I Got You, Babe (11 page)

“It’s
grand theft auto.
Add that to your armed-robbery charge—”

“No! I just borrowed it!”

“Borrowed?”

“Yes! You practically gave me the keys!”

“Gave you...?” John paced back and forth as far as the phone cord would allow, gesturing wildly. “I didn’t
give
you anything!”

“Well, you didn’t exactly give them to me, but they were lying right there on the counter in plain sight, weren’t they?”

“So that gives you the right to steal my car?”

“Borrow
your car,” she explained.
“Borrow.”

Astonished by her convoluted logic, John wanted to beat his head against the wall. Once he got hold of her, he’d do the world a favor. He’d wrap his hands around her neck and cut off the blood supply to her scheming, illogical brain. Before long she’d be nothing more than a harmless little vegetable who smiled a lot, looked really pretty, and didn’t steal cars. His car in particular. That was what he’d do.

“Tell me where you are, Renee,” he said. “Right now. Tell me where you are, or I’ll have every cop, sheriff, sharpshooter, bloodhound, and SWAT team within a hundred miles breathing down your neck.
Do you understand?”

All at once John heard a muffled crackle, followed by a loud, scratchy female voice.

“Welcome to McDonald’s. May I take your order?”

A gasp.

Click.

John pulled the phone away from his ear, staring at it in dumb disbelief. Had he just heard what he thought he’d heard? A fast-food drive-in window? What kind of car-stealing fugitive stopped for a Big Mac?

John slammed down the receiver, thinking fast. In the time that had elapsed since Renee had grabbed his car, she couldn’t have made it to any other town besides Winslow. And in a dinky little town like this, how many McDonald’s could there be? Surely not more than one. If he called the local guys right now, chances were they could pick her up before she could say “Supersize it.” As he grabbed the phone again, though, something caught his eye across the street, maybe half a block down from the hospital.

Golden arches.

Chapter 6

T
he speaker blared again as the woman repeated her request for an order, but Renee’s hunger had vanished in a cloud of sheer panic. Where was John? Twenty miles away? One mile away? Standing right behind her?

The only reason she’d picked up that stupid phone was because she thought it was possible that Paula got the cell phone number off caller ID and was calling her back for some reason. The last thing she expected was to hear John’s voice on the other end of the line.

She had to get out of here. Now.

Unfortunately, the minivan was in front of her, at least three cars had pulled in behind her, and a row of carefully pruned holly bushes sat between her and the parking lot. Her panic level took a quantum leap. How was she going to get out of here?

Then the minivan moved up to the window and Renee felt a rush of relief. But relief edged into panic again when the gum-cracking McTeenager at the window started handing food to the driver. Bags and bags of food. And Cokes. And ice-cream sundaes. And chocolate-chip cookies. Renee estimated that in the span of two minutes, enough food went into that van to feed a third-world nation.

Then the driver handed an open cardboard container back to the McTeenager, pointing out something about that particular hamburger that evidently wasn’t right. Renee wanted to shout at him,
This is McDonald’s, not Burger King! You can’t have it your way!

She gripped the steering wheel until her hands ached. Surely her sense of time was warped right now. This food transference couldn’t actually be taking eons.

She leaned her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes, trying to get a grip. What were the odds of John’s being anywhere near here? About a thousand to one? Even a hundred to one didn’t sound so bad. All she had to do was hug the minivan’s bumper, and the second it pulled out, she would too. Everything was going to be okay. She took a deep, calming breath, then opened her eyes again.

John was coming across the street.

For a moment she sat there, frozen with disbelief, like the time she’d whacked her finger with a hammer but it took a second or two to feel the pain. Then a big red
danger
sign flashed in her brain, and she slapped her palm against the Explorer’s horn in one continuous blare, trying to get the kid to clear out.

He stuck his head out the window and glared at her. “Hey! Keep your shirt on, will you?”

At the same time, three long-haired girls—or maybe boys, she wasn’t sure which—plastered themselves against the back window of the minivan and gaped at Renee as if she were some kind of mind-numbing video game.

