Tall, Dark and Lethal

Chapter Two

“Take me home or take me to the nearest police station. Your pick,” Bailey said for the umpteenth time, raising her voice a smidgen, which made no difference whatsoever. Talking to Cade Palmer was like talking to her garden statuettes, or to her sixteen-year-old nephew, Zak, who was going through yet another difficult phase. Poor kid.

She was willing to cut Zak some slack. But not Cade. Cade was a grown man who should be held responsible for his actions.

“Who are you, anyway?” Even sitting down, she had to look up at him. He was a head taller, built but lean, and irritating as anything.

She was starting to suspect that he wasn’t the computer programmer he’d claimed to be. People didn’t come after computer programmers with grenade launchers. Then there was all that “yes, sir; no, sir” business on the phone, and him wanting to “come in.”

He was looking in the rearview mirror and ignoring her. Straight nose, strong jawline and shortcropped dark brown hair. He had a singular focus and an easy grace to his lean body.

“Are you in the witness protection program?”

He took forever to respond. “Kind of.”

Oh, God. Anger flooded her circuits. He had no right to drag her into his dirty business. “Could you be any vaguer?”

“You bet.” He looked at her with his caramel brown eyes, which were fringed with thick, dark lashes. “There’s a confidentiality issue.”

What on earth had she ever done to deserve this from the universe?

She had to be honest—she didn’t much care for the man. He was insufferable for the most part, the kind of neighbor people prayed wouldn’t move in next door. She did her best not to let him get a rise out of her with every outrageous act or comment—and failed often. And she had trained herself not to ogle or respond to his magnificent body, not even if he purposely taunted her by mowing the lawn in nothing but a pair of tattered blue jeans. But his eyes got to her every time. And there was no avoiding them, because if she dropped her gaze, she was confronted with his mile-wide chest.

“It’s for your own protection,” he added.

“I don’t want your kind of protection.” She was lucky he hadn’t killed her when they’d jumped from the balcony. Her heart raced all over again just thinking about it. Or maybe she just hadn’t had a chance to calm down fully yet.

He had stepped up on her railing—which she should have replaced when she’d installed the French doors, but had run out of money—and then he had stepped out into nothing. Air. His arms had been like steel brackets around her. For a surreal moment, he had morphed into some kind of action hero. Or villain. She hadn’t quite decided yet which one.

“I don’t want to go with you.”

“Too bad,” he said, without looking at her.

That was so like the man. Stubborn and rude. Insufferable. From the moment he had moved in, they had fought over everything, from the noise she made working in her garage to the oil his car leaked all over the driveway. He’d claimed her music was too loud. He’d knocked over her favorite flagpole and flat out refused to fix it. He might have a great body and gorgeous eyes, but manners he had none.

He’d had the gall to yell at Zak for tapping into his wireless. Why? It didn’t cost him any extra if Zak used it. She had dial-up, but Zak had wanted something faster. The troubled teen—who, by the way, was a computer genius, but would Cade notice that and take him under his wing a little? Oh, noooo—did deserve some distraction when his life as he knew it was falling apart. Cade Palmer was selfish and mean to kids.

And a kidnapper.

“You can’t take me God knows where against my will. Explain to me why we can’t go to the police.”

“This is beyond the police. As soon as I can be sure that it’s safe to let you go, I will. Put on your seat belt.”

So she couldn’t easily jump from the car when he stopped for a light? Not a chance. “What do you mean, beyond the police?”

He ignored her, which made her want to beat him over the head with something. Just her luck that he’d stolen a car without as much as a baseball bat on the backseat. “Where are we going?”

He took a sharp turn, and she slid hard into the door. She shot him a glare before reaching for her seat belt.

“Stay low.” He picked up speed, then took two turns in quick succession, watching the rearview mirror more closely than the road ahead of them.

Oh. Her mouth went dry as she gripped her seat. All she could think of was the way he had said “grenade launcher” with that dark look on his face just a short while ago. Her heart skipped a beat. “Are they following us?”

Long moments passed before he responded, slowing the car at last. “We’re fine. For a second I thought—”

“You gave me a heart attack for nothing?” She went for the door lock again. When he reached over and grabbed her hand, she shoved hard against him. Not that he took any notice. “Want to tell me where you’re taking me?”

