Packing Heat (14 page)

Besides, he was hiding something from her.

She slipped out of his arms, out of the bed, pulling on her T-shirt and panties. She had to have the distance even if it left her feeling cold and alone again. She’d needed his comfort last night, but she couldn’t allow it to become a habit to turn to him when her own strength wasn’t enough.

“Setting boundaries?” Cole said from the bed, his voice rough with sleep and even more tempting. “For my benefit or yours?”

Now she looked over her shoulder at him, smiling slightly. “I thought my job description was the only boundary you needed.”

He shrugged. “As long as you don’t start thinking about fairy tales, we’ll both be fine.”

“I’m FBI and you’re . . . you. Not exactly Cinderella, Prince Charming, and happy endings.”

“You don’t think I’m Prince Charming?” Cole slapped a hand over his heart. “I’m wounded.”

“Just as long as you can type.”

“I think I can manage it.” He headed for the bathroom, turning back halfway there. “I, uh, could use somebody to wash my back.”

“I thought you liked showering alone.”

“I like showering alone when my choice is showering with a hundred other guys.”

“Well, just consider me one of the guys.”

He gave her a leisurely once-over, his smile coming slow and wide as he did. “Too late for that.”

Too late was right. Almost. If he kept looking at her with that combination of heat and appreciation, she’d shuck her determination and her clothes, and join him in the shower. He didn’t press her, though, and once he disappeared into the bathroom, it was a lot easier to stick to her guns. Sure, hearing the water run, thinking of all that naked, muscular flesh under the hot spray, remembering what he felt like against her, in her, was almost more than she could resist.

Once he walked away, though, it was a lot harder for her to make the first move. True, she’d done just that last night, but she didn’t have an excuse this time. If she went into that bathroom she wouldn’t be looking for simple human comfort or a distraction from the horror of Richard’s torture. She’d be going in there because she wanted Cole, and Prince Charming notwithstanding, there’d be more to it than just satisfying a physical need. And he’d know it. That was what really held her back.

He came out, shirtless, his jeans unzipped and unbuttoned. She barely spared him a glance, ducking into the bathroom and showering in record time, leaving her hair wet and sleek. It wasn’t much as disguises went, but if someone was looking for a blonde with shoulder-length curls she wouldn’t immediately come to mind.

She put on clean underwear, a pair of jeans, and a soft cotton sweater she’d bought for herself the day before, and slipped out of the bathroom. Cole was already at the computer, lost in his own little world, and since it was almost noon, Harmony left him there and walked to the nearest fast-food restaurant. She brought back two salads and two iced teas, unsweetened.

“You consider that a meal?” Cole said when she handed him his half of lunch. “I’m working hard here. Not to mention last night. I need to keep up my energy.”

“I did just as much of the work as you did last night.”

Cole grinned, acknowledging the truth of it with a slight waggle of his head.

“You’re sitting on your butt in front of a computer,” Harmony pointed out. “If you keep eating like you have been, you’re going to start looking like your mug shot again—which is probably appropriate since you’re breaking the law.”

He dug into his salad, made a face. “I never broke the law before I went to jail.”

“Except for that one time.”

His head lifted, his eyes going hot on hers. “I didn’t know I was breaking it.”

“Right, you were pudgy and naïve.”

Cole went silent, not all that unusual for him, except this time there was a dimension to the silence that made her replay her comment and regret making it. Cole wasn’t the kind of person who did what he’d done, at least not for money. He didn’t have a devious bone in his body. What he did have was a moral streak a mile long. “I’m sorry,” she said. “What really happened?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Which, along with the fact that he’d shoved the salad away and gone back to work, was code for
leave me alone
. She did, but she knew it was important to him. And she knew it was connected to the FBI. He was usually a pretty even-keeled man, but every time he tried to break into the Bureau’s system he became angry and frustrated.

It didn’t take him long to prove her point. Less than ten minutes later he lurched to his feet, shoved both hands back through his hair, and paced across the room, stewing.

Harmony looked at the screen but it was all a bunch of
Matrix
-type gobbledygook, and Keanu Reeves wasn’t handy to interpret for her. “What’s the problem?” she asked Cole.

