A Great Kisser (37 page)

J
ake stretched, arched his back, then rubbed his hand over his face. The combination of the stress of the past few weeks, nailing down funding for the race, and the sudden new relationship in his life, combined with the attendant drama there, had all apparently caught up with him. It wasn’t even that late, but he was fighting the fatigue already.

“It’s bad when the old farts are perkier than the young buck,” Oscar commented off-handedly as he continued to work on modifications to the manifold Jake had spent the better part of two days earlier in the week trying to repair. In fact, it’s what he’d been working on when he’d left to go pick up Lauren for the first time. It was almost impossible to believe everything that had happened since. It had all evolved so quickly. If anyone had told him he’d not only be willingly involving himself with someone this close to race time, not to mention her family drama, too, but actually looking forward and excitedly anticipating whatever came next, he’d have never believed it. And yet, here he was.

“Earth to Jake.”

He looked up to find Ace staring at him, holding a diagram he’d just finished on a proposed engine modification. Everyone else chuckled as he pulled his head out of the clouds.

“You want to take a look at this? Then go call your girlfriend. Better yet, have her come up here, go take a break for about an hour, then come back when you can use the head on your shoulders again.”

He smiled a bit sheepishly and endured the good-natured ribbing that followed. He’d earned that and more. “Might not be a bad idea.” He checked over Ace’s schematic, then ducked out of the hangar and pulled his cell phone out as he strolled toward the parking lot, looking up at the full moon. It was crazy how much he missed her, and she’d only been gone an hour or two. He grinned as he punched her number. But it was a crazy he didn’t want a cure for.

Her phone rang a few times and his grin started to fade when she didn’t pick up. Maybe she was in the shower. He doubted she’d gone to bed. Then another thought hit him, but he immediately rejected it. Or tried to. She wouldn’t have gone out to talk to Charlene. They’d agreed to sleep on it and get together again in the morning to discuss the smartest way to proceed. Her voice mail picked up and he left a quick message telling her he missed her and to call him whenever she got his message.

He flipped his phone shut, but wasn’t ready to head back inside just yet. He thought about going to the front office and looking through the articles again. Lauren had printed off everything she’d scanned and made copies of the rest, so he had the same file she did now. So did RJ. He smiled again, briefly, thinking about how happy it had made him, seeing the two of them hit it off so naturally. He couldn’t have asked for more.

There was a siren in the distance, down in town, and it drew his attention from his thoughts. He’d been walking toward the front office door but detoured around the building to where the road leading to the school cut in toward the parking lot. The vantage point there was a good one, and he could see all the way down into town. Sirens weren’t a common sound in Cedar Springs, so he was curious to see what was up. The flashing lights belonged to a police car, judging by the color, and an ambulance. Car accident, he was guessing. He hoped it was nothing serious. He stood there and watched for a few minutes, but his thoughts were already straying back to Lauren and the situation with Arlen.

His cell phone rang and he grinned, popping it open without even looking at the incoming number. He loved the little rush he got whenever they made contact. He hoped it took a long, long time before that little thrill faded. “Please tell me you were naked in the shower when—”

“Jake? Jake McKenna? This is Sergeant O’Hara—”

“What’s going on, Darryl?” he asked, surprised, then froze, his gaze tracking back to the flashing light below. A sick dread filled his gut.

“Well, it looks like your Jeep was involved in some kind of accident. Where are you?”

He had brief flashbacks to the day they’d come to tell him about his parents, but he shoved those brutal memories ruthlessly aside. “What happened? Is Lauren okay?”

“Lauren? You mean Lauren Matthews?”

“Yes,” he said, fighting down the wave of abject panic that threatened to engulf him. “She had my Jeep. She would have been driving. Is she okay?” He tore his gaze away from the flashing lights below and started trotting back toward the back hangar.

“I don’t know,” Sergeant O’Hara said. “There was no one on the scene when we arrived.”

Surprise momentarily slowed Jake’s steps. “What? Maybe she’s dazed, wandered away from the scene. Have you looked?”