“We need a new car and some weapons.” He pulled up to the post office and parked.

How did they get here? Clearly, he knew more back roads than she did. Maybe he wasn’t as new to the neighborhood as he’d claimed. Although she’d never seen him before he’d shown up three months ago just to annoy her to death.

“Come on. We’re going in.”

“In pajamas? Barefoot?” Her mind suddenly caught up with what he’d said. “Weapons?” Her voice was a touch weaker on that last word.

“It’s not even seven in the morning. Nobody is going to be in there. You’re fine.”

Obviously he wasn’t the kind of man who worried much about propriety. But he was right; the building was empty. The post office wasn’t open yet, but the room with the P.O. boxes was. He went straight to the stainless-steel sorting table that housed forms of all sizes and colors, reached under it, searched for a second and then came up with a small key. He opened one of the larger, business-size P.O. boxes on the opposite wall and retrieved a box that held a black gym bag.

Once they returned to the car, he tossed the bag in the back and indicated that she should get in. “You should be able to find something in there to wear. You can change here.”

Huh?

Getting naked with Cade Palmer nearby wasn’t on her it-might-happen-in-this-lifetime list. Although there had been that dream…. Okay, maybe more than one. But she was not going to think about them—not now, not ever. She opened the bag and saw a soft, extra-large T-shirt on top. She would be less conspicuous in that than in her slinky pajama top.

“Fine. Don’t look.” She turned her back to him.

He started the car and pulled out of the parking lot. “I try not to make promises I can’t keep.”

She could tell from his voice that he was grinning.

Insufferable.

She grabbed the bottom of her top. Stalled. Looked back at him. He lifted his gaze to the rearview mirror.

“Don’t look!”

“You turned around. I thought you wanted something from me.” He turned his attention back to the road. She was right—he was grinning.

She yanked her silk top off. No big deal. He had probably seen a naked woman or two before, anyway. It would have been easier to leave the top on under the T-shirt, but it was the middle of a heat wave, the temperature nearing ninety already—not a day for layers.

She glanced down at her body. With his long T-shirt on top, the silk shorts almost passed for street wear. She dug into the bag, hoping for something for her feet. Her soles were scratched and bruised from him dragging her—barefoot—through all that landscaping.

Flip-flops would have been great. Instead, she found a Ziploc bag full of IDs and bank cards, and a wad of cash held together by a rubber band.

And a gun.

Her fingertips went cold, the air suddenly froze in her lungs, and clothing became the least of her problems. His mentioning weapons was one thing; sitting next to a nasty-looking firearm was another. It brought the severity of her situation into sharp focus.

“I’ll take that.” He held his hand out and, when after a moment of hesitation, she gingerly gave him the gun, he said, “See if you can find some bullets in the front pocket.”

She did. A whole box of them. She handed them over, and he started to load the handgun without slowing down or taking his eyes off the road, driving with one elbow. Like he was one of those guys in spy movies who practice taking apart and putting together their weapons while blindfolded. If she weren’t so scared, she would have been impressed.

She considered staying in the backseat, as far from him as possible. But she had questions, and she wanted to look at his face while he answered them to see if he was lying to her.

She climbed to the front, nearly knocking him out with her left knee when she slipped—which she didn’t feel too bad about, to be honest—then fastened herself in. First things first. “Why is the Mafia after you?” She braced herself for some grizzly story. It had to be something pretty serious.

He gave her a blank look.

“Witness protection?” she prompted.

The tanned skin around his caramel eyes crinkled. “I never said anything about the Mafia.”

She thought back. True. She’d assumed.

“You did witness a crime, right? That’s how people get into witness protection.” What did she know about that, anyway? Whatever she’d seen on TV. And real cops always said how those shows were wildly inaccurate.

Still, if he was in the program, there had to be a good reason for it. She hoped he wasn’t a criminal who’d rolled over on his buddies. She pulled as far away from him as possible without being too obvious about it, and put on the best poker face she could, preparing for his answer.

“I’m not in witness protection.”

She glared. “You said—”

“I said kind of.”

