I Got You, Babe (14 page)

“Will you slow down a minute and
listen
to me?”

“Not necessary, Renee. I already get the picture. This is unjust. You didn’t do it. And I’m a real asshole for doing my job and taking you in. Does that about sum it up?”

No, it didn’t. She wanted to take him by the shirt collar, yank him to a halt, and tell him to listen to the whole story or else. Unfortunately, she didn’t have an “else” to fall back on. If he kept up this pace, though, she’d be dead by the time they emerged from the forest.

Oh. Wait a minute.

She stopped and stood in the middle of the road. She couldn’t believe she was being such a fool. Why in the world was she hurrying to keep up? She strolled over to a grassy spot by the side of the road.

And sat down.

John stopped and turned back. “What are you doing?”

She pretended to ignore him. Passive resistance. It had worked for Gandhi, hadn’t it?

“Get up,” he said.
“Now
!”

When she still ignored him, John stomped over to her. He skewered her with a concentrated gaze of restrained fury— one of those heavy-duty cop looks he’d probably spent hours perfecting in his bathroom mirror.

“Get up,” he repeated, his voice frigid.

“Maybe you should sit down with me instead. We could have a nice...chat.”

“Chat, my ass.”

Before she knew what was happening, he’d grabbed her arm and hauled her to her feet. The birds squawked and scattered, their wings making a
whop, whop, whop
noise that echoed through the piney woods. He gripped her by her arms, determination oozing off him like a red-hot aura. “I swear to God, if you don’t turn around and walk down this road
right now,
I’ll—”

“You’ll what? Throw me over your shoulder and carry me out of here? It’s only another eight or ten miles, right?”

“You’re resisting arrest!”

Renee shrugged indifferently. “Compared to the other charges against me, I’d say that’s a drop in the bucket.”

Anger flooded his face, but she was on a roll and she couldn’t stop now.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she went on. “Not until you listen to me.”

“Fine,” he said, releasing her. “Talk all you want to. While you’re walking.”

The last thing Renee wanted was to move one step closer to incarceration. But at least he’d be listening to her instead of walking ten paces ahead of her. And he didn’t say how
fast
she had to walk, did he?

“Agreed. But only if you take this tape off my wrists.”

“No way.”

“John...” Her voice slid up the scale a few notes, warning him against disagreeing with her.

“No,” he repeated. “I am
not
going to—”

She plunked herself down in the middle of the road.

“Damn it, Renee! You are
really
starting to piss me off!” The last thing John had intended to do was lose his temper, but then again, he hadn’t counted on dealing with such an outrageously obstinate woman. How had things gotten twisted around until she thought she was the one calling the shots?

She held up her wrists with a look that said it was her way or no way. He didn’t trust her for a minute, but what choice did he have? He could carry her out of this forest and probably die of exhaustion in the effort. He could threaten her again, with absolutely no way to back it up. If he was going to get out of this crappy place and this crappy situation sometime before Christmas, his only choice was to compromise.

He let out a hiss of disgust, then pulled out his pocketknife and sliced through the tape, feeling as if he were turning Godzilla loose to ravage Tokyo. The second she peeled the tape off, he grabbed her by the arm again and hauled her to her feet.

“Get moving,” he said, clicking the knife shut and jamming it back into his pocket. “And no stopping until we’re out of here.”

She turned and started down the road, moving with the speed of a geriatric turtle.

“Get with it,” he said, stepping along beside her. “This isn’t a walk in the park.”

She sped up a little, but at this pace it would be the next millennium before they got back to the main highway.

“You know,” Renee said after a moment, “if I’d been that officer, I’d have arrested me, too, with the gun and the money being in my car and all.”

Her sudden acquiescence put him on red alert. “Oh, yeah. He deserves a medal for all the intuitive thinking he used to make that arrest.”

“And apparently it was a blond woman who committed the robbery.”

“So I hear.”

“And I don’t have an alibi.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So I guess I look like a pretty good suspect, huh?”

“Damned good.”

“But what about motive?”

