All Jacked Up (7 page)

“If you come through this and she doesn’t?”

She came out of the store while Jack was mulling that over. She paused with one hand on the peeling doorjamb and turned her face up to the sun. Stopping to smell the roses. Jack snorted. The only roses she was going to smell would be the ones on her grave. Or his more likely.

“Aubrey Sullivan is going to survive World War III,” he said to Mike. “Her, Twinkies, and cockroaches. I probably won’t make it through this in one piece but somebody watches over the truly clueless. Otherwise they’d never have a chance to reproduce, and there wouldn’t be so many of them around.”

“Don’t tell me you’re getting religion.”

“I wasn’t referring to God.”

Mike laughed, but when he spoke there was no humor in his voice. “If you need anything . . .”

“How about a suit of armor,” Jack said, flexing his shoulder.

“I mean it. Don’t make a habit of calling here, but if there’s anything I can do—”

“I know.”

Aubrey sashayed over, her skinny hips swinging. She bumped up one eyebrow as she took in the phone stuck to his ear.

“Gotta go.” Jack hung up in time to catch whatever she flipped to him. He eyed it, then watched her bite into an apple.

“You looked like a breakfast burrito kind of guy,” she said, wincing when he opened it and shoved the whole thing in his mouth.

He chugged the soda she handed him, trying not to whimper when she cracked the lid on a cup of coffee and the smell of it wafted over to him.

If he’d admitted to a weakness, it would be that first cup of coffee in the morning, the way the caffeine burst through his system and brought him up no matter how little sleep he’d had. And he hadn’t gotten much sleep last night. But it would be a mistake to go into the little store, just for coffee, he told himself. The only thing worse than the clerk being able to identify Aubrey was the clerk being able to identify them both.

She closed her eyes and inhaled the steam, smiling like it was better than sex, and suddenly he didn’t give a damn who saw them. The only thing that saved him from making a beeline into Larry’s was the coffee trance, mouth watering, eyes on the cup, breath coming out in a long, sad wheeze. When she held the cup out to him, all he could do was stare blankly.

“I got it for you,” she said.

It took a minute for her meaning to get through, then he stared at her, eyes narrowed.

“I was just teasing.” She jiggled the cup and gave an encouraging little nod, eyes wide, still smiling. “I don’t drink coffee.”

He took it from her, still suspicious. “Did you drug this?” he asked, tipping the cup from side to side and studying the dark surface. “Or poison it?”

“Does sugar count?”

Shit. Jack looked into the cup again, wondering how she knew.

“Caffeine and sugar,” she said as if she’d read his mind. “You’re a guy who likes to do things with a bang, Jack, even when it comes to your metabolism.”

He took a drink, closing his eyes so she wouldn’t see them roll back in rapture.“’Sokay,” he mumbled.

“You mean you’re not going to tell me I was wrong, just to be obnoxious?”

“Crossed my mind,” he drained the cup and crushed it between his hands, “but the next time you fetch me coffee I want you to get it right.”

She laughed. He would have preferred sarcasm, or even her snotty librarian superiority.

“Let’s go,” he said, rolling his eyes over the little bounce to her step as she fell in beside him. Nobody should be that happy an inch away from death, he thought, adding chipper to the list of things about her that irritated the crap out of him.

“Why did you park way over there?” she asked. “Don’t we need gas?”

“I’ll stop somewhere else. I don’t want the clerk identifying us.”

“But he saw us.”

“He saw you,” Jack said, “because you were naive enough to go inside and buy things from a guy who spends all his time out here alone with just the squirrels and mosquitoes for company. He probably took a good, long look at you.” Jack gave her a once-over, midriff-baring T-shirt and low-slung jeans, looking all bright-eyed and cheerful with her hair pulled back in a neat ponytail. If she’d had something going for her in the looks department and if she’d filled out her Wonderbra a lot more—Nope, she’d never make Bond Girl, but she wasn’t exactly forgettable, either, and to a guy who spent his days with peeling paint and dead air space, she’d qualify as eye candy. “He won’t be needing a magazine the next time he practices the only kind of safe sex there is,” Jack said. “Now if anyone comes asking, they’ll know we were here, and there are only so many roads we can take on our way out.”

“I didn’t notice you complaining while you were filling your stomach.”

“The damage was already done,” he said. “No point in going hungry, too.”

“What damage?”

“I don’t know and that’s just the problem.” He stopped, turned to confront her. “Shit, you didn’t use your credit card, did you?”

“I maxed them out before I left.”

Jack held out his hand, palm up.

She looked at it, then up at him. “No way. It’s my money.”

“Fine, it’s your money. I’ll just hold it for you.”

“No.”

Jack snagged her backpack off her shoulder, then dropped it when she gave it up without an argument. He grabbed her instead, and this time she resisted, squirming and dancing around. “Hold still,” he said, pulling her up against him, locking one arm around her. Her face turned up to his, eyes wide, lips parted as he slipped his other hand down to check the front pocket of her jeans, then changed up to check her other pocket. He didn’t find any money, but he caught himself lingering, liking the way she was pressed up against him. Reacting to it.

“Enjoying yourself?” she asked.

“Not yet.” He pulled his hand out of her front pocket, slipped both into her back pockets. Checking for the cash, that’s all. Not noticing how nicely rounded her backside was, or flexing his fingers into the firm flesh, or—

“Let me know when you’re through.”

His gaze zipped to hers. “If I decide to waste my talents on you, you’ll know it.”

She rolled her eyes, then stared off over his shoulder, looking bored. “Big talk.”

“It’s not just talk.” He took his hands out of her back pockets and slapped them on her butt, snugging her hips to his to prove it.

Wide, mud-brown eyes fastened onto his. One skinny eyebrow lifted. Jack took it as a challenge.

