Alpha's Captive 03 - Flight (6 page)

H
arper turned her phone back on and pulled up her map app.

“It won’t plot a course because we’re not on the road
or trail, but it’s about a mile this way.” She set off in the direction that the phone indicated. “You’ve got to let me go in alone this time, okay? No shirt, no shoes, no service, and you don’t have any shoes—and really, Levi, at some point, someone’s going to have enough guts to throw out the huge wolf that is incredibly obviously not a service dog.”

“All right,” he said.
“But I’m watching the store, and if I see trouble, I’m going in.”

“Y
ou’ll need to have your wolf on, anyway,” she continued. “Try to stay out of sight until I get an agreement out of somebody so you don’t freak them out until they’re committed. But wolf is better than man. I’m not going to be able to bum a ride with a hot guy breathing down the back of my neck.”

Levi smirked.
“You think I’m hot?”

Harper glared at him.
“Oh, shut up. You know you’re hot.”

She followed the map app as best as she could through the trees, and a
fter several minutes, they reached the edge of the field, across which was the travel plaza, a broad, low block of a building in the middle of a vast concrete parking lot and filling station.

“That’s what I’m talking about
,” Harper said, grinning at Levi.

“Nice work,
Shackleton,” he said.

She frowned.
“Who?”

“Doesn’t matter.
You ready to go?” he asked.

“Nope.
Got to get the look down first.” She dropped her purse to the ground and dug out her .38 special and shoved it in her front pocket, then pawed through the purse until she found her mirror and brush.

Levi snorted.

“You can keep your comments to yourself,” she said. “I know what I’m doing. If you want to bum a ride, it works a whole lot better if the guy’s interested in having you in his passenger seat.”

“He might be interested in a lot more than that,” Levi predicted.

“Doesn’t mean he’ll get it.” Harper parted her hair with her finger on the side, so that part of it slid flirtatiously across her face. It’d give her something to play with—that was always a hit.

Levi started to strip, and she watched him out of the corner of her eye while pretending to ignore him.
She had a feeling that he wasn’t fooled.

“Get a ride from someone who looks like he has my shoe size,” Levi said as
he dropped his shirt at his feet.

“So, you’re going to take his car
and
his shoes?” She shook her head. “That doesn’t seem right.”

“You want to stop at Payless and get new ones?” he countered.

She snorted as she reapplied her lip gloss. “You bought your boots at Payless?”

“No, actually, I ordered them from a motorcycle specialty shop,” he said icily
as he unfastened his pants. “And they cost a mint, too. But I wasn’t going to bring that up like you bring up your car all the time.”

She snapped her mirror closed and treated him to a glare.
She liked to imagine that she was immune to the effects of his washboard abs and square chin now, but she was painfully aware that she was not. “My car is not a pair of boots. You didn’t rebuild your boots from the ground up with your brothers.”

His irritation faded.
“Sorry. That was cheap.”

She tossed her hair over one shoulder and adjusted her neckline to be a bit more revealing.
“Yeah. Yeah, it was. But I’ll look for a guy who looks like he has your shoe size.” She looked down at his feet. They were big, even for his frame. “But I don’t think it’ll be that easy,” she added.

“If I have shoes
, we have more options,” he pointed out.

“Yeah, I get it.”
She took the armful of clothes that he offered and shoved them down into her purse. They overflowed the top. She frowned and pulled out her zip-front hoodie, tying it to her hips. The purse still wouldn’t zip, but it came closer to fitting. She looked up to see laughter in Levi’s eyes.

“What?” she said.

“Your hoodie,” he said.

“What?” she repeated.

“It’s red.” He grinned wider.

“So?”
She tried to figure out the significance of it. Poor camouflage?

“It’s red,” he repeated.
“A red hoodie.”

“
Yes, it is,” she agreed. “Why’s that funny?”

“You’re going into the
travel plaza with a red hoodie and a wolf,” he said patiently. As she still stared at him, he continued, “A little…red…riding….”

“Oh, my God,” she said
as he burst out laughing. “I thought you were actually going to say something that mattered. You think that’s funny? Really? That’s funny to you?” She picked up a stick and threw it out of the trees in a flat arc. “Fetch.”

And then he made a noise like a low growl deep in his throat, and he lunged forward—b
ut at her, not at the stick. Harper jerked back but not even close to fast enough. He caught her wrist and pulled her, hard, against him, and then his mouth was on hers, relentless, his tongue pushing in her mouth, taking, and she kissed him back with a strength that surprised the distant part of her that was still capable of thought.

When he finally broke away
, she said, “What the hell was that for?”

He grinned down at her, but his eyes echoed her surprise, as if he’d startled himself.
“It was either kiss you or spank you.”

Harper jerked back, out of his arms.
“Spank? Really? You’re going to threaten to spank me?”

“You know how assholes in old movies always tell women that they’re beautiful when they’re angry?” he said.

Harper was truly seething now. “Don’t you dare—”

“Well, you’re beautiful when I’m angry.
What do you make of that?”

And before Harper could do anything but s
putter in response, he shifted, his jaw growing long and his body sprouting hair as he lowered to arms that became front legs as they touched the earth.

“That is a lousy way to escape an argument,” she said to the wolf.

Levi just looked at her.

“What would you do if I told you to fetch now?” she asked.
“Would some doggy corner of your brain want to chase the stick?”

He yawned dramatically, showing a line of sharp, white teeth,
then closed his mouth with an audible snap.

