The Renegade Steals A Lady

“I’ll scream my head off at the first cop I see.”

He stopped. His breath crystallized in front of his face like miniature storm clouds. “No you won’t.”

Shifting her weight onto one arm, his good arm, with the other he raised the pistol he’d taken from her to her cheek. The gun’s gleaming steel barrel chilled her flesh. She tried to turn away, but that put her face against his chest.

She preferred the gun.

“You won’t scream,” he continued in a voice more suited to seduction than intimidation, “because you don’t want another cop to go down with a bullet from your gun. The gun I took away from you.”

She almost laughed hysterically when she realized she’d been about to say that Marco wouldn’t shoot a cop.

He’d shot her, hadn’t he?

Damn him. Losing a gun, someone else getting hurt with it, killed with it, was every cop’s nightmare, and he knew it.

She gulped in a mouthful of air as sharp as knife blades, glaring at nothing over his shoulder. “I don’t need another cop to take you down. I’ll do it myself, when the time is right.”

He put the gun away, hefted her securely against him and set out at a jog. “I’m sure you’ll try.”

Marco had been running for nearly an hour and still couldn’t find a shred of rhythm. Each step landed harder and jerkier than the last. His lungs burned under the ribs Tomas Oberas had pounded. The forearm Bravo had bit throbbed. Paige’s weight in his arms, slight as it was, drove needles in and out of his bad shoulder.

Since he’d been a teenager, he’d used running as a way to leave the physical pain behind, the way his friends in Oklahoma had taught him. By concentrating on the exertion and the hypnotic beat of his step, he could go outside his body, outside his troubles, and more recently, outside the prison walls.

Yet tonight, when he tried to picture the red rock canyons of Oklahoma he once ran with his friend, Toby Redstone, and the other Caddo Indian boys, all Marco could see was Paige’s head lolling against his chest. When he tried to visualize a thunderstorm gathering over the tall grass of the plains, he saw only her hair fanned across his shoulder. Hair that reminded him of warm honey.

She’d cut it since he’d seen her last. A multitude of intriguing layers now fell around her cherubic face, curling in at the ends to cup her high cheeks and support her fine-boned jaw.

He definitely approved.

And the smell…

He breathed deep. Her hair smelled just the way he remembered. Like he’d dreamed about. Pure, clean baby shampoo.

Every night these last six months, he’d buried his nose in the single, thin pillow allotted for his bunk, inhaled a breath that shouldn’t have held the scent of anything except industrial detergent and the odor of too many men in too close quarters, and smelled baby shampoo instead.

Sometimes it infuriated him that he couldn’t get her out of his head. Sometimes he was glad to have the memory to hold on to. Either way, sleep was lost in the wanting and the regret.

He’d learned to live on the edge of exhaustion, which was a good thing, because he was beyond exhaustion now.

One foot in front of the other, he told himself. Inhale four beats. Exhale four beats. Focus on the rhythm.

But no amount of concentration blocked out the constricting pain in his gut when he felt her shiver in his arms.

She was cold. He held her closer and forced himself to evaluate more than the proud rise of her cheekbones and her perfectly pitched eyebrows. Her eyes were closed, but he knew she was conscious.

She just didn’t want to see him.

He supposed he couldn’t blame her.

She was pale, but not deathly so. Instead of their usual red-wine color, her lips were light pink, and parted slightly as if she wanted to be kissed.

The urge to do just that took him with the force of a freight train. He could put some warmth back in those lips. Color back in her cheeks.

His heartbeat tripled and blood surged to the center of his body. The sharp pangs of regret troubling his gut softened to sweet hunger. Then he stumbled, caught himself and cursed, his breath sawing harshly through the quiet night air.

He should be watching where he was going, not eating up the sight of her like a starving man at a king’s banquet. She hadn’t wanted him even before she’d caught him stealing drugs from her bust. She surely didn’t want him now.

What they’d had was not to be repeated, regardless of any false hopes rising in his traitorous body. In fact, if she got her hands on her gun anywhere in his presence, he might never have to worry about that particular discomfort again.

She was a good shot, and she had reason to hold a grudge.

Up ahead, an engine came to life. Paige’s eyes snapped open. Her body tensed in his arms, but she said nothing as he pushed on.

