Infamous (38 page)

The tires squealed, then screamed, drowning out the roar of the engine.

“Now!” he shouted, and he, too, threw as much of his weight as he could over to the right side of the Jeep, and they didn’t go onto their side.

The guardrail came toward them, much too quickly, and A.J. turned the wheel hard, harder, still leaning. The Jeep skidded, sideways now, into the oncoming lane, scraping along the guardrail, metal on metal, with an unholy screech.

Alison was screaming—he was, too.

And the friction from the guardrail was slowing them down. But not enough.

Because then they were free of the curve, the Jeep rocketing out of the guided track of the guardrail like a pinball. As they headed downhill, they once again began to pick up speed.

A.J. glanced into the rear-view mirror to make sure Alison was okay. She was holding on for dear life, but she smiled at him, a fierce smile of victory. They’d made it past the deadly curve.

The first one on this road, anyway.

A.J. saw the cutaway before Jamie pointed to it.

It was big, but nowhere near as big as it needed to be to stop a heavy vehicle with no brakes. But it was at least as wide as it was long.

And it was flat, and he saw those orange barrels that Jamie had told him about.

“Hang on,” A.J. shouted to Alison. “We’re going off road.”

The Jeep bounced crazily as the tires left the pavement and hit the uneven dirt at the side of the road. A.J. had about four short seconds to decide whether to aim for the gate or the fence itself, and because the gate looked like it might pop right open, he went for the fence instead, hoping it would help slow them down.

But they smashed into the thing with all four wheels off the ground, and it didn’t offer much resistance—it just went down.

They landed on top of it with a bone-jarring crunch, bounced, bounced again.

And mud—or what was left of what must’ve been huge puddles of thick mud after that drenching rain and which had since turned into something softer than the usual hard, dusty ground—pulled at the tires and the Jeep skidded and slowed.

Sixty-five, sixty, fifty-five …

A.J. dragged the steering wheel left, trying to point the Jeep toward those barrels, and then he realized this was a lot like driving in the snow and ice of Heaven, and he pulled the wheel harder, to make a donut the way Jamie had taught him when he was ten, out in the field behind their house in celebration of his first Christmas after turning double digits.

Alison was screaming again, and they hit the orange barrels with the very back of the Jeep, which did little to slow them, since they were empty. They went flying like bowling
pins, but the impact somehow triggered the airbag, a blinding cloud of white directly in A.J.’s face, making it impossible for him to see.

He swore as he tried to push it out of his way as they continued to spin back out into the middle of the pull off, like a Tilt-a-Whirl ride gone horribly wrong. Around and around and around.

Until finally, they were going slowly enough for A.J. to put the Jeep into park and it lurched to a stop. The engine sputtered and stalled.

“Alison?” He pushed the airbag out of his way to turn toward the back.

She was sitting there, still gripping the grab bar over the window, her eyes bright and her face flushed as she worked to catch her breath.

“You all right?” he asked.

She nodded, let go of the bar, unfastened her seat belt. “Are you?”

“Yeah.” His hair was in his eyes and he pushed it back with a hand that was shaking. So much for steady. But, to be fair, it was adrenaline. The shaking was all after the fact.

Next to him, in the front seat, Jamie exhaled long and hard. He may have said something, but A.J. didn’t hear it, because Alison sat forward and grabbed him around the neck and kissed him.

It was not a
Thank you for saving my life
kiss, either.

It was a
Do me right now
kiss.

He knew, because she’d kissed him like that before.

Her hands were in his hair, on the back of his neck, tugging at his shoulders, pulling him toward her.

And A.J. couldn’t think of a single thing he’d rather do to celebrate the fact that they were both still alive, so, as she kissed him the entire time, he scrambled awkwardly over the seat back, only vaguely aware as he did so that Jamie had popped away.

Alison just kept kissing him as he landed on top of her in the backseat. She welcomed the weight of his body by wrapping herself around him, intertwining their legs, as if she
wanted every possible inch of them to touch, to be connected. And God, he wanted that, too.

Which was why, when she started removing clothing—both his and hers—he didn’t protest, even though he knew—he
knew
—that this was going to land right at the very top of his current list of mistakes. Things he should—or shouldn’t—have done.

