I Got You, Babe (12 page)

“No. It’s fine. Got any surgical tape?”

“Uh, yeah. Sure.” The woman went to the back room, then returned with a roll of tape and handed it to John.

“Mind if I take this?” he asked.

“No. Go ahead.”

John took Renee by the arm again and led her back toward his car.

“So,” she said, with as much nonchalance as she could muster, “I guess you’re taking me back to Tolosa?”

He didn’t respond. She took that as a yes.

When they reached his car, he pulled Renee’s arms around in front of her, crossing one wrist over the other. Before she knew exactly what was happening, he’d wound the surgical tape four or five times around them.

“What are you doing?” she asked, horrified.

“I’ve got no handcuffs.” He ripped the tape off and pressed down the loose end. “And I’m taking no chances.”

Renee looked down at her bound wrists, and all at once the reality of the situation came crashing down on her.
How had this happened?
she asked herself for the thousandth time. How had she landed on the wrong side of the law again, when she’d put her heart and soul into becoming the kind of person who would
never
have to worry about being arrested?

As a teenager, she hadn’t felt humiliated to be dragged to jail. All she’d felt was defiance, along with that hopeless feeling of not giving a damn because nobody else did, either. The indignity she felt right now was a result of the self-respect she’d managed to gain since then, and a philosophical person might say that her humiliation was a step in the right direction.

She wished she could tell John about the years she’d spent putting her past behind her. About how she’d suffered through demeaning, dead-end jobs just so she could pay her bills. About how she’d finally built a life for herself she was starting to be proud of, only to have it shatter into a million pieces.

She’d seen the man behind the badge. The man with a heart. The man who’d shown her compassion when he thought she’d been abused, then gone to war with Leandro when he thought she was in danger of being hurt again. That was the man she wanted to talk to now.

Slowly she lifted her gaze from her wrists and met John’s eyes, but as he stared back at her, she saw that his anger had been replaced by an impassive, stony stare. His jaw was rigid, his eyes cold and unreadable, and that was when she knew. There was only one side of him she was going to see from now on: the cop side.

She held out her wrists. “Please don’t do this. Please. I’ll go quietly. I promise.”

“Tell me some more lies.”

“But John—”

“You want your mouth taped, too?”

“No, but—”

“Then I suggest you keep it shut.”

He opened the car door and shoved her into the passenger side of the front seat, pushing her head down to clear the opening as she’d seen cops do when they were arresting people on
Real Stories of the Highway Patrol.
He slammed the door behind her. She settled back in the seat, her heart thumping in her chest in a relentless rhythm.

“We’re going to the cabin so I can get my stuff,” John told her. “Then it’s nonstop back to Tolosa.”

His words settled on her with heart-wrenching finality, and by the tough, uncompromising expression on his face, she knew she wouldn’t be talking him out of this. He was going to deliver her to jail, then turn his back and walk away, believing he’d done his part to incarcerate a desperate criminal. She’d be shuttled through the system and eventually land in prison, sentenced to a life of despair and hopelessness for a crime she didn’t commit.

It was official. Her life was over.

Twenty minutes later, John pulled up in front of the cabin, a feeling of déjà vu washing over him like an ocean wave at high tide. Only a few hours ago, he’d been in this very spot, primed for a night of hot sex with a beautiful woman. Now he was dragging that beautiful woman to jail.

God, what a night.

Actually, the more he thought about it, the more he decided this turn of events might work out pretty well. This would give him an excuse to return to Tolosa. He could tell Daniels he had had to cut his vacation short to bring in a fugitive. How could the lieutenant argue with that?

Fortunately, Renee had the good sense to keep her mouth shut on the way back to the cabin, because if she’d opened it up and started yapping again about how sorry she was and how she was innocent and all the rest of that crap, he probably would have gagged her, tossed her onto the roof of the car, and tied her to the luggage rack.

