Alpha's Captive 04 - Haven (2 page)

A
s soon as Levi pointed it out, Harper made out the shape of the big rig, parked on the side of the road. The driver was probably napping or taking a required break or something.

“So what’s the plan?” she asked.

“We stop and offer to help, of course,” Levi said.

Harper snorted.
“Really, that’s your best idea?”

“Well, if he doesn’t come out when we stop, we don’t have to say anything at all.
I don’t know how we’re going to stick it onto the trailer, though. We’ll have to put it inside the cab somehow, I guess—”

“What’s wrong with bubble gum?”

“It got wet. I threw it all away,” he said.

She blew a bubble and popped
it noisily. At Levi’s surprised expression, she said, “I bought more. Well, technically, you bought me more.”

“
We’ll need more than one piece,” he said, ignoring her allusion to her use of his prepaid debit card.

“Check
my purse.”

He did,
and he pulled out the packet and shoved four strips into his mouth, his jaw working around the big ball of gum.

Harper dropped her gaze back to the road.
She was entirely focused on the problem at hand, she told herself. The SD card had been a huge setback, and it put them in even more danger, and now the police knew she was with Levi, which meant that the bad guys definitely knew who she was.

There was no part of her that was glad that
the SD card didn’t work because it meant more time in Levi’s company. That was crazy thinking there, and Harper was a lot of things, but she wasn’t crazy.

Especially about
a man who’d already made his position clear.

The semi was close now, close enough that Harper could make out the “How’s my driving?” number on the
left-hand swing door. She slowed down, pulling off onto the shoulder.

Maybe they’d luck out.
Maybe the driver wouldn’t notice the tiny, two-colored car, and they could plant the GPS tracker and get away with no one the wiser.

But even as she put the car into park, a man emerged from a clutch of trees a short distance from the truck.
Gray hair, barrel chest, slight paunch, flannel shirt. Everything about him said “trucker.”

Great.
The trucker hadn’t been napping at all—he’d just pulled over to take a leak. And now he’d want to know what exactly they were doing. Harper had to hope he hadn’t seen whatever news reports had gotten her family so worked up.

“Better get out and start talking,” Levi said, already grasping the door handle.

“No problem,” Harper muttered, tugging her shirt down to reveal a little more cleavage before unbuckling and circling the car quickly with a smile plastered on her face.

The trucker stopped in his tracks as she approached, staring at her distrustfully.

“You in some kind of trouble?” she asked.

“No, miss,” the man said, his eyes staying respectfully glued to her face in a way that meant that every bit of his peripheral vision was focused on her cleavage.

Harper relaxed. This would be an easy one. Polite, but he wouldn’t mind wasting even half an hour with her as long as she was a Nice Girl.

Harper was good at Nice Girl.

“Oh, good. I just got this funny feeling....” Her eyes wide and innocent, she cocked her head sideways and waved to Levi, who was strolling casually over toward the back end of the trailer. “That’s my brother Dan. He said I was being dumb, but you know, we have an uncle who’s a trucker—well, it’s my dad’s brother, so Dan’s stepdad’s brother, so really just my uncle. Anyway, I said to him, ‘What if it were Uncle Silas who was broken down on the side of the road? You ever thought of that?’”

The man smiled in a paternal sort of way, just like Harper expected.
“We’ve got cell phones to call dispatch if something like that happens. They’ll get a repair guy or a tow truck or both out here.”

“Oh, I know, but you know, anything we could do to help,” she said
, giving him her most engaging smile.

“That’s really nice of you, miss, but you shouldn’t be stopping like this,” he said seriously.
“You’ve got your brother with you now, but not everybody on the road is nice, and that includes truckers. It’s really not a good idea for you to stop just ’cause you see someone on the side of the road.”

Harper glanced back at Levi at the trucker’s mention
of him. He bent as if he were adjusting his shoe, and as he straightened, he casually slid a hand under the edge of the trailer, just for a moment.

Bingo.

“You’re probably right,” Harper said. “I’m sorry. And now I’ve just taken up your time for no reason at all, too.”

“Well, thanks for your concern, miss,” he said.
“And I really don’t mind at all. It’s just that not everybody’s going to be friendly, you know.”

She nodded earnestly.
“Well, I’m glad we stopped, anyway. Gives us a chance to put the top down, right? And it’s such a pretty day.”

There were hands on her shoulders then, and she looked back to see Levi standing behind her.

“Come on, sis,” he said. “Stop bothering the guy and get back in the car.”

Harper rolled her eyes dramatically for the trucker’s benefit.
“Yes, sir,” she said sarcastically.

Levi looped an arm around her shoulders and hustled her back to the car.
His arm around her felt anything but brotherly.

“You think he bought that?” he muttered.

Harper turned the full force of her gray eyes up at him, making them as big and sweet as she could manage. “Wouldn’t you?”

She felt his body stiffen in automatic reaction.
“Damn, girl, you’re good.”

She smiled smugly.
“I know.”

They were at the Mini Cooper now, and Harper turned back to give one last wave at the trucker before circling around to the driver’s side.

Easy peasy.

“Why don’t I drive?” Levi suggested.

“I stole the car,” Harper said. “I get to drive. Anyhow, who’s the better shot? You need your hands free.”

With her snub-nosed
revolver versus his nine mil, there was no question that he’d be able to hit a target at a farther distance. She’d challenge anybody with a better gun, but Levi didn’t need to know that.