He held up a hand and kept pacing. She could almost see him thinking, his brain working at warp speed before the proverbial lightbulb popped on over his head. He raced back to the table and plopped down, almost missing the chair but not bothering to adjust his seat as his fingers flew over the keyboard. His eyes were glued to the screen, intense, the reflected glow making him look fanatical—and a little scary when his mouth curved into a Grinch-comtemplating-Whoville grin.

“What are you doing?” she asked, putting her hand on his shoulder when her voice wasn’t enough to get his attention.

He punched the ENTER key and sat back. “I’m going after your money,” he said.

“Should I pack?”

“Nope. Your IT friends at the Bureau won’t be expecting me to hit the banking system. And, anyway, I made sure they’ll be too busy to notice I slipped in and diverted four million dollars.”

Her heart jumped, partly because she’d just taken an irrevocable step, partly because it was a step closer to saving Richard. And then reality crashed her party. One minute he was seething, the next he was so elated she could feel the excitement coming off him in waves. Either he was manic or . . . “Wait a minute, what did you do?”

“I infected them with a little virus,” he said in a singsong,
take that
tone of voice.

Harmony ripped his hands off the keyboard, knowing it was already too late. “Jesus, Cole,” she breathed, “how . . . what . . .”

“Relax, all I did was scramble some of their files for a little while.” He shook her off and picked up his tea, taking a long pull from the straw. He was trying to look like he didn’t care, but the Grinch was gone, and in its place was a sulky little boy who’d played a trick and wasn’t getting the appreciation he’d expected. “I put some dancing cartoon characters on their screens.”

“Cartoon characters,” Harmony echoed faintly, sitting down hard on the other chair and trying to wrap her brain around it. Dancing cartoons or not, she was responsible for putting the FBI out of commission for god knew how long. Thanks to the lunatic she’d unleashed on them.

“Cinderella and Prince Charming,” the lunatic said, still not getting it. “I thought you’d appreciate my choice.” When she didn’t respond, Cole snapped his finger in front of her face. “Hello. It’s supposed to be funny.”

“Funny? You think the FBI is going to find this funny just because it’s cartoon characters and not something obviously destructive? You’re insane. Or you have a death wish.”

“Did you miss the part about the four million dollars?”

“No.” She took a deep breath, and thought, okay, so it hadn’t exactly happened the way she wanted. There was four million dollars in the kidnappers’ account. Now all they had to do was deal with the fallout of Cole’s virus.

She got to her feet and started throwing her things in the duffel.

“What are you doing?”

“We have to get out of here.”

He shook his head, looking smug. “It’ll take them a few hours to get the system back up, and even then they won’t be able to track the source.”

She put both hands flat on the tabletop and just concentrated on breathing for a minute. “You’re sure?”

“Like I said, they won’t be expecting a hit on the frozen bank accounts, and even if they do, it’ll look like the money is still there because they’ll have to reload their last system dump, which was probably midnight.”

“It’s not like they don’t monitor those accounts. They’ll figure it out before long.”

“Doesn’t matter. Even when they realize the money is gone, they won’t be able to track me. I bounced the signal all over the known universe. It’ll take them days to find this motel, and we’ll be long gone by then.”

Harmony resumed her packing. “I still think we should go.”

Cole looked like she’d just kicked his favorite dog.

“It’s not that I don’t trust your abilities. I broke you out of jail for exactly this reason, remember? It’s just that we’ve been here for two days, and I guess I’m feeling like we need to move on. Just to be safe.”

“Okay,” he said, looking somewhat mollified. “I’m with you. As long as we stop somewhere for real food.”

She’d show him progress, all right. If sheer determination was any guarantee, Richard would be free in two days—hopefully before she went broke from feeding Cole.

“I’ll have a beer, whatever’s on tap,” he said when the waitress appeared at their table, “and two cheeseburgers. How about you?” he asked Harmony before the waitress could jump to conclusions and walk away.

“Not the heart attack special.” She plucked the small, plastic-coated menu out from behind the salt and pepper shakers. Her choices were severely limited, and they all included beef and buns. Cheese was optional, and why not, she figured? “Cheeseburger and a Diet Coke.”

The waitress took herself off having written nothing down and spoken not a word. But she’d taken a really good look at Cole. She appeared immediately with their drinks, and less than five minutes later with their food in paper-lined plastic baskets. Cole attacked his meal with the same kind of focus he approached the computer. Harmony didn’t attempt to side-track him with conversation.

