Afterglow Read online

  The steering wheel dug into her stomach. His chest was hard behind her, his thighs flexing as he rearranged his legs to accommodate her on his lap.

  “It’s going to be all right, sweetheart. Let me do the work. Keep your head down and tuck and roll. Let go of the wheel.” He slid closer to the wide-open door. He half-stood, crushing her ribs against the steering wheel. Dakota wrapped her arms around the arm he had clamped around her midriff, cutting her circulation; his other arm protected her head. “Crazy damn man, who’s going to protect your hard head?”

  “That’s my girl. Head down. Hold tight.” His arms tightened like a vise around her, his body protecting hers. “Cowboy up. Ready?”

  “No!”

  Rand jettisoned them out of the car into the blackness of the night.

  ELEVEN

  Rand landed hard, his left shoulder taking the brunt of the fall as he kept his body wrapped protectively around Dakota. No crash pad to land on in this stunt. Just skin meeting pavement. Not textbook-perfect in the stuntman’s fall guide, but as far as he could tell, nothing was broken.

  They slid, rolled, and bounced across the dirt verge for a hundred feet before slowing down on the softer grass. The slide felt like an eternity, but experience told him it was probably a minute or less before they came to a jarring stop.

  Had anyone seen them bail?

  If he had been capable of drawing a breath, he would have used it to curse. Having the wind knocked out of him still sucked after all these years, but he knew to take small sips of the warm evening air until his lungs inflated. His hand was over Dakota’s breast, and he could feel her instinctively doing the same.

  While it would’ve been excellent to stay right where he was in the cool grass, Dakota clasped in his arms, they needed to move. “How’re you doing?” he whispered against her cheek as her breathing stabilized.

  Her long hair was all over him. It smelled like lemons and crushed grass.

  “Every bone in my body is broken,” she informed him breathlessly, not moving as she labored to drag air into her lungs. “If you’re not going to fling us into space again, could you loosen your arms a bit so I … can … breathe?”

  Her bottom was pressed against his groin. Very much as it had been hours ago in the catacombs. Damned fool that he was, he didn’t want to let her go. He loosened his grip, feeling the loss of her as she straightened her legs and rolled onto her back, panting.

  He looked down the road, no curves, so he could see the taillights of their stolen truck as it kept going. A few seconds later, the sedan’s headlights barreled toward them from the opposite direction. Thank God there were no other vehicles; the road was dark and deserted save for the truck and the attack car.

  They were in the ditch, the darkness and long grass hiding them from view. But if the car stopped and the men got out, they’d be sitting ducks. Rand flattened his body, and watched the headlights spin as the car made a U-turn to come up on the rear of the truck. The truck was going about thirty-five miles per hour. Easy enough to catch. Two sets of red lights moved into the distance.

  With a loud, grinding crash, the car slammed into the back of the truck, the sound horrifically close in the still night air. “Bad guys think we’re still in there,” Rand said softly, his attention on the road. No one would be looking back here, but he wasn’t taking any chances with Dakota’s life.

  Another hard slam. Fainter this time as the vehicles moved away.

  “Shouldn’t we get going?” Dakota demanded, rising on her elbows to watch with him.

  “Give it a few more minutes. If they see we aren’t hunkered down in there, they’re going to put two and two together and come loo—Jesus!” An earsplitting screech, ending abruptly in a loud crash and the sound of glass shattering, was followed by a ball of fire as the gas tank exploded. A spectacular display. Could’ve come from one of Creed’s movies. Except this was real life, and someone wanted them seriously dead.

  “God, what just happened?”

  “They must have run the truck into a tree or wall or something immovable.” Other than the distant glow of flames, the road was dark. No returning headlights. Not yet.

  Dakota flopped her head back in the grass. There was enough starlight for him to see the gleam of her eyes and the sweat on her skin. She was disheveled beauty painted in black and white. “This is insane. Who are those guys?”

  “I suspect the same people who killed Ham.”

  She frowned up at him. “How did they know where to find us?”