Sex with a woman who’d already claimed to have walked away from him, who’d just spent a lot of time insisting that she wasn’t going to have sex with him ever again. It couldn’t possibly end well, and yet he didn’t give a damn. He just wanted inside of her.

She wanted that, too, and as she scrambled out of her jeans, she stopped kissing him long enough to say, “Condom.”

He answered, “Yes.”

He’d replaced the one in his wallet and he used that replacement now to cover himself, sitting up for a moment on the bench seat as she finished her wrestling match with her jeans. He’d barely gotten it on when she straddled him. No
May I?
No discussion. Just bam. Hot, hardcore, full penetration sex—from zero to sixty in the beat of a heart.

A.J. heard himself cry out, heard Alison, too, but then she kissed him again, possessively, ferociously, even as she rode him hard and deep, setting a rhythm that made his heart race. This was a woman who knew what she wanted, who didn’t hesitate, didn’t sit back and wait, and God, her self-confidence totally turned him on.

She was on the verge of coming—he expected as much, expected her to come fast. And here she thought they didn’t know each other.

He wished there was time for him to hang on, so he could make her come again, more slowly her second time, because God, he’d loved doing that, that night when they’d finally hit her bed. But right now they were in a car, and it was broad daylight, and if someone passing by saw the broken fence, the scattered barrels, and the airbag sagging now in the front seat, they might stop to see if they could help.

And A.J. didn’t need any help, thanks. He knew exactly what to do to rock this woman’s world. He tightened his stomach muscles and pushed up his hips so that she could take him as deeply as possible. It felt beyond good on his end, and the noise she made, her moan of pleasure as she came undone, made him come, too.

He almost told her he loved her, but he knew she didn’t want to hear that, so he clenched his teeth over the words.

But as he sat there, in the back of that Jeep, with his arms tightly around her, her head down on his shoulder as she, too, caught her breath, he knew he had to say something.

But she spoke first, her breath warm against his ear. “What am I going to do?” she said. “I can’t seem to stay away from you.”

A.J. ran his hand down and up her back, wishing he had some kind of magical answer. “Sometimes it’s things that are the hardest that are … most worth having.”

She lifted her head to look at him, pushing her hair back out of her face. It was getting hot back there with the air conditioner off, and they’d both recently done some sweating.

“And sometimes things that are hard? They just suck. Getting hit in the face with a two-by-four,” she said. “Over and over again?
That’s
hard. It also sucks.”

“Good point,” he said, unable not to smile at her.

But she looked down at him, into his eyes, her face so serious as she shook her head. “I’m not going to fall in love with you, A.J.,” she said. “I can’t.”

A.J. nodded, because she seemed to want a response. “Okay.”

“Really?”

“No,” he admitted, “but what am I going to do? I can’t make you love me. Is it okay with you if I hope that you’ll change your mind?”

She laughed. “What if I say no, it’s not okay?”

“Tough shit?” He phrased it as a question, adding plenty of tentativeness to his voice, but he knew as she looked into his eyes, that she could see that he meant it.

She laughed again, but this time she pulled off of him, and
once again, he immediately missed her closeness and heat—despite the fact that the temperature in the Jeep was becoming unbearable. He opened the door for some air and a chance to stretch his legs as he cleaned himself up.

Alison, meanwhile, was searching for her panties, then turning the legs of her jeans right side out. She opened the door on her side of the car, too.

“I can do this,” she said as she dressed, and he got the sense that she was talking to convince herself as much as him. “I know you don’t think so, but I can. I can spend these next few days or weeks or even months with you, and walk away when it’s over, without blinking. Because I’m
not
going to let myself fall in love with you. It’s no longer an option. It’s completely off the table. So if that’s going to be a problem for you …”

“I’m going to have to think about it,” he said. “Okay. I thought about it, and it’s not going to be a problem for me as long as you keep jumping me like that. The only thing better than hope is hope with a lot of great sex.”

Alison laughed. “I’m serious, A.J.”