“We’re doing that now. I’d appreciate it if you could come down here.” He gave Jake the address of the intersection. Right where the flashing lights were.

“On my way.” He broke out into a run and knew he looked a little bit wild when he swung through the door into the hangar. Xavier had flown Jake’s plane back from Holden earlier in the day and picked up his truck, so Jake had no available ride. “Oscar, I need the keys to your truck. Lauren’s been in an accident.”

He’d never seen men that old move that fast. And was eternally grateful. He caught Oscar’s keys when he tossed them and waved. “I’ll call you as soon as I know anything. Thanks!”

It took every bit of focus he had to keep his imagination from running wild as he navigated the winding road into town. The accident was at the intersection just after the road bottomed out. It was the last crossroad before climbing upward toward the school. Jake pulled Oscar’s truck over behind one of the two police cars blocking off the end of the street. A small crowd had gathered, but it was late enough that all the shops and restaurants were closed, and they weren’t close to any houses, so thankfully it hadn’t become a full-blown spectacle.

Jake wove his way toward the ambulance, but it wasn’t until he skirted around the side of it that he saw his Jeep. His heart stopped as he saw how it had slid sideways and slammed into a small tree. The driver’s side tarp door hung drunkenly on one hook, allowing him to see that the air bag had deployed.

“Jake?”

He turned to find Sergeant O’Hara standing next to him. He knew Darryl because the officer’s younger brother had been a student of Jake’s a few years back, but that was their only connection. “Did you find her?”

The officer’s face was expressionless, but Jake didn’t miss the bleak look in his eyes. “We’re still looking. There isn’t any blood, so it doesn’t look like the impact caused any extreme external injuries.”

External. Jake hadn’t missed his use of that word. “Any idea how it happened?” In the winter months, accidents like this were unfortunately all too common. But it was a clear summer night.

“There are skid marks, which leads us to believe she swerved to miss hitting something and lost control of the vehicle.”

Jake nodded, but was already walking over toward the Jeep.

O’Hara shadowed him. “Don’t touch anything. We’re still investigating.”

“Did you check to see if it hit anything other than the tree?”

“They’re doing that now.”

There were two officers with flashlights in addition to the larger klieg lights the emergency medical crew had set up. The whole area was bathed in an ethereal blue-white glow.

O’Hara held Jake back. “We need to let them do their job.”

“Who’s looking for her?” He should be looking for her. He needed to get a grip here and focus, but it was just a swirl of light and sound and—

“Jake?”

He turned then to find Ruby Jean pushing her way past two of the emergency personnel. She ran to him and hugged him tight, and it was only then, when he saw the fear and concern on her face, that his own focus snapped into place.

“What happened? Where is she? Is she okay?”

“Apparently she hit a tree, we’re not sure why, but it looks like she swerved to miss hitting something.”

Ruby Jean twisted to look over her shoulder in the direction of the ambulance. “She’s okay?”

“We don’t know. We can’t find her.”

Ruby Jean swung back, mouth half open, then finally blinked. “What? What the hell do you mean you can’t find her?”

He repeated what O’Hara had told him.

“Well, are they looking for her? Do you think she tried to walk up the road toward the school? She was probably on her way to see you.”

RJ was right. If she’d gone to see Charlene, she’d have been headed in a different direction entirely. He turned and found O’Hara in the growing crowd. “Is anyone looking up the road, toward the school?”

“Yes,” he said. “No tracks, nothing yet.”

“We need to be doing something, dammit,” Ruby Jean said. “Where the hell would she have gone?”

“She might be dazed,” Jake said. “The air bags came out. I don’t know.” He looked at the Jeep, at all the people who were trying to figure things out, and tried like hell to focus, to figure it out. She hadn’t simply vanished.

L
auren squeezed her eyes against the stab of pain throbbing in her head. It felt like someone had clubbed her with a bat. Her body felt like lead and her thoughts were fuzzy, like she’d been asleep too long. It took a few moments before she became lucid enough to sort through a few things. Her head hurt like hell. So did her face. And her chest. What the hell had happened?

