Bitch Factor (6 page)

Dann didn’t move. She applied another ounce of pressure.

“You know the drill, Dann. We can do this hard or we can do it easy. So far I’ve been mercifully easy.”

When he tried to pull away, she pressed harder. She heard a satisfying grunt, but also felt his powerful back muscles tense against her leg. He still wasn’t convinced.

“The cosh in my back pocket,” she explained reasonably, “was invented by the Nazi SS. It can break a kneecap with
one blow, quick as breaking eggs.” Absolutely true. She didn’t add that she’d never used it. “I’ll ask once more, Dann, nice. Put your left hand behind you.”

She gave him time, holding the pressure steady, letting him think about it. After a moment she felt his shoulder move as he tried to comply, dazed neurons sending sluggish impulses to the arm. Then his left hand slid behind him, the spare cuff dangling.

“I’m going to move my foot,” she told him. “I want you to put the other hand back here, both wrists together so I can fasten the cuffs.”

Maintaining the pressure on his ear, she eased back on her boot heel and released his hand. He didn’t move. She knew what he was thinking—once the cuffs were locked, he’d lose any advantage.

Another ounce of pressure on the Kubaton.

He didn’t move. The pain in his ear had to be nearly unbearable. Dixie waited, mentally counting to ten.

At five, she felt his back muscles flex…
six
…

She wished she could see what he was doing. She leaned forward…
seven
…

He was stretching his fingers. Plotting a sudden grab?
Eight
…

Her hand around the Kubaton began to cramp. She wondered if the stun gun had any zap left.
Nine
…

Wincing at the pain in her hand, she applied more pressure… and his arm brushed her leg as he finally, with a gravelly curse, complied.

Dixie reached down to snap the lock one-handed, then stuffed the Kubaton back in her pocket and wiped the sweat off her upper lip. After a moment, her heart stopped hammering.

The easy part was over. Now she had to ferry this scumbag all the way to Houston, a twenty-six-hour trip after already being up all night. Taking this job had been as dumb as spitting upwind.

The way Parker Dann figured it, he’d gotten careless, let his guard down, and deserved to be caught. But it still felt lousy being outsmarted after all his careful plotting, playing the “model citizen,” waiting for the holiday court break so no one would miss him for a week or two. That bounty hunter must be part bloodhound to guess he’d head for Canada.

How many years since he’d lived there? Twenty? Twenty-five? Next time he got loose he’d throw a dart at the map, shoot for someplace he’d never lived before. The beach, maybe. Yeah, he’d always wanted a waterfront home, surf pounding right outside his door.

He yanked the heavy chain that shackled him to the rear floorboard. The chain slid out of his numbed hand and rattled around his feet.

Flannigan, she’d said her name was. Wasn’t that the name he’d heard muttered around the jailhouse, waiting for bail to be set? Inmates talked about her like she was some kind of mind-reading magician, showing up at places she couldn’t possibly know about. One guy’d been successfully dodging the law for nine years. Joined the Mexican army, and nobody even came close to finding him. Then he crossed back into
Texas to see his daughter get married. When he left the church, there was Flannigan waiting at his car.

Parker rubbed his chest where she’d hit him with the friggin stun gun. Felt like a mule kicked him in the gut, then trampled his head.

Nudging the chain aside with his stocking foot, he studied the U-bolt attaching the chain to the car floor. She hadn’t even let him put on his shoes or shirt before hustling him out to the Mustang. Now there she was in the motel room, poking around, packing up his stuff, he hoped. Maybe she’d bring him a shirt before he froze solid.

He yanked the chain again, hands flexing quicker this time. No way he’d ever work that U-bolt loose. The shackle locked around his ankle looked simple enough, if you knew how to pick locks, which he didn’t. If he could find a nail or a piece of wire, might as well give it a try. Might get lucky.

Otherwise, he’d bide his time till he got a chance to snatch her keys. Twelve hundred miles back to Houston… she’d have to let him out sometime… and he must outweigh her by eighty pounds. Pure mass had to account for something, magician or not. He’d shove her down and sit on her.

Mighty Mouse
, that’s what the inmates had called her. Big Joe Bonner swore she’d brought him down in ten seconds flat.