“I am, too,” he said, opening up his phone. “That was seriously great sex. I’m looking forward to more of it as I work to convince you that I’m worth the risk. You got cell coverage here? Because I’m showing no bars.”

Alison’s cell phone had bars.

Which, for me, was a great relief.

I was already looking under the Jeep’s front seats for another of those little TechWhiz boxes that I was now more convinced than ever were some kind of cell phone signal jammers.

They’d had that type of thing on
Star Trek—They’re jamming the signal from our ship, Captain!
And they’d been able to do similar things with radio signals and even radar back during WWII. Since I’d had a son who flew bomber raids over Africa and then Europe, I knew a great deal about the importance and mechanics of jamming the enemy’s radar.

But that wasn’t happening here, since Alison’s cell phone worked. As she called the production office for help, I pulled A.J. aside and shared with him what little I’d learned since running into the man I suspected was Gene, as he’d removed the evidence of his nearly-foul-play from Hugh’s Jeep.

I told A.J. about the TechWhiz 7842, and the mysterious swapped-out Gatorade.

I told him about Sandra Busard, who was supposed to go with Hugh, but only after Alison had canceled on him.

And I told him about the holes in the ground that I’d found, which seemed to suggest that Alison’s nearly demolished office trailer had, at one time, been anchored with guy wires. There was also what I thought of as a suspiciously placed dent in the side of the trailer. But A.J. interrupted me before I could reveal my theory about that.

“You think someone intentionally removed those anchors before the storm,” A.J. said, his skepticism ringing in his voice. “That seems a bit of a stretch. There was no way for anyone to know how strong those winds were going to get. That’s kind of like me saying I think I’d like to trip Beverly, so I’ll sit in my living room on the sofa with my leg stretched out. She’s bound to show up sooner or later and take a fall.”

“They want it to look like an accident,” I told him a touch peevishly, because he was right. As far as accidents went, it was pretty dumb and relied far too much on luck. But they could’ve been playing into their hand. Seen that the storm was coming, and gone for it when it appeared to be the doozy that it was. “Plus I’m pretty sure the plan was to put a little shoulder into it, too, when the wind blew. There’s a dent, right where someone could’ve heaved and helped the thing tip.”

“There are, like, four hundred dents all over that trailer,” A.J. argued, shaking his head. “And what about the other trailers that didn’t have anchors? Gramps, you’re letting your imagination run wild. And why would they tip it, anyway, after we got out?”

“Because they didn’t see you leave.” I didn’t have an answer for
What about the other trailers
, so I said, “Okay, all right, let’s leave the trailer alone and focus on what just happened here. As in, you nearly died. Have you looked under the Jeep? I suspect you’re going to find that brake line was tampered with. I think my tall killer with the ponytail, and his buddies Gene and Loco, are trying to kill Alison, and I don’t think they care who gets caught in the crossfire.”

A.J. just kept shaking his head. “You honestly think Alison witnessed a murder and didn’t
tell
anyone?” he asked, looking me dead in the eye.

I stared straight back at him. “She knows something. She’s seen something. She’s somehow involved.”

“In a murder?” he asked, lowering his voice and glancing over toward the other side of the Jeep, where Alison was still on her phone. “Seriously, Gramps, if you think Alison would help anyone cover up the fact that they hit the bumper of someone else’s car in a parking lot, let alone a
murder
 …”

“Just check that brake line,” I told him. “I’ll be beyond thrilled to be wrong. I’d do it myself, but you’re going to have to see it anyway.…”

A.J. glanced at Alison again, and I knew what he was thinking. Here she’d just gotten used to—barely—the fact that A.J. was being followed around by a spirit from beyond.

And she was struggling—hard—with the news that A.J. was forever destined to fight his alcoholism. That that battle was never going to end.

She wasn’t going to welcome the paranoid-seeming warning that someone was trying to kill her. And A.J. was right. She’d think—again—that he was certifiable.

But I strongly believed that she had to be told. Told and talked into going to the police. Or the FBI. She and A.J. could go back to Jubilation and knock on the door of Rob and Charlotte’s trailer, and ask for immunity in exchange for the information for which Gene and company were trying to kill her. Whatever that information was.