To the Limit (35 page)

"You aren't going to do something stupid, are you?" he asked, uneasy all of a sudden, like maybe she'd hurt herself now that she appeared to be straight and realized how low she'd sunk with Reno.

"More stupid than what I've been doing, you mean?" She stopped at the bathroom door. Shook her head. "No. I'm not going to do something stupid."

She shut the door behind her. He stared at it for a while, then relaxed when he heard the shower spray hit the bathroom wall.

Now what?
he wondered as he finished off his meal. She stayed in the bathroom a long time. Long enough that he picked up his guitar so he'd have something to do with his hands.

He was lost in a song when the bathroom door opened. Steam rolled out of the small room and then she stepped out of the mist like some strange creature who was wary of making an appearance in a brave new world.

Well, for the love of Mike.

She'd wrapped herself up in a towel. And except for that pure white piece of terry cloth, she was as bare as a babe.

Bare feet. Bare face. Without all that makeup, he could actually see it.

Pretty face,
he thought again. Even with that single sad tear burned into her cheek. He'd never noticed her eyes before—couldn't see 'em through that thick black gunk she always painted on them. They were green. Soft as meadow grass.

He dragged his thoughts away from such sappy sentiments. This was Tiffany Clayborne. Nothing had changed. Except he got the most concrete feeling that everything had.

The lip rings were gone. Her hair was even a different color. That wild raspberry red was gone. It was still wet, but it looked to be sort of sandy brown.

And standing there, still dripping from the shower, squeaky clean, not hiding behind paint and dye and bling blings, she looked all of twelve years old.

"I... um ... do I have any clothes?"

He must have just sat there because she said, "Billie? Did you bring any clothes for me?"

"Oh, um, yeah. Um ... in your bag. I just grabbed some stuff I thought you might need "

She smiled at him. Like something he'd said made her... he didn't know. Happy?

"Thanks," she said, picked up her leather bag, and set it on the bed.

He stood up, not stupefied, he told himself, and watched her rifle around in it and finally give him a baleful look.

"What? Didn't I get the right stuff?"

"I was just wishing I had some jeans," she said. Then she looked at him. Hard. "What size are you?"

"Me?"

"You got an extra pair? And maybe an extra T-shirt?"

He did. But he wasn't so sure he wanted to see them on her. Still, he trudged to his old canvas duffel and dug out both jeans and T-shirt.

"Thanks."

She disappeared into the bathroom again ... and came out wearing his clothes.

It made him feel funny seeing her in his stuff. Not funny ha-ha. Funny thinking-about-her-asking-him-if-he-wanted-to-have-sex funny.

"What do you think?" she asked, turning a slow circle with her arms out.

He crossed his arms over his chest, looked at his boot tips. He thought she'd put some bumps in the front of his T-shirt, that's what he thought.

"Where are you going from here?" she asked, looking unsure of herself again suddenly.

"Home," he said without hesitation, because that was the only thing in this whole sordid mess that he was sure of.

"Home? Like, your own home? Alone somewhere?"

"To my folks'."

"Oh." And then, "Where's that?"

He'd never noticed that scuff on the toe of his boot before. Couldn't seem to take his eyes off of it. "Utah."

"Is that far?"

"Hundred miles or so."

He could feel her staring at him. He looked up. She'd slung her weight on one leg, crossed her arms over her middle, uncrossed them. Then she looked at the ceiling and he could see tears form in her eyes.

Well hell. Now what?

"Do you want to come with me?" he heard himself asking just as he realized it was the only thing he could do.

Her face turned all red, and she pinched her lips together, like she was trying not to cry. She lost the fight. A big fat tear rolled down her cheek.

She nodded. Looked at him with so much relief in her eyes that he knew she figured he'd probably just saved her life again.

He figured out something, too, in that moment. Tiffany Clayborne had no place else to go.

LAS VEGAS

Eve woke up thinking,
Wow.

What had just happened? She glanced at her watch. Strike that. What had happened three and a half hours ago?

Beside her, gorgeous and rumpled and, bless him, naked as the day he was born, McClain slept—with a smile on his face.

Guess that answered the "Was it good for you?" question. It wasn't just exhaustion that had put him in that deep sleep.

And yet the other question remained. What
had
just happened? Three and a half hours ago.

She rose slowly. Headed for the shower, still so relaxed and wrung out, her legs were wobbly.

It was more than great sex. More than anything they'd done before. There'd been tenderness and an underlying urgency he'd taken great measures to hold at bay. And my, oh my, he'd shown a dedication to her pleasure that had elevated her orgasm to heights she'd never reached before. And he'd taken her pretty high in New York.

So, what was it?

Nothing she wanted to think about, she decided with a scowl and a real nervous clutch in her chest as she lathered her hair and let the hot shower spray invigorate her skin. Nothing she could afford to think about.

Chalk it up to heightened senses. Chalk it up to adrenaline— for sure hers had been working overtime since they'd found Reno and Gorman dead. And the note with their bodies.

He was taunting her. Warning her. Either she died or Tiffany did. Who was this guy?