But instead of talking, she spent the whole time with her bound hands in her lap, running her fingernail back and forth along the seam of her jeans. And she was still doing it now, her blue eyes downcast, a strand of blond hair falling carelessly across her cheek. She looked so damned innocent that if he didn’t know better, he’d think—

John killed the car engine, feeling like the biggest moron who’d ever walked the planet. She’d played him like a fiddle all night, only to start up the music again just by sitting there doing nothing at all.

He yanked the keys out of the ignition, then got out, circled the car, and opened Renee’s door. He took hold of her arm and pulled her out of the car. The single floodlight down the path by the cabin door gave off enough light to softly illuminate her face, and when she turned her eyes up to meet his, all at once he felt as if he were manhandling a stray kitten.

No. She’s not innocent. There is absolutely nothing innocent about this woman.

He flipped the locks, shut the car door, then took her by the arm and led her down the winding, wooded path toward the cabin. She let out a ragged sigh, and he felt as if he’d just
kicked
a stray kitten.
Damn.
This woman was driving him crazy. The quicker he got back to Tolosa, turned her in, and forgot he’d ever known her, the better off he was going to be.

All at once, Renee’s head shot up. “What’s that?”

“What’s what?”

She stopped suddenly and listened. “That noise.”

“Cut it out, Renee.”

“I mean it!” she whispered, inching closer to John and scanning the darkened forest. “Someone’s out there!”

John stopped and listened, but by his skeptical expression, Renee could tell he thought she was lying. But she was sure she’d heard a rustle of dry pine needles, as if someone were walking through the trees.

John shook his head and started to lead her toward the cabin again, when the same sound filtered through the night air, this time louder. He whipped his head around, his gaze searching the forest, and she could tell he’d finally heard it, too. Slowly he drew his gun.

“Who is it?” she whispered.

“I don’t know,” John whispered back. “There shouldn’t be anyone within ten miles of here.”

Renee thought her heart was going to beat right out of her chest. She was sure someone—or
something
—was walking through the forest. Unfortunately, the risen moon had faded to a pale timber disk, making it hard for her to see what sharp-toothed animal or ax-wielding human was out there waiting for them.

John led her by the arm into the trees, stepping over a fallen log half-buried in pine needles, dodging a cluster of saplings. Every ounce of self-preservation she possessed told her not to go anywhere near the forest, but then she decided that sticking like glue to the guy with the gun was probably the best course of action under the circumstances.

“Sounds like someone walking through the brush,” she whispered.

“Shhh…”

“Are we sure Leandro’s still in Winslow?”

“Shut
up,
will you?”

John stopped and listened. Seconds passed, filled only by silence. “Hey!” he shouted. “Who’s out there?”

Renee heard a mad crunch of pine needles practically at her feet. She looked down, and right in front of her, a pair of red, devil-like eyes glared up at her like a creature from the depths of hell.

With a strangled scream, she yanked her arm from John’s grip, whipped around in a blinding one-eighty, and started to run.

“Renee! Stop!”

But her fight-or-flight instinct was in full swing, with the fight part not even an option. Then all at once her ankles hit something hard. She flew through the air, then fell facedown into the dirt, knocking the wind out of her lungs in one big whoosh.

“Renee! It’s only an armadil—”

John never finished his sentence. Instead, the same fallen log that had tripped her tripped him, and he fell in a sprawling heap only inches to her left, letting out a muffled “Oof.”

In the span of a single heartbeat, Renee came to two important conclusions: one, she’d just run screaming from one of God’s more benign creatures—an armadillo—and two, her way out of a prison sentence lay in a pile of pine needles only a couple of feet beyond her hands.

John’s gun.

Without even thinking, she pushed herself to her knees, then lunged for the weapon. She grabbed the gun with her right hand, which was bound beneath her left one, then did a fireman’s roll to her right before rising to a sitting position. To John’s credit, he was already on his knees, but she’d been quicker in zeroing in on the gun. It felt heavy and dangerous, but despite the awkward position of her hands she clung to it tenaciously, determined not to give in to her gut instinct and run screaming from it, too.

John sat back on his heels, breathing hard. “Give me the gun, Renee.”

