Worth the Trip (16 page)

Trip dragged his mouth from hers to drop to his knees, tearing off her boots, then her jeans, leaving her in a bra and panties because her sweater and shirt were already gone.

“White cotton,” he said, her laugh trailing off into a moan as he laid his mouth on the inside of her thigh, inching down white cotton so he could take his mouth to her.

She bowed up, hands fisted in the bedcover, so responsive he nearly lost it. Watching her, enjoying the way she came undone, was too much to resist. So he stood the pain and pleasure, let them burn in his blood until his skin tingled and every breath he drew was fire in his lungs, until she collapsed bonelessly, so wrung out she could barely breathe. But she reached for him anyway, and he went to her, fumbling at his jeans like a teenager desperate to get them off, never mind his boots.

“Condom,” she said, and had him jerking his wallet out of his back pocket, ripping out the condom and fumbling with it, the little foil package beyond hands that were suddenly all thumbs.

Norah took it from him, tore it open, smoothed it on. And had his eyes rolling back in his head, the heat and softness of her touch sending him over the edge. He caught her hips and surged into her, stopping when she cried out, so damn glad to discover it was pleasure, not pain, on her face, pleasure as he slipped her bra straps down and took one hard peak into his mouth. She bowed up again, her hips meeting his in an ever-faster, more desperate rhythm until her breath caught in the back of her throat as he felt her constrict around him, once, twice, again and again before he buried himself in her, and let himself go with her.

 

“ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?”

Norah floated back down, found herself wrapped in Trip’s arms, and thought, Oh yeah. Since she was still fighting to regain her breath, she only nodded in answer to his question, but the concern on his face pushed her to say, “Why wouldn’t I be?” When his expression didn’t change, she smiled. “I’m fine, Trip. Better than fine.” She stretched a little, loving how deliciously used her body felt, how relaxed. Even the stress she carried around constantly in her neck and shoulders was gone.

Her head was on his shoulder. If she stretched, just a little, she could have kissed him. But it would be a kiss that conveyed more than she wanted it to, and definitely more than he’d be comfortable with. This was just sex. She’d decided that before she allowed herself to become intimate with Trip, and even if the decision to go there had been torn from her by a hunger she couldn’t have resisted, it was still a deliberate choice. Trip was part of the ADVENTURE, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to let herself go, and she refused to have regrets.

Trip tapped on her forehead. “What’s going on in there?”

“Honestly? Nothing.”

“Why not?”

Norah leaned back so she could see his face better. “What do you think should be going on in there?”

“Nothing,” Trip muttered, just sulky enough to make her smile.

“Do you want me to cry and make a scene? I can call your handler and tell him you took advantage of me, if that helps.”

“You could have told me you’d already decided you were okay with this.”

“It’s not like we took the time to discuss it.”

Trip laughed a little. It was a nice sound, as nice as the way his fingers trailed softly up and down her arm. “Maybe I can manage a little foreplay next time.”

“The whole day was foreplay.”

“Scoring one-o-one,” Trip said, “get a woman on the back of a motorcycle and you’re in.”

Norah hummed in the back of her throat, part amusement, part contentment. “I think it had more to do with being wrapped around you, but the bike might have played a part. Tomorrow we get to see if it works on men.”

“Because?”

“You’re teaching me how to drive a motorcycle. Just in case,” she added before he could argue.

He didn’t, probably because he knew she was right. “Just in case,” he repeated.

Progress, Norah thought, pushing herself up on one elbow. “Now about that foreplay . . .”

GOOD SEX TO MAKE UP FOR THE LAST . . . OKAY,
her entire adult life, an excellent breakfast to make up for the dinner she hadn’t had, and she was going to spend a good part of the day wrapped around Trip on the back of his motorcycle. What, Norah thought the next morning, could be more glorious? Okay, the skies were boiling like Shakespeare’s cauldron, the temperature had passed arctic and was heading for deep-space cold, and the motorcycle-driving lessons had been a complete failure—she had to do what with her left foot, left hand, and right hand all at the same time? But she was looking on the bright side.

