The Bliss Factor (16 page)

“The Honda is chasing us,” she said to Conn, needlessly since he was watching it in the side mirror. “So are the police.”

“Lose them.”

Rae had a feeling that order was more about the cops than the Honda. She made a left on North Crooks Road, headed for Big Beaver and the entrance ramp to I-75. It would have been the quickest way to get rid of the Honda, if not for the van, which was old and clearly not well-maintained, still sputtering and coughing its way up to speed. The police were another story. The police weren’t known for giving up.

It was a concern for Rae, even before they got on the highway, which was bumper-to-bumper, stop-and-go rush-hour traffic, the kind of traffic that freaked her out even when she wasn’t being chased by the police.

She swerved around cars, cutting the wheel right and left, shifting the van into spaces that didn’t look big enough for a moped. The Honda, being smaller and more maneuverable, forged its own path, trying to come up beside them. The two squad cars were bringing up the rear, one parked on the Honda’s back bumper, the other sticking with the van. Even though they were running full lights and sirens the other vehicles couldn’t get out of anyone’s way.

And then the radio bolted to the dash started to squawk, a man’s voice yelling about phone calls and lawsuits and unemployment.

Conn reached for the handset.

“People must be calling the toll-free number.” Rae flipped the radio off. “Best we stay out of it. They’ll figure it out later.” She saw brake lights up ahead, three lanes of them, and shook her head. “We’re not going to outrun the police,” she said to Conn.

“Not in this,” he said, sounding disgusted. “If we still had the Hummer—”

“It has nothing to do with what we’re driving. It’s rush hour, and trust me, that isn’t what it sounds like. There are so many cars on the road we won’t get anywhere fast, and I won’t put other lives in danger by trying to. Besides, these things never end well for the people who aren’t in uniform. The police can call out as many squad cars as they want. Sooner or later we’ll be caught, and it won’t be pretty.”

If Conn had been driving, they’d have kept running, that much was clear. But Rae was at the wheel, so she bullied her way over to the right lane and shot off at the next exit, blasting through a yellow light that was just turning red, trapping the squad car at the intersection. She took the turnaround and got back on the highway, going southbound now, staying in the right lane until she saw the sign for Big Beaver. She got off there and took a left, pulling into the Troy Police Station not far beyond. The Honda kept going, one of the squad cars from the dealership hot on its back bumper. The other car screeched into the lot behind the van.

Rae was already parking at the curb by the entrance, and she wasn’t waiting for the chase officers. They’d pull weapons and get out handcuffs, and she wasn’t about to be cuffed and arrested in public, not to mention the part where she’d probably have to lay facedown on the ground.

“Trust me, this is our only option,” she said to Conn.

She jumped out of the van, Conn right behind her. They went inside, and when the officer at the counter stepped up and asked what he could do for them, Rae said, “I just stole a van. But I have a really good reason.”

THE POLICE WERE HAVING A HARD TIME WITH
the whole stealing-a-van-to-get-away-from-the-guys-in-the-Honda justification. Especially since they’d lost the Honda. They
really
had a hard time with Conn’s memory loss.

They’d taken his fingerprints and run them against every known database with no luck. Rae had to give it to the Troy Police: They were thorough. And stubborn. She was getting a kick out of the show, though.

They were sitting in a small office, she and Conn on one side of the desk, a Detective Hershowitz on the other. He was rapidly losing patience.

“Where are you from?” he asked Conn for the third time. When he didn’t get an answer, he said, “Clamming up isn’t going to do you any good.”

“Clamming up?”

“He means you’re not answering his questions.”

“Why doesn’t he say that then?” Conn said, arms crossed, face set into a frown, not bothering to hide his irritation. Since they’d stepped foot in the place, he’d acted . . . not superior, exactly, but definitely dismissive. If he kept it up they were the ones who’d get dismissed. Right into a cell.

“He has a hard time with sayings,” she told the detective.

“He has a hard time with his hearing, if you ask me.”

“I meant slang and colloquialisms. Like ‘a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.’ ”

“Especially if you’re hungry,” Conn added.

“Not helping,” Rae said under her voice.

Detective Hershowitz sat silently through the Laurel and Hardy routine. He wasn’t amused. “You should be grateful you’re not handcuffed or in a holding cell.”

“We are,” Rae said. “
Very
grateful. Especially about the handcuffs.”

“Don’t like handcuffs, huh?” Detective Hershowitz asked, leaning in her direction and shifting from stern to . . . not so stern. With an overtone of
Ick
. “Bad associations?” he asked her. “I mean, you don’t have any record or anything, so . . .” His eyes shifted in Conn’s direction, went hard again. “King Kong like to get rough?”

“Hey, personal! And he is not my boyfriend.”

“Boy?”

Rae whipped around. “Now is not the time to worry about how manly we think you are.”

“So what’s the deal with you two? Him not being your boyfriend, why are you together? He doesn’t need an accountant, he needs a psychiatrist.”

“Uhhhh . . . I should get that,” Rae said, when her phone, sitting on the desk with all their other possessions, rang.

Hershowitz slapped a hand on hers, then picked up the phone himself. She was praying the call wasn’t from her parents.

It wasn’t. The way Hershowitz sat up straight in his chair was her first clue. Her second came when he handed the phone to Conn.

Rae intercepted it. “Who is this?”

“Put Larkin on.”

“Not until you tell me who you are and where you’re from.”

“I’m the guy who can have you thrown into a cell and charged with any number of crimes, regardless of what you actually did and what the local yokels decide to do about it.”