Harper wrinkled her nose at him as she started across the field toward the
travel plaza. “You totally wouldn’t bite me. So don’t even bother to pretend.”

Levi fell in step.

“Now that you’re a wolf, you can’t talk back. So that means you have to listen to what I say. Okay, maybe not do what I say, but you at least have to hear it.” The building was only a few dozen yards away. “Don’t play with me, okay? If you’re not that into me, I get it. But don’t play games, and don’t tell me you’re doing anything for my own good. Believe it or not, I’m a big girl, and I can decide what my own good is—or isn’t.”

She stepped onto th
e concrete parking lot. “I’m going to try to be inconspicuous now, okay? So just kind of…hang back until I come out. Pretend you’re not with me. I’m looking for a prepaid phone with a data plan and a micro USB and a micro SD to micro USB reader. If they’ve got it, I’ll be back as soon as I can, all right?”

The wolf nodded his shaggy head, and lowering it
to reduce his intimidating profile, he slunk off behind the dumpsters.

All right.
It was up to her.

Harper squared her shoulders and walked toward the truck stop.
It was one of the huge ones, with restaurants and gift shops and showers. She went through the nearest entrance and found herself amidst a sea of key chains and postcards, facing a bored girl a couple years older than she was behind a Subway counter.

Best to get food when they could.
Harper ordered three foot-longs—an extra for Levi, just to make sure.

“Cell phones?”
Harper asked after taking the bags of food.

Wordlessly, the girl pointed.

Harper turned the corner and found a checkout counter on top of a glass case of cell phones, a wall of cigarettes and phone accessories behind.

“I need a prepaid cell with a data plan,” she said.
“And a mini SD card reader, like for a camera data card? That will attach to the cell phone?”

The man’s smile was
just a shade too friendly. “What are you taking pictures of?” he asked as he turned to the back wall, picking through the products before finally selecting one.

“My dog,” Harper said flatly.
“He’s so cute.”

“I’ve got two dogs,” the man volunteered as he set the reader on the counter.
He reached for the cell phones under the counter. “Pomeranians.”

“Yeah, mine’s a bit bigger than that.”

The man set three phones on the counter. “Now, we don’t actually have any prepaid smart phones here. But these do come with some data. They’re called feature phones—”

“That’s not going to work for me,” Harper said.
She scanned the shelves. “There. That tablet. Does it have a mini USB port?”

“Sure, but it doesn’t have data, either,” he said, pulling it down.

“But it has wireless, right? You know, WiFi?”

“Of course,” he said.

“Then I’ll take it,” Harper said, snagging a pack of gum and putting it on the counter, too.

“You really want to look at those pictures, don’t you?” the man asked as he rung her up.
“Two hundred and forty-six and thirty-one cents.”

Harper dug in her purse for Levi’s wallet and handed over the prepaid debit card.
“Definitely.”

“Must be a pretty cute dog then.”
He watched as the receipt was spit out and handed it to her.

She signed.
“You have no idea.”

After a quick detour to the restroom, she
popped piece of gum in her mouth, headed out the nearest door, and scanned the filling area. Half a dozen big rigs were fueling up or idling down in their own section. She didn’t know how to drive one, and she wouldn’t want to bet that Levi did, either. And anyhow, stealing a semi would attract way more attention than hijacking an ordinary car because they were usually filled with expensive things.

But there were four other cars, too.
One minivan with a woman at the pump—and even if there weren’t kids in the car, that was out, because her shoes would never be big enough, and anyhow, lone women almost never agreed to take hitchhikers. A truck, but the guy who stepped out wasn’t any taller than Harper, and that was if he stretched. A midsized sedan, carrying a couple. Convincing two people to take her was be far harder than convincing one, and it doubled the chances of things going all wrong when it came time to leave them on the side of the road.

And then there was the fourth car.
The soft-top Mini Cooper. Harper watched as the man inside unfolded himself to an unlikely height. She looked at his shoes. And she looked at the car again.

You only live once, right?
And they wouldn’t be living long if they didn’t get a car, ASAP.

She put on her brightest smile
, pulled off the sunglasses, and started forward.

“Hi,” she said as she approached.

The man looked up, taking her in with a single glance. He had a close-trimmed beard, a multicolor knit cap, and black plastic-rimmed glasses.

That
scored about twenty on the hipster scale. Harper widened her smile, turning her charm up as far as it would go. She hoped his single small hoop earring was ironic and rebellious rather than a sign that he was gay because sex appeal was far more effective than relying on random kindness. She leaned an arm against the pump, pitching her body ever so slightly forward to give him a better view of her cleavage.

His eyes tracked down for a second before snapping back up to her face.

Straight, then. All right. She was in business.

“Hi,” he said.

She ran her free hand through her hair, tousling it slightly. Behind him, out of his range of vision, she could see Levi creeping up on the periphery of the parking lot. “This is really embarrassing, but my friends kind of ditched me. We got into a stupid fight, and well—where are you going?”

“Harrisburg,” he said.

Levi was getting closer—and shaking his head as forcefully as the wolf could shake it. He was not happy about her choice of car, no doubt.

Harper ignored him.

“I’m Christina, by the way,” she said.

“Brett.”
He looked slightly dazed, as if he wasn’t quite sure how a busty redhead had ended up beaming up at him.

“Nice to meet you, Brett.
Well, that’s really lucky, because I’m headed to Harrisburg, too. Do you think you can give me a lift?” She held his gaze steadily, her smile never wavering.