Escape Out of Darkness (3 page)

“In my suitcase in the backseat. You can wait till we get to our motel room. Another fifteen minutes won’t kill you.”

“It might,” he said grimly. “Did you say motel room, singular?”

“Don’t be coy. We’re married, remember? You’re not going to pull any nonsense about who’s sleeping where, are you?”

“All I want is a bed, Maggie.” He’d shoved the hat to the back of his head, but he still kept the sunglasses in place despite the twilight landscape. “I know better than to make a pass at Superwoman.”

“Don’t call me that,” she said tightly.

He grinned then. “Listen, kid, it’s a compliment. You leave me breathless and in awe.”

“I’ll leave you unconscious if you don’t watch it,” she warned. “I’m not in the mood to be teased.”

“Maggie, you may look like Miss Sweden and act like Superwoman, but you’ve got the personality of a king cobra. Don’t you ever lighten up?”

She thought about it for a moment. Every muscle in her body ached, her eyes were gritty and stinging, and she would have given anything to be able to dump Mack Pulaski at the nearest airport. But it wasn’t his fault, and normally she would have responded to his teasing with better temper. But she was too damned tired to make the effort.

“Pulaski, if anyone could ever die of jet lag, I’m going to be the one. I was in London twenty-four hours ago, and I didn’t get more than three or four hours of sleep a night while I was over there. I am so tired I could cry, and I’m sorry if I’ve been less than gracious, but that’s life and you’re going to have to put up with it. I’ll keep you safe but I’m not going to flirt with you. And it’s Denmark.”

“What?”

“I’d be Miss Denmark. My father’s Danish.” She pulled off the road in front of a low, rambling motel that had clearly seen better days. “You stay put—I’ll go register.”

His hand reached out and caught her arm, and she noted its strength with absent relief. He’d be able to hold his own if it came to that. “You stay put,” he said. “When married couples travel it’s the husband who registers, not the little woman.”

“Little woman!” she roused herself enough to snap.

“A definite misnomer in this case, but the idea’s the same. I’ll be right back.”

She watched him go with her mind in a fog. Someone could leap out of the bushes, shoot him in the back, and she’d just be sitting in the car like a zombie. Well, too bad. Until she got a few hours of sleep he was going to have to fend for himself. He was strong, so surely he could manage for just a few minutes while she sat here and closed her eyes. …

“Hawkeye, incoming wounded …” The voice blared into her unconsciousness, and she burrowed deeper, away from the sound. “Hawkeye …” Maggie rolled over, away from the noise, and then suddenly her eyes shot open, all her senses alert.

“Not Superwoman after all,” Mack’s raw skeleton of a voice came from a few feet away. “Have you decided to join the living again, Maggie?”

Maggie raised her head, looking around her in complete disorientation. She was lying on a double bed in a motel room that had clearly seen better days. The paint was peeling, the color scheme was mud, the air-conditioning was complaining loudly enough to be heard over the black-and-white television with its interminable
M*A*S*H
reruns, and the bed beneath her closely resembled a sack of potatoes. Mack was lying stretched out on the second double bed, which filled the small room to bursting. He’d taken a shower, and drops of water still beaded his shaggy blond hair. The two weeks’ growth of beard was scraped clean from his chin, the sunglasses were reposing on the bedside table, and he was lying there in faded jeans, a black T-shirt, and bare feet. There was a very dark amber glass of Jack Daniel’s in his hand and an amused smile lingering around his mouth and lighting those warm hazel eyes of his.

“Wake up, little Maggie. I’ve got a sandwich for you from the sleazy little cafe. You won’t like it much, but I don’t think it’ll kill you. But I’m not sure if I’ll survive their chili.”

“Why did you eat chili? I would have thought you’d be sick
of it by now,” she said wearily, pulling herself into a sitting position on the lumpy bed.

“I’m a glutton for punishment. Do you always sleep like the dead?”

“Not usually. What’d you tell the motel manager?”

“That we were on our second honeymoon and I was going to carry you across the threshold. I don’t think he even bothered to look.” He reached down on the floor beside him and tossed her a paper bag. “Eat hearty, and don’t ask me what’s in it. Figure it’s just one more price you have to pay.”

Maggie swallowed the mystery sandwich dutifully, washing it down with the glass of whiskey Mack provided. “You want to call a truce?” she said when she’d finished.

“I was never fighting, Maggie,” he said. “You must be feeling more human after your nap.”

“I am,” she said, leaning back against the headboard. “And more observant too. Who are you, Pulaski?”

“I’ve already told you who I am.”

“I don’t mean now. I haven’t gotten a really good look at you until now, and you look strangely familiar. I can’t get over the feeling I’ve seen you before.”

“You may have,” he said casually, draining his glass and pouring himself a healthy second dose. “Were you into rock ’n’ roll in the late sixties, early seventies?”

“Who wasn’t? Even in my early teens I had a thing for Jim Morrison. Not to mention—oh, my God.”

He grinned. “You do have good powers of observation, don’t you? I don’t think I’ve been recognized in years.”