And John was closing in on her fast.

Renee rolled the window down, stuck her head out, and yelled at the kid, “Move! Please move!
Please
/”

He ignored her, continuing to hog the drive-through as if time were not a factor here, as if the woman in the green Explorer behind him wasn’t about to get mauled by one very large and very angry cop.

John leaped over a low hedge at the edge of the parking lot and strode toward her, his face a mask of unmitigated fury. On the verge of hysteria, Renee fingered the door handle, thinking about running. Then she thought again. John was bigger than she was, and certainly faster. She wouldn’t stand a chance.

She hit the button to roll the window up, then flicked the door locks. John circled the minivan and headed for the driver’s side of the Explorer, his teeth clenched, looking as if he were ready to explode. His left eye was practically swollen shut, surrounded by a Technicolor bruise that made half his face look like something out of a zombie movie.

Ever see a pissed-off cop, Renee?

Oh, yeah.
Now she had.

John yanked at the Explorer’s door handle. Finding it locked, hauled a gun from the waistband of his jeans and whipped it around until Renee was looking right down its barrel.

“Police! Put the car in park and turn off the engine!”

Renee gasped at the sight of the gun. She
hated
guns.

“I’m gonna blow a hole in this window!”

From the look on his face right now, she didn’t doubt it. She didn’t doubt he’d tear right through the door with his bare hands if that was what it took to get to her.

If only the kid in the car ahead of her had the good sense to get himself and his friends away from the raging wild man waving a gun around, Renee might have a shot at escape. But his gaze was glued to the spectacle John was creating as if he were watching an episode of
Cops.

“Last chance, Renee!”

She was trapped. Maybe it was better to let him in than to have him claw his way in. He’d still mangle her, of course, but maybe he’d actually let her live. She shoved the gearshift into park.

“Unlock the door!”

Renee’s finger hovered over the door lock.

“You’re resisting arrest! Unlock the door or I’m breaking the glass!
Now
!”

Renee held her breath and flipped the automatic switch. All four locks shot up. John stuck his gun back into the waistband of his jeans and jerked the door open. He clamped his hand onto her arm, yanked her from the car, and spun her around.

“Hands on the car!”

“John, please—”

“Shut up and put your hands on the car!”

She placed her hands on the car like a common criminal, which was exactly what he thought she was. He patted her down, running his hands roughly over her waist, her hips, then down each of her legs. She had a flash of the fantasies she’d had about him less than an hour ago, and not one of them had involved him touching her like this.

“You know I’m not armed,” she told him. “I don’t have a gun. I hate guns. I don’t even like the word—”

“Oh, yeah? The way I hear it, you shot a convenience-store clerk”

“It wasn’t me!”

He spun her back around, took her by the upper arms, and pinned her against the car, glaring down at her with an expression that bordered on the homicidal.

“You’re a lying, bail-jumping, car-stealing pyromaniac,” he muttered. “I ought to—”

“I’m innocent! I didn’t do what they say I did!”

“Innocent people don’t run! And they sure as hell don’t steal cars!”

“I was only borrowing it. Really. I—”

“You have a vocabulary problem, Renee.
Borrow
and
steal
are not the same thing. If I give you something, that’s borrowing. You take my keys while I’m sleeping, that’s stealing. Now get in the car!”

He shoved her through the driver’s door, then got in after her. The minivan still sat in front of them, its occupants glued to the situation as if this were a commercial break and the action would pick up again any minute.

John laid on the horn. The kid’s eyes flew open wide. He yanked his head back into the car, stomped the accelerator, and left the drive-through, apparently deciding that John’s possession of a firearm gave extra weight to his honking. As John drove by the window, the teenage girl on duty looked as if she’d swallowed her Dubble Bubble.

“You should have told me you were a cop,” Renee muttered.

“You should have told me you were a fugitive.”

“I’m not a fugitive! I mean, I am, but it’s only because—”

“Forget it. I don’t want to hear it.”