“It’s for you,” she said, handing the phone to Conn. “If this guy is an example of your friends, I can see why you wouldn’t want your memory back.”

But she moved in close so she could hear both sides of the conversation. Conn didn’t discourage her.

“You missed your last check-in,” the grump on the other end of the call said. “I was about to send someone after you—until your prints turned up in the system, then I was pretty sure you were dead.”

“Who is this?” Conn asked him.

“You’re joking, right? It’s Mike.”

“No, Mike, he’s not joking,” Rae said. “He got hit over the head a week ago, and lost his memory.”

“Jesus, Conn, you’re letting a ci—You’re letting her listen in? You really have lost your memory. What if she’s one of them?”

Rae snatched the phone out of Conn’s hand, saying, “Let me handle this,” when he wanted to move in close.

“One of whom?” she said into the phone.

“A criminal,” Mike said.

“That’s interesting, because I was wondering the same thing, Mike. How do we know you’re not the criminal?”

“Because I’m not,” he said with the kind of authority and a lack of patience that told her he was an important guy. It didn’t tell her he was on the up and up, so either he worked for some law enforcement agency, probably federal, or he was with the mafia.

Either way it wasn’t good for her.

“Put Larkin back on,” he said in a voice that sounded like he was chewing rock.

Rae looked at Hershowitz, then at Conn, not sure what to do. Conn didn’t have a clue what was what. He needed her. On the other hand, she had a pretty good idea she didn’t want any part of whatever Conn was mixed up in.

And then she remembered her parents. “Look,” she said into the phone.

“Handcuffs, jail cell, serious criminal charges,” Mike said. “Any of that meaningful to you?”

Rae huffed out a breath, handing the phone to Conn again, and this time she didn’t bother to listen in. She just didn’t have the heart to find out any sooner than necessary what new detour her life was going to take.

Conn did a lot of listening, said a couple of “uh-huhs,” and handed the phone to Detective Hershowitz. “Mike says to keep my head down and work on getting my memory back until he can send someone.”

“Did he tell you what’s going on?”

Conn shook his head. “He said he isn’t telling me anything, not even who he is, until I remember how to keep my mouth shut.”

Rae bit back her frustration. She wanted
answers
, dammit, but every time she thought she might get some fate conspired to leave her clueless and stranded with a man who was nothing but trouble. On every imaginable level.

“You can go,” Hershowitz said. “Just don’t steal any more cars.”

“Any chance you’ll tell me what that Mike guy said to you?”

“He said I could arrest you if you made a nuisance of yourself.”

Rae didn’t need to be told twice. She gathered her things together, retrieved her phone from the detective, and herded Conn out of the detective’s office.

“Well,” she said when they were in the lobby, “you must be a good guy.”

“You doubted me? I’m wounded.”

“Right, you’re destroyed. Sorry. So what does ‘good guy’ mean? You were with my parents’ group doing undercover work? Which means there’s some sort of criminal activity going on there?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Let’s go ask my mom and dad.”

Conn caught her by the upper arm. “Harry and his friends will be watching the faire.”

“But my parents—”

“Are fine. If they were a target they would have had trouble already. If we go back there, we will only bring it to them.”

Rae dug deep and managed to calm herself, mostly because what Conn said made sense. They’d sent Conn away for his safety, but she knew that if they were in danger, they’d have pulled up stakes and taken off, too. Still . . . “Maybe we should send the police.”

“And tell them what? There are outlaws at the Renaissance faire?”

Rae huffed out a breath, crossing her arms. “They’ll think we’re pulling a prank.”

“If you mean jesting, aye, you’re right.”

“And what about Harry and Joe? They broke into the dealership to get my name and address, but they botched it. Otherwise they’d have been on their way to my house. All they have to do is pose as reporters, or bribe someone at the dealership. Jim looked bribable. Heck, Jim will probably give them my address for free after the trouble we caused.”

“Then we leave.”

“What will that solve?”

“We’ll be safe—”

“That’s just geography. You have to get your memory back. That’s the only solution.”

“How do you suggest I do that?” Conn said, every bit as angry and frustrated as she was, for all he kept his voice completely flat.

“Stop fighting it. Stop being all Zen and go-with-the-flow and laid-back. Pretend you’re in danger—which you are, by the way—and get a clue.” She was yelling at him by the time she finished that sentence, and all the police were staring at her. So she used it to her advantage. “Can someone call us a cab?”

CONN WAS STILL ANGRY, STEWING THE ENTIRE CAB ride back to her house. “We’re just going to pack some things and then we’ll go away for a few days,” she said once she’d paid the cab and it was gone.

He didn’t answer, or look at her. And he didn’t shrug. She missed the shrug.

“I’m sorry I went to the police.”

“You broke a promise,” he said.

“They were going to catch us anyway. I just made it so we could talk to them on our terms.”

Conn rolled his shoulders. “Do you think it wise for us to be here?”

Progress, she thought, even if he still wasn’t looking at her. “Even if the Stooges know the police let us go, which they can’t possibly, and even if they know where I live, they’re probably lying low until the heat dies down . . . they’re staying home until they think the authorities have stopped looking for them.”

She moved into her bedroom while she talked to throw some clothes in an overnight bag, then to the bathroom, and then to Conn’s room. She didn’t figure he was worried about clothes since she could hear him banging around in the kitchen, probably trying to bring every crumb of food in the place.

“There’s just one problem,” she called out, dropping the bags in the living room on the way to the kitchen. “We don’t have a car—oh.”

Harry stood by the kitchen door, flanked by Joe and the chubby, balding man who seemed to be their designated driver. Harry had a gun pointed at Conn.