Beyond the tree line, radios crackled. Hurried footsteps scuffed across gravel. This was it, the search command center.

In the fog, the parking lot looked like a sea of cop cars. Dozens of vehicles, many more than he had counted on, were strewn in front of him in no particular order. County Sheriff, Department of Corrections, City Police, Texas Highway Patrol—they were all in attendance.

All looking for him.

He couldn’t see Paige’s truck, but it must be nearby.

Throwing her a warning glance, he zipped out to the closest car and ducked behind the rear bumper. Bravo followed like a ghost, the slight click of his toenails on rock the only proof he was more flesh and blood than spirit being.

Zigging and zagging from vehicle to vehicle, the three of them crossed the lot. Marco chanced a look over the hood of their latest hiding place, reorienting himself and searching for Paige’s canine-equipped Ford Expedition.

“Where did you park the thing, New Mexico?” he grumbled.

He spotted her truck before she could answer. Not that she would have answered, anyway. Apparently she found satisfaction enough in glaring at him.

A few yards closer, and he could see the wire barrier behind the front seat that sectioned off the dog’s compartment.

Good.

He glanced cautiously at the mutt. Bravo hadn’t offered him any trouble since their showdown in the forest, but Marco would feel better when he got that animal and its fangs back in a cage. The arm he’d bitten hurt like a—

A car door slammed to Marco’s right. He hit his knees behind the front wheel well of a highway patrol souped-up Ford. The trooper was close.

Too close! Jesus, he could see the man’s shiny black shoes on the other side of the car. The feet were broad and the steps sluggish, like a man overweight and out of shape.

Marco flattened himself against the car door, holding Paige to him tightly. He did the best approximation of the “down” hand signal he could manage. Thankfully, Bravo dropped to the gravel despite Marco’s limited command of doggie sign language.

The trooper’s steps led around the front of the car. Marco’s heart shot into overdrive. His brain screamed for oxygen, but he didn’t dare breathe. He fingered the gun in his pocket.

Hell, if it went down like this, it was going to get ugly. Paige’s fingers curled in the collar of his jumpsuit. Her eyes implored him.

Looking away from her, he brought the gun to his side, his fingers stiff with dread.

The trooper stopped just short of coming around the corner of the Ford where he could see them. Another man, lighter on his feet, joined him.

They were so close Marco could smell the smoke of the cigarette one of them lit. The smoldering match landed just inches from Marco’s hand.

For the first time in a lot of months, Marco prayed, silently but fervently.

“Getting here kinda late, aren’t you?” The question came from the trooper’s position.

“Had to find a sitter for my little girl,” the other man grumbled. Riley Townsend. The voice was unmistakable, disgruntled as it was. Riley rounded out the Port Kingston canine squad at three, with Paige and her brother, Matt. If he got his dog out of his car, it was all over.

“It’s supposed to be my night off,” Riley finished, sounding no happier than he had before.

Marco didn’t blame the man. He’d seen Riley’s daughter, Alyssa, at a department picnic once. If he’d been called away from a kid like that to traipse around the woods all night, Marco wouldn’t have been too happy about it, either.

Paige recognized the voice, too. Marco felt tension spiral through her. It must have been hell for her, knowing help was so close, and not being able to call for it.

He pushed away his empathy for her. Help came in a lot of forms. A lot of packages. Sometimes people didn’t recognize it.

After a moment’s silence, Riley asked, in a make-peace tone, “So what’s the deal here? Anybody got a trail yet?”

“On your boy Angelosi? Nah. But we’ll get him.”

“He’s not my boy,” Riley said. “And you sound like you’re enjoying this.”

“To tell the truth, some of us are right looking forward to ridin’ him down. Don’t like what he did. One bad cop makes us all look like a bunch of thievin’ dopeheads, you know?”

There was a pause. Paige’s gaze turned up to Marco’s and he looked away, choking on the tattered remains of his pride. It was bad enough to hear condemnation like that. Worse to have to look in her eyes as she heard it, too.

“He was a good cop, once,” Riley said.

“Well, he ain’t no cop no more, is he?”

Riley’s pause was shorter this time. “No. I guess not.”