  More important, why did they want to kill them? “An excellent question.” He touched her cheek. Her skin was a little clammy from shock. And then, because he couldn’t help himself, Rand curved his palm around her jaw. “Are you hurt anywhere other than bruises, lacerations, and all your bones being broken?”

  “Isn’t that enough? Why did you tell me to cowboy up? Was that some sort of code I should know?”

  “In the business, it means doing a stunt you know is going to hurt.”

  “You could’ve filled me in on that little detail sooner.”

  “Still would’ve hurt.” His chest hurt as he looked at her. A free fall would do that to a man, Rand knew. He’d experienced plenty of them. However, nothing in his life had given him the same sensation as when he looked at Dakota North. No matter what had happened between them, no matter how many questions remained unasked and unanswered, the sight of her stole his breath harder than a fall from a ten-story building. Or a moving vehicle.

  He hadn’t been able to stay with her, but he’d done a shitty job of living without her. Caught between a Scylla and a Charybdis. “Why are you here, Dakota?” Here in France. Here in my arms. Here when I’d almost managed to forget you.

  She reached up and grazed his mouth with her fingertips, her lips curved in a Mona Lisa smile. “Some crazy guy threw me out of a moving car.”

  “Rude and extremely ungallant of him.” He closed the few inches separating their mouths and bent his head to crush his lips over hers. Little flares of lust and greed exploded around his heart. Yeah, his dick was involved too, but he wasn’t thinking that low.

  Her mouth was hot as he speared his tongue inside. The familiar taste of her, butterscotch, went directly from his tongue to his groin. He ravaged her mouth, forgetting killers and unanswered questions. Forgetting past resentments and the grinding pain of losing her.

  He fisted her glorious spill of hair. The scent of lemons, dust, and crushed green things filled his senses like a drug. Rand kissed her with everything he had. She responded by bracketing his face with her hands, murmuring low in her throat as her body arched to get closer.

  He made love to her with his tongue and his lips, loving the heated sweetness of her butterscotch-flavored mouth, both hands tangled in the silky strands of fire spread across the grass.

  He was out of his mind, Rand thought desperately, easing his lips from the cling of hers. He bent his head to press a kiss into the fragrant hollow of her throat, then reluctantly withdrew his fingers from her hair.

  He lifted his head. “I think we managed to ditch them. Come on.” He got to his feet—Jesus, everything hurt—and held out his hand. “We have a plane to catch.” He pulled her to her feet. Her wildly tangled hair tumbled down her back, and she made a grimace of pain. “Seriously, how badly are you hurt?”

  “Scrapes, bumps, and potential bruises. I’ll live.” Bunching her hair in both hands, she did some intricate knot thing at the back of her head that held it off her face. She glanced around. They were at the edge of an open field. Other than faint starlight, there wasn’t another light to be seen. “Should I call a cab?” she asked lightly.

  He brushed dirt and bits of grass from her arms, pretending he didn’t see her wince, then looked back down the road. “Our turnoff was about a mile back. Can you walk?”

  “Yes, but sadly, I can’t dance. No rhythm. Lead on, Macduff. Oh! Wait. There’s my bag! Woo and hoo!”

  Rand walked a couple of hundred feet
and picked it up from the middle of the road. Hooking it over his shoulder, he returned to where Dakota stood waiting.

  “Thank God. Everything I own is in here. I can take it—”

  “No. I’ve got it.” Not trusting himself if he touched her again, Rand kept a couple of feet between them as they walked. She was a little stiff, but she didn’t appear seriously hurt. Every muscle in her body had been jarred and would be hurting like hell, if not now, then come morning. Treating their injuries would have to wait until they were somewhere safe.

  They kept to the verge where there were stands of tall trees and clumps of thick vegetation. Only one car approached. Rand pulled Dakota behind some low branches and waited until its taillights were red specks. A few minutes later, another car passed without fanfare; they ducked and covered, then continued walking. The trees thinned and the shrubs became more widely spaced for several hundred yards, leaving them exposed.

