The Great Escape (6 page)

“You’ve been acting like you do.”

“I have not!”

He ran the flat of his hand over one pectoral and glanced toward the TV. “Just as well, I guess.”

The crazy part of her wanted to know why it was “just as well.” She clenched her teeth.

He returned his attention to her. “I like it rough, and you don’t seem the type.” He snapped her thigh with his thumb and second finger. “You sure you don’t want to change your mind?”

She wrenched her leg away and rubbed the sting he’d inflicted. “Positive.”

“How do you know you won’t like it?”

He was still looming over her, and her heart was thudding. Nine years of Secret Service protection had allowed her to take her safety for granted, but there was no friendly agent stationed outside the motel room door now. She was on her own. “I just know, that’s all.”

His thin lips twisted. “You’re fucking up my vacation. You understand that, right?”

“I’m paying you.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve decided you’re not paying me enough. I was straight with you from the start. I told you I wanted to get laid.” He reached for the sheet she’d twisted around her body.

She grabbed at it. “Stop right there! Back off.”

Something disturbing flickered in his eyes. “You’ll like it. I’ll make you like it.”

It sounded like a line from a bad movie, but he looked as though he’d thought it up all by himself. She couldn’t believe this was happening. She hauled herself up against the headboard, frightened and furious. “You’re not going to touch me, and you know why? Because if you do, the full power of the United States justice system is going to come crashing down on you.”

“Your word against mine.” He curled his lip.

“Exactly. An ex-con and the president’s daughter. You figure it out.”

She’d finally penetrated that thick skull. With a dark mutter, he shot her a sneer and retreated to his cave.

She stayed upright, her spine pressed to the headboard, her blood still racing. She clutched the sheet to her chest, as if that would protect her if he changed his mind.

It was over. He’d made the choice for her. She couldn’t spend another day with him, not after this. First thing tomorrow, she’d call her family, find an airport, and fly home. Her adventures as Viper, the biker girl, were over.

Fly back home to what? Her family’s disappointment? The job she’d started to hate?

She tucked the sheet around her body, feeble armor. Why couldn’t he be a harmless drifter who’d let her hitch a ride without giving her any trouble? She pressed her head between the pillows again, trepidation and resentment churning inside her. Through the slit of light, she watched him across the narrow space that separated their beds. The walls were thin. She was afraid to shut her eyes. If he made another move, she’d scream. Surely even in this seedy motel, someone would hear her.

He lay on his back with his ankles crossed, the remote propped on his chest, his hair inky against the pillow propped behind his head. He’d switched from monster trucks to bass fishing, and he looked perfectly relaxed, not at all like a man with rape on his mind.

Perfectly, totally relaxed …

Maybe it was a trick of the flickering light from the television, but she swore she saw the faintest smile of satisfaction lurking at the corners of those thin lips.

She squinted. Shifted the pillows ever so slightly. It wasn’t her imagination. He looked smug, not sinister.

He looked like a man who’d figured out the perfect way to get rid of an unwanted nuisance and come out a thousand dollars richer.

S
HE GOT DRESSED IN THE
bathroom the next morning and didn’t speak to him until they’d been served at a pancake place wedged between a service station and a thrift shop. Some of the diners were women, but most were men wearing caps that ranged from the trucker variety to sports teams. They eyed Panda suspiciously, but no one paid any attention to either her or her pregnancy bump.

He took a noisy slurp from his coffee mug, then dug into his pancakes, chewing without bothering to close his mouth. He noticed her staring at him and frowned. Her conviction that he’d been manipulating her last night wavered. She was almost certain he’d been deliberately trying to scare her off, but her instincts weren’t exactly foolproof these days.

She studied him closely, paying particular attention to his eyes as she spoke. “So, have you raped a lot of women?”

She saw it. A flicker of outrage camouflaged almost immediately by half-closed eyelids and a noisy slurp from his coffee mug. “Depends on what you mean by rape.”

“You’d know it when you did it.” She took the plunge. “I have to admit last night was interesting.”

His brows slammed together. “Interesting! You think that was interesting?”

Not at the time she hadn’t. But now? Definitely. “Maybe if you were a better actor, you could have pulled it off.”

He grew wary. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She ignored his scowl. “It’s obvious you want to get rid of me, but was that the best you could do?” Those sinister lips pulled tight, and his expression became so ominous she had to muster all the bravado she could find to set her elbows on the table and meet his gaze. “I’m not going anywhere, Panda. You’re stuck with me.” A small devil prodded her, and she pointed to the corner of her own mouth. “You have a little food right there.”

“I don’t care.”

“Are you sure? A fastidious eater like yourself?”

“If you don’t like it, you know what you can do.”

“Yes. Fly home and send you a check for a thousand dollars, plus expenses.”

“You’re damned right, plus expenses.” He swiped at his mouth with his napkin, more a reflexive motion than capitulation.

She curled her fingers around her own coffee mug. He could have dropped her off on the side of the road anytime and disappeared, but he wanted the money, so he hadn’t done it. Now he intended to scare her off and still collect the cash. Too bad for him.

She set down her mug. All this time she’d assumed he had the upper hand, but it was just the opposite. “You’re big and bad, Panda. I get that. And now that I get it, would you mind knocking it off?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The leers. All those references to ‘getting laid.’”

He pushed away his plate, leaving his pancakes half eaten, eyeing her with distaste. “Here’s the way I see it. Rich girl thinks she can add a little excitement to her life by slumming it with a guy like me. Am I wrong?”

She reminded herself who had the upper hand. “Well, the experience is definitely making me rethink the importance of decent table manners.” She gave him the same dead-eye look she gave her sibs when they misbehaved. “Tell me where we’re going.”