The trooper rocked heel-to-toe. “Damn straight. He’s just a con on the run.”

Riley snorted disgustedly. “He’s a minimum security walk-away. Nothing to get your shorts in a wad about.”

The trooper went still. “You didn’t hear the squawk?”

“What squawk?”

The trooper’s weight eased back as if he’d lifted his head or squared his shoulders. Marco heard him tap out another cigarette. “Got a light?” Shiny Shoes asked.

“Those things’ll kill you,” Riley answered. “What squawk?”

Sweat chilled along Marco’s spine, that and apprehension making his skin crawl. He needed to get out of there. Get Paige out of there. But he also needed to hear what the police were saying about him. He had a feeling it wasn’t good. Cops didn’t tell stories without milking them for all they were worth. The bigger the buildup, the better the punch line.

This one was getting a pretty big buildup.

The trooper hitched up his pants. A second later, Marco heard the strike of a match. A sulfurous scent mingled with the crisp fog. The trooper puffed, then blew out a slow breath. “Your boy Angelosi walked away, all right. Walked away from a burning van with a guard and a driver still pinned inside.”

Paige jolted in Marco’s arms. This time he couldn’t look away. In her eyes, he saw the horror, the flames she must be imagining. In his mind he smelled the smoke.

Heard the screams.

Dull blades of pain tore through him at the memory.

“They’re dead?” Riley asked.

“Uh-huh,” the trooper said. His voice bubbled with hatred. “Don’t know about you canine types, but for us troopers, that makes Angelosi a murderer.”

Paige’s nails dug into Marco’s chest. Her pulse galloped beneath his fingertips. Even in the near dark, he could see the sheen of revulsion in her eyes. She was going to call for help. Despite the danger to herself, she was going to give him up.

Her lips parted. The urge to press his own mouth over them hit him like a bolt from the heavens.

Her body arched as she pushed against him. The soft mounds of her breasts pressed against the hard planes of his chest. She pulled in a deep breath, ready to scream.

Aw, hell.

Just before the sound welled out of her, he crushed her to him and stopped the noise.

Paige’s lungs burned with the need for air. When her head began to swim, she bit the hand Marco had clamped over her mouth. He flinched, but didn’t let her go. His other hand caressed the nape of her neck, stroking maddeningly.

A promise, or a threat?

Two sets of footsteps crunched across the gravel behind her, then receded into the darkness. A car door thunked, and an engine roared to life. Paige slumped back to the ground at the grind of tires over rock, headed the other way. Dully, she recognized the noise as the sound of hope pulling away. Dignity. For as Marco carried her to her truck and sat her behind the steering wheel, she realized she had none left.

He was going to use her again, and there was nothing she could do about it.

Yet.

Marco put Bravo in the back, then circled to the passenger door, climbed inside and handed her the keys. “Get on the radio,” he said. “Tell them you’re leaving.”

She reached for the microphone with an unsteady hand. “Matt won’t buy it.”

“Make up an excuse. Make it good.” Marco shifted her Glock in his hand, an unsubtle warning. “You don’t want your brother coming after us, do you?”

Her breath shuddering at that thought, she did as Marco said. “Adam four-niner,” she said, giving her call sign. “I’m ten-six to the vet’s office. Sorry, guys.”

“Adam four-niner, S-six. Where the hell have you been?”

“Ah…” She looked at Marco. “I must have slipped out of my grid. Got a little lost.”

“Why weren’t you answering calls?” Matt asked, sounding suspicious.

Paige poured confidence into her voice. She couldn’t live with herself if Matt was hurt because of her. “My hand-held went on the fritz. I’m in my vehicle now.”

There was a moment of silence, then Matt’s deep voice rumbled across the radio again. “What’s up with Bravo?”

“S-six, he stepped on some glass. I don’t think it’s serious, but I’m going to have it checked out.”

Matt sighed. “Roger, four-niner. Get him back out here later if he can work. We need all the help we can get.”

“Will do.” Paige returned the microphone to its clip with more than a little relief pouring through her.

Until she looked at Marco.

He smiled at her sickly. “Piece of cake.” Shoving the Glock back into his coat pocket, he said, “Let’s go.”

