!"

Chapter 3

The police cruiser's blue light came on, bathing Belinda's cheeks with condemning heat each time it passed over her face. The officer was male, that she could tell from the span of his shoulders. And he wasn't happy, that she could tell from the way he banged his hand against the steering wheel. Since the cruiser sat at an angle, and since her left bumper was imbedded in his right rear fender, and since his right signal light still blinked, he apparently had been attempting to change lanes when she'd nailed him.

The officer gestured for her to pull over to the right. When traffic yielded, he pulled away first, eliciting another sickening scrape as their cars disengaged. She followed like a disobedient child, and despite the odd skew of her car and an ominous noise that sounded like
potato potato potato
(probably because she was hungry), she managed to pull onto the narrow shoulder behind him. The driver side door of the squad car swung open, and long uniform-clad legs emerged. Belinda swallowed hard.

"Whip up some tears," Libby said.

"What?"

"Hurry, before he gets back here."

"I can't—
owww
!" She rubbed her fingers over the tender skin on the back of her arm where Libby had pinched the heck out of her. Tears sprang to her eyes, partly from the pain and partly from the awfulness of the situation. She tried to blink away the moisture but wound up overflowing. She was wiping at her eyes when a sharp rap sounded on her window.

"Uh-oh," Carole whispered. "He looks pissed."

An understatement. The officer was scowling, his dark hair hand-ruffled, his shadowed jaw clenched. Belinda zoomed down the window and waited.

"Is everyone okay?" he barked. Bloodshot eyes—maybe gray, maybe blue—blazed from a rocky face.

"Y-yes."

"Then save the tears."

She blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

Libby leaned forward. "My friend is late for an important meeting, Officer."

He eyed Belinda without sympathy. "That makes two of us. I need your driver's license, registration, and proof of insurance, ma'am."

Belinda reached for her purse, which had landed at her feet. "I'm sorry, Officer, I didn't see you."

"Yes, ma'am, these big marked cars with sirens really blend."

Libby harrumphed, but Belinda shot her a warning glance and handed over the documents he requested.

He glanced at her license, then back at her.

"It's me," she mumbled. The worst driver's license photograph in history: She'd been suffering from the flu, and for some reason, wearing a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt had seemed like a good idea. She was relatively certain that a copy of the humiliating photograph was posted on bulletin boards in DMV break rooms across the state of Ohio.

"I'll be right back."

He circled around to record the numbers on her license plate, then returned to his car, every footfall proclaiming his frustration for inexperienced, un-photogenic female drivers. He used his radio, presumably to report her vitals. She'd never been in trouble in her life, but her gut clenched with the absurd notion that some computer glitch might finger her as a lawless fugitive—kidnapper, forger, murderer. Her new friends wouldn't be able to vouch for her, except to say that she maintained a neat desk.

"He's kind of cute with that whole bad-boy unshaven look," Libby muttered. "But he doesn't have much of a roadside manner."

"Well, I did hit his car."

"It isn't
his
car—it belongs to the taxpayers. You hit your own car, really."

Belinda closed her eyes and focused on the sensation of vehicles passing with enough speed and proximity to send vibrations through her crippled Honda. The vacuum pulled at her hair, and the tang of asphalt stung her nostrils. A symphony of car horns sounded around her. Everything in Atlanta was faster than she was accustomed to. She couldn't imagine ever feeling as if she belonged to this teeming city, couldn't conjure up the hopeful romanticism that had shot through her when she'd sat in her Cincinnati apartment hunched over her laptop, scanning the Archer employment ad.

WANTED: Finance specialist for privately owned firm in Atlanta.

In hindsight, she'd been at a low point—3:00 a.m., on the verge of returning to work after two weeks of vacation that were supposed to have been spent standing in line at the Louvre and instead had been spent standing in line at the post office, returning wedding gifts. To her emotionally scraped self, Atlanta had beckoned like a big-bosomed matron. Warm, perfumed, comforting. Now she was thinking she'd watched
Gone With the Wind
one too many times.

The crunch of gravel signaled the officer's approach.

She opened her eyes, but the flat line of his mouth caused the Berry Bonanza with calcium to roil in her stomach.

"Do you live in Cincinnati, Ms. Hennessey?"

"No, I moved here two months ago."

A muscle worked in his jaw as he scribbled on a ticket pad. "I need your address, please."

She recited it as he wrote.