“What about it?”

“It was the one thing nobody had an answer for. I mean, why in the world would someone like me knock over a convenience store?”

Drugs. Running with a bad crowd. Coercive boyfriend.

Being desperate for money. Just plain old lack of conscience. Hell, he had a hundred answers for that one. And not one of them mattered in the least.

“I’ve got news for you, Renee. If you’re standing over a dead body holding a smoking gun, proving motive really isn’t necessary.”

“I know it
looks
bad. But I had no reason to do it. None. I’ve got a good job. Why would I rob a convenience store?”

“Do you owe money?”

“Of course. Who doesn’t?”

“A lot of it?”

“More than I wish I did, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.”

“Do you have a record?”

She paused. “Of course not.”

“You had to think about it?”

“I’m just not used to getting interrogated, that’s all.”

“Do you do drugs?”

“No! Never! Not even when—” She stopped short, then continued. “I’ve never done drugs. Period.”

“Then I guess you wouldn’t mind pulling up the sleeves of your sweatshirt.”

She came to a halt and spun around to face him. She narrowed her eyes angrily, then shoved the sleeves of her sweatshirt to her elbows and thrust her arms forward. “Needle tracks? Is that what you’re looking for?”

He inspected her forearms. Her smooth ivory skin was as fresh and pretty as the rest of her. Most of the law-breaking women he encountered were foulmouthed hookers, female con artists, and just plain lowlifes—drugged-up, used-up women who looked forty-five when they were twenty-five. Not this one.

His gaze inched down her forearms to her wrists, where the tape had left pale red welts on her skin. He felt a twinge of guilt, then immediately shoved it aside. The last thing he needed was to feel sorry for her. Any pain she’d suffered she’d brought on herself because of the bad habits she’d recently developed, such as jumping bail, setting fires, and stealing cars. Still, for some reason Leandro’s words lingered in his mind.
That’s one hot little body she’s got.
It was probably the only thing on earth he and Leandro would ever agree about.

Part of what drew his attention was the jeans she wore, snug in all the right places, and what resided beneath her sweatshirt—a truly spectacular pair of breasts, breasts he’d been within inches of getting his hands on last night. He remembered how he’d kissed her until both of them had practically melted into the sofa, then slipped his hand beneath her sweatshirt until he met warm, soft skin. His purpose had been to call her bluff, to find out why the hell she’d propositioned him in the first place, but somewhere in the middle of that he’d lost his objectivity and wanted nothing more than to see that heavenly little body of hers lying naked on that sofa. Christ, but she’d been soft and sweet. If only she’d been willing—

Wait a minute.
What the hell was he thinking? If she’d been willing, he’d have made love to a bail-jumping armed robber. If Lieutenant Daniels had seen inside his mind right now, he’d have one more admonition to add to
curb the hot temper
and
stop getting personally involved.

Do not get the hots for the women you drag to jail.

“So you don’t shoot up,” John said. “There are plenty of other bad habits that require a load of cash to support.”

She yanked her sleeves back down. “I don’t put anything in my lungs or up my nose, either. I even quit smoking. If you’re looking for a drug habit as motive, you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

“So you’re a model citizen.”

“No, I’m not. I’ve got just as many vices as the rest of the world. But that doesn’t mean I committed a crime.”

“I assume your fingerprints weren’t on the weapon.”

“Of course not.”

“Did they test for gunpowder residue?”

“Yes. My hands were clean.”

“What did the victim say? Was the robber wearing gloves?”

Renee paused. “Yes.”

“There doesn’t seem to be a lot of evidence in your favor, does there, Renee?”

“I didn’t do it!”

“Then what was the loot and the weapon doing in the backseat of your car?”

“I don’t know,” she said with a sigh. “I honestly don’t.”

She stared down at her feet, her shoulders drooping. The shadows under her eyes said she hadn’t slept much last night, and for a second he wondered if maybe he’d tied her so tightly that she couldn’t get comfortable.

Damn.
He had to stop this. Why did he care one way or the other? As long as she had enough energy left to walk out of this forest, that was all that mattered.

