The Defiant Hero (32 page)
“I didn’t know where you were.”
That was bullshit and they both knew it. “You could have found me easily enough—at least got a message to me.”
She sighed. “It had been years,” she said, and he knew she was venturing closer to the truth. “For all I knew . . .”
She looked out the window again.
Nils waited fifteen seconds. Thirty. Forty-five. “What?” he asked, unable to keep his mouth shut a second longer.
She shook her head.
“What? Come on, Meg, for all you knew what?” Hurt rasped in his voice, but he couldn’t stop. “Don’t leave something like that dangling, god damn it!”
It came out in a burst. “For all I knew, you didn’t even remember me!”
Silence.
Meg stared out the window again as Nils hung onto the steering wheel.
He was stunned. He didn’t know whether to be aghast at her lack of self-confidence, or insulted by her lack of faith in him.
What had she thought he’d meant that night?
I want you so much. He’d kissed her mouth, her neck—her head thrown back, desire etched on her beautiful face. She’d opened her eyes and tugged him down the hall toward her bedroom, unbuttoning his jacket, sliding her hands up underneath his shirt. He could hardly breathe, hardly think, and he kissed her again, just kissed her and kissed her, pinning her against the wall, there in the hall outside her bedroom door.
He knew they needed to talk more before they made love. If they made love. Jesus, she was married. And back then, that had mattered to him. Or maybe just she had mattered to him. He knew they should slow down. But what he knew hadn’t quite caught up with what he wanted.
Nor with what she wanted. He felt her fingers on his belt and . . .
“I’m offended,” he said, yanking himself back to the present, shifting slightly in his seat, wishing that none of this mattered anymore, that time had done what time was supposed to do and had taken the edge off of everything he’d felt for her, everything he’d wanted so desperately.
Instead that edge had been honed to a razor sharpness that could slice him to pieces if he let it.
It had been the last time he’d seen her in years. She’d unzipped his pants and . . .
And he’d been all over her, too, pulling off that ridiculous jacket, slipping her dress down past her shoulders, filling his hands with her breasts as he kissed her again and again. I’ve never felt anything like this before. God, Meg, I’ve never wanted anyone as much as I want you. . . .
“How could you think I wouldn’t remember you?” he asked her now. He’d lifted his head, looked into her eyes. I’ve been waiting my whole life for you. “Didn’t you think I meant anything that I said?”
She didn’t. She hadn’t. She shook her head now, unwilling to admit it. “I didn’t know what to think.”
“ ‘I want you so much,’ ” he quoted himself. “I think I must’ve said it five thousand times. Gee. What could I have meant?”
“I thought it was just . . . you know . . .”
“A line?” he supplied the word for her. “Yeah, I’ve found that always works really well. Tell a woman that you want her so much that you can’t even breathe, and then don’t sleep with her when she tells you in plain English that she wants you, too. If I hadn’t cared about you enough to remember you, I wouldn’t have walked out of there that night.”
Jesus, talk about regrets. He should have taken what she’d offered, gone for the single night, to hell with what she’d feel in the morning.
He’d done plenty of one-nighters since then—usually all with married women. He’d pretended that it was the excitement of breaking the rules, of taking something that didn’t belong to him that had attracted him to Meg in the first place.
But he’d proven himself wrong again and again, waking up in some stranger’s bed, unsatisfied and disgusted with himself.
And aching for Meg.
“I thought—” She closed her eyes. “I didn’t know what to think. You were so young and everything about that entire situation was so emotional. I thought you were swept up in the moment. I thought . . .” She took a deep breath. “John, I never really felt as if I knew you. I mean, it always seemed to me as if you—the real you—were hiding behind this fiction you’d created, this make-believe life. And this, I don’t know, this earnest sincerity that you could do so well was just part of the charade. It was real for that moment, but I never really believed it was more than a game.”
Nils didn’t know what to say. It was the biggest sacrifice he’d ever made in his entire life—walking away from Meg that night, knowing that he could have her, make love to her, spend the next few hours in paradise.
And she thought he’d been playing some game.
“I didn’t forget you,” he told her quietly. “Not for one minute.”
He could see in her eyes that she still didn’t quite believe him.
And he knew that that was his own damn fault.
Alyssa Locke’s cell phone rang.
If Sam hadn’t known she’d been waiting for some vital phone call, he wouldn’t have guessed there was anything going on.
The expression on her face didn’t change one bit, yet without moving a single muscle, her tension level elevated from tightly wound to near breaking. Still, if he hadn’t been watching for it, if he wasn’t hyperaware of her every move and her every breath, he wouldn’t have noticed.
She turned away from him to take the call, as if by presenting him with her back, she’d created some kind of cone of silence that would keep him from overhearing her conversation. “Locke.”
Sam drained his beer and pretended not to listen.
“Oh, my God, oh, my God!” Alyssa turned back, gripping the bar as if she’d fall out of her chair if she weren’t holding on.
Sam stopped pretending not to listen.
“Okay,” she said into the phone. “All right. I’ll . . .” She looked directly at Sam as if she’d just remembered he was there. “Shit! I can’t get over to the hospital right now. Tell her . . .”
She had tears in her eyes. For the briefest split second, Sam was positive he’d actually seen tears in Alyssa Locke’s usually arctic eyes. But then she blinked and they were gone.
“Yeah,” she said to whoever was on the other end of the connection. “And tell her I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“What’s up?” Sam asked as she slipped the phone back into her fanny pack. She was still clinging to the bar with one hand. “Are you all right?”
She looked into his eyes. Normally she looked around him, above him or through him, but right now, she actually met and held his gaze.
