Two-1
942 Words
Two
Jake stopped the rented pickup truck in front of Bryn and their small pile of luggage and jumped out. He opened the passenger door for her before tossing their luggage into the truck bed.
Bryn put her hands on her hips. “What is this?”
Jake finished stowing her laptop computer in the front on the floor before looking at her. “Transportation?”
She looked at him with one eyebrow arched.
“We’re in cowboy country. What else would we drive?”
She heaved a pointed sigh before approaching the open door, where her short skirt, high heels and the truck’s threshold defeated her before she got started. She gave Jake a now what look. He grinned and stepped behind her. His hands gripped her waist, offering her a brief sensation of flight, then a landing on the seat. She felt color flood in her face, sent there by her pounding heart. She smoothed her skirt and collected her scattered dignity while Jake made the journey around to the driver’s seat. He slid in beside her and fired the engine, an expression of masculine pleasure lighting his eyes as the truck responded to the pressure of his foot on the gas. Bryn buckled her seat belt, then grabbed onto the armrest as they shot into the flow of traffic. Before she could assimilate the highway signs, Jake had committed them to head south. Jake handled the truck well. He was a confident, not reckless, driver. She just didn’t like being driven. Which explained her volatile reaction to Phagan, since he was driving her crazy. With an inward shrug, she forced her feelings to the back burner, where she put all the things she couldn’t control.
“Did you get a hold of your brothers?” she asked, looking away from the road.
Jake nodded. “Luke, the one with the Denver PD, is checking out the local angle with a buddy of his in Estes Park. I think I mentioned our family has a cabin near there?”
Bryn nodded, resisting the urge to tense when he changed lanes.
“And Matt, another marshal, said he’d have his computer guy check out the address of that MUD. If it is local, we should have an address by tomorrow sometime.”
“Two marshals and a cop in one family?” Odd to learn Jake was a sibling. He seemed such a loner.
“Guess it’s in my genes.” Jake pushed a hand through his hair, rumpling the surface boyishly. “Dad was a cop.”
“Was?”
“Died. Line of duty.” His face closed.
“I’m sorry.” Bryn shifted. Her own parents were hale, hearty, and baffled by their daughter’s law enforcement inclinations. A regular, though rural, Ozzie and Harriet in a world of disposable marriages.
“So, what’s the deal with you and Phagan?”
Bryn stiffened. “There is no deal.” Not a complete lie, because she didn’t know what was going on or how to explain it to herself, let alone to Jake.
She still remembered the moment she realized Phagan was doing more than feeding her leads to his unsavory targets. That she understood. His jobs were targeted to maim and destroy bad people, so of course he’d need her to clean up after him. But why would he feed her leads to where he was? It made no sense.
Then he’d started leaving her gifts, both on her desk and inside her apartment, places he shouldn’t have access to. It was infuriating to do her job, to live her life, all the time wondering if he was the repairman who came to fix her television or one of the people cleaning the office. He knew too much about her. He’d invited her to a meeting in virtual reality a few months ago. She’d been hesitant but determined to try to smoke him out. And she’d found herself, she remembered with guilty amusement, in Ozzie and Harriet’s world. All black and white and her with a fifties hairdo and clothes, down to a white apron tied around her dress. But no shoes. In the kitchen.
The guy had a dark sense of humor that she was having a hard time not responding to.
How did he know what she had never acknowledged out loud? Terror had faded into laughter she couldn’t hold in check. Phagan was a high-tech criminal whose butt she was determined to toss into jail, but he was also a benign, eager-to-please-without-getting-caught suitor with a sense of humor she secretly enjoyed. She hadn’t lowered her guard, but she had grown bolder about following the clues he sent her. The i***t seemed determined to make sure she stayed on his trail and she was learning from him. She hated to admit it but it was the truth.
How could she not like the guy a little? Wouldn’t stop her from plotting his downfall, but it helped to like your work. It helped a lot.
“How about we stop to grab some grub?” Jake asked.
Grub? Boy, were they ever in cowboy country.
* * * *
The lights were dim, glowing just enough to add a sheen to black satin sheets on a bed overhung with an ornate mirror. A panel slid back, revealing an expensive entertainment center. Peter scanned a row of unlabeled videos, selected one and shoved it into the machine. Drink and remote in hand, he went to the bed, made a nest with the pillows, then settled himself at its center. Before he could activate the VCR, the phone on the nightstand intruded.
Muttering a curse, Peter grabbed it and took a calming breath. “Harding here.”
“You alone?” Stern asked.
“Why—”
“You need to come back to the office.”
“I was just going to bed.”
“Tough. Get back here.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Not on the phone.”
Peter cursed silently. “Fine.”
He banged down the phone and stood up. This had better be worth it. He shed his elegant robe and picked up the pants he’d laid over the suit valet. Before pulling them on, he started the video, putting his clothes on as the young girl on the screen took hers off.
- Writer