“Snake,” she breathed. “You were the lead singer of the Why, weren’t you? With that glorious blond hair down to your hips. God, you were every teenybopper’s dream of heaven, in your leather pants and no shirt, leaping all over the stage. And that wonderful … voice …” She let it trail off, her enthusiasm draining. “Good God, what happened to you?”

“My run-in with friend Mancini,” he said with a shrug. “And don’t look at me with that shocked expression, Maggie. You
know as well as I do that things were pretty wild back then, and I was whacked-out. Different woman every night, different drug every hour. Or maybe it was the other way around. I was an arrogant bastard, and I thought people like Mancini couldn’t touch me if I decided what they provided wasn’t the proper quality. A couple of his goons taught me otherwise. A kick in the throat can put quite a dent in a singing career.” He took another sip of his whiskey, and Maggie stared at him, unbelieving.

“And you don’t want to kill him?” she demanded. “You’re in a position for revenge, and you don’t want to take it?”

“It happened more than fourteen years ago, Maggie May. I’ve had a lot of time to come to terms with it. Mick Jagger might be able to shake his ass all over the stage at age forty, but I haven’t got his stamina. I was all set to burn out early and, in a way, Mancini gave me a second chance. You can’t do illicit drugs when you’re in intensive care for a month.”

“But Mancini must think you want to crucify him.”

“Don’t get me wrong. I’d love for people like Mancini to be run out of business. I’m just not about to offer my aging body as a sacrifice in the cause. You can be Superwoman. I’m only a mere mortal who’d like to make it to the other side of forty.”

“Pulaski, I’ll ask you nicely. Please don’t call me Superwoman,” she said.

“Since you ask me nicely, I’ll do my best. But it’s tempting. You want to tell me why you don’t like it?”

“Maybe when you know me better.”

“Am I going to get to know you better?” It was an idle question.

“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe not.”

She let Mack drive the next day. He’d been almost docile the night before, remaining in his own bed without a single suggestive remark escaping that remarkably sexy mouth of his. He hadn’t even objected when she insisted on leaving the bedside
light on. He’d merely slouched down in the bed and covered his face with his hat. A few moments later he was snoring quietly.

She hadn’t expected to sleep so well. She wasn’t used to sharing a room, particularly with a healthy, attractive member of the opposite sex, and she was still keyed up and almost too tired from the last forty-eight hours to sleep.

For some reason Peter Wallace kept creeping into her mind. It had been months since their affair had faded away from lack of interest, and its end had been so subtle she’d hardly noticed it. That was what bothered her the most, she thought, punching the lumpy pillow. Maybe she wasn’t able to fall in love, maybe her emotions had been so wrung out years ago that she had none left to give. The thought was depressing, and Mack’s sleeping body in the bed next to hers didn’t help matters. But his gentle snoring proved soporific, and the unexpected revelation of his past career faded out of her consciousness and into her dreams. Suddenly there he was, a long-distance kinescope of a sixties rock star, whirling, dancing, posturing, and prancing, that mane of thick blond hair flying around him, that glorious voice of his singing, howling, screaming, and crooning into the microphone. Until even that dream faded into a deep sleep that lasted until six the next morning.

The arid land of the Navajo reservation seemed endless as they drove from Utah into Arizona. The radio picked up nothing but static and Barry Manilow, the artificial climate produced by the air conditioner made Maggie’s eyes itch, and there wasn’t a fast-food joint in sight.

But at least there was no black sedan in sight either. The roads were filled with the requisite pickups that seemed the major form of transportation in that part of the world, interspersed with the omnipresent Winnebagos.

“I like the name of that one,” Mack said out of the blue. “The Snow Princess out of Fairbanks, Alaska. You’d think if they lived in a place that pretty, they wouldn’t bother to travel.”

Maggie was instantly alert. “Don’t you think that’s sort of a
suspicious name? I mean, isn’t snow another word for cocaine? Or is it heroin?”

Mack gave her an amused glance. “Are you seriously going to tell me that Mancini and his boys would advertise if they went undercover? Or the CIA? Or the rebels?”

“Hell, Pulaski, you have too damned many enemies,” Maggie said, leaning back. “You’re right of course. You didn’t happen to get a look at who was driving?”

He grinned. “A very large, very cheerful-looking lady well past sixty years old. Her equally large, equally cheerful spouse was beside her.”

“How do you know they’re married? You shouldn’t jump to such conclusions. If they were both looking cheerful, they are probably living in sin.”

Mack gave her a brief, curious glance. “I take it you’ve been married too.”

“Not on your scale. Just once, for a very short time,” she said, looking back at the Snow Princess with not much more than idle curiosity. It lumbered along in serene innocence. “We both knew it was a mistake, and fortunately neither of us was so egocentric that we couldn’t admit it. I was on the rebound, and I should have known better. Did you ever marry on the rebound?”