“That kind of ignorance will buy you a prison sentence in a hurry,” he told her.

“But it’s the truth! I don’t know how that stuff got in the backseat of my car. My car’s old, and the door locks don’t work. Anybody could have thrown something in there!”

“Yeah. Any blond woman who’d robbed a convenience store and just happened by.”

“I know it looks bad, but—”

“The clerk picked you out of a lineup.”

“I know! But I have no idea how—”

“Why did you run?”

“Because I didn’t do it!”

“Then you should have stayed around to prove it.”

“Even my attorney thought I was guilty. How was I supposed to fight that?”

He shrugged indifferently.

Renee tightened her hands into fists. “Oh, it’s so easy for you to shrug it off, isn’t it? You’re a cop. The guy on the other side. The one who throws people in jail. You’ve never had to face the prospect of looking at those bars from the inside out!”

“That’s right. Law-abiding citizens don’t have to worry about that.”

“I
am
a law-abiding citizen!”

John snorted with disgust. “I think that’s up to the jury to decide.”

Renee swept a strand of blond hair away from her eyes and glared at him. “You’re a real jerk, you know that?”

“And you’re a real pain in the ass. Do you know
that?”

To his utter surprise, Renee wheeled around and smacked him on the upper arm with her doubled-up fist. He recoiled involuntarily, but when her fist came flying at him again, he lunged at her, caught her by the wrists, and backed her against a tree trunk.

“You just assaulted a police officer,” he said. “Add that to the charges you’ve already racked up, and you’re never going to see the light of day again!”

“Tell me, John. Have you ever stopped to wonder if any of those people you lock up are innocent? Or do you just go for the first suspect you see who maybe fits the description, toss him in jail, and think you’ve done a good day’s work? Is that how it is?”

“I’ll tell you how it is, sweetheart. I spend my life rounding up the scum of the earth, people who’d shoot their own mother for a fix, people who’d plant a knife in someone’s back if it got them what they wanted.
That’s
what I deal with every day!”

“So is that what you figure I am?” she said, her whole body trembling with anger. “One of those people? Bad to the bone?”

“Doesn’t matter what I think. If I’ve got probable cause, I pull the scum off the streets. It’s somebody else’s job to dispose of it.”

“So that’s how you deal with it? You figure it’s not your job, so you don’t have to worry about all those poor people serving jail sentences because you got it wrong? How do you live with that?”

“Because more of them are guilty than not, and if they walk,
that's not justice
!”

“Oh, yeah. But it’s justice to lock up the innocent ones, just in case?”

John wanted to shake that mocking condescension right out of her. It took a lot of nerve for her to pass judgment on him, as if she had any idea what it was like to do his job. As if she thought he
wanted
innocent people to go to jail. As if he knew who was going to serve time when they were innocent and walk when they were guilty. Judges and juries were insane about half the time and made decisions he wouldn’t understand if he lived to be a hundred.

“How can you do it, John?” she repeated. “How can you look people in the eye and—”

“I
don’t
look! I’ve got a job to do, and I don’t need that kind of complication!”

“Complication?
Complication?
Looking someone you arrest in the eye makes things
complicated? You
mean, like, you might actually see that you’re making a mistake once in a while?”

John blinked with astonishment at the words that had tumbled out of her mouth—and his. It wasn’t until this moment that he realized the truth—it was the eyes that did him in. That little scumbag who’d gotten off scot-free had those guilty, mocking little eyes that had set John off like a firecracker on the Fourth of July, making him destroy that damned paper-towel dispenser because he hadn’t been able to destroy the little scumbag.

And now he was looking at the flip side. At Renee, whose big blue eyes were screaming her innocence. An image slammed into him of her in prison, falsely accused, a nameless, faceless entity shuttled through the system, emerging ten years later a hard, bitter woman, nothing but a shadow of who she was now, a woman whose life had been stolen from her....

No.

He looked away. She grabbed his arm and yanked him back. “Don’t you
dare
look away!”