“You ever actually have a desk?”
“Sure, in my apartment. It does a great job of holding up my fake plant.” She leaned back and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “We went to the movies for our first date. You were a gentleman, didn’t try anything.”
“But you were hot to go. You kept touching my arm and tossing your hair. Fiddling with your bra strap.”
“You wish.”
“And panting. I remember a lot of panting.”
“Shut up.”
Cooper smiled and merged onto the highway. Their rhythm was easy, natural. He wasn’t flirting, exactly, but the banter was fun. They kept it up, kept it light, as he drove back to Chinatown. Lisa had made them promise to have lunch before they left, and it seemed as though they had the time to spare now. He pulled up a mental map of Wyoming. The Holdfast spanned a good chunk of the middle of the state, an ugly sprawl of desert and badlands cobbled together in a thousand real estate transactions, with a border like a gerrymandered congressional district. He figured it was about a twenty-five-hour drive. They could take it slow, get some rest along the way. Stop somewhere and buy a couple of wedding rings. And he could use the time to make a plan. Getting to Erik Epstein wouldn’t be easy, and that was only a stepping-stone on the way to John Smith.
“The Amalfi Coast of Italy,” she said. “That’s where we honeymooned. We rented a room on the side of a cliff, with a balcony where we drank wine. Every day we swam in the ocean.”
“I remember. You looked dynamite in that suit.”
“The red one?” She looked at him through dark lashes. “You always liked me in red.”
“It’s good with your body,” he said, the words spilling out before he could stop them. The memory of last night flashed back, the soft whisper of her shirt sliding off, and the image he’d invented. He felt a little heat in his forehead, glanced over at her.
She wore a half smile. “My body, huh?”
“Your skin, I mean. You said your dad is Lebanese—what’s your mom?”
“French. All burgundy lips and flowing hair. They were quite the couple. He was a businessman, a very sharp dresser with a pencil moustache. The two of them were like something out of an RKO flick.”
“Were?”
“Yes,” she said simply.
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.” She set her shoulders, and he read the active change in topic there, marked it to the pattern that she was becoming in his mind.
He was just about to ask where they lived when he saw the Escalade. Traffic had been getting steadily worse as they’d drawn closer to Chinatown, which he’d chalked up to tourists and the lunch crowd. But the truck— Late model Escalade, black, tinted windows.
Parked half in, half out of the street. Like it stopped suddenly. Right at the intersection of Cermak and Archer, two of the arteries of Chinatown.
Engine running.
Government plates.
Shit.
—sent a warning tingle down his spine. Cooper sat bolt upright, fingers tightening on the wheel. Shannon picked up the move, followed his eyes, said, “No.”
He glanced in the rearview, half expecting to see black SUVs bearing down on them, but there was nothing but a long line of cars. If it was a trap, the other side hadn’t swung shut yet. A U-turn? Conspicuous, a last resort. It could just be a coincidence, a DAR crash vehicle down here for something else, with a different target.
“Lee and Lisa,” Shannon said, and jerked as if she’d been electrocuted. “No, no, no.”
“We don’t know—”
“The traffic,” she said. “Damn, I should have seen it. Stop the car.”
“Wait, Shannon, we can’t—”
“Stop the car!”
He saw it then—the traffic hadn’t just been slowing. It had been creeping to a stop. This wasn’t a matter of a crowded street or a backed-up stoplight. Something was blocking the flow of cars. It could be an accident. A collision, with police on the scene.