“Maybe number two, but I don’t really remember. I stopped marrying them a while before I lost my voice, and most of that time is a little vague.” He smiled at her, that curiously seductive smile that she wasn’t sure she trusted. “So who were you rebounding from?”

“A man. And a way of life,” she said repressively. “And that’s all I care to say about it. You want to tell me about your love life?”

“We’ve got only two days to Houston, Maggie May. I don’t think I’d get past age twenty.”

He managed to get a laugh out of her. “You’re a con artist. I bet you played havoc with all the groupies’ hearts.”

“Groupies don’t have hearts. Besides, I’ve learned my lesson.
I’m now down to one woman at a time. Quality wears a lot better than quantity.”

“I imagine it does.” She sat back, remembering for a moment. Quality and quantity. When it came right down to it, her past had been sorely lacking in both. Of course there was more than one kind of quality. There was breathless, mesmerizing, addictive passion that left you stupid and vulnerable and in so much pain it took years to recover. And then there was the quality that came with a good man trying his best, with her doing everything she could to love him back and, ultimately, failing. She’d known that with Will, her husband of eight short months, and she’d known it with Peter Wallace. The sense of emptiness and failure that had been nagging at her for the past few months came back full force.

Maybe it was bad blood. Maybe she was doomed to follow in her mother’s footsteps, always falling in love with the wrong man, never being able to love the right one. Her sisters hadn’t been blessed with any more luck than she had. Kate was on the verge of a divorce, Holly seemed to go through men like Kleenex, and Jilly kept away from them altogether. They were a sorry lot, the four of them.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Mack’s voice rasped beside her, and she looked up, startled.

“I was thinking about my family. You got any brothers or sisters?”

“One brother. He lives in Seattle, drives a car very much like this one, and totally disapproves of me. Loves me, but thinks I have a helluva life-style.”

“So you do.”

Mack shrugged. “I like it when I’m not being gunned down. It’s not for Alan, but then I’d suffocate if I had to live his life. He’s a stockbroker, with a socially ambitious wife, socially ambitious children, even socially ambitious dogs. I think their image is more real to them than what’s behind it.”

“What is behind it?”

“Basically good people but lacking in depth. Do you have brothers and sisters, Maggie May?”

“Three sisters. Half sisters, to be exact.” She wrinkled her forehead. “Actually, I guess I have more than that. My mother had four daughters, my father had me and then three sons by his second wife. I tend to think of my half brothers as more like cousins. It’s odd, because they’re just as closely related as Kate or Holly.” She shook her head.

“So what were you thinking about your family?” It was a casual question, one to wile away the long hours of Arizona flatland, but Maggie wasn’t in the mood to spill her soul.

“Just that I missed them,” she said evasively. She could see by the look he gave her that he wasn’t fooled, but he dropped the subject. She was learning he had a way of doing that, pushing just a little bit, then pulling back when she got uncomfortable. She sort of liked that about him. She sort of liked a lot of things about him, even though she still wasn’t quite sure she trusted him.

“Do you have any more of those nails you threw on the road yesterday?” he asked in a tone of no more than casual curiosity.

She looked at him, as she had many times during the morning, trying to superimpose her memory of the legendary Snake on the rumpled, world-weary, very real man beside her. He had the mirrored sunglasses perched on his nose and his hands were resting with casual competence on the leather-covered steering wheel. Big hands, strong hands, she noticed.

And then his words penetrated her abstraction and Maggie was instantly alert. “I threw them all. Why?”

“Because while I think the Snow Princess is completely innocent, I’m not too sure about the Little Hustler from Mobile, Alabama. Vern and Donna Jean and Jennifer and Tommy are supposed to be inside. Instead, they look like Juan and Carlos and Manuel. And I don’t think they’re here to see the sights.”

“The men in the car yesterday weren’t Hispanic.”

“So we’ve traded one set for another. Great.” Mack straightened in his seat, just marginally, and she could see those strong,
broad hands of his flex experimentally around the steering wheel. “Where’s the Snow Princess?”

“I can’t see it but I guess it’s behind the Little Hustler. Do you want me to drive?”

“I thought we already agreed that in these circumstances we didn’t have time to stop and switch drivers?” His voice was still casual. “You’re going to have to leave it up to me. Fasten your seat belt.”

At least he’d stopped calling her Superwoman, she thought gratefully. “Are you sure you can handle it?”

“We don’t have much choice, now do we? If it’s any consolation, I can tell you that I managed to survive two Ferraris, a Corvette, and a Jaguar XKE in my misspent youth. I can assure you I did not drive slowly.”

“This thing doesn’t handle like an XKE.”

“No, it handles like a goddamn tank. But at least it’s fast.” He cast a calm glance into the rearview mirror. “And I think it’s about time for it to prove its stuff.”

The Little Hustler had been gaining steadily. Mack had been accelerating, pushing the speedometer up and up, but the RV had managed to keep pace, even move closer. The Snow Princess was left far behind in the summer dust, but things were still overtly polite between the white sedan and the Winnebago. Maggie huddled down in the seat, her eyes trained on the side mirror.