"You were supposed to obtain a Georgia driver's license within thirty days of moving here."

His tone pushed her pulse higher. "I didn't know."

He tore off one, two, three tickets, then thrust them into her hand. "Now you do." He unbuttoned his cuff and began rolling up his sleeve. "I need for you ladies to move to my car, please."

Belinda gaped. "You're hauling us in?"

The officer looked heavenward, then back. "No, ma'am. You have a flat tire and at this time of day, it'll take forever for your road service to get here."

She pressed her lips together, thinking this probably wasn't the best time to say she didn't have a road service. Or a cell phone to
call
a road service.

He nodded toward the cruiser. "You'll be safer in my car than standing on the side of the road."

"I... thank you."

He didn't look up. "Yes, ma'am. Will you pop the trunk?"

While the women scrambled out of the car, Belinda released the trunk latch, but the resulting click didn't sound right. She opened her door a few inches, then slid out, bracing herself against the traffic wind that threatened to suck her into the path of oncoming cars. The toes of her shoes brushed the uneven edge of the blacktop, and she almost tripped. Her dress clung to her thighs, and her hair whipped her cheeks. The rush of danger was strangely exhilarating, strangely...
alluring.

Then a large hand clamped onto her shoulder, guiding her to the back of the car and comparative safety. "That's a good way to become a statistic," he shouted over the road noise.

She tilted her head to look into reproachful eyes, and pain flickered in the hack of her neck. Tomorrow she'd be stiff. "This is very nice of you," she yelled, gesturing as if she were playing charades.

He simply shrugged, as if to say he would've done the same for anyone. Dark stubble stained his jaw, and for the first time she noticed his navy uniform was a bit rumpled. He frowned and jerked a thumb toward the cruiser. "You should join your friends, ma'am."

At best, he probably thought she was an airhead. At worst, a flirt. She pointed. "The trunk release didn't sound right."

He wedged his fingers into the seam that outlined the trunk lid and gave a tug. "I think it's just stuck." Indeed, on the next tug, the lid sprang open. He twisted to inspect the latch as he worked the mechanism with his fingers. "The latch is bent, but fixable." He raised the trunk lid and winced. "I assume the spare tire is underneath all this stuff."

A sheepish flush crawled over her as she surveyed the brimming contents. "I'll empty it."

He checked his watch. "I'll help. Anything personal in here?"

She shook her head in defeat. Nothing that she could think of, and what did it matter, anyway?

But her degradation climbed as he removed item after item that, in his hands, seemed mundane to the point of intimate—a ten-pound bag of kitty litter, a twelve-pack of Diet Pepsi, a pair of old running shoes with curled toes, an orange Frisbee, a grungy Cincinnati Reds wind-breaker, a
Love Songs of the 90s
CD, two empty Pringles Potato Chips canisters (she'd heard a person could do all kinds of crafty things with them), and two gray plastic crates of reference books she'd been conveying to her cubicle one armload at a time.

Her gaze landed on a tiny blue pillow wedged between the crates, and she cringed. Unwilling to share that particular souvenir of her life, she reached in while he was bent away from her and stuffed the pillow into her shoulder bag.

"I'll get the rest of it," he said.

She nodded and scooted out of the way. "Can I help with—"

"No." He looked up at her, then massaged the bridge of his nose. "No, ma'am. Please."

Glad for the escape, Belinda retreated to the cruiser, picking her way through gravel and mud, steeling herself against the gusts of wind. The girls had crowded into the backseat, so she opened the front passenger door and slid inside, then shut the door behind her. The console of the police car was guy-heaven—buttons and lights and gizmos galore. The radio emitted bursts of static. No one said anything for a full thirty seconds.

"Your hair looks like crap," Libby offered.

Belinda sighed and dug in her bag for a brush, displacing sunglasses, wallet, lipstick holder, compact, and electronic address book. At least now she had an excuse to end the driving arrangement. "I'll understand if you want me out of the carpool."

"Nonsense," Rosemary said, although she sounded a little less than sincere.

"Honey," Libby cooed through the metal screen partition, "Atlanta traffic is like life—sooner or later, you're going to hit or be hit."

"You're staying," Carole said. "The odds of you being in another accident now are, like, really low."

Belinda tried to smile. The accident seemed to have broken the ice, along with her budget. "Does anyone have a cell phone? I should call Margo to tell her I'm going to be late."