She really should have asked more questions before she handed him the gun. Oh, God. She’d just armed the man who had kidnapped her. Stupid, stupid, stupid. She was so far out of her element, she couldn’t keep up, couldn’t think fast enough. She had to start using her head to gain some information and make some decisions. “Any ideas on who is after you?” Would he tell her?

“Take your pick. Could be a drug lord, weapons smugglers, terrorists…”

Okay, so that was probably the truth. Nobody would make up a list like that. The options were enough to give anyone heart palpitations, yet he was oddly nonchalant. Like a professional. He did know how to handle that gun. He was either a bad guy who’d ticked off some other bad guys, or a good guy with a lot of enemies. She decided to be optimistic. She desperately needed some hope to cling to, even if for only a few more moments. “You were in law enforcement?”

Say yes. Please say yes.

“Kind of.”

Her nerves were as frayed as the cuffs of his jeans. “If you say kind of one more time, I’m going to scream.”

“Nothing I haven’t heard before,” he said, humor glinting in his eyes.

He thought this was funny? The man lived to drive her crazy. Swear to God, if she had a grenade launcher…

She caught herself. She believed in a universe that could be influenced by positive and negative thoughts. In the situation she was in, there was no sense thinking violent thoughts. She closed her eyes for a moment and briefly envisioned getting away from the man.

He pulled into the parking lot of a diner, which, unlike the post office lot, looked fairly full.

DeDe’s was a plain, square clapboard building that never made it into visitors’ guides. Tourists who came to Chadds Ford to discover the country’s colonial past wouldn’t have looked at it twice, anyway. But the food was divine, which made it a favorite meeting place for locals. She used to have breakfast here with her grandmother every Sunday, before she’d passed.

She closed her eyes for a moment and drew a deep breath. “What are we doing here?”

“Getting breakfast.” He was checking out the lot carefully.

“How can you eat at a time like this?”

He shrugged. “If you don’t eat, you won’t have the strength to face whatever comes next.”

He had a very pragmatic view of eating. Judging from his lean body, he’d never spent a day of his life overeating, or dieting, or wrought with emotion that made ice cream a necessity, for that matter. “I don’t think I can eat right now.”

“You can always give it a try. A sandwich and orange juice?”

“Okay. And coffee.” Although if there were ever a morning when she was wide-awake without caffeine, this would be it. Still, old habits died harder than Duracell batteries. And caffeine wasn’t just about waking up. It was her comfort food of choice. Among others. Suddenly she could have killed for a bag of Cheetos.

Not that there was a chance of getting Cheetos out of Cade. She’d seen his grocery bags before—he was a health nut. He shopped at Trader Joe’s.

“You stay here.” He scanned the parking lot one more time before starting out. “I’ll get it to go.”

She watched him walk to the front door and hold it open for a group of old ladies. He trusted her to stay put. He really had seemed competent until now. So competent that she was beginning to feel dejected about her chances of getting away from him. Well, everybody makes mistakes.

She was out of the SUV the second the door closed behind him. And she nearly got run over by the cop car pulling into the lot.

HE THOUGHT HE’D LOST Palmer, but spotted him in that SUV by accident and thanked his lucky stars for it. Luck had always been on his side. And why not? Luck favored the prepared mind. Wasn’t that what they said? And he always was prepared.

So was Cade Palmer, it seemed. He’d escaped that explosion. That had been a surprise in the middle of his morning surveillance. He’d been checking out the house, making his own plans. He wouldn’t have minded if someone else took care of Palmer. He wasn’t vain that way, didn’t take his business personally like some others he knew—no sense in that. Whatever way the man was rubbed out was fine with him.

As he had stalked closer, he’d watched the woman Palmer left in the car. He wanted Palmer, but he could settle for her now. Palmer would come after her—he could never resist saving everyone in sight and then some. He would have grabbed her were it not for the damn cop who came at the worst moment, when he was a few feet from the Escalade and she was looking in the opposite direction, not having a clue.

He did have time to notice her nice legs. He wasn’t averse to bonuses. That Palmer had likely had her already didn’t detract from her charms—maybe it even added to them. He’d enjoy taking something that was Palmer’s.