“'Where are we going?”

“To give you back to Leandro.”

Renee swallowed a gasp of sheer terror. Did he actually intend to throw her on the mercy of a madman? “But you’re a cop. Don’t you have priority, or seniority,
or something?”

 
“Only if I want to exercise it. The minute the bondsman posted your bail, you signed your rights away. He can send anyone after you he wants. Leandro has the authority to bring you in, and since I’ve had all the fun I care to have for one night, I think I’ll step aside and let him do it.”

“Please, John!
Please
don’t make me go back with him. He’s so angry—”

“Why? Because you torched his car? Gee, I can’t imagine why that would piss him off.”

“You know what he’s like. Don’t make me go with him. He’ll kill me. I swear he will!”

“He won’t kill you. They stopped that ‘dead or alive’ thing about a hundred years ago.”

“Please. I want you to take me back.
Please
.”

“I said
he
wouldn’t kill you. I didn’t say I wouldn’t.”

Renee came within an inch of believing that. She had never witnessed anything like the hard, intense, “I wanna maim somebody” look John was giving her right now, and it was all the more frightening because
she
was that somebody.

“John. Please listen—”

“No. I’m way past listening. Especially when all I hear are lies.”

“I’m sorry about that. But—”

“Sorry?
Sorry?
You lie to me, steal my car, and get me into a fight with a thousand-pound gorilla, and all you can say is you’re
sorry
?”

That was when Renee knew that this was more than just your average cop-to-fugitive animosity. John was taking this personally. Very personally. She’d made him look like a fool, and there was no way he was ever going to forgive her for that.

A moment later he slowed the car, then swung into a hospital parking lot and came to a halt in a spot near the emergency room door. Renee looked around questioningly.

“What are we doing here?”

“I told you. I’m giving you back to Leandro.”

“He’s here?”

“Only for as long as it takes them to shove his nose back into place.”

“You actually broke his nose?”

“Yeah. It’s standard operating procedure when you’re protecting innocent young things from their abusive boyfriends.”

Renee winced. If he’d intended to make her feel guilty, he’d succeeded.

John got out, circled the car, then dragged Renee out the other side. “I want you to behave in here,” he said, hustling her toward the door of the emergency room. “You step one foot out of line, and I’ll make whatever plans Leandro may have for retaliation look like a picnic in the park. Got that?”

 Renee fought the irrational urge to yank her arm away and run. What would be the point? She’d never get away from him. She’d just be putting him in an even fouler mood than he was already in.

John dragged her into the waiting room and up to the glass window. A middle-aged Hispanic woman in Snoopy scrubs with a stethoscope dangling around her neck stood behind the glass, flipping through a chart.

John slid the window open with a
thunk
and flashed his badge. “Where’s the guy who came in here a few minutes ago? Tall, smashed nose, ugly as sin?”

The woman eyed John’s badge. “He’s in the back.”

“He needs to come to the front. Right now.”

“Sorry. He’s doped up.”

“What?”

“He was complaining about pain, so I shot him up with Demerol. I’ve got a plastic surgeon on the way.”

“Surgeon?” John said with disbelief. “He’s having surgery?”

“Yeah. Whoever smacked him really did a number on him.”

“When will he be released?”

“Sometime tomorrow.”

John closed his eyes and muttered a curse. Renee felt an enormous surge of relief, an emotion John clearly didn’t share. He stuffed his badge back into his pocket with a harsh breath of frustration. “Well, that’s just great.”

The doctor leaned toward John and dropped her voice. “He’s not wanted, is he? Just between you and me, he has a face right off a post-office wall.”

“No,” John said wearily. “He’s not wanted.” Then he turned an accusing glare toward Renee, as if it were
her
fault that Leandro was out of commission.

“Pretty wicked-looking bruise you’ve got there,” the doctor told John. “Does your smashed-up face have anything to do with that guy’s broken nose?”

“You might say that.”

“You want me to take a look at it? You could have an orbital fracture. I can get a facial series—”