“Shee-ut. Reached out to knock the little runt out of my way, maybe cop a feel of those fine tits while I’m at it. She grabbed my wrist in some kind of devil’s grip, had me on my knees before I could spit.” Exaggerating, of course. Bonner must weigh three hundred pounds. Only way to save face after being brought in by a woman was to make her out to be Superbroad.

But Pico, a quiet, hard-eyed Hispanic, his acne-scarred face devoid of expression, had taken up the story from where he squatted on his heels in a corner to avoid sitting on the floor.

“Same bitch brought my brother in. Rudy makes it halfway to Monterrey, stops at a cousin’s house maybe ten minutes. Gets back in his car, drives twenty feet down the road—the engine quits. While Rudy’s head’s under the hood, Flannigan
cuffs him, man, throws him in her trunk. Hauls him back across the border.” Pico gave everybody a look that said the punch line’s still coming. “Cousin finds the car. Later he tells Rudy the bitch stuck a potato up his tailpipe. A goddamn
potato
, man.”

After that, half the guys in hearing distance had bounty hunter stories, each one trying to top the last. But the ones featuring Flannigan were the most colorful.

Dann watched the motel-room door open and close, Flannigan striding toward the car, carrying his plastic bags, stun gun clipped to her belt. Have to stay clear of that thing.

The inmates all agreed on a couple of points. Said if Flannigan got on your trail there was no shaking her. Someone said she used to be a hotshot ADA, had a good chance at the top job. Then one day she up and quit, no explanation.

Dann heard her pop the trunk, toss his bags in, close it. When she strode around to the passenger side, he caught a brief full-length profile, and an unexpected stir of appreciation gave him a start. The woman was a looker, no denying that. The cut of her curves awakened carnal appetites that had gone woefully dormant these past few months.

She opened the front passenger door, leaned in, and slid a panel open in the steel mesh separating the front and back seats. Parker got his first unobstructed view of her face: full mouth, well-shaped lips, sunny complexion over fine bones, no-nonsense chin. But it was the lusty brown eyes that gave her away. This bitch might walk, talk, and kick butt like a man, but inside she was all woman. And women had soft hearts.

“Here’s a shirt and coat, Dann.” She shoved them through the opening. “And some dry socks.”

The rolled-up socks bounced off his chest, hitting the chain with a thud and a rattle.

“Guess you think I’m Houdini.” He jiggled his cuffed wrists with just the right amount of impotence. Wasn’t a woman alive could resist male helplessness. “How am I supposed to put them on?”

She motioned him to turn around. Parker suppressed a smile as he heard a click and felt the cuffs separate.

“What about my shoes?”

“Packed.”

“Guess you didn’t notice the snow. Guy could get frostbite.” He grinned his most puppyish grin.

“You won’t be walking anywhere until we get to Houston.”

So much for charm.

“Well, what about my car?” It was a wreck, sure. He’d bought it to get by until the city released his impounded Cadillac. Paid hard-earned money for it. “Can’t just leave it here in the parking lot.”

“You won’t need any wheels where you’re going.”

Shit!
“Tell me, lady, were you born a bitch, or did it come with your training bra and pubic hair?”

She cocked an amused eyebrow, then snapped the mesh panel shut and slammed the passenger door.

What a lousy friggin mess. Bracing one foot against the door, as high as he could lift it, Parker studied the shackle lock.

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” Thoreau had written. Parker had never felt desperate until the day he was arrested and charged. Mostly, he took life as it came, hard or easy. Never accomplished much, but then he hadn’t aimed at making any great marks in the world. He had lusty appetites, and he was unashamed of those. “In the long run men hit only what they aim at.” Henry David Thoreau hadn’t minded jail, but then
he
wasn’t facing twenty years. Parker aimed to stay out of jail. No way he was going back to court. He’d watched the jurors’ faces that last day. If the trial had ended there, he’d be in Huntsville now, staring at up to twenty years behind bars. He’d rather they shot him.

Dixie swallowed another caffeine tablet and pulled off the highway to look for a coffee shop. The noonday sky had muddied up with storm clouds. The snow fell harder now, a blinding white curtain that stretched miles into forever. She barely felt safe going sixty. If she could drive far enough south, she’d leave the storm behind, but that meant staying awake a few more hours. No matter how it kicked and sputtered in her stomach, coffee was a must.