But he couldn’t risk her making any noise now, couldn’t afford even a momentary struggle. He pulled back into the cover of his own vehicle. He could wait. He had waited for months already, never knowing where the bastard was, never knowing if he was going to wake to Palmer’s gun pressed to his forehead.

He had the man’s scent now, was on his trail. He would get him in the end. He always got his man. That was how he had stayed alive in parts of the world where violence was an everyday occurrence and respected businessmen and politicians went to dinner with assassins and murderers.

He couldn’t say he liked the life, but he understood it and was good at it, had achieved a measure of success fishing in those murky waters. He wasn’t about to let Cade Palmer take that away from him. And one thing was clear. With the past they shared, it would always come down to kill or be killed between the two of them.

Palmer was good at killing.

But he was better.

CADE STUDIED THE POSTED menu, turning his cell phone over in his hand. He was supposed to meet Abhi in half an hour. Had the man betrayed him? He’d been the SDDU’s trusted man in Jodhpur. But people switched sides all the time. No one knew that better than he did. The name David Smith tasted bitter on his tongue. Cade gripped his phone, irritated that the man at the front of the line was taking forever to order.

Abhi might know that he was alive. He had to consider that possibility. He had contacted the man under an assumed name, but Abhi had connections. He would dig deep before agreeing to a meet. Cade hadn’t thought he could dig deep enough to get to him, but what if he had?

But even if Abhi had discovered his identity, he still wouldn’t know where he lived. Cade couldn’t see any possible way how the man could have found that out. Still, at one point Abhi had worked for BAKIN—Indonesian intelligence—which had since been restructured into BIN, the Badan Intelijen Negara. The man was scary good. A great guy to know as long as he was on your side. And therein lay the gamble.

He couldn’t go to Abhi with Bailey in tow, and he couldn’t leave Bailey behind. The question was whether to call Abhi and set another time for their meeting. If he didn’t show, would Abhi pack up and go back to his Jodhpur hideout, taking his information with him? Probably not, not for a few days, not with the amount of money Cade had put on the table for information on David Smith.

He slipped his phone back into his pocket. He had to get Bailey out of the cross fire and hand her over to the authorities for safekeeping. But first he had to figure out why the FBI wanted them in the first place, and convince the Bureau that she didn’t have anything to do with anything. He needed time, and he needed to find out which of his enemies had orchestrated this morning’s attack—and how they had found him.

PERFECT. NICE TO HAVE some luck for a change. Bailey relaxed for the first time that morning. She smoothed her T-shirt down, tugged her hair into place and straightened her spine.

The black-and-white rolled into a parking space a few feet to her right. She walked toward it, wincing as the gravel scratched her bare feet. With a little more luck, she’d be given a ride home.

Not that she had shoes at home.

Not that she had a home. The thought took the air out of her lungs. She paused to catch her breath. Cade’s craziness had distracted her from the fact that her house was gone. Why was it so hard to breathe? Her eyes burned.

She couldn’t fall apart. Not yet. Not yet. She had to ask for help.

The nice officer was going to take her someplace safe where she could call her brother. They would let her wait at the police station until he came to pick her up. They would wrap her in a blanket and give her hot coffee. She watched TV—she knew how it went.

She would be told that it had been a gas explosion after all. Grenade launcher. Right. Could be that Cade was a crazy maniac who had blown up the house himself and concocted the whole story so she would willingly go with him.

What did she know about him, anyway? He’d lived in the house for only three months. He claimed to be Frank Garey’s nephew, but she’d known Frank for nearly seven years and the retired truck driver had never mentioned any relatives to her.

She glanced toward the diner’s entrance. A young couple came out, hugging and kissing for all they were worth, acting like they were madly in love. Bailey wasn’t sold on the idea of love. Both sets of grandparents had divorced before she’d been born. Her parents’ divorce was a mess she just as soon not think about. And now her brother’s marriage had fallen under the ax.

The lovebirds outside the diner moved on without letting each other go for a second.

She couldn’t see Cade. So far so good.

He would be mad as hell when he found her gone. And she didn’t want to see Cade Palmer mad. She’d seen him annoyed, and that was scary enough. In a few minutes, she would be under the protection of the law, safe from him and whatever was really going on.