They were at the bar paying their tab when a Special Alert came on the television over the bar. Since it preempted football, the place erupted in catcalls and boos.

And then Cole’s eight-year-old mug shot flashed across the screen and the ruckus cut off like somebody had clapped duct tape over everyone’s mouth simultaneously. All eyes were glued to the TV, some of them narrowed in a puzzled attempt to place that face, as the voice-over talked about Cole.
Terrorist
was the first thing they called him. After that it was hard to hear much. She caught the terms
armed and dangerous
and
escaped felon
over the din of voices, but she was probably the only one who heard the part about Cole hacking into the FBI’s computer system—
allegedly
—and setting loose a virus.

Then she saw her own face, taken straight from her FBI identification badge. Nobody had trouble recognizing her. The word
reward
was just the catalyst that got them moving.

Several people pulled out cell phones. Cole raced for the door, and Harmony was right on his heels, getting a flash of Veda and Ron, backdropped by their RV, telling a roving reporter how they’d been in fear for their lives.

They hit the car, Cole taking the passenger seat. “Did you see—”

“Yeah,” Harmony said over the sound of the engine roaring to life when she sparked the ignition wires together. She straightened and put the car in gear, backing out of the parking space. “The guys in the bar are already calling the cops.”

“I don’t think you have to worry about the guys
in
the bar.”

She swung around and looked past him, out the passenger side window. A half-dozen locals were piling out of the bar and heading for their vehicles, all of which said 4WD on them somewhere. “Damn!” She stomped on the gas and the Taurus sent up a plume of gravel before the tires caught and it shot forward, the back end fishtailing until they hit the paved road.

“We’ll never outrun them in this,” Cole said.

“I didn’t pick it for speed.” She’d picked it for anonymity, which was no help now that they’d been outed on national television.

“We don’t know the roads around here, either.”

“We don’t have to.” She hit the ramp to the interstate, narrowed down because of repaving. She flew across the two open lanes without using her signal, then put as much distance between them and the bar as she possibly could. Since it was after eleven at night, there wasn’t much traffic and what there was had eighteen wheels.

“With any luck we can get lost in all these trucks,” she said, tucking the Taurus between a car hauler and frozen food truck pacing each other in the right lane.

“You mean the ones with the CB radios?”

“Don’t you ever have good news?”

“You’re optimistic enough for any five normal people,” Cole said. “Somebody has to represent reality.”

“Choosing to think positively isn’t ignoring reality. Sometimes you get good news.”

“The good news is I won’t survive to see the inside of a jail cell again.”

“The hell you won’t. There’s no way I’m letting you die before you tell me what’s really going on.”

“I thought you were going to keep me out of jail.”

Harmony glanced over at him. “You’re changing the subject. There’s no way the FBI would go on television and admit you hacked into their system if they didn’t want you bad.”

That shut him up. The pickup truck that roared up next to them kept her from gloating. She hit the gas, cutting the wheel sharply to the left in a feint that made the pickup driver slam on his brakes automatically, and gave her time to cut over into the left lane in front of him. The Taurus’s engine sounded game, and the speedometer inched up, but not nearly fast enough to keep the rear window from filling up with an F-150 grille.

“Shit,” Cole muttered, bracing himself between the door and the console.

The F-150 nudged their back bumper, its engine roaring as it accelerated, pushing them toward the rear of the semi in front of them. There was another truck in the right lane. To their left were orange construction barrels, and beyond them the remaining lanes of the highway were nothing more than an open pit corrugated with reinforcement steel, waiting for concrete to be poured in. Harmony let the car drift toward the barrels. Cole grabbed the steering wheel, trying pull it back to the center of the lane. Harmony brought her fist down on his wrist as hard as she could.

“Ouch. Jesus, Harm!”

“I can’t fight you and him at the same time,” she shouted back.

“But—”

“If you touch the steering wheel again, I’ll shoot you.” The threat might have had real teeth if her gun hadn’t been in her duffel, which was in the backseat. But Cole appeared to have gotten the message.