Spying a red neon DINER sign, its message softened by a snowy scrim, Dixie coasted to a stop and pulled on her gloves. The Mustang’s feisty heater kept the car toasty, but from the buildup of fresh snow outside, she figured the temperature had dropped considerably.

“Hey!” Dann called from behind the steel mesh. “Where you going? Don’t leave me in here. I’ll friggin freeze.”

“How do you want your coffee?”

“Coffee?
What the hell happened to breakfast?” He rattled the chain that shackled him to the Mustang’s floorboard.

“You won’t starve and you won’t freeze, so don’t get your panties in a wad.”

“Come on, lady, I’m not going to run. How far would I get in this weather?”

“You think I intend to find out?” She zipped her jacket and turned up the collar. “That backseat is your home all the way to the Harris County lockup, so you may as well get comfortable.”

“Yeah? Suppose I have to take a leak?”

“See that plastic bottle back there? Label says ‘Fresh Mountain Water? Consider that your personal urinal.” Dixie tucked her thermos under one arm and flipped the door latch.

“Aw, come on, lady—”

A blast of icy wind wrenched the door from her hands, flung it wide, and peppered her skin with snow and sleet like gravel. Turning her face from the wind’s force, she wrestled the door shut, then fought her way down the sidewalk to the front of the diner. She had parked away from the windows to avoid curious eyes. Glancing back now through the swirling snow, she could barely see the car. Surely no one would notice Parker Dann in the backseat. In this squealing wind, if he yelled, no one would hear him, either.

A wave of heat and the smell of hamburgers greeted her when she stepped inside the diner. Her taste buds snapped to attention. Around midnight, she’d stopped at a drive-through burger stand. She hadn’t eaten since.

Raking snow from her hair, she scanned the diner. The ambient noises dropped a notch. Dishes slowed their clatter; voices leveled to a hum. Local citizens sized up the wayfaring stranger.

A somewhat crooked Christmas tree decked with tinsel and candy canes twinkled in one corner, while Elvis crooned “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” on a vintage jukebox. To be home for Christmas, Dixie would have to cross three states and half of Texas in less than thirty hours.

She sighed and slid onto a stool at the counter as she checked out her fellow customers. Two young couples sat at a square table across the room, thick down-filled ski jackets padding their chair backs. At the counter, a pair of middle-aged men in plaid flannel shirts drank coffee, and in a booth on the
back wall, an elderly couple had just finished lunch. They shoved their plates aside and stared openly at Dixie.

The waitress, twenty-odd, with bouncy chestnut hair, pushed through a swinging door from the kitchen. Her gingham uniform had a loose button dangling from the top buttonhole, a long run marred her stockings, and an artistically penned card Scotch-taped to her name tag said “Smile, it’s almost Christmas.” She set plates of food in front of the plaid-shirted men, then turned a ready smile at Dixie.

“Yes’m. What can I get for you?”

Dixie eyed the wall-hung menu. “Four burgers, two orders of fries, a large milk, and a thermos of black coffee to go.” She didn’t plan to stop again anytime soon. “I’d also like a coffee to drink while I wait.”

The waitress wrote it all down, then flashed the smile. “We have some fresh cherry pie. You guys want to take some of that along, too?”

Dixie checked the stool beside her to make sure she was alone. So much for anonymity. Everybody in town had probably watched the Mustang pull in, spotted the Texas tags even through the snow, and, with their keen country eyes, noticed Dann in the backseat. Smalltown folks didn’t miss much.

“Cherry pie sounds real good,” Dixie said.

The waitress jotted that on her pad, too, and scurried off to the kitchen. Minutes later she was back with Dixie’s coffee.

“We got a room vacant if you guys want to bed down for the storm. Weatherman says the roads north of Hillsboro are closed. Expect they’ll be closed farther south inside an hour.”

“Hillsboro? I just came through there. The roads aren’t closed.”

“Yes’m, they are now. Storm’s coming in fast.” She slid two generous slabs of pie into a foam carrier.

One of the men at the counter said, “Your first time up this way, is it?” His flannel shirt was red and green plaid.