“Are you sure we should do this?” her practical-and pessimistic side asked anyway, bolstered by the sight of Lake Michigan to her left, with its white caps and churning surf.

“Weather report says it will clear later this morning,” Trip said back, via Bluetooth.

“Okay,” she said, trusting him implicitly. “Ever think of becoming a meteorologist?”

“Everybody hates those guys.”

Not in your case.
If Trip said it would be beach weather in January, everyone in his viewing area would be walking around in swimsuits. Or at least all the women would be.

“Those guys are always wrong” was all she said. “That’s why everyone hates them.”

“That’s just a cliché. Like you can’t trust a federal agent.”

“Clichés happen for a reason.”

Trip chose not to respond, which made her feel a little guilty, but only for a second. After all, he’d brought it up.

“Where are we going to get a boat this late in the season?”

“Kizi.”

“What’s a Kizi?”

“I asked the manager of the motel when he brought breakfast, and he said Kizi can get me anything I want.”

“What are the chances Kizi goes through legal channels?”

“Ignorance is bliss,” Trip said.

Norah had to agree. She’d been getting quite the education since Trip had come into her life. About some things she’d have preferred to remain blissfully ignorant; other things had just been bliss.

They took 119, a stretch of road that alternated between views of Lake Michigan and a tunnel of trees famed for its fall color, but almost leafless now with the storm that had blown in overnight. 119 led them to Cross Village, the last town on the shore until Mackinaw City, which sat at the foot of the bridge connecting Michigan’s upper and lower peninsulas.

Cross Village had been founded where Father Jacques Marquette, during his missionary travels, had planted a cross on the bluff overlooking Lake Michigan. That small cross had long since disappeared, but a large cross, visible for miles out into the lake, had taken its place.

It was a quiet town filled with quiet people, a bastion of the remaining Ottawa Indian population, and home to Blissfest, a folk music festival that drew visitors from across the nation. The sun hadn’t fought its way very far over the horizon, but even at that time of the morning the place seemed to be hopping, people having breakfast, buying papers, or trading hellos as they met on the sidewalks. They all stopped to stare at the crazy people on the Harley. Not to mention they were outsiders.

“So much for flying under the radar,” Norah said.

“I didn’t count on so many early birds.”

“Be grateful it’s not hunting season yet. Half these people would be carrying rifles, too.”

Trip didn’t have a comeback for that, but she could feel his relief. “Where do you suppose Kizi is?”

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Trip said, and kept going right through town.

“I thought we needed Kizi,” Norah said. “He’s going to get us a boat.”

“We’ll find one,” Trip said. “There’ll be vacation homes peppered all along the shore. Someone will have a boat still in the water.”

“You’re going to steal a boat?”

“We’re going to steal a boat.”

“That sounds great in theory, but my job doesn’t come with a get out of jail free card.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“Wait until spring?” Which she knew wasn’t an option. What she didn’t know was why she wanted the delay. Was it because she was afraid of drowning, or of Trip leaving just when she’d begun to find this new side of herself? And there, she concluded, was a question that could wait until spring.

119 had ended in Cross Village. Trip kept to whatever roads he could find along the coast, taking the time at each one to check for a boat. Finally they came across a house with a tent-covered structure next to the dock. Trip guided the bike into the drive and left her there while he walked down to scope it out. He came back with a smirk on his face.

“Jackpot,” he said.

“There’s a boat in that tent?” Norah followed down the dock. A square metal structure had been erected beside the dock, white canvas covering the portion of the posts about a foot above the surface of the lake. Inside the tent a boat was suspended from the top of the frame. The boat was maybe fifteen feet from end to end, completely open with a semicircle of seats at the rear and a pair of swivel seats behind the windshield at the front. “It’s pretty small.”

“We don’t have far to go,” Trip said, “it’ll do the job.”

Norah glanced at the white-capped expanse of water, then back at the boat. “It looks like the waves will be higher than the sides of the boat.”