He skimmed his hand up her rib cage. Her mouth dropped open, her breath catching in the back of her throat—strangling with indignation, he told himself. His brain bought it. His body took the little choked-off sound she made as a moan of encouragement, grinding against hers before he could rout the correct message to it.

Or maybe it was getting the correct message, because her nipples were peaked and her pulse pounded wildly in the hollow of her throat. She was trembling, too, and it wasn’t in fear.

They stood like that, eyes and bodies locked, heads drifting toward each other . . .

“Jack.”

He reared back, telling himself it was only the caffeine and sugar dancing a tango through his bloodstream. If he’d been about to kiss Aubrey Sullivan, it was just to prove his point, which was . . . Oh, yeah. “You started this game.”

She shoved away from him. “No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did. You’ve been wanting me to put my hands on you since the bedroom.”

“What bedroom?”

“Yours. Last night. You squirmed in between me and the window—”

“Squirmed?”

“Yeah, squirmed, and don’t tell me I didn’t see that look in your eyes, like there’s a bed handy—”

“—and two guys on their way to kill me, so why not stop and have a nice sweaty bout of sex with a complete stranger, who, by the way, I loathe. Sure, Jack, that’s exactly what was going through my mind.”

He snorted. “Who said your mind had anything to do with it? Just like an egghead to mess up a simple physical thing like sex by analyzing it to death.”

“Trust a Neanderthal like you to reduce sex to nothing more than a basic, uncontrollable urge. And then blame your weakness on me.”

He narrowed his eyes. “I’m in complete control.”

“Really?” She took a step forward, punctuating her points by drilling a finger into his chest. “Who felt me up on the way out of the library? Who pawed me in the arbor after we escaped the dogs—both times, by the way, when we were about to be killed?”

“Like you weren’t plastered all over me the whole time.”

“People were shooting at us, Jack, and you were the next best thing to a bulletproof vest.”

“Yeah, sure, you’re not hot for me at all.”

“Just like you’re not attracted to me.”

They stared at each other for a second, fresh out of accusations, all worked up and no place to go with it. And then they dove at one another, bodies colliding painfully, noses banging together. Their mouths met for one, mind-numbing second before pain blotted it out.

“Christ, you’re bony,” Jack said, pulling back to rub at his ribs where her elbow had dug in.

“And you’re ham-handed.” Aubrey crossed her arms over her breasts.

Jack nearly apologized before he remembered what had started the whole thing. He held her gaze for a minute, then eyed her breasts. His gaze popped up to hers for a quick second, noted her oh-shit expression, and when he looked back down again, she was already reaching into her shirt.

“You have a one-track mind,” she said, coming out with a small wad of hundreds.

“That’s because I don’t mess it up with all that other crap.” He took the cash from her, probably not all she had on her but he was willing to call it a draw if it meant he didn’t have to put his hands on her again. If he put his hands on her there’d be only one of two outcomes, and while turning her over his lap had some definite attractions, she wouldn’t enjoy it. He knew she’d enjoy the other possibility, but a couple of minutes of pleasure wouldn’t be worth listening to her harp about it for the next week, or worse yet, think they had a relationship.

He didn’t mind her getting him coffee and food, but he didn’t want her getting all relaxed and chummy. And he didn’t want sex. All he wanted from Aubrey Sullivan was distance, and since he couldn’t have the physical kind, he’d settle for emotional.

“What if we’re separated?” she asked, fluttering around him like a magpie, chattering at the side of his face as he set off walking.

“There’s only one way that’ll happen.”

She stopped swooping, settling in to walk on his right. “Do you think it’s going to come to that?”

“It’s the only way I’ll give up.”

“Me, too.”

As if she had a choice. “You ought to stop wasting all of that stubbornness on me,” Jack said.

“You should talk.”

“Look, we’re stuck with each other, and the sooner you accept that the sooner we can start trying to solve this mess instead of running away from it.”

“You keep wanting me to trust you, and then you trot out the handcuffs.”

“Yeah, how did you get out of them this time?”

“Small bones, double-jointed—just my thumbs,” she added hastily.

Jack ignored the immediate detour his thoughts had taken. “Pho—eidetic memory,” he said, “double-jointed thumbs. Any other sideshow skills I should know about?”

“I seem to be really good at making people mad at me.”

“Can you turn it off?”

She bumped up one shoulder. “If I really want to.”

He stopped walking to look at her, a new habit he’d developed, he realized, to make sure she was getting the point. “If one of Corona’s men gets ahold of you, they’re not going to handcuff you somewhere and give you a chance to escape. They’re going to kill you.”

“Yeah, I got that, you can stop repeating it now.”

No, he couldn’t. She said she understood, but when they were up against it, she acted like her life meant nothing to her—not to mention his. “You’re doing the smart thing,” Jack said, “now do the hard thing. No more calls, no more going off on your own; you’re going to have to trust me.”

“You said hard, not impossible.”

Jack shook his head, knowing he should just let it go, and not being able to. “They know we got out of D.C. somehow,” he said, setting off for the car again. “They know we’re on the run and we can’t go to the authorities. By now the word will be out. Every hit man and criminal associate of Corona’s will be looking for us, and it’s a big organization.” Which was why every law enforcement agency in the country was trying to shut him down. Putting Corona out of business would cripple half the cocaine trade in North America. “And that’s not the worst of it. Every petty criminal east of the Mississippi will be looking, too. Getting Corona’s goodwill isn’t easy, but catching you will do that.”

She didn’t say anything.

They were at the car. Jack stopped by the driver’s door to look over the roof at her. “I’ve been with you twenty-four hours and you’re still in one piece, right?”

“So you want me to trust you because you haven’t killed me.”