Fugitive Heart

chapter Eight


This was Nick’s worst nightmare. He had his hands full keeping himself a few steps in front of the Espositos. Now his hands were literally full of Ames. From the moment the woman had wandered into his house, all soft curves and dimpled cheeks, he’d known she would be trouble. She’d interfered with his mission—to search the house and grounds thoroughly and if he didn’t find anything, drop off the grid and try to reinvent himself someplace quiet. Maybe across the border in the Canadian northwest. He’d escaped the expectations of his childhood and slipped the mob for legit work—nerd work at that. Surely a city guy like him could get used to roughing it in the wilderness.

“Hey.” He pulled her against him a little more roughly than he needed to. “Don’t faint on me.”

“I’m not fainting,” she wailed, and then her face was buried against his chest and his shirt was getting damp.

“It’s okay. It’ll be all right.” He patted her back. Lies, but he had to say something. “Elliot’s probably in Aruba or someplace, sitting on a beach, drinking a Corona.” Someplace that didn’t have an extradition treaty with the U.S.

“That doesn’t make me feel much better,” she mumbled. Her deep exhalation warmed the skin under his shirt. “My own brother and he doesn’t ever think of me. He never visited while Mom and then Dad were dying, and he left me to handle the funerals. What kind of a person doesn’t come to his father’s funeral?”

“One who’s in deep trouble.” He stroked her hair, the curls as bouncy as her personality. Not a good idea. You’re starting to like her too much.

“One who’s completely selfish.” She gazed up into his face with damp eyes. “My God, Elliot’s horrible, and I don’t know why. My parents were good people and raised us right. He has no excuse for acting the way he does.”

He hunkered on the weed-infested shoulder of the empty country road, holding on to Ames. He should have felt like a fool, but looking into her eyes, so wide and hurt and bruised-looking, he didn’t care. He only had to say something to make it better. There wasn’t much he could offer. “Some people just get on the wrong track. They don’t see where they’re headed until it’s too late, and they can’t dig their way out of the shit piled on top of them.”

She wiped her face with the back of her hand, pushed away from him and got to her feet. “I think I believe you about all of it.” If she cooperated, they could head in the right direction—away from the nightmare.

“Good.” He rose from the crouch and shoved his hands into his pockets.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you. Sorry I hit you,” she said. “And I’m sorry for the trouble my brother caused you.” She wiped her face again, smearing mascara, making her eyes appear even more bruised. Her sorrow tugged at his heart.

“Elliot did what he did, and it’s not your fault.”

“But I have to try to fix this.” She sniffed and straightened her shoulders, chin up, eyes flashing rather than melting now. “I’m going to help you search. We’ll find the stuff he took and get you off the hook. If I can do that much, I’ll feel better.”

Whoa. She really did seem to believe his story. Even better, she didn’t say anything about going to the FBI. Nick didn’t think contacting them would be helpful, especially if any agents had ended up on the Esposito payroll again. Things could get even worse for him if it appeared he’d squealed to the Feebies and word of that got back to Bert.

“It’ll be better if you stay away from me completely, out of the line of fire.” Her eyes widened, and he hastily added, “So to speak.”

She swallowed and shook her head. “No. We’ll get this done faster if we both look. There are a few places I have in mind where Elliot used to stash pot and skin mags back in high school. We’ll start there.” She turned to get back into the car, a bundle of determination.

Reluctantly, Nick slid behind the wheel. He’d gone on this date in order to weasel out what she knew, but he’d come away from it with an ally. Wanted or unwanted, Ames was a part of this now.

Jesus, what if he hadn’t pushed her to tell the truth? At least now maybe they had some notice, a few hours before whoever Esposito sent showed up at his door—or hers.





“I’m afraid we’re not going to find anything here.” Even Ames was finally ready to admit defeat a few hours later as she wiggled out from under the sagging front porch. Dirt streaked her sweaty face and arms, and her damp hair was frizzy. Her clothes were ruined, but she didn’t freak out about it like most of the women Nick knew back in the city would have. She rubbed more dirt from her hands onto her skirt and pushed a lock of hair out of her eyes, leaving another smear on her forehead. Streaks of dirt covered her knees too. Funny, he’d never considered knees cute before. “I’ve checked all the hiding places he used as a teen and even under the porch where he used to hide his box of treasures when he was little. See?”

