The Bliss Factor (22 page)

They’d passed over the straits; Mackinaw City was spread out below them for a moment before the small cluster of buildings gave way to trees. Nothing but trees, leaves past the brightest colors of fall but still thick enough that nothing was visible on the ground unless they were right over it. But Conn knew the highway was down there somewhere.

“I-75,” Rae said, just as he banked the plane to the right—wobbling it again to remind her he didn’t know what he was doing.

He had to give her credit, her hand closed around his arm and went white knuckled, but only for a second before she got hold of herself. “Thank God it’s a weekday and traffic is light. Look for a straight stretch—”

The engine began to sputter.

Her eyes cut to his. “Don’t tell me, we’re out of gas.” Conn looked at the gauge and came to the same conclusion. The plane had probably been on the runway because it had just arrived and was waiting to be refueled.

She looked at the manual again. “U-u-u-mmm,” she said, her voice shaking as much as her hands.

Conn reached over and rubbed the back of her neck. “We can do this.”

She took a deep breath and let it out. “People are always landing planes on highways, right?”

“If you say so.”

“You’re the one who got us into this situation. Time to put your money where your mouth is. That means prove what you said about being able to land this thing.”

“I know—” Conn stopped himself before he gave away the farm. “What’s next?”

“The throttle controls altitude,” Rae said, too intent on the instructions to notice his verbal slip. “That’s the throttle.” She started to point to a bright blue lever, then got sidetracked. “Landing gear. When—” She started paging through the manual.

Conn didn’t figure they had any time to waste. “It’s labeled,” he said.

“But I don’t know if we should turn it on yet.”

“Only one way to find out.” He put the gear down, feeling the plane shudder a little, but more interested in the road rushing up at them, the two lanes looking impossibly narrow as the engine gave a last cough and went silent. “Keep reading.”

There wasn’t a lot of traffic on a weekday morning, but Conn had chosen the southbound lanes so whatever cars came along would be heading the same direction and hopefully see them in plenty of time to get out of their way. He wrestled with the wheel, just the sound of the air rushing by them as he fought to make a glider out of a plane that was never meant to be one.

Rae started to talk about balancing the throttle with the control stick, decreasing their altitude, and applying flaps. Conn made sure he didn’t anticipate her directions too much, pulling the yoke toward him to slow the plane down to around seventy knots, keeping the nose up as they dropped under twenty-five feet. No need to kill the throttle since the engines had already stopped. He let the back wheels drop to the roadway, deliberately hard.

Rae gave a little cry and grabbed his arm.

He shook her off. “Gotta land the plane,” he growled, the plane dropping to the pavement again, softer this time. He pushed up slightly on the wheel to bring the nose down. The front wheel touched down, rubber squealing as he applied the brake.

When the plane finally came to a stop, he looked over at Rae, white as a sheet. He clapped her on the back and she wheezed in a breath, some of her color returning. It took another minute, and a lot more deep breathing—on both their parts—before she said, “What now?”

Conn answered her question by taking her hand and pulling her out of the plane. If she was okay enough to talk, she was okay enough to walk. There were a couple of cars behind the plane, but they were too far back to see much, not even if they were male or female since part of Rae’s return to reality had been putting her hair up in that ugly bun again.

He retrieved their things and towed her through the ditch, boosted her over the ancient farm fence on the other side, and followed her into the forest.

“Mackinaw City will be this way,” she said, heading north. “Do you think those guys are watching the car?”

“I’m more concerned about the dogs,” Conn said.

She stopped and looked back at him.

He shrugged. “In my day they would have brought out the hounds to track outlaws.”

Rae didn’t have a comeback for that, at least not a verbal one. Her pace picked up, though, so Conn got the distinct impression she didn’t want to risk coming face-to-face—or face-to-muzzle—with any potential pursuers.

Conn was just glad she didn’t ask any questions. He needed to think, to put everything that had happened in the last few days together with what he’d discovered before he’d lost his memory and see how the new picture shaped up. He wasn’t going to be able to do that until he factored Rae into the equation.

