I opened my eyes in shock and with the realization that I couldn’t, wasn’t able to—
I pulled away, broke from him with sudden violence, standing so abruptly I knocked over both my stool and my drink, trying to get backward, away from him, him who didn’t know what I was—
He looked at me with vague amusement. “So that was the line, huh?”
“What?” I looked around to see everyone in the bar staring at me, and turned back to him, still sitting on his stool, the same little smile crooking his lips. “No, it’s fine, I just…can’t…” I let out a breath in frustration. “Are you okay?”
His eyebrows arched upward. “I’m fine. Are you?”
“Yes. I’m fine. I’m sorry.” I cocked my head and tried to give him my most regretful expression. “Thank you for the drinks, James. You’re a really nice guy – and a fantastic kisser, by the way – but I have to go.”
He stood and tossed some bills on the bar. “Why don’t I walk you out?”
He took a step toward me but I held a gloved hand out and rested it on his chest. I let it linger there; damn, it was firm. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, for a lot of reasons.”
He seemed to be suppressing his grin, but nodded. “Fair enough.” He reached into the pocket of his pants and came back with a business card. “If you’re ever in Minneapolis, give me a call.”
I straightened my blazer and nodded, feeling the holster against my ribs. “I’ll keep that in mind.” I nodded toward his stool. “You might want to sit down for a few minutes.” He gave me a quizzical look. “Just a suggestion. Nice to meet you, James.”
I walked from the bar and tried really, really hard not to look at him as I pushed my way out the door. It didn’t work, and he gave me a sizzling smile that made me want to go back to him, and kiss him until his eyes rolled back in his head and his face melted off. I shook my head in disgust at that thought and walked out into the parking lot. It felt like I was being weak when I thought it, weak and casual and flippant, endangering James’s life so I could feel…something. I was lucky that the eternity that it felt like he kissed me was less than I thought it was, or he would have made a hell of a scene pitching over in the bar.
The parking lot lurched as I was about halfway across it. I stopped, regained my balance, and kept going. Once I reached the elevator after passing through the hotel lobby, I leaned against the wall and felt my head spin. Those Whiskey Sours weren’t so bad.
When the elevator door dinged I opened my eyes to find the doors still closed. I heard another ding and stared, waiting for them to open. On the third ring I realized it wasn’t the elevator: it was my phone, and I scrambled to grab it out of my pocket. I thrust it up to my ear after hitting the talk button, not even looking at the caller ID. “Hello?”
The elevator dinged, the door opened, and I heard Kat’s voice on the other end of the line as well as in person. She stood in the hall and turned her head in surprise when she saw me stagger out of the elevator. “Get packed.” She pulled her phone away from her ear and I got a good look at her face, which was still drawn, but now more serious, her blond locks twisted and mussed around her. “Ariadne called. There was another robbery.”
I dropped the cell phone back in my pocket and my hand went out to the wall automatically to support me. “Where?”
“Red Wing, Minnesota.” She started to hold out a hand to help me but I waved her off. “It’s north of here, a little over an hour, on the Wisconsin state line. We need to move now.” A little hint of a smile peeked at me, understated, on her tanned and pretty face. “If we hurry, we might be able to catch up with them.”
Chapter 8
A few minutes later our SUV was back on the highway, doing about a hundred miles an hour, barreling north on the interstate with the siren blazing. Kat was at the wheel and I was in the passenger seat. Scott was passed out in the back seat, his head against the window. We hit a bump and he didn’t stir. I rolled my window down and let the warm night air blow in my face.
“How are you holding up?” Kat didn’t take her eyes off the road. I could tell she was tense, white-knuckling the wheel. I would have been too. Scott had learned to drive years ago. Kat and I had learned in the last six months, with Parks as our instructor, in an intensive driving course that the Directorate gave us to teach us how to drive both offensively and defensively. Now I could run a car off the road at eighty miles an hour easier than I could parallel park.
“My world is in motion,” I said, as I swallowed heavily. I didn’t quite feel sick, but I certainly felt the first strains of it. “I could do with a little less of that.”
A tight smile made its way onto her face and a few of her teeth peeked out from between her lips. “At least I didn’t take the back roads route the GPS suggested. All those twists and turns…”
“Bleh.” I shook my head. “Drinking is bad for you. Also, I think I came close to kissing a guy to death in the bar.”
“What?” Her head snapped over to look at me.
“He’s fine.” My eyes pointed straight ahead, and I was trying to watch the road in order to avoid getting motion sickness. “I mean, he seemed fine, so we must not have kissed for very long.”
“Um, wow.” Her eyes were not on the road, which became obvious a moment later when she had to swerve after the tires started bumping on the strips at the edge of the highway. “Sorry. Wait, so what happened? I mean, aren’t you and Zack…”
“I don’t know.” I pulled out my phone and pushed the button again. The screen flared to life, giving me a perfect view of the background, but there were no missed calls or waiting text messages. “We kind of had a fight.”
“Oh.” She turned to look at me, then swiveled her gaze back to the road. “What about?”
“Pretty much about what you and Scott were doing just before we left.”
“Sleeping?” She turned to me and then reddened. “Oh. Before that.”
“Yeah.”
She let the silence hang for a minute. “Because you guys can’t…?”
“Yeah.”
I think the edge in my response put her off, because she got quiet before she spoke again. “Not even a little? Like maybe being really careful, with some clothes on, and—”
“No.” I tried to end her inquiries, but I felt my frustration bleed over. “I don’t have much margin for error, Kat. A little unnoticed skin contact in the throes of passion and a few seconds later he’s dead.” I felt the breeze run through my hair. “That’s not really how I would want it to go. It’s not a turn-on, having impending death hanging over you during sex. Especially…” I swallowed heavily again, this time unrelated to that slightly sick feeling that was growing in me. “…you know. The first time. Or hell, any time.”
“I guess it sort of kills the romance, huh?” She looked at me again, and her face turned sympathetic, her eyebrows arched in concern. I found it annoying, especially since I knew she and Scott were having plenty of sex; scads of it, loads of it, probably every single night of the week, and I couldn’t even get a kiss in without worrying about hurting someone. “So, did you and Zack break up?”
“I don’t know.” I frowned. “We didn’t really resolve anything, and he hasn’t tried to talk to me since we fought, so maybe.” I looked over at her. “Why?”
She didn’t look at me, just shook her head, and when she answered, her tone was completely casual. “No reason. Just wondering.” She chanced a glance at me, then half-shrugged. “Well…you were kissing some other guy in a bar…”
“Oh.” I felt a dull pain in my head, and then I slapped myself right on the forehead. “Oh, damn.” How could I have been so stupid? “I didn’t even…it didn’t even occur to me about Zack. Damn, I have a boyfriend. Damn damn damn.”