They got inside, and Harper started the car and
hit the button for the soft top to fold up on itself at the back of the car. The warm midday sun slanted down on their heads as she pulled back onto the road, shifting through second into third. The trucker smiled from his cab and raised a hand in salute as they drove.

It had worked.
They were free of the GPS tracker and back on track. She could hardly believe it. Maybe now things would finally go smoothly.

“Sunglasses,” Harper ordered, holding out her hand.

Levi, in the passenger seat now, twisted around and pulled her purse out of the back to dig them out.

“They
are mine, you know,” he said mildly, handing them over. Damn but he looked good sitting there, next to her. His unshaven scruff was beginning to shade over into a short beard, but he looked no less handsome for that, with his bright white teeth in his tanned face.

“So?
” Harper shoved the shades on and checked her reflection in the mirror. “I think they look better on me.”

Which was a complete fabrication, but she felt like teasing him.
She felt suddenly, ridiculously lighthearted. They were still driving an absurdly conspicuous stolen car, and they were no closer to getting anything off the SD card, but now at least they knew how they’d been found so easily before and they’d dealt with that. It seemed like progress, and right then, she’d take what she could get. Levi would get the SD card to his friend, get the data off it, and then they’d part ways. Forever.

And she was entirely okay with that.
Really, she was.

Her gaze slid over to Levi in the seat beside her.
He’d pulled the plastic box of stew from her purse and was eating it greedily—with one of Aunt Tiff’s spoons. She frowned. She hadn’t put that into her purse.

“Your nose is already burned,”
Levi said conversationally, catching her gaze.

She looked in the rearview mirror,
then prodded it gently with her fingertips. Pink, yes, but not yet tender. “It’ll be all right.”

He shrugged.
“It’s your nose.”

“Do you really want to stop to put the roof back up?” she asked.
She was enjoying the feel of the wind on her face and her hair streaming behind her.

He
shrugged, then shook his head.

“Anyhow, I was thinking that if people are looking for us, we’re a lot more obvious as a red car with a white roof than a red convertible,” she said.

He snorted. “This isn’t a proper convertible any more than a Vespa is a motorcycle.”

Harper smiled.
“So what kind of car is a proper convertible?”

“A
1958 Corvette,” he said. “With the last hint of fins replaced with the sleekest body you’ve ever seen, and the scoops that go from the front wheel across the doors.” He dug in the bag at his feet and came up with a Subway sandwich. Wordlessly, he pulled it out of the plastic sleeve and passed it over to her.

“Hmm, classic car buff,” she said
, spitting out her gum into a corner of the sub wrapper. “I’ve always dreamed of owning a ’50s Lincoln Continental, totally tricked out.”

“So why the Skylark?” he asked.

“I told you, my brother bought it for me,” she said, taking a big bite of the sandwich. All this running away was making her hungry, and breakfast had been a very long time ago, before dawn.

“A fan o
f My Cousin Vinnie?” he asked. There was a scene in the film that prominently featured a Buick Skylark.

“Oh, LOL,” she said.
“I totally haven’t heard that one before. No, he got it because it was a classic and something we could actually fix up for not too much money, and it was cheap for the condition it was in. Six hundred bucks. He made my other brothers pitch in a hundred each since it was my sixteenth birthday, so it cost him four hundred, and he got a buddy of his to tow it over.”

She smiled
at the memory. Neither Braden nor Austin had been happy with that, but they’d done it. Even Christina did what Cory said. “Cost me a hell of a lot more, of course. Three grand, when it was all said and done. He said I could sell it for eight or ten, pocket the difference, maybe take some classes with it.”

“But you didn’t,” he said.

“It wasn’t about the money,” she said. “We rebuilt it together, all four of us. And even Christina would come out into the barn to hang out sometimes and watch us work and not pick a fight.” She cast her eyes sideways at him. “How big’s your family? You say brothers and sisters, you say clan, you say all kinds of things, but you don’t say anything more specific.”

“It’s big,” he said.
“Most werewolf families are.”

“How big is big?” she prompted.
“I’m one of five.”

“Well, I’m
the fifth of nine,” he said.

She whistled.
“You aren’t kidding about big.”

“Yeah, and I’ve got hordes of cousins and nephews and nieces and aunts and uncles, never mind the second cousins—”

“I get the picture,” she said. “So you left all that? Did you just want to, you know, get away?”

Harper could understand that, to a point.
While a family was a place where you always belong, it was also where you were stuck in the place you were given. Her role was that of the baby sister and baby cousin—even now, at the age of twenty-one, she got put at the kiddie table at half the family gatherings.

Levi
shrugged. “When I was a teenager? You’d better believe it. Plenty of people hate being a teen, but it’s worse for a werewolf, going through shifts and never quite knowing when you’re going to suddenly sprout hair. Regular guys worry about getting a surprise stiffy. Werewolves have to worry about surprise fangs.”

“Okay, that does sound like it sucks,” she agreed
, suppressing a smile.

“And
of course, even now, I don’t really care to live under the collective thumb of the clan council, with no say in anything.”

She gave him a sideways glance—and immediate
ly, a strand of hair got caught in the wind and whipped across her face into her mouth. She it spat out and turned back to the road. “Okay, I’ll bite. Why don’t you have a say in anything?”

“Got to be the head of a
household to be on the council,” he said. “If you’re not an alpha, you don’t get a vote.”

“Alpha?”
She openly grinned at the word. “Sounds like a code name.”

“It sounds stupid,” he returned
. “Long time ago, they were just called the primes—before that, the princips. But I guess we’ve been watching too many wildlife shows, so now it’s alphas, more often than not.”