Considering the situation, he was lucky to be free and alive. He had Rae to thank for that—and what he’d done was the furthest thing from thanking her. Getting involved with her had been a mistake, one he’d never have made if he’d been himself. Not that he had any regrets.

Every moment with her had been incredible, but what she’d given him was more than sex. She’d given him back himself. Before Rae, every time he’d come close to a breakthrough he’d smothered the restlessness, the flashbacks of death and war—almost post-traumatic stress because he’d been doing this since he was a kid: marines, Special Forces, then FBI. He’d made a deliberate decision to be a guy without that kind of past, hell, to be a guy with no past because that was better than the one he lived with.

There’d been no need for that last night because Rae had been there. He’d lost himself in her. Even when morning came he’d made her his world, and it had become such a habit not to try to remember he hadn’t realized he was back, that he was Connor Larkin, FBI agent, until Harry, Joe, and Kemp showed up, and a label popped into his head.

Counterfeiters.

And Annie and Nelson Bliss were in it, right up to their tie-dyed headbands.

It was Conn’s job to shut down the operation, and it should have been a piece of cake, which was why Mike Kovaleski, his handler, had put him on it. Conn had been tired of the ugliness of his past, soul-deep tired.

A bunch of latter-day hippies living on the fringe of society, who didn’t want to file tax returns, let alone obey laws, shouldn’t have posed a problem for him. They probably figured no one would care if they made a little cash. Literally.

Turned out it was a whole lot more complicated. Somebody-was-playing-puppet-master complicated. No way had Rae’s parents hired Harry, for one thing. No way had they hit him over the head, then rescued him from the mud and nursed him and his broken brain. And no way would they hire a trio of bumbling enforcers to hide their crime, let alone sic them on their own daughter.

And now the bumbling enforcers were taking potshots at them, which told Conn two things: The mastermind was getting panicky, opting to take him out without discovering who he was and what he knew. And the mastermind was in Detroit. Otherwise the situation would have escalated earlier.

It was time to stop pussyfooting around and close this case. It might be a simplistic view of things, but it was more than he’d known yesterday, and progress was progress. He had to find out who was running the show before Rae discovered what was going on. He’d still have to arrest her parents, there was no getting around that. But she’d be safe. That was the mission: Get the bad guys and keep the civilians from getting hurt.

Their feelings didn’t count.

Unfortunately, he had to pretend to still be into Rae without actually doing anything about it. Keep his distance without appearing to keep his distance. So she didn’t get suspicious.

He’d probably need Merlin to pull it off. Too bad he didn’t believe in magic anymore.

 

 

RAE FOLLOWED CONN THROUGH THE WOODS, GRATEFUL, at least, that she was dressed for it. He set a brutal pace, stopping every now and again to let her catch up. She might have been angry, she might have complained. She might have found a handy place to sit until she was rested and the hell with everything else. The thought of dogs kept her going. Not that she didn’t like dogs, she just assumed the ones that would be sent after them would be more reminiscent of Cujo than Lassie.

Although, it would be a good distraction from Conn, since the only thing that seemed to keep her from wanting to jump him was danger. Take now, for instance, watching him stride through the woods, arms swinging and butt flexing. It was . . . invigorating. A little line of sweat darkened the back of his T-shirt even though the temperature hadn’t broken the sixty-degree mark. It made her want to strip off the shirt, and the pants, and—

“I didn’t realize we were so far out of the city,” she said in a desperate effort to stop thinking about sex in the woods.

Conn didn’t say anything. Conn was saving his breath for walking. She made a conscious effort to do the same—and to keep her eyes off him. She had a lot to think about anyway. Harry and his cronies, sure, but first and foremost, everything had changed. Oh, not Conn, he was just in danger mode. And not her, not really. What had changed was
them
.

Rae allowed herself a smile only because she knew he couldn’t see it, couldn’t see the wistfulness, the secret joy, the voluptuousness she’d never felt before.