She used the hotel hair dryer, called her hairstyle good, and, wrapped in a towel, walked into the bedroom. Determined not to dwell on the appealing sight of McClain in all his naked glory, she flipped the sheet over his lap, grabbed the remote, and turned on the TV, muting it so she wouldn't wake him. She was reading the news captions, hoping for a report on the murders and popping M&M's, when the GPS went off with a loud bleat.

McClain reared up in bed like he'd been shot.

"What?" Bleary-eyed, he dragged his hands across his face while she ran for the tracking unit.

"Tiffany," she said. "She's turned on her phone."

"Kat said she sounded straight," Eve told Mac as he emerged from a quick cold shower. Less than five minutes had passed since the GPS had gone off and Kat had called Eve's cell, confirming that Tiffany had, in fact, called her.

"Anything else?" he asked with a glance her way. She'd dressed for the heat in a soft yellow tank top and denim shorts. She'd also packed while he'd shaved, then hit the shower. She was faster at getting ready than any other woman he'd ever known. He liked that about her. Liked a lot of things about her. Too many things, in fact.

"Other than the fact that she was doing fine, she was pretty tight-lipped," Eve said, addressing his question.

"I can't believe Kat didn't find out who she was with and where they were headed," Mac sputtered as he ditched the towel, pulled on clean boxers, and snagged a pair of jeans.

"She tried. But for some reason, Tiffany wouldn't tell her. She only said that she was no longer with Reno and that she was going to take some time to think things through. And that a friend was helping her."

Mac tugged a white polo shirt over his head. "She didn't give any indication that she knew Reno was dead?"

"None. Kat said she didn't sound spooked or afraid or even nervous about anything. Just short and to the point before she hung up and evidently turned the phone off. Kat, however, about blew a gasket when I told her about how we'd found the bodies."

Mac let out a deep breath, found a pair of socks, and dropped down on the edge of the bed to tug them on.

"At least we got a location on the GPS. And we know now for certain that she's still alive." It was a huge relief. And a helluva lot more than they'd known—he checked his watch—five hours ago. "Alive and completely unaware that Reno and Gorman are dead and that whoever killed them is most likely after her and you, too."

"I told Kat we'd call her back after we'd discussed what to do next."

He'd given that some thought. "Have Kat call her cell phone and leave a message. Have her tell Tiffany about Reno's and Gorman's murders."

"And what about us? Does she tell her that we're looking for her?"

He rose, looked around for his shoes. "Once she finds out about Reno, she's going to be jumpy as hell. She's not going to trust anyone—especially not you, someone Edwards hired. She might trust me, but she's pretty pissed at me right now."

"Then let's have Kat tell her that
she
hired me once she realized Tiffany was in trouble in New York. We won't mention you."

"That'd work. Have her leave your cell phone number with Tiffany, too. Maybe we'll get lucky and she'll actually turn on Kat's phone, pick up the message, and call."

Eve made a quick call to Kat and relayed the plan.

"Well, that's done. Now we wait," Eve said when she'd hung up. "If Tiffany doesn't call, at the very least, we'll get a read on her location from the tracker."

"Speaking of which," he slipped into his shoes and grabbed the map he'd been studying along with his breakfast pizza, "let's move. The GPS pinpoints her in Mesquite. According to the map, it sits right on the Nevada-Arizona border. We take Interstate Fifteen all the way. With a little luck, we can be there in an hour, hour and a half."

The day was desert hot when they walked out the hotel doors at 1:30 toward their rented SUV. Squinting against the sun's glare, Mac juggled his duffel, the map, and a bottle of water he'd picked up at the casino snack bar.

"Hold it," he said as he managed to fish the keys to the SUV out of his pocket. "Not that I'm getting paranoid or anything..."

He got down on all fours and looked under the vehicle. And froze—for all of a nanosecond.

"Run!" he yelled, pushing to his feet.

He grabbed Eve's arm and half-dragged, half-pushed her ahead of him.

"Run, dammit!"

The blast cut off his words right along with his breath. The concussion sent him airborne.

It could have been a second, could have been a lifetime, that he flew through the air. And it was nothing but sheer dumb luck that the blast threw him up and over the hood of a Cadillac. It broke his fall and sent him tumbling to the asphalt beside it.

Pain exploded through his knee just as the secondary blast—probably from the gas tank exploding—rained glass and metal and burning rubber all the hell over the parking lot. It would have killed him for sure had it not been for the Caddy.

He was still shaking his head to clear the ringing in his ears when he realized he couldn't see Eve.

He rose to his feet with a roar, staggered, and made a frantic visual search of the lot. "Eve!"

Nothing.

"Eve!" he yelled again, then felt the air rip from his lungs on a gasp of relief when her head emerged from behind a Japanese import.

Limping, he raced over to her. Gripped her upper arms in his hands and looked her over good.

"I'm OK," she said, one hand clutching her purse close to her chest, the other clasping the side of her head as if she needed to hold it on. "I'm OK. Really," she insisted.

There was blood on her knee, a raspberry the size of an orange on her elbow, and an inch-long scrape on her cheek. He'd bet the farm she was going to turn up with bruises on top of bruises in the morning.

And if his heart hammered any harder, he was going to have a severe case of internal bleeding. He didn't care. Just like he didn't care that his knee hurt like a bitch. Eve was all right. He hugged her hard against him, probably putting a few more bruises on that fragile skin.