She didn’t try to open her eyes, but she tried to move her hands, intending to probe a little, more out of an instinct than forethought. But her hands wouldn’t budge; they seemed pinned, or trapped.

“Don’t bother struggling.”

She stilled, her awareness of her current situation abruptly slammed into fast-forward as she scrambled to figure things out a hell of a lot faster. Where was she? What had happened? And who the hell had just said that? She opened her eyes into slits, then winced a little at the increased pain. It was dark, but even the little bit of light emitted by the dashboard stung her vision. Dashboard. She was in a vehicle. A moving vehicle, she realized a moment later. She’d been driving…

She closed her eyes again to keep the pain from spiraling and tried like hell to think. Driving. Jake’s Jeep. She’d been going up to the school, thinking about her mom, about Jake, about her future. That was all she could remember. She carefully rolled her head to the side and tried again to open her eyes. The shadow next to her slowly morphed into the shape of a woman as her vision began to correct and focus. “Who—”

Then the woman turned to look at her. And two things hit Lauren at the same time. Arlen’s secretary, Melissa, was the driver…and she was holding a rather large gun.

“Why?” Lauren croaked.

Melissa snorted and turned her attention back to the road. “Because you are presenting a growing obstacle to me achieving my goals. I’ve worked too hard to let you just waltz into town and ruin everything.”

Lauren closed her eyes and tried to think past the pain. Her hands were tied in her lap and strapped beneath the seat belt. She moved her feet slightly and was thankful to discover they weren’t otherwise bound. For whatever good that was going to do her. But at least she could run. If that ever became an option. “What…obstacle?”

Melissa laughed, but it was an ugly, hateful sound. Lauren didn’t open her eyes again, but she could see in her mind the image of Melissa and that gun. She remembered how she’d thought Arlen’s secretary was so pretty and perky when they’d first met. It was amazing what anger and hatred could do to that. “You…came to my room,” she said, wincing again against the pain. “Again.” She had no idea the extent of her injuries, but her head was pounding like a pipe against an anvil, and her face didn’t feel so hot, either. She tried not to think about that, and focus instead on Melissa, and why they were in this vehicle.

“I had to know what you were up to. I’d heard you’d been snooping around. At the library, in Arlen’s very own personal office. I thought the crushed bike would make you rethink things, but you didn’t stop.”

Lauren tried to focus on what Melissa was revealing. She knew about the library and was responsible for the bike. Okay. But she also knew about Arlen catching Lauren in his office. And the only person who knew she’d been “caught” was Arlen. Which meant…“You…and Arlen?”

“Bright girl, but then all we’ve heard from Charlene for the past six months is how brilliant and talented you are. My God, I was sick of you before I even met you.”

“I liked you,” Lauren said, her thoughts becoming words before she could censor them.

She barked a laugh. “I was surprised by you. I expected an uptight, workaholic snob. Of course, your mother wasn’t anything like I expected, so maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. I could almost like her. If she hadn’t married Arlen.”

Lauren scrambled to process the nuances of what she was hearing. And figure out just how far over the edge Melissa had plunged. The gun in her lap didn’t bode well on the crazy scale.

“Does my…mother…know?” Lauren shifted her head, trying to find a position that stopped the clanging pain. “About…governor…you?”

The car swung in a slow swerve as Melissa hit the brakes, rocking Lauren, who couldn’t brace herself without her hands. She groaned a little as her head swayed, then jerked back when Melissa regained control of the car. She felt them slow down, but even when she opened her eyes again, it was too dark beyond the windows to tell where they were.

“What do you know about the governor?”

Lauren hadn’t meant to reveal anything, but she could barely string her thoughts together. If the damn throbbing would just stop, for just a second, so she could think. At this point, they were probably well past worrying about Ruby Jean’s job, but she still did her best to protect her new friend. “I have…contacts. There’s been…talk. That’s why…digging.”

The car swerved to a complete stop, forcing another grunt of pain from Lauren as the seat belt tightened automatically to hold her in place.