“
I’m
going to Caddo Lake. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll be going to the airport.”

“Excuse me.” A sixtyish woman in a peach pantsuit approached their booth. The woman gestured toward a nearby table where a jowly man with a walrus mustache pretended to look in the opposite direction. “My husband, Conrad, said I should mind my own business, but I couldn’t help noticing …” She stared at Lucy. “Has anybody ever told you that you look like the president’s daughter? That Lucy character.”

“She hears it all the time,” Panda said. He looked across the table at Lucy and said in fluent Spanish, “
Ella es otra persona que piensa que te pareces a Lucy Jorik.
” And then, to the woman, “Her English ain’t too good.”

“It’s amazing,” the woman said. “’Course, now that I’m closer, I can see she’s a lot younger. Hope she doesn’t grow up to be like her.”

Panda nodded. “Another spoiled brat who thinks the world owes her.”

Lucy didn’t like that at all, but peach pantsuit lady was on a roll. “I used to admire the way President Jorik raised her kids, but obviously she missed something with that Lucy. Running out on the Beaudine boy. I see his mama’s television show all the time. And Conrad’s a big golfer. He never misses watching any tournament where Dallas Beaudine’s playing.”

“I guess some women don’t know what’s good for them,” Panda agreed.

“Confidentially, neither does Conrad.” She smiled at Lucy. “Well, y’all have a nice day. Sorry to have bothered you.”

“No bother,” he said, as courteous as a small-town preacher. But the moment she disappeared, he crumpled his napkin. “Let’s get the hell out of here before more of your fan club shows up. I don’t need this crap.”

“Snarl all you want,” she told him. “You’re the one who invited me on this joy ride, and I’m not calling it off.”

He tossed some bills on the table a lot harder than he needed to. “Your funeral.”

Chapter Four

T
HE SMALL RENTAL HOUSE SAT
on one of Caddo Lake’s hidden bayous. A pair of aging window air conditioners protruded from the faded mustard-colored siding, and a square of artificial turf covered the front stoop. They’d spent the previous night at a motel near Nacogdoches, where Panda had made a point of ignoring her. Early this morning, they’d headed northeast toward the lake, which sat on the Texas-Louisiana border and, according to the pamphlet she’d picked up when they stopped for gas, was the largest freshwater lake in the South—and surely the spookiest, with its primordial swamps rising out of brown water.

The house was shabby but clean, with a small living room, two even smaller bedrooms, and an old-fashioned kitchen. Lucy chose the room with twin beds. The orange plaid wallpaper curled at the seams and clashed with the cheap purple and green floral quilted bedspread, but she was too grateful to have a wall between her bed and Panda’s to care.

She changed into her shorts and made her way to the kitchen. It was outfitted with metal cabinets, worn countertops, and a gray vinyl floor. The window above the sink looked out over the bayou, and a nearby door led to a small wooden deck that held a molded plastic table, webbed lawn chairs, a propane grill, and some fishing gear.

She found Panda gazing out at the palmetto banking the bayou, his feet propped on the deck railing, a Coke can curled in his palm. At least he hadn’t hunkered down with another six-pack. He didn’t acknowledge her as she checked out the grill, then examined a fishing pole. His silences were unnerving. “It’s hot out here,” she finally said.

He took a swig of Coke without bothering to reply. She averted her eyes from the disagreeable T-shirt she’d been pretending all day not to notice. Panda’s concept of sartorial elegance didn’t extend further than a shower and a clean pair of jeans. She felt an unwelcome pang for Ted, the sweet, sensitive, even-tempered bridegroom she’d thrown under the bus.

“A shade umbrella would be nice,” she said.

Nothing but silence.

She spotted an excursion boat in the distance, cutting through bald cypress webbed with Spanish moss. “If I were a biker, I’d have a better name than Panda.”

Viper.

He crumpled his Coke can in his fist and stalked off the deck into the backyard, pitching the can into a black plastic trash bin on his way. As he walked toward the lake, she slumped into the chair he’d abandoned. Ted was a great conversationalist and the best listener she’d ever known. He’d acted as though he was fascinated with whatever she said. Of course, he acted that way with everybody, even crazy people, but still … She’d never known him to be impatient or short-tempered—never heard him utter a harsh word. He was kind, patient, thoughtful, understanding, and yet she’d dumped him. What did that say about her?

She pulled one of the matching chairs closer with her heels, feeling bluer by the minute. Panda reached the dock. An overturned canoe lay on the bank, and an osprey skimmed the water. He hadn’t told her how long he planned to rent the house, only that she was free to leave anytime, the sooner the better. But did he really want that? She was growing increasingly convinced that he was smarter than he let on, and she couldn’t let go of her nagging fear that he was talking to the tabloids. What if he’d figured out he could make a lot more than a thousand dollars selling them her story?

She headed down the steps and toward the water, where he’d stopped by the canoe. She scuffed the heel of her sneaker in the dirt. He didn’t look up. She wished she’d chosen a traveling companion who didn’t indulge in oppressive silences and favor loathsome bumper stickers. But then, she wished for a lot of things. That she’d picked a different fiancé to abandon, one who’d done something—anything—to justify being ditched at the altar. But Ted hadn’t, and some ugly part of her hated him for being so much better than she was.

She couldn’t stand her thoughts a moment longer. “I like to fish,” she said. “I throw everything back. Except when I went to Outward Bound. I kept the fish then because—”

“Not interested.” He straightened and gave her a long look—not undressing her with his eyes; he’d stopped doing that—but looking at her in a way that made her feel as if he were seeing every part of her, even the parts she didn’t know were there. “Call Ted and tell him you’re sorry. Call your folks. It’s been three days. You’ve had your adventure. It’s time for the rich girl to go home.”