High Tide (8 page)

He hadn't been embarrassed when
she
was the naked one, but now that the tables were turned, he … What? Thought she would jump on him?

“Go on, get in the shower. I promise I won't look.” Her tone was that of a mother talking to a nine-year-old who'd newly turned modest.

He seemed to hesitate for a moment, but then he turned away from the bathroom. Some tough guy, she thought, chuckling to herself.

“If I let you walk out the door, I'm an accessory to murder,” he said as he walked to the big window and looked out between the drapes.

“Right, and you have to protect your own skin,” she said.

“Look,” he said as he dropped the curtain and looked back at her, “I know that right now you want to run, but where would you go? You can't very well fly back to New York and walk into work tomorrow as though nothing happened. Roy was a prominent man, and his murder will make the news.”

“I didn't kill him.”

“Probably not,” Ace said as he pulled out a shaving case from his duffel bag. “Come in the bathroom and sit.”

“I will not—” she began, but then thought, Why not? She went into the bathroom with him and sat on the toilet while he shaved.

“The way I see it, I'm doing you a favor,” he said, foam on his face, a safety razor at his throat.

Fiona was looking about the room for something heavy to hit him over the head with. But the room had long ago had everything stolen from it that could be carried away. Maybe the razor would slip …

“And how are you doing me a favor?” she said. If she could get him to turn his back when he returned to the bedroom, maybe she could hit him with the chair.

“If you ran, you'd be a fugitive from justice, and—”

She forgot about killing him. “Justice? You can say that word to me? What do you know about justice? I was taken away from Kimberly to go on a slimy fishing trip, and—”

“Who is Kimberly?” he asked as he dried his face.

“Really,” Fiona said with the heaviest sarcasm she could muster. “Bird feathers in your ears and eyes? Do you actually
live
in America?”

As he picked up the phone, he gave her a puzzled look, but the next moment he was talking to someone. “Ham and eggs, hash browns, toast, coffee, the works. Yeah, and that too. Sure. You can deliver it to—You don't deliver? But I'm in the motel just across—Oh, I see.” Ace waited a moment before he spoke again, then he lowered his voice and spoke in honeyed tones. “But couldn't you make an exception just this once? For me?” He was obviously talking to a woman.

“I'm going to be ill,” Fiona muttered, then took one long step toward Ace, snatched the phone from his hands, and said into the receiver, “There's a twenty tip in it for you.”

“Be there in a tick,” a woman's voice said; then the phone went silent.

Fiona dangled the receiver from her fingertips while looking Ace straight in the eyes, an I-told-you-so smile curving her lips. “You're out of high school now … Ace.” She said his name with contempt. “Not all women are cheerleaders lusting after the football captain.”

Turning her back on him, she walked away, at least as far
as the small room would allow. Truthfully, the longer she spent with this man the more ready she was to turn herself in to the police. Now that she was fully awake, she was thinking of the seriousness of murder and that if she didn't kill Roy, either this man or the fish cleaner did.

Or maybe the two men had done it together.

For a moment neither Fiona nor Ace said a word.

“Soccer,” Ace said. “I played soccer in high school, not football.”

Fiona almost said, “So did I,” but she conquered herself. Right now she was concentrating on springing out the door the second the waitress appeared. If she could escape him, maybe the best thing to do would be to turn herself in to protective custody.

Minutes later there was a knock on the door. After all, how long did it take to fry perfectly good food into the greasy mass that was sloshing about on the tray the woman held out?

“That'll be sixteen fifty, plus tip of course,” she said, beaming up at Ace with so much concentration that she didn't notice Fiona edging toward the door. “I even brought you this morning's paper. It's all about those two killers from …”

She had glanced down at the newspaper, then back up at Ace, but she quickly looked back at the paper again, and her eyes widened. The next instant she looked up and saw Fiona in a position as though she were about to spring.

With a quick scream of pure terror, the plump waitress dropped the tray and began running across the parking lot to the diner.

“What the hell was that all about?” Ace said, standing there watching the woman run.

Stooping, Fiona grabbed the paper.

It took both of them precious moments to comprehend what they were seeing. Photographs of Ace and Fiona were on the front page, and the headlines said that they were killers on the run. Below their picture was a shot of Eric lying on a hospital bed, one eye swollen shut, his face a mass of bruises, and the caption said he'd been left for dead by Ace and Fiona after the brutal slaying of Roy Hudson.

Ace grabbed their two bags, the car keys, and as he went out the door, he grabbed Fiona's arm and pulled her toward the Jeep. Within seconds they were screeching by the windows of the diner. Every patron in the place was standing at the window watching and pointing.

“Bonnie and Clyde,” Fiona shouted over the sound of the tires tearing out of the parking lot. “I feel like Bonnie and Clyde.”

“Yeah,” Ace yelled back, “and look how they ended up.”

Six
 

She had to give it to him: he could drive. He wasn't reckless, and she doubted if he even once exceeded the speed limit, but he moved in and out of traffic with quick efficiency. He wove the car down side streets in residential areas, always with his eyes on all three mirrors as he watched to see if anyone was following them. She didn't ask him if he had a place for them to go because she was afraid that he would have a negative answer.

Once he mumbled something.

“What?!” she asked in fear.

“Redheaded woodpecker,” he said. “Rare in this area.”

Given their circumstances, she could only blink at this remark.

After about forty minutes he pulled the sun visor down and removed a little black remote control, pushed a red button
and the next minute they glided into a garage and the door closed behind them. “Come on,” he said without looking at her, then disappeared inside a door, leaving her in the car.