“No way.” Renee got to her feet, her gaze never leaving his.

“There’s a big price to pay for shooting a cop,” he told her, easing to his feet at the same time.

“I don’t want to hurt you. I just want your car.” Assuming, of course, that she could drive with one hand crossed over the other and bound with surgical tape.

“Give me your keys,” she said.

He paused for a moment, then methodically reached into his pocket and extracted the keys.

“Throw them down and back away.”

He did what she told him to, but even in the near-darkness of the forest, his cold, calculating expression unnerved her. She could almost see his mind working as he formulated a plan to get the upper hand again. He backed away two steps, then three.

“Keep going,” she told him, and waited until he was far enough away that when she dipped the barrel of the gun down to pick up the keys, he wouldn’t be within tackling distance. Once she was satisfied he posed no immediate threat, she knelt carefully and snagged the keys with her left hand.

She started to back through the trees toward the Explorer, the gun still trained on him. But to her dismay, for every step she took backward, he took one step forward.

“No!” she shouted. “Stay there!”

He kept walking, slowly and steadily. “How many crimes do you plan on committing tonight, Renee?”

“Crimes? I haven’t committed—”

He was right. She couldn’t exactly quote the statute, but holding a gun on a cop was most certainly a crime, and an even bigger one, she imagined, when the gun was his. Add that to bail jumping, fire starting, car stealing...
Good Lord.
How had she gotten herself into this mess when she’d never intended to step on the wrong side of the law again?

“Tell you what,” John said, his voice low and even. “Why don’t we just pretend this never happened? I’ll take you back to Tolosa, and if it turns out you’re innocent of the robbery, I’ll forget about your stealing my car. I’ll forget about your taking my gun. But I gotta tell you—if you shoot me, I’m afraid I’m going to have a pretty hard time forgetting that.”

It was a tempting offer. But no matter how reasonable his suggestion sounded, with all the evidence against her, sooner or later she’d be facing a prison sentence. Just the thought of incarceration made her hands shake as if she had some kind of neurological disorder. She took a deep breath, trying to get a grip. Then tears welled up behind her eyes, and she shook even harder.

No, no, no!

She blinked quickly, but she couldn’t stop the tears. She wiped her face against her shoulder, trying to clear her blurry vision. She couldn’t fall apart now. Not when she was only a few feet away from freedom.

John held up his palm, still inching toward her. “Now, sweetheart, if you’re not careful, you’re going to accidentally pull that trigger, and I think you’re going to be real sorry you shot me. Isn’t that right?”

She was still five yards or so from the car, but all at once she could tell she wasn’t going to make it. John was advancing closer with every step, and the minute she had to turn the gun down and away from him to unlock the car door with her left hand, he’d be on her. She had to stop him.

“Don’t come any closer, John! I mean it!”

He held out his hand. “Give me the gun. Just hand it over, and I’ll forget all about this.”

“Oh, yeah. Sure you will!”

“I give you my word, Renee. I’ll pretend tonight never happened. But I have to take you back to Tolosa. If I told you anything else, you’d know I was lying, right?”

Renee looked at him warily. He’d probably learned all kinds of negotiating skills in cop school, all of which were designed to keep him from getting shot and make sure she ended up in custody. So how was she to know what was the truth and what wasn’t?

“Besides,” he went on, “you say you’re innocent. If that’s true, you don’t have anything to worry about.”

“Come on, John! With all the evidence against me, they’ll just go through the motions. They’ll toss me in jail and throw away the key!”

“You’ll get a fair trial.”

“Oh, give me a break! Do you really believe that?”

“I’m a cop, Renee. What do you think I believe?”

“You didn’t answer my question!”

John stared at her, his breath fogging the cold night air. “Of course I think you’ll get a fair trial,” he said finally, but his response came a bit too late to be believable. She hated the way he was patronizing her. She hated the fact that he thought she was a criminal. And above all, she hated the fact that he was trying to act as though he had her best interests at heart when all he really wanted to do was see her behind bars.

John held out his hand again. “The gun, Renee.”