As soon as they cleared the search perimeter, Marco insisted on pulling over so that he could drive. They were twenty minutes down the highway before either of them spoke again.

“Where are we going?” she asked, rolling her forehead off the passenger-side window to look at him. The green lights of the dashboard gave his face an eerie cast.

“You still have the Miata?”

“Yes.” Her head ached too much to see any advantage in lying.

“Then we’re going to your place.”

He turned his eyes away and was quiet, his expression strangely serene, given the circumstances. She wondered if he was remembering, as she was, the first time he’d ridden in her bright blue convertible, the night they made love.

She’d been aware that Marco had been watching her off and on for nearly a month when they’d ended up working a narcotics bust together. Marco had been cuffing a prisoner when the man pulled an ice pick from beneath his belt and slashed Marco’s hand, then ran. Paige and Bravo gave chase, with Marco gaining ground behind them, bloody palm and all, yelling for her and her “poodle” to back off.

Determined to make the collar herself, to show the almighty narcotics detective what the poodle squad could do, she followed the suspect up a hay elevator and into a dilapidated barn. She’d pounded ten feet across the loft before realizing the floor was only half there.

Bravo had his man already, standing over him in the corner.

Breathing hard, Marco had rushed into the barn below her. “Don’t—”

She didn’t. But the floor collapsed, anyway. A second later she found herself sprawled across his chest, chaff from ancient bales of hay dancing in the sunbeams all around them.

“—move,” he’d finished dryly.

He needn’t have worried. She couldn’t, paralyzed as much by the feel of the muscled male body beneath her and the dark eyes boring into her as by the fall.

That night, as she lay in bed with a mystery novel, trying to banish the memory of his heat and the sudden, searing connection between them, she’d heard a tap on her window. Angelosi had stood outside throwing pebbles like a teenager, for goodness sake.

She’d met him in the driveway, her aqua-colored robe locked around her like a suit of armor. He was leaning against her new Miata, an indulgence, the first nonsensible thing she’d bought in years….

“What,” she asked sharply, irritation mixing oddly with excitement in her voice, “are you doing here?”

“This yours?” He stroked the hood, and her mouth turned to cotton.

She nodded.

“Put the top down and let’s take her for a spin. See what she can do.”

“It’s late.”

He laughed. “Yeah, and the breeze is warm and the stars are out. So what’s the problem?”

She fingered the neckline of her robe. “I’m not dressed.”

Leaning close, too close, he fingered her robe just the way she had, picked it back just far enough to see the lacy edge of her nightgown curved over the mound of her breast. “You look fine to me.”

Her breath caught at the rough edge to his voice. She jerked back, her mind spinning. She must be crazy. Insane to even consider this. At the moment, though, insanity—in the form of a tall, dark Italian-American looking at her like the wolf must have looked at Little Red Riding Hood—sounded pretty appealing.

“Give me five minutes,” she said, and ran to the house. She might just be crazy enough to go driving with him in the middle of the night, but she wasn’t lunatic enough to do it in her nightgown.

They drove out of the city, to the rural ranching counties. The stars glittered overhead like a mirrored ball at a dance hall as they streaked down country lanes that smelled of fresh-cut hay and livestock.

“Faster,” Marco urged, and she couldn’t say why, but she found an empty stretch of road and pressed the accelerator down until the wind whipped tears into her eyes and she felt like she was flying.

Far from being afraid, Marco threw his head back and laughed.

Breathless and exhilarated, she pulled back into her apartment complex just before midnight and invited Marco in, where he laid her down on her wide four-poster bed and took her for a ride every bit as breathtaking….

Her night with him had been a learning experience. A discovery.

Not that she hadn’t been with other men. She’d dated. Been intimate on occasion. Safe, mediocre sex with safe, mediocre men.

Nothing about Marco Angelosi qualified as safe.

Or mediocre.

He was wild. He was wicked. He scared her to death.

And he’d ruined her for other men.

From the moment she’d first gazed up into his angel’s eyes, she hadn’t wanted anyone else. She hadn’t wanted anyone else even after she’d sent him to prison. And Lord help her, she wouldn’t want anyone else even after she sent him back.

But she would send him back.

Chapter 3

“You okay?”