She shook a rusty tin box, and something inside rattled.

Nick took it from her and studied the tiny lock. It sounded as if there were marbles rolling around in there. He looked at her. “Do you mind if I…?”

“Go ahead.”

He broke off the small lock and lifted the lid. Marbles, as he’d guessed. Also some gold coins with pirate heads on them, tokens from some long-gone arcade, no doubt. A photo of a brown-and-white dog leaping for a stick a small boy held. The boy was Elliot. He could tell from the mischievous grin, which hadn’t changed a bit over the years. There was also a piece of notebook paper, folded into a tight little square. A corner ripped as Nick unfolded it.

Ames pressed close to his side. He could smell her perfume or deodorant mingled with the scent of her warm flesh. “Oh,” she breathed as she read the faded words printed with pencil in sloppy block letters. Last Will and Testament of Elliot R. Jensen.

Nick passed the paper to Ames. This was private stuff, the memories of her brother, of their shared past.

“According to this, he left me his penknife.” Her voice was thick again. “That was his favorite thing in the entire world. He whittled sticks and hunks of wood that were supposed to be animals but looked like blobs.” She read on and laughed. “He left our cousin Rob a curse. He hated Rob.”

Suddenly Nick felt the pain too at the vision of Elliot as a goofy kid with his whole future before him. Who would’ve guessed he’d f*ck it up so badly?

He wanted to hug Ames and maybe do more, but he had no idea how she felt about him now. Besides, they didn’t have time to stop. The sun was already setting, and he didn’t want to light up the scene in case their visitors were already on the way.

To resist the temptation of her, he took a step away from the porch and disguised the motion by shuffling from foot to foot. “We’re both annoyed as hell at him, but Elliot was—is—a good guy in a lot of ways. We’ll find out what happened to him, okay?”

She nodded and bent to tuck the little box into a sack. When she straightened, all signs of anger and grief were gone. “What now?”

“We keep looking. Inside again, I guess.”

She wiped sweat from her forehead. “You have no idea what we should do next, do you?”

“Give me a minute. I’ll think of something.” I have to.

“I think we should talk to Jake Greely. He was one of Elliot’s best friends. Perhaps he has some idea of his whereabouts.”

“The fewer people we talk to, the better.”

“Maybe I can do it so he won’t get suspicious. The last time I saw him, he asked me out on a date, so that’ll be a good excuse to stop by. Of course that was a while ago—a few months.” She frowned as if regretting lost opportunities.

Jake Greely. Nick’s mind had grown clouded with desire and exhaustion. “Why does that name sound familiar anyway?”

“You met his mother at the movie night in the park. My brother might have come back to town quietly—I sure didn’t hear a thing—but if he got in touch with anyone, it would be Jake. If he saw Elliot, then we know we should keep looking around here. Jake’s living at his mom’s house. I’ll go there.”

“We’ll go.” He’d been trying to get her away from him for safety’s sake, but now he thought perhaps that was a mistake. Nothing to do with the fact that the guy had once asked her out.

“I might have an easier time alone.” She rubbed at a blotch of dirt on her arm.

“We’ll go,” he repeated. “I’ll wait in the car.”

“God, you’re bossy.”

“Yeah, about that.” He fell silent, waiting until she looked up and met his eyes again. “Until this thing with the Espositos blows over”—and wasn’t that a euphemism?—“I think you shouldn’t be alone, and you should probably stick around someone who’s armed.”

“A lot of the guys around here hunt.” Her dimple showed. “And there’s the county sheriff’s department. Of course, you have a pretty big gun.”

Her manner was ever so slightly flirty. Her fear and anger had apparently passed. Ames Jensen was a tough cookie, as his father would say. Damned good thing too.

He folded his arms. “Going to the sheriff might be a great idea after I leave town.”

Her smile vanished, and he almost wished he hadn’t said that. But, yeah, it was right to remind them both that he would move on and that her safety mattered more than their tentative new relationship or whatever was forming between them.

The chances that the Espositos had influenced local law enforcement in Podunk, Wisconsin, were miniscule and even Bert’s most testosterone-powered thug wouldn’t go after her if Ames was with the sheriff.

He picked up the shovels and carried them onto the porch. “Fast showers, fast food, then this Greely guy.”