The temptation was to hold on to all of that, even if holding on meant not trying to quantify or qualify their relationship. Not trying to look ahead. But that wasn’t her nature. She’d never taken the term “bean counter” as an insult. It was what she did and who she was. She embraced that, but for once in her life she was content to live in the moment, not weighing risk and return, not holding back until she was absolutely certain she’d get back what she’d put in.

Conn’s memory would return soon enough, and she would have to watch him walk away. She couldn’t even dread it because it meant he could deal with the people who were after him. But it was going to hurt like hell.

“We’re back,” Conn said over his shoulder, and she put all the anxiety over the future away.

One thing at a time, she told herself, the first being getting to Mr. Pennworthy’s car without cops or dogs finding them.

Conn had stopped behind some pines that turned out to form a sort of boundary at the back of a little house.

Rae peered through the aromatic boughs and didn’t see anyone. She kept her voice down anyway. “The car is on the other side of the city, and I-75 is still between here and there. We should keep moving until we find an underpass—a road that goes beneath the highway,” she added automatically, having gotten used to explaining those kinds of terms to Conn. “Without being seen, if possible. Maybe you should slouch or something.”

Conn met her eyes for the first time since they’d left the plane, and he was smiling. “Maybe you should cover up that hair.”

“You didn’t feel that way last night,” she said, regretting the words as soon as they were out because his eyes darkened, grew intense, and she forgot where they were and what they were doing.

Conn wasn’t helping. “We could wait until full dark,” he said. He didn’t leave much mystery about how he expected to fill the hours between then and now.

Tempting, but her desire was tempered by the possibility of discovery, especially this close to civilization. And she didn’t mean the sex police. The regular police were more of a concern, or maybe the FAA would get involved, since they’d stolen the plane. And then there were Harry, Joe, and Kemp. Among others. “Remember the dogs?”

“If there were going to be hounds, they’d be a problem by now.”

“It’s dinnertime,” Rae countered, “and it’s not barbecue weather, so most people should be indoors.”

His eyes lit up, and his stomach growled. So much for her irresistibility.

“Don’t even think about it,” she said. “We’ll stop to eat after we put a few miles between us and incarceration. I’ll even go for Scottish chicken. As long as we don’t get caught. If we do we’ll be eating jail food.”

“Have a little faith,” Conn said, and he set off, moving in the general direction of the highway, following the line of trees.

Rae followed him through the woods edging the city. He didn’t really give her a choice, but she was getting tired of the macho attitude. She trotted a little, went past him, and took the lead.

“If there are bullets, that’s where they’re coming from,” Conn said.

“I’m tired of being Guinevere.”

“That would make me King Arthur.”

“He came to a bad end.”

“He was borne off by beautiful woman to an island to live for eternity.”

“But he was stabbed with a sword first. I’m not sure being borne off to an island by beautiful women is worth being skewered.”

“I don’t know about the skewering, but having one woman give me a hard time is bad enough. Three? For eternity? Not worth immortality.”

“I’ve been giving you a hard time? Since I met you I’ve been chased, shot at, arrested, and nearly killed in a plane crash.”

Conn looked like he wanted to argue, especially about the plane, and she had to admit he had bragging rights after that landing. But they came to a narrow, rutted dirt lane that ran parallel to the highway, with a strip of weeds growing in the center, knee-high, and he turned to study the area, his eyes going laser sharp.

“Not exactly a high traffic area,” Rae observed.

“True, but it will appear less suspicious if we pretend to be a couple out for an evening stroll,” he said.

“With our luggage?”

Conn slung the strap of her bag over his shoulder, adjusting it so the bag hung behind him. Then he took her hand, twining his fingers with hers.

Rae had never been one for fairy tales, having grown up in a life that capitalized on them, not to mention the part where she knew what life was like behind Mother Goose’s whitewash job, people not bathing for months, covered in lice and fleas, living in squalor.