“Contacts. I know your contact. Did Ruby Jean tell you? Of course she did, now that you’re banging her brother. I knew she couldn’t be trusted! I told him to let it slip to her, to prove to him that she couldn’t be trusted. Who else knows?” Melissa demanded, sounding dangerously more crazed than she had up to that point. She wasn’t shrieking, but her demand held an edge of hysteria. “Does Charlene know?”

Well, that answered one question. Her mother had no idea. Lauren’s throat tightened as it hit her what this was going to do to her. “No,” she rasped. “Not from me. You and Arlen…are you…?”

“I am the woman behind the man. Not Charlene, and certainly not ridiculous Ruby Jean. I mean, come on, have you seen her? And that name? No way is he taking her to Denver. And no way would she ever be able to do for him what I do. I was the one he turned to. I was the one who encouraged him to dream again. We’re partners. Real partners.”

“He married—”

“Yes. It threw me when he came back from Florida married. Married!” She almost shrieked that last word, then seemed to regain her grip. “But I realized, right away, that he’d just done that for us.”

And that answered the crazy scale question. Not in a good way. Lauren wondered if Arlen knew how insane his secretary was, or if her dreams of grandeur were the result of private loony tunes fantasies. Was she actually involved with Arlen? But Arlen had told Melissa about finding her in his office out at the house. Why else would he tell her that if they weren’t otherwise involved. Or maybe Arlen was simply using her and she just hoped it would lead to more.

Lauren closed her eyes again, against the throbbing and the tumble of thoughts battling each other inside her head. She needed to think, dammit.

“And just when I have it all lined up, you waltz into town. Snooping around and immediately hooking up with Jake McKenna.”

Melissa spat this last part out, and if she hadn’t just been talking about Arlen like he was her dream man, Lauren would have sworn she was jealous about Jake. Or maybe she was the kind of crazy that just hated anyone who had something she couldn’t have. Jake had mentioned that Ruby Jean had tried to set them up and he’d turned her down.

“Everyone is talking like you’re the second coming. Charlene is all smiles and happy, and now Arlen’s having second thoughts—”

“About running for governor?”

Melissa laughed, and this time the sound made Lauren’s flesh crawl. “No, you stupid bitch. About making her disappear the same way he made his last two wives disappear. Arlen is brilliant, you know. He knows exactly how to get what he wants from people. I’ve watched him, and I’ve learned. It’s how I figured out how to get what I wanted from him. I was taught by the best.” She looked smugly at Lauren. “You’re not the only one who knows how to dig up the dirt.”

Lauren’s mouth dropped open and she couldn’t seem to close it back up.

“What, you don’t think just because I’m a little younger than you and live out here in the middle of nowhere that I can be smart and powerful? You Capitol Hill bitches don’t have the corner on being power players you know. And I haven’t always lived out here.”

“Arlen…killed…his wives?” Was Melissa just spewing more crazy talk…or did she really know something?

“Arlen finds the people who can do the most good for him, for his vision, his work, and when he’s done with them, he moves on. In business, you can fire people, or simply cease to do business with them, but in marriage, when your spouse ceases to be profitable to your long-term goals…”

“Divorce,” Lauren said.

“Looks bad. Widower is much more sympathetic.”

“He is…divorced.”

“Only because he didn’t think of the fire sooner.”

Lauren felt her body parts start to turn cold. Very, very cold.

“I have waited to meet someone like Arlen my whole life. I’ve been used, mistreated, abused, lied to, cheated on, all by men who told me they love me. Arlen is different. He’s honest and straight with me and I always know exactly where I stand. He’s made me see what’s important in the world, and that’s being in control of your universe. With you at the core and your goals like satellites, orbiting around you. Everything is merely a vessel you use to keep your goals orbiting smoothly.”

Lauren wanted to point out that this honest man was presently lying to everyone else, and if she was telling the truth about his past wives, he’d been lying for a very, very long time. She could also point out that, by its very nature, the whole “me at the center of my universe” theory kind of precluded Melissa from being anything other than a satellite. There could only be one center.