  Rand debated skipping the small airfield, turning around, and walking the rest of the way into Fontainebleau, where he could find a hotel and check every inch of Dakota, making sure she was as fine as she claimed. Honesty wasn’t her strong suit. She’d walk with a broken leg if it proved a point. The airport sign, coming sooner than he’d anticipated, made the decision a nobrainer. “The private airfield is this way. It’s a flight school as well, so they probably have someplace we can clean up.”

  His muscles were starting to protest, it had been a while since he’d dropped from a moving vehicle. He didn’t miss it. If his body ached, Dakota must be in some serious pain. He indicated the bulky purse over his shoulder. “Got any aspirin in here?”

  “Do you have a headache?”

  “For you.”

  “We’ll break them out and share when we get there, how’s that? Boy, it’s really dark out here, isn’t it?”

  His eyes had long since adjusted as he scanned their surroundings. Outside of town there was nothing to light their way but starlight, and that was blotted out by scudding cloud cover as the wind came up. “I’m fine.”

  “I remember. No drugs. Not even over-the-counter stuff.”

  The air smelled strongly of pine and dust as they walked, now in the middle of the dirt road, because either side was dense with thick shrubbery.

  At the end of the road, they reached a large Quonset hut that served as the airport. The windsock stood out from its pole, flapping slightly in the wind, and the light above the steel door greeted them. He tried the handle, and thanked God it wasn’t locked. He knew Dakota had given her last hurrah walking the mile to get here.

  Rand eased open the door, noting that the light was on in the small office behind the counter, though not a soul was around. They walked through the silent hangar, where two Cessnas sat in the shadows, and entered the cramped, untidy office that smelled of jet fuel and dust. The wall clock showed it was just after 9 p.m. It felt a hell of a lot later.

  As Dakota turned, he noticed the rip in the sleeve of her jacket for the first time, blood seeping a long wet stain on the fabric. He needed water, a first-aid kit—and to get her the hell back to Seattle.

  “Someone left a note.” She jerked her chin at the battered, paper-strewn desk, where a piece of foolscap with MAGUIRE scrawled across the top was propped against a bottle of wine and held down by a corkscrew.

  Rand picked up the paper and sorted out the message among doodles depicting some sort of sprocket device. “The guy waited, but left after dark. He’ll be back tomorrow morning. Let’s see if there’s running water and get you cleaned up.”

  “Excellent plan.” She straightened her shoulders with a barely perceptible grimace of pain he would’ve missed if he hadn’t been watching her so closely. “I don’t know about you, but I need hot running water, a masseuse, and a chiropractor, not necessarily in that order.”

  “Let’s hope we find at least one out of three.” He smiled, because she honestly did need all three. Her hair was a wild tangle around her head and shoulders, the coppery strands filled with knots, leaves, and bits of twig. Her cheek had a raw scrape on it, and her face and clothing were filthy. The jackets she’d bought in Barcelona protected them from the worst of the road burn. Messy, dirty, exhausted, she looked like some mythical woodland creature sent to tempt a poor mortal.

  Jesus. He must’ve hit his head to wax poetic at a time like this. “There’s got to be some form of a bathroom around here.”

  They found a minute bathroom down a hallway from the office, equipped with a toilet and a sink. Dakota fumbled for the light switch, blinking into the sudden brightness. Clearly also used for storage, it was filled with stacks of boxes and odds and ends, including an enormous ashtray filled with a mound of cigarette butts drowned in coffee, or worse.

  “I’ll be quick.”

  He was caught by the light of humor in her pale green eyes as she wiggled her fingers for her tote. She was a mess, but the warm Dakota-scent of her skin, a scent no other woman had ever been able to duplicate with expensive perfumes and lotions, made his blood rush through his veins. “I want to look at that cut on the back of your arm. First let me get rid of this.”

  He picked up the ashtray with a rag he found in one of the boxes and carried it into the hallway. He came back and washed his hands, leaving the water running until it was hot.

  “Take that off.” He indicated the jacket.

  She unzipped it and tossed it on top of the stack of boxes in the corner. “You’re very bossy.”