“Let’s get cleaned up at my place. I have nothing to wear here.”

He thought about following her into her apartment and into her shower. He’d hold her slippery, warm body in the spray of water… “No. Sandy Marvin knows your real name. That means the Espositos do too. And how hard would it be to track you down? Answer—way too easy. Someone could be waiting there now.”

He sat on the porch steps, only for a moment, to regroup. Trouble was, Ames joined him and leaned against his shoulder. She heaved a big sigh, and he had to lift his arm and pull her against him. She fit perfectly in that spot between his arm and his body. He considered how to kiss her without distracting them too much and then realized she’d muttered something.

“What?” he asked.

He’d supposed she’d just cursed under her breath—hell knew he wanted to scream out curses—but not Ames. She’d come up with a plan. “We’ll stop by the diner. I’ve got an extra uniform there I can wear so I don’t look like a mud monster when I visit Jake.”

“If I was Esposito’s guy, that diner is the first place I’d go hunt down information.”

She nodded. “So I’ll use the back door.”

He squeezed her body to his and remembered how her lips had tasted last night, and the uninhibited way she’d thrown herself against him.

She slowly asked, “Were you ever Esposito’s guy?”

“No. I work in a museum, like I said. Research, creating brochures, building exhibits and repairing them, fund-raising. That’s my world.” Once again a pang of regret shot through him. His job had seemed boring occasionally, but for days now, he’d craved boredom.

“Oh.”

She still doubted him? He made a frustrated noise deep in his throat.

Ames must have understood his inarticulate growl. She pulled back to study his face. “No, I believe you. You just seem so familiar with that whole…what goes on. How these guys think.”

“I grew up around those people, and yeah, they were the ones I partied with as a teen.” Before the mess with his father. “But I never lived like that.” That wasn’t entirely true, and he sagged a little, remembering.

“Okay, I can tell you’re upset. What’s wrong?” She seemed better able to read him than Lina, his girlfriend who’d lived with him for almost year while they were in graduate school.

He decided to tell her the worst about himself—why not? It wasn’t anything as horrible as she’d conjured on her own, like he’d kill Elliot. He touched a springy curl at her cheek. Just for luck. “The family likes to have something on people who know anything about their business dealings. You know, quid pro quo. So, um, you know…” His voice trailed off.

She bumped his shoulder. “I think you’re saying ‘you know’ a lot because you don’t actually want me to know. Go on. You were talking about business dealings.”

“Hey, how come you’re not a lawyer? I’m thinking you’d be a good prosecutor.”

She began to squirm against him again, as if trying to get even closer. “I didn’t go to college, and I like web design. Come on, Nick. Explain this quid pro quo.”

He wrapped the other arm around her and pulled her onto his lap. His body woke entirely, and for a second, the rest didn’t matter.

They exchanged a long, hungry kiss. He hauled her closer. She twisted, wiggled and then straddled him. He could feel the heat of her pressing against him. Yes, he did like skirts.

She nibbled his mouth, sank into another kiss and moved in his arms, restless and full of life. All of that soft energy so close, so ready for him. Maybe he could just slip his fingers into those panties and then into her. And then he could—

“What did you mean by quid pro quo?” she murmured against his mouth.

“Don’t you ever let anything go?” He kissed her eyelids and a clean spot on her cheek.

With a pained sigh, and ignoring her startled squawk, he lifted her up and off his thighs. “We don’t have time. I’ll do a quick cleanup, and we can talk in the car.”

She started to protest.

He held up a hand, palm out. “I’ll talk, I promise.”

While she waited for him on the porch, he went inside to get the worst of the dirt off himself. The cold water doused his body’s eager longing for Ames, temporarily. He put on jeans, a T-shirt and his easy-to-reach nylon holster again. He’d never gotten used to the weight and feel of a gun against his body and took a couple of minutes to practice pulling the gun from the holster. Nick’s dark wool jacket was off the rack and loose—the casual academic-nerd look, his father had called it. It hid the gun just fine.

They walked to the car without talking. He looked around the clearing, which was too frigging quiet, before sliding into the driver’s seat.

Ames clicked her seat belt closed and stared out the window as he started the car and drove up the bumpy driveway. Too bad there weren’t cameras along the dirt drive. He’d love to know what awaited him over the rise or around the next curve.