Slowly, Fiona got out of the car, her backpack on her shoulder. When she stepped through the door, she was in a small kitchen, very plain, clean, but with a feeling that no one actually used it. She could hear a voice through the doorway. Cautiously, she stepped into a living room that had a white Berber carpet and black leather furniture. There were three big watercolors of local Florida scenes on the walls. Hotel rooms were more personal than this place.

Ace was sitting on the couch talking into a telephone.

Fiona thought that she should put her finger on the button and cut him off, but she didn't. Common sense overrode her fear. If the police didn't know where they were, why did she have to fear a telephone tap?

“You have the names?” Ace was saying. “Right.” “Yes, I understand.” “Yeah, here at Joe's.” “No, I'll stay here as long as I can.” “Yes, she's here with me.”

At that Ace leaned back against the couch and looked at Fiona sitting on the matching black leather chair. “No, no, of course not,” he said into the phone, then smiled. “She's as tall as me, so she's wearing my clothes.”

At that Fiona sat upright and glared at him.

The reply of the person on the other end made him smile broader. “Yeah, okay, tell her not to worry, I have it under control. I'll wait for your fax.” He paused. “Yeah, okay, and you too.”

When he put down the receiver, Fiona was still glaring at
him, but he ignored her. “Are you hungry? I'm not sure what there is to eat here.”

Fiona came off the couch in one motion and planted herself in front of him. “I want to know what's going on. What do you have under control? Where are we? Who were you calling, and what was so funny about your … about these clothes? Except that I'm sick of them, that is.”

He was wrong, she thought, he was at least two inches taller than she was. They'd be equal if she had on heels, but in the old tennis shoes, she had to look up to him, ever so slightly, but she was looking up.

As he often did, he ignored her; he stepped around her and went into the kitchen. Fiona was inches behind him, so close in fact that he almost hit her in the face with the freezer door of the side-by-side.

“Ah, here we have a variety of frozen grease. So what's your poison?” He held up two packages—one of eggs wrapped around ham and another of eggs wrapped around cheese.

She took a deep breath. “I want to know what's going on,” she said as calmly as she could. “I am wanted for murder. The newspaper—”

“No,
we
are wanted for murder.” He'd put the frozen packages back into the freezer and was now looking in the cupboards. “You know how to make pancakes?”

At that Fiona put her arms straight down to her sides, her hands in fists, opened her mouth, and let out a scream.

Ace had his hand over her mouth before she'd let an ounce of air escape her lungs. “What the hell do you think you're doing?” he demanded. “If someone heard you, they might investigate.” Slowly, he removed his hand and nodded
toward the countertop in the kitchen. “Now sit down while I make breakfast.”

She didn't move. “So help me, if you don't tell me what's going on, I'll scream my head off.”

“You really do have trouble with anger, don't you? Have you thought of seeing a counselor?”

At that Fiona opened her mouth again, but this time he didn't move. Instead, he just looked at her speculatively.

Closing her mouth, Fiona narrowed her eyes at him. “So why aren't we at the police station, Mr. Do-Gooder? Just hours ago you were telling me that I couldn't be a fugitive from justice, that I had to turn myself over to the police. But now that you're also accused, we're hiding.”

“You want blueberries in your pancakes?”

“I want some answers!” she shouted at him.

“All right,” he said, “but sit while you ask me what you want to know.”

“No,” she said calmly as she took a seat on a barstool on the far side of the counter, “I don't play that game. I don't beg you for information. You start talking.”

“I guess it would be too much to ask that
you
would cook while I explain.”

Fiona gave a snort of derision. She had no idea how to turn on a stove, much less make food with one of the things.

“Thought not. All right, as you know, Eric killed Roy Hudson last night so we—”

“Wait a minute,” Fiona said slowly, her hands on either side of her head. “I thought you believed that
I
killed the man.”

Ace was at the stove, his back to her, but he turned
around, a look of astonishment on his face. “How could you have killed a man twice your size?”

“This is not funny,” she said, “and I don't appreciate your levity.”

“Okay,” he said with a sigh as he turned back to the griddle on the stove. “I had to get you out of there last night, so I pretended to Eric that I believed you were the killer. For all I knew he had a couple of stowaways on the boat ready to attack us.” He placed the first stack of pancakes in front of her.

Since it was more than she usually ate in two days, she got up, found another plate, then lifted all but one of the pancakes and put them on the empty plate. During this she was thinking about what he was saying and doing her best to remember all that had happened last night.

“But later when we were alone, why did you keep saying that you thought I was a murderer?”

“To keep you angry so you wouldn't think about what had just happened.” He had a spatula laden with yet more pancakes. “Is that all you're eating?”

“Yeah,” she said with a cold look at him. “We unwomanly women don't eat too much.” But the pancakes were quite good.

He put two more on her plate, put three pats of butter on each pancake, then slathered the whole stack in syrup.

“You were going to turn me in to the police,” she said as she looked at the pancakes and decided to take just one more bite.

“Protective custody. Seemed to me that Eric had it in for you. Or maybe it was just that you were the weaker of the two of us.” At that he held up his hands as though to prevent her attacking him for his non-p.c. reply, and she saw
that the backs of his hands were deeply scratched. It must have been painful for him to drive.

“I'm sorry,” she mumbled, her mouth full, her eyes on her plate, her face red in memory of his holding her in the shower.