“Step away from the car!” he shouted into the darkness.
Instead of fear, a hot rush of fury took over. “We’re not going anywhere!”
The earth erupted in front of them. She gasped. He hadn’t been bluffing about the gun.
Thad grabbed her and pushed her into the darkness. “Do what he says.”
“Why?” She was furious. Possessed by a raging wildfire. Furious with their kidnapper. With herself for involving Thad in her mess. With this cretin who was terrorizing them. “Big man with a gun!” She gripped the glass pebbles tighter in her fists. “What do you want, big man?”
“Shut up, Liv,” Thad ordered.
“Shut up!” their kidnapper shouted at exactly the same time. He spun on Thad. “Give me your wallet. Toss it over there.”
Thad did as he demanded.
“Now your phone,” the man said.
“Don’t do it!” Olivia exclaimed.
Thad ignored her. The man kept the gun leveled as he bent down to snatch them both up.
“Now that watch.”
Thad unclipped the Victory780 and tossed it toward his feet.
The man turned in her direction. “Give me your purse.”
She couldn’t get past her fury. “It’s in the limo, you moron.”
“Liv . . .” Thad’s voice sounded a sharp, warning note.
But she’d sucked Thad into what should have been her crisis alone, and she was beyond reason. “Big man wants to do drama! I do drama better than anyone!”
The man lunged for her. She let both hands fly, hurling the glass at his face.
He gave a howl of shock, and that was all Thad needed to charge him. The gun fired and flew into the air. She screamed, lost her balance, and fell.
“Liv!” Thad spun toward her.
With no weapon, the driver lurched for the limo.
The car door slammed, and Thad went to his knees beside her. His hands frantically moved over her body, and in the adrenaline rush flooding her, she couldn’t comprehend why he was feeling her up at a time like this.
“Liv! Where did you get hit?”
He wasn’t feeling her up. He was . . . “I didn’t.” She rolled to the side. “I fell.”
Thad spotted the gun and rushed with it toward the limo, but by the time he fired, the car was peeling onto the road, gravel spraying like shrapnel.
For a long moment, neither of them spoke. In the distance, the lights on a transmission tower blinked, and she heard the faraway sound of a freight train. They were alone in the thick desert dark.
As she breathed in the dusty cloud from the car tires, all her fury evaporated, leaving her with a racing heart and wobbly legs as she pushed herself to her knees. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“For what?”
“For dragging you into my problems.”
“Shut up, Liv, okay?” It was the second time he’d said that to her, but now his gentle tone made her want to weep. “Maybe he was after the watches.”
As she started to argue with him, she felt something by her hand. She closed her fingers around his watch and held it out. “A lot of effort for nothing.”
“Bastard.” He clicked on the safety and shoved the gun in his waistband. As he took the watch from her, he helped her to her feet. “Let’s go.”
One of the gel breast lifts she’d worn instead of a bra had fallen from the V of her dress. She fumbled for it, but layers of sandy grit adhered to the sticky surface, so she retrieved her flamenco shawl instead. He helped her to her feet. “Let’s go.”
Having lopsided breasts, she decided, was only a minor complication compared to the bigger challenge of trekking down a dark, rutted gravel road wearing five-inch stilettos.
Thad was thinking the same thing. “You’ll never make it to the highway in those shoes. I’ll carry you piggyback.”
“Never.” Olivia Shore, the toast of the Metropolitan, the jewel of La Scala, the pride of the Royal Opera, did not piggyback on anyone, no matter how broad and strong they were. She tossed the dusty shawl around her shoulders. “I’ll be fine.”
“You’ll kill yourself.”
“But I’ll keep my dignity.”
“You’re a stubborn fool.”
She sighed and looped a knot in the front of the shawl. “I know.”
Her refusal made the awkward trip last twice as long, but Thad’s tight grip kept her from twisting an ankle, and at least she held on to a shred of pride—or as much as her cockeyed breasts would allow.
With both their phones gone—hers abandoned in the limo’s back seat and his stuck in the asshole’s pocket—they had to rely on the kindness of strangers for a ride back to the city. Unfortunately, the strangers turned out to be a trio of drunken frat boys. Fortunately, Thad let them know right away that he was the one and only Thaddeus Walker Bowman Owens, so they let him drive. Unfortunately, he introduced her as a Chicago Stars cheerleader. It shocked her that she still remembered how to laugh. A pathetic laugh, for sure, but at least she wasn’t crying.
She borrowed one of the frat boys’ phones and called Henri. He was frantic. He’d been waiting for them in the hotel lobby when the real limo driver had shown up, and the doorman had informed him that she and Thad had already left. Henri had assumed they’d decided to get to the restaurant early to have a drink, but when he’d arrived and discovered they weren’t there, he’d grown increasingly worried. It took much of the rest of the trip to convince him she and Thad were unhurt. Physically, anyway.
*
“I can sense a middle linebacker twitching his left eye!” Thad exclaimed, as they took the elevator up to their suite sometime around four in the morning. “But I have no idea what our limo driver looked like. And do you know why?”
She knew exactly why because she’d already listened to his rant twice.
“Because I was too busy staring at your ass! That’s why!”
Their grilling by the Las Vegas police hadn’t gone well. The officer who’d interviewed them found it hard to believe that neither of them could describe the driver, and by the second hour of their stint at the police station, he’d stopped trying to hide his skepticism. “You didn’t see the driver when you approached the car? You didn’t speak to him before you got in?”
“Yes, but . . .” Olivia took over this round. “Thad and I were having a . . . a conversation, and neither of us was paying attention.”
Their interviewer had an egg-shaped head, dark-rimmed glasses, a brush mustache, and a mistrustful nature. “So let me get this straight. You think he was white, but maybe not. He wasn’t short, but he wasn’t tall. And his voice sounded maybe middle-aged but maybe younger.”
“He had a hat on,” Olivia said defensively, “and it was pulled low. I remember that.” She tugged the dirty flamenco shawl more tightly around her to conceal her unfettered breasts and briefly wondered how the frat boy would feel about the single silicone lift pad he’d find in his car when he sobered up.
“He was wearing a dark suit,” Thad added. “We told you that.”
“Are you even sure it was a man? Could it have been a woman?”
“Thad and I weren’t really having a conversation,” she said desperately. “It was more of an argument, and you know how that is.”
The officer—his name tag read L. Burris—looked up from his computer screen. “You’ve been getting a lot of publicity lately.” Olivia should have seen what was coming next, but she hadn’t. Burris pulled off his glasses. “Ms. Shore, this isn’t the first incident you’ve been involved in since this tour of yours started.”
“It’s not my tour. Marchand Timepieces is sponsoring—”
“That assault in New Orleans . . . They never found the man responsible.” His chair squeaked as he leaned back into it. “You’re aware, aren’t you, of the penalties involved in filing a false report?”