“Crap,” she whispered.

“What?”

“This whole situation.”

He stopped the car and studied her. Just as she seemed to know him, he figured he could read her better than most people. “Come on. I know you’re holding back, Ames. Tell me what you’re thinking, and then I’ll tell you what you asked me about earlier.”

She laughed then, for the first time in hours. A great sound. “I think I might be a little crazy. I learn my brother’s involved with criminals. I know we’re in danger. I feel sick with this, I feel like sobbing, but mostly I feel like having my way with you. That’s just creepy. If you hadn’t stopped us back on the porch, I would have had your pants down and my skirt up and… Good thing you took less than five minutes inside the house. I was this close to bolting inside and joining you in the shower. I ought to be worrying about the people who’re after Elliot and us. Instead, I spent the time imagining you naked.”

He had to swallow down the wave of lust her words conjured in his body. “Ever hear about how danger and sorrow make a person want to do something life affirming?”

“No.”

“Sounds about right, though, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe it sounds right to you. To me, it sounds crazy.” She tilted her head back, exposing her pale throat. Nick could really do with more life affirming about now, starting with licking that throat.

He pulled out of the driveway and onto the back road instead. No sign of traffic was a nice change for him, but the dirt and badly maintained roads wreaked havoc on a car. In his constant city versus country contest, car travel ended up a draw.

Her eyes still closed, she said, “Tell me.”

He didn’t bother to pretend he didn’t know what she meant.

“When I hit eighteen, I was past the easy time.”

“I don’t understand. From everything I know, the early teen years are far less easy. Eighteen is past the really tough adolescent years.”

“I mean the easy time in jail. If I broke a law, I wasn’t going to get off easy. It would go on my permanent record.”

“Oh, right.” She gave him a swift, narrow-eyed look.

“Look, it’s not that big a deal. It’s not like I killed or even hurt anyone.” Back then. “I just ended up as part of a group of guys who robbed a liquor store after closing. We went out drinking, and suddenly there was Bert, messing with the alarm code. He had some new toy he wanted to use, he told us. A code breaker.”

They’d been laughing and playing. Nick had been drunk, and the whole night felt like they were flying with the power of being young and with a group of guys he’d known forever. Laughing and…

He scowled when he saw how she stared at him, as if she thought he was as despicable as a child rapist. Sure, the night’s memories felt scummy now—but he still felt the need to argue with her and his conscience.

“We didn’t get any money. Not much, anyway, maybe fifty bucks because the business had closed out the cash drawer. And we grabbed a couple of six-packs. It was more just messing around and seeing what we could do. That’s what I thought. But even though we’d knocked out the cameras—disabled them, I mean—don’t glare like that, Ames, we didn’t even break the cameras, for God’s sake. Anyway, the cameras there weren’t working, but Bert had a camera of his own.”

The next part embarrassed Nick, but Ames had stopped frowning. Now she just waited and watched him, so he continued. “Bert managed to take video and shots of me in the store—incriminating stuff. A day later, I got a call explaining the concept of what Bert called mutual leverage. Along the lines of ‘we’ve got your dirty secret, and that helps us feel better knowing you’ve got a couple of ours.’ It felt like crap being dicked around by a guy I thought was my friend, but I understood. This was how they’d feel safer about me. I’d made it clear since high school that I wasn’t interested in any aspect of the business, not even the legitimate side. So in a way, Bert helped me go on my own merry way.”

He turned from the bumpy country road onto the highway. “After that night, I learned my lesson. I’d go out clubbing with them now and then, but no more partying hard. No more drinking a lot. No more extracurricular activities.”

“That all sounds horrible.”

Nick tried to explain. “They could have threatened me with violence or framed me for something I didn’t do, whatever—but Bert liked to make it real.” Also, Bert enjoyed messing with people’s minds on a small scale. So did his dad, Cesar, who was far more likely to use violence to get the message across.”

“So you still stayed friends?”

“Not really. After my father unsuccessfully tried to call it quits, I broke away completely. I went to school full-time, worked a lot. I’d left that life behind. For good, I believed.”

“Until my brother.”

“Until your brother.”

“Oh, Elliot,” she muttered under her breath, and it sounded like both a prayer and a curse.