“That was the phone call you’ve been waiting for,” he said. “Anything I can do to help?”
He’d surprised her, and as he watched, he could almost see her brain work, processing the fact that he’d known she’d been waiting on a call, processing . . .
“Why do you want to help me?” she asked.
“Which hospital is it?” he countered. “I was originally thinking you were waiting on a boyfriend to call, but that wasn’t . . .” Tell her . . . she’d said. Her . . . “Is it your mother? Is she sick?”
“My mother died when I was a teenager.”
Oh, hell. “I’m sorry.” His own mother hadn’t ever been much of a prize, but she loved him. Despite marrying his asshole of a father, she’d never done anything truly awful, like go and die on him.
“It’s my sister,” Alyssa told him. “Tyra. She just went into labor. She’s having a baby. Her first baby. It’s been kind of a . . . rocky pregnancy.”
Rocky must be putting it lightly. Alyssa was still hanging on to the bar as if she’d fall on her head if she let go. She was terrified.
“Is she local?” Sam asked. “Or is this happening out in California? Don’t I remember you telling me something about growing up in California?”
She’d never said anything like that to him—never volunteered anything about herself. Yet this was a way to get her talking. She’d correct him without realizing she was revealing personal information.
“No,” she said. “I grew up right here, in Washington.”
Jackpot.
“Tyra’s over at the Howard University Hospital,” she continued.
“You want to go over there?” he asked. “You should. I’ll wait here.”
“Yeah, where have I heard that before?”
“Well, good,” he said, “at least you’re learning.”
Alyssa didn’t respond to his smile. She looked at her watch. “I’m going to call the hospital for an update in five minutes.”
“Look, why don’t you just go over there? We weren’t really going to do anything tonight anyway. I can do my Yoda imitation for you tomorrow.”
She shook her head. “I shouldn’t let you out of my sight.”
“Oh, hell. What happened? They found Johnny’s car—no Johnny, no Meg,” he guessed.
She narrowed her eyes. “Did he call you?”
Crap, he was right. “Where’d they find it?”
“So what you’re telling me is that he did go after Meg.”
Oops. “I didn’t say that.”
“And I didn’t say anyone found anything,” she countered.
Sam had to smile. “Well, there we go. Neither of us knows shit.”
For a half a second, he thought that she was maybe going to smile back. But instead she looked at her watch again.
“Come on,” he said, sliding down from the bar stool. “You’re going to the hospital. Do you have a car, or did you take a cab over here?”
She dug in her heels. “If Nilsson’s going to contact you, it’s going to be soon. I’m not going anywhere without you. Not until he turns up.”
“Well, guess what?” Sam said. “I’m going to visit your sister in the hospital. You can either follow me over there, or drive me in your car, save me cab fare. Your choice.”
She still didn’t move. “Why would you do this?” she asked. “You’re actually willing to spend the evening in a hospital . . . ?”
“I have a sister, too,” he reminded her quietly.
For a moment, she just stared at him, as if he were a talking dog or an alien from another planet. Her eyes were luminous and the expression on her face was one he’d never seen before. He knew that for some reason she was walking an emotional tightrope, and his kindness wasn’t helping. It was confusing her, making her teeter on the edge of some kind of meltdown.
“Besides,” he told her, with a grin and a waggle of his eyebrows, “it’s part of my devious plan to get you into bed.”
Now, a comment like that she could handle. It made sense in her world, gave her a point of reference. She snorted and headed for the door. “In your dreams.”
Sam followed her out the door. Absolutely, in his dreams. Every single night, probably for the rest of his cursed life.
“You’re finally glad that I’m here,” John said as he loaded Razeen back into the car. “Admit it.”
“I am,” Meg said. She shut her eyes. “But I’m not.”
They’d pulled off the highway and onto a deserted country road in Somewhere, Georgia, to make a pit stop.
Osman Razeen had been only semiconscious and drooling as John had helped him out of the car. A locked gate fenced off what looked like a deserted factory way back from the road. The wildly growing underbrush near the chainlink made a perfect makeshift rest room. They were mostly hidden from view, but John couldn’t grab Razeen in a fireman’s carry and escape into the woods.
Razeen couldn’t stand up by himself, let alone unzip his pants to relieve himself. If John hadn’t been there . . .
Meg had sat in the grass several dozen yards away from the car and kept an eye on the two men, trying not to watch too closely. While John had Razeen, she had custody of the car keys. No way was she going to risk John loading Razeen into the car, jumping in, and driving away without her.
Still, there was no doubt about it. She was not ready for a full-time career in hostage taking. She was worried about Razeen—about that blow to the head he’d received back in the motel room, about the amount of sleeping pills she’d already given him. It was probably time to give him more, yet he’d seemed so out of it.
John sprawled beside her, reclaiming the car keys and putting them into the front pocket of his coveralls. “Mind if I take a quick combat nap? I just need twenty minutes. . . .” His eyes were shut and his breathing steady almost before he hit the ground.
He was out. Sound asleep. Just like that.
That was impossible. Wasn’t it? He couldn’t really be asleep. Could he?
Meg sat up and, other than the steady rise and fall of his chest, he didn’t move.
She leaned forward, toward him, over him, watching his face for any little sign that he was faking it.
I didn’t forget you. Not for one minute.
John’s words had made her want to weep. She wasn’t sure which was worse—thinking that he wasn’t telling the truth, or thinking that he was.
He was asleep on his back, one hand on his chest, the other tucked under his head. He’d already gone into deep REM sleep—she could see his eyes moving beneath his lids. She didn’t think there was any way he could’ve faked that.
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