Marco’s voice sounded faraway. Paige jerked herself out of her reverie and glanced at the rearview mirror. She was surprised, for a moment, to see him so close—just across the seat from her. She was even more surprised to realize her cheeks were as wet as they had been that magical night in the Miata.

Must be due to the head injury.

As unobtrusively as possible, she wiped her nose with her sleeve. “Fine.”

He looked grim. “Your face is as pale as a baby’s bottom.”

“I’ve been shot at, fallen off a cliff and I’m being kidnapped. How am I supposed to look?”

His only answer was a frown. Or maybe it was a scowl.

She rubbed her sleeve harder across her face. She had to get her act together. She was a cop. They were almost to her house. She had to talk Marco into giving himself up.

“You won’t get far in the Miata,” she reasoned. “It’s too easy to spot.”

“Not if no one is looking for it.”

It was Paige’s turn to frown as Marco pulled her Port Kingston PD Expedition into a parking spot in front of the steps to her second-floor apartment. He had to know every cop in the state would be looking for her car within minutes after he left.

Unless there was no one around to tell them he’d taken it.

She shivered, sure that her blood temperature had dropped five degrees in the last five seconds. She didn’t even realize Marco had moved until the car door next to her swung open. One of his hands slid behind her shoulders and the other caught her behind the knees.

Her heart seized up like a bad bearing.

She studied the hard lines in his face, the bruises, the shadows under his eyes. This wasn’t the Marco she knew. This man was a stranger. A murderer, the state trooper had said, and she had no reason to disagree. He’d shot her. Kidnapped her.

For the first time since she’d known Marco, she was afraid of him—truly and deeply afraid. Each step he took with her in his arms added to her anxiety. Her fingers curled to fists on his back. Forget convincing him to turn himself in. She just wanted him to leave.

The thought twisted her pride. She was a cop. She had a job to do. But she was also a woman, alone and vulnerable, and she was hurt.

Bravo followed them up to the apartment entrance and ducked around Marco as soon as the door swung open. Marco followed him to the laundry room. A creature of habit, Bravo went straight to his kennel and stood over his bowl. She always fed him when they got off work.

Standing well back, Marco swung the gate to the dog pen closed with his foot. The clank of the closing latch signaled the loss of Paige’s last best hope for survival.

As she watched Bravo nose his empty bowl, whining, Marco carried her out of the room.

In the bedroom, she scanned frantically for potential weapons. Her thoughts raced with her heart. If he put her on the bed, there was the lamp. If he set her on the chaise in the corner, she might be able to reach the scissors in her sewing basket. If—

He walked right through the bedroom, into the bathroom, and plunked her down on the toilet lid, then promptly turned, dropped the stopper in the tub drain and twisted the faucets on full.

Her jaw hung slack. “What are you doing?”

He’d left the tiny bathroom before she finished the question, but he called back, “Get out of those clothes.”

Like hell. The image of her naked body swimming in a crimson tub, her wrists slashed, shimmered in her vision. Would he try to make it look like suicide?

The absurdity of the thought wiped the vision away a second later. The bruises and abrasions on her body would make suicide a tough sell. She wasn’t sure what he was up to, but whatever it was, she didn’t like it.

Growing more frantic, she scanned the cluttered bathroom counter for something to use as a weapon. The facial cleansers, perfumes and assorted hair products within her reach weren’t much of a match against the 9 mm Glock Marco had taken from her.

But they would have to do.

Keeping one eye and one ear turned toward the bedroom, Marco dumped ice from Paige’s freezer into a plastic bag. He’d taken the phone out of the bedroom, but he didn’t dare leave her alone for long. He didn’t think she was ready to give up yet. Not by a long shot.

Ice pack in hand, he hurried back through her room, refusing to let the wide, pine bed he passed mean anything to him. What was past was past. He wouldn’t dwell on it.

Yeah, right.

He was still trying to shake himself out of the daze brought on by the sensory assault of her bedroom when he walked into the bathroom. Too late, he realized he should have been more careful.

Through the steam, a pair of dark service blues lunged at him. Instinctively he threw his hands up. Her forearm collided with his and he grabbed on to her fine-boned wrist.

He heard a hiss, but didn’t identify the sound until it hit him.