  The skimpy tank top revealed where she was hurt. A few minor abrasions. The cut on her arm was the worst of it. There was a lot of blood. He crowded her against the sink, plopping her bag on a stack of boxes behind him. This was dangerously like old times, when they’d shared the bathroom before going to bed because to be apart for even those few minutes was too long.

  She braced her hands beside her hips, which arched her back a little and showed the sweet plump curve of her breasts. When he raised his gaze to her face, her pretty green eyes glittered with amusement; she knew exactly what had his attention. She said with sassy good humor, “Apparently it’s slipped your mind that I have two guns in that bag.”

  Rand grabbed a bunch of paper towels from the dispenser and tested the heat of the water on one finger. Satisfied, he wet the towels and squeezed them out. “I have the bag though, don’t I? Turn around so I can clean that.”

  She presented her arm. The cut was long, but not as deep as he’d feared. He washed it gently to get out bits of gravel and debris, then went to work on various scrapes marring her fair skin.

  “There’s some hand sanitizer in your purse,” she told him, her smile a little wilted. “Let’s break out the aspirin while we’re at it.”

  “Wash the parts you can reach while I look.”

  “Yes, sir.” She washed her face with one hand, holding back her long hair with the other. Rand remembered Sunday mornings when she’d raced into the bathroom to wash her face and brush her teeth, then raced back into the bedroom to make love before he had to catch a plane back to LA.

  He handed her more towels as she straightened, water dripping off her chin and eyelashes. “There’s so much crap in here, I can’t find anything. It’s heavy enough to hold a bear trap.” He handed it over. “Here, you look while I clean up.”

  Rand pulled his T-shirt over his head to assess the damage. Abrasions, a few holes, and dirt.

  “Do you want me to—”

  “Got it, thanks.” God, no. He did not want her soft hands anywhere on his body. He washed as best he could, then dried off. It wasn’t a shower, but it would have to do. They were both filthy. He looked up to find Dakota watching him in the fly-speckled mirror. She averted her gaze and finished going through her purse, placing his Glock and wallet on the edge of the sink. Her fingers shook.

  “Need to pee?” he asked gently. She had passed exhausted and gone straight to being seconds from falling face-first on the floor, unconscious. He knew the signs. She nodded. Rand edged past her. “Get it done. I�
�ll be right outside.” He closed the door.

  DAKOTA STARED BLANKLY AT herself in the mirror, then grimaced and shook her head. She looked almost worse than she felt. Her hair was a disaster, and her clothes were ripped. The scrape on the back of her arm stung like fire ants were attacking, and her muscles quivered with strain and exhaustion. “Oh, right. That’s what happens when you get thrown out of a truck going the speed of light.”

  Rand banged on the door. “You all right in there?”

  “I need ten minutes.” Ten hours would be better.

  “You have two.”

  She dragged her tank over her head, and shouted through the door, “What’s your hurry, Maguire?” Then under her breath, “Ow. Ow. Ow.” Every scrape and muscle she flexed made itself felt. “Seriously ow!”

  “You’re going to want to be horizontal in two minutes or less, trust me.”

  “Don’t stand there listening to me, go find us something to eat.”

  “Minute forty.”

  She heard the scrape of his shoes on the cement floor as he wandered off. She wasn’t crazy about her Wild Woman of Borneo look, but her brush had gone up in flames for the cause. Finding a scrunchie in the bottom of her tote, she finger-combed the debris out of her hair, tying it back so she could wash the ground-in dirt and assorted vegetation off at least her top half.

  After using the facilities, she took out Rand’s T-shirt and boxers from the day before, and her own clothing she hadn’t had time to wash in Paris. Since she had no idea when or where she’d have another opportunity to do any more shopping, it was now or whenever as far as clean clothes went.

  Using the sliver of rock-hard soap and hot water, she washed the handful of T-shirts and underwear, then hung everything on the towel bar to dry.

  Resisting the idea that the floor was a good place to rest, she stripped off her ripped jeans and underwear, pulled on the black cotton drawstring pants, and dragged a clean but wrinkled tank top over her now swimming head. She leaned her hip on the sink to pull the tank down.