The pickup hit them again. Still hugging the barrels, Harmony let it drive them toward the semi, waiting, waiting, her eyes glued to the truck ahead, and when the Taurus’s hood nosed beneath it, she swerved right, almost into the semi beside them. The pickup driver shot ahead, and being an amateur, he jerked his steering wheel just slightly to the left to avoid hitting the truck. He tried to correct but it was too late, his left front tire slipped over the edge of the pavement and towed the vehicle into the pit. Rebar came flying up and then they were past.

“I hope he’s okay,” Cole said.

“If he’s not, it’s his own fault,” Harmony shot back, her eyes on the rearview mirror. “His friend certainly hasn’t learned anything.”

Cole twisted around to look over his shoulder. “Jesus,” he said, “what is this guy thinking?”

“He’s thinking that I’m female and blond and I probably can’t drive a vacuum cleaner in a straight line. People constantly underestimate me.”

“I’ve noticed,” Cole muttered.

“Noticed? You’ve done it yourself.”

“I won’t again.”

“Let’s hope you get the opportunity to prove you mean that.”

The semi in the right lane had dropped back, probably wanting to get out of the danger zone. Harmony pushed the Taurus up to top speed again and went around the truck in front of her, cutting in and out of traffic as fast as she could. The second pickup stayed right on her bumper.

“Shit,” Cole said again. “He’s on the radio.”

Harmony looked over at him, both of them coming to the same sick conclusion just as two big rigs lined up on the road ahead. A pig hauler with an open top and slatted sides took the left lane, a tanker pacing it on the right.

“At least the tanker isn’t carrying anything explosive,” Harmony said. Just cooking oil, judging by the name-brand logo on the back.

“It’ll still hurt when we smash into it.”

Sure enough, the two big trucks seemed to be answering the pickup driver’s call to aid. They lined up together, as the pickup inched up close behind the Taurus just like the first truck had.

“Apparently he did learn something,” she said, because the pickup driver stayed on their rear bumper, keeping his truck at a speed she couldn’t outrun. A big SUV roared up beside the pickup, the two of them herding her across the white line and forcing her between the two semis. Then all four trucks began to slow, leaving them trapped, nowhere to go.

“They’re trying to hold us until the police can get here.”

“The hell they are,” Harmony said. She floored it, sending the Taurus shooting ahead.

The semi drivers fought back, nosing the cabs of their trucks together. They’d expect her to stop. Harmony poured on more speed. The Taurus shuddered, smoke beginning to seep out from under the hood. But it gave her a couple more miles per hour. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Cole leaning back in his seat, his right leg straight, like he was pushing an imaginary brake pedal. She kept the speedometer pegged and her hands steady on the wheel, and if there was a prayer running through her mind, who could blame her as they rocketed toward a vee of steel and rubber with an increasingly small opening.

She hit that seemingly tiny gap, steel shrieking as both sides of the Taurus scraped against the semis’ cabs. They had enough speed for the car to make it past the front doors, before she felt it jerk, the rear quarter panels hanging up. For a minute she didn’t think they were going to make it through. Then the Taurus shuddered, there was the sound of steel screaming as it tore, and they were free.

The man driving the pig hauler reacted with lightning speed, Harmony saw in the rearview mirror, hand-overhanding the wheel to steer the truck straight again. The tanker driver didn’t have the same skill, or reflexes. The sudden absence of the Taurus caught him off guard, causing him to jackknife the truck.

Air brakes shrieked. The pig hauler tried to turn but there wasn’t enough time. It hit the tanker, sending it over onto its side. The last thing she saw was pigs being catapulted from the hauler and landing on the highway, still moving, thankfully, slipping and sliding in the fountain of cooking oil spilling out of the top of the tanker. If there were any other guys chasing them from the bar, they were behind the brand-new roadblock.

“I hope that thing doesn’t catch on fire,” she said, bringing the car down to the speed limit. “The whole state will smell like a pig roast.”

Cole didn’t say anything, and when she glanced over at him, he looked kind of green. “Do you remember when you asked me to trust you,” he said, “the day you broke me out of jail?”

“You told me ‘when pigs fly.’ ”

“They didn’t have wings,” Cole said, “but I’m pretty sure a couple of them were airborne, at least briefly, and if they weren’t, I’m still willing to take that as a sign.”

Harmony didn’t even try to hide her grin. “I wonder if hell froze over, too.”