“Have a little faith,” Trip said.

He jumped into ankle-deep water at the shallow end of the tent, and began to turn a crank that lowered the boat slowly toward the water.

“You do that, and I’ll start praying,” Norah said.

Trip continued to crank, and in the end the possibility of what they might find was stronger than Norah’s fear of the waves. Or maybe, she thought as she climbed into the boat without an argument, she was foolishly overconfident in Trip’s abilities, but it just didn’t seem like anything could go wrong . . . Okay, things had gone wrong, but not in a mortal injury way. And she was wearing a life preserver. It smelled like it had been soaking in mildew for a year, but if she went over the side she wasn’t going to care. Once Trip had parked the motorcycle inside the garage with the miraculously broken door lock, they located some gas, the boat was underway, and the wind was blowing, she couldn’t smell anything. She couldn’t feel anything, either, but she’d spent two days on the back of Trip’s Harley in the frigid wind, so being numb was hardly new.

“We’re almost there,” Trip said to her not much later.

Norah lifted her head out of the neck of her jacket and looked over the front of the boat, then stuck her face back into her collar again. One sight of Waugoshance Lighthouse was enough.

The lighthouse sat at the western end of a shoal stretching seven miles from the Michigan shoreline westward into Lake Michigan. The shoal consisted of a series of shallowly submerged gravel beds dotted with low, weed and evergreen-covered islands that appeared and disappeared depending on the water level of the lake. Waugoshance had warned ships off the shoal for the last half of the nineteenth century and the first dozen or so years of the twentieth, at which time it was replaced.

It had sat abandoned and derelict for nearly a hundred years. Its metal skin was peeling away, the stone structure beneath crumbling, the birdcage light at the top nothing but the curved metal framework that gave it its name. It was, however, stationary and it offered shelter from the wind.

Trip nosed the boat in as close as he could, then jumped out on the lowest course of stones in the lighthouse’s base and tied off. He helped Norah out of the boat, then jumped back in, handing her their bags and scavenging beneath the seats. He joined her, his arms full of stuff, including a toolbox and a first aid kit.

“What’s all that?”

“Everything I could find,” Trip said. “You never know what you’re going to need.”

“We need to get our butts up to the top of the lighthouse,” Norah said. “Before the whole place washes away.”

They made their way up the stairs, careful of the crumbling redbrick walls and the debris already covering the risers.

“What exactly did Puff tell you?” Trip asked her when they reached the top.

Norah laughed a little. “He said there’d be a loose brick.”

“Ha-ha.”

“Yeah.” Norah turned a slow circle. “That has to be the understatement of the century.”

Trip started working his way around the room. “What bothers me more is there’s no place big enough to hide fifty million dollars worth of stolen goods. There aren’t even any empty spaces behind these bricks.”

“Damn it.” Norah headed for the stairs.

“Where are you going?”

“He conned us.”
He conned me.
The possibility had always existed, but it still hurt like hell.

“Think, Norah,” Trip said, stopping her before she’d taken the first step down. “Why would he send us here?”

She turned around, already grabbing on to that tiny ember of hope.

“Let me rephrase that,” Trip said. “Why would he send you here? He wouldn’t hesitate to send me on a wild-goose chase, but he wouldn’t do that to you.”

Trip continued to work his way around the room, peeling loose bricks off the walls as he went.

The ember took fire, fanned into a flame that felt like the sun coming up inside her, filling her with warmth and light. Lucius was her father; she’d love him even if he’d conned her. But it felt damn good knowing he hadn’t.

She set to work helping Trip, systematically stripping a section from the floor to as high as she could reach, then moving on.

“Don’t worry about the ones down low and up high,” Trip said when he noticed what she was doing. “He would have put it at eye level.”

“Okay, but eye level for my dad is about halfway between yours and mine.”

“Good point,” Trip said, adjusting his focus down about half a foot.

But Norah was already there. “Eureka,” she said, spying a bit of plastic behind the brick next to the one she’d just pulled out.