“Why…this?” Lauren asked. “You’ll get caught.”

Her laugh made Lauren’s skin crawl. “No, I won’t. I learned, remember? From the best. I’ve been watching you. And Jake. Charlene says everything is fine, but you’re still digging. The bike was my first attempt to discourage you. But you just wouldn’t stop, you wouldn’t leave. And Charlene was saying you might stick around because of Jake.” She spat his name like it was snake venom. “Then I saw him go to the library, so I followed him. That stupid old bat who works there blabbed all about how he’d been upsetting her precious filing system by taking out old newspapers. After he left I ducked back there to see if he’d put them all back, the ones you’d scanned into your computer…but I saw he’d taken more out. And I knew it was about the fire.” She gunned the engine, but they remained where they were. “You were getting too close to figuring things out. I couldn’t let you do anything to ruin Arlen’s dream. My dream. We’re so close.”

“You used…Charlene. Me. We’d find out…eventually.”

“Not necessarily,” she said, her voice so dead, so…emotionless.

And for the first time, Lauren truly began to fear that she wasn’t going to get out of this alive. Not that her prospects had been great up to that point, but she was good at talking people around a point, good at strategy, good at figuring out how to work things to the advantage of her side. What she needed right now was an exit strategy. Preferably a bulletproof one. It would help if she knew where they were headed. “Where are you…taking me?”

“My plan was to convince you to leave, to go back to Washington. I was going to promise you anything you wanted. Run Arlen’s campaign, a high-level position on his staff. At first when Charlene said you’d come around, I thought we could use to you our advantage, get you on our side. But you wouldn’t quit snooping!” She smacked the steering wheel with the hand that was holding the gun, making Lauren flinch. She looked over at Lauren. “We can’t trust you. You can’t be trusted.”

“You should have…told me. I’d have understood.”

Melissa screamed and Lauren felt the bile of abject terror rise in her throat. “Liar!” she screeched. “You, Jake, Ruby fucking Jean, all of you!”

“They’ll know something happened to me,” Lauren said, forcing the words past the ball of fear in her throat. “I can’t just disappear. The election is too far away. You can’t cover it up for that long. They’ll keep digging.”

Melissa started rocking in her seat as she floored the gas and drove them like a bat out of hell with God only knew her destination. Lauren looked out the window and the front windshield, but one rural road surrounded by mountain peaks looked like the rest of them to her.

“You can’t go back,” Melissa said. “You’ll ruin everything.”

Lauren switched tactics. “Take me to the airport. Take me to Holden. I’ll fly back to Washington.”

Melissa’s mad bark made it clear what she thought of Lauren’s offer.

“I want to make a deal,” Lauren said. “I can help you.”

“What deal could you possibly make now?” She waved the gun around, making Lauren shrink back against the seat, setting off fresh waves of pain. “You have no deal to offer.”

“I do.”

“What?” Melissa shrieked, only this time it sounded like it cracked on a sob. She was breaking down.

Which meant Lauren was toast, or it meant Melissa was realizing that her sudden plans to do away with Lauren weren’t going to get her the result she’d hoped for. Lauren prayed it was the latter. “My mom…”

“What about her?” Melissa growled.

“I don’t want her hurt.”

“You don’t get a vote.”

“I could get Arlen votes, though. Lots and lots of them. And money,” she croaked, forcing out the words past the pain. “All the money he’d need to mount the campaign of his life.”

“We’ll get that from Charlene.”

“Not if she’s grieving my loss. She’ll be lost to you both, completely. And you need her alive at least through the campaign. I have clout, Melissa. I can get you what you want.”

“Why should we trust you? Why should I believe you? You’d say anything right now.”

“I’ll get you want you want, because you have something I want.”

Melissa slowed the truck and looked over at her. “What are you saying?”

“You don’t have to trust me; you know I’ll do whatever you want me to because you have my mother. I’ll get Arlen the election, and when it’s over, you give me my mother. I’ll take care of making sure it works out so Arlen doesn’t look bad. I don’t want her dead. I’ll do whatever you want.”