2
Jill Hennessy turned her little red Honda hatchback into the gas station lot and then slammed on the brakes.
“What the hell?” Peering over her steering wheel, Jill stared at the muscular beast of a man in dark jeans and black leather and scuffed boots blocking her path to the gas pump. “Ohmygod, he’s got a gun! And he’s pointing it at me!”
“Stop right there!” The man’s square jaw was shaved smooth, but everything else about him was rough. “Get out of the vehicle, Ma’am. Now, please. Right fucking now, damn it!”
Panic ripped through Jill as she blinked about a hundred times, then almost passed out when she noticed a blood-spattered body on the asphalt, not far from this gun-wielding leather-jacket-wearing beast of a man.
Ohmygod, that other guy’s dead, Jill thought frantically as her mind spun through all the self-defense and situational-awareness stuff she’d read online. Within milliseconds her mind flipped to survival mode, connecting the dots to paint a picture that was clear as a billboard.
Dead guy oozing fresh blood from two bullet wounds?
Living guy with a gun telling her to get out of the car right fucking now?
Shooter didn’t identify himself as a cop or any kind of law enforcement?
This was a murderer who was trying to carjack her to get away!
Which means he’ll kill you too if you’re dumb enough to stop, Jill decided even as her trembling hand rammed the car back into gear and her foot slammed down on the gas and her body lurched forward as she ducked her head down in case he started shooting.
Jill screamed now as the guy raised his weapon just as her car’s front bumper was about to ram into him. Then she gasped when at the last possible second the man leapt into the air, turned his body sideways, rolling onto her hood and over her windshield and onto her roof as she swerved and screeched her car past the dead body and the gas pump, somehow managing to get back onto the county road.
“Ohmygod, is he gone?!” Jill glanced wildly at her rearview mirror, then yelped when she realized she was driving on the wrong side of the yellow line. She got the car back under control, glanced at her mirrors again, frowning when she didn’t see her carjacker sprawled on the road behind her. “Maybe he fell off back at the gas station. Maybe he—ohmygod!”
Jill’s scream was masked by the sound of her moonroof being smashed by a fist bigger than her head. The guy’s arm reached down, and before Jill understood what was happening, there was a gun barrel pressing down on the top of her head and a chillingly deep voice giving her orders.
“Pull over to the side of the road, Miss.” The man’s voice oozed with controlled authority, but beneath it was definitely a threatening edge, like he was not thrilled about almost being run over by her little red Honda hatchback. “Do it now.”
Jill’s grip on the steering wheel tightened so hard her knuckles were white and her hands began to cramp. But somehow her frantic mind instructed her to keep driving, that if she stopped she was a dead woman, that it was common knowledge that home invasions and carjackings never ended well for the victims, that your best chance was always to fight for your life instead of complying with your death.
Comply, you die.
“No,” Jill declared with more firmness than she felt as she pressed down on the gas, pushing the old car faster, the speedometer of the underpowered Honda creeping past seventy as the entire vehicle shuddered like it was going to come apart. “You can’t shoot me while we’re going seventy miles an hour, because you’ll die too. But if I stop, then I’m dead. I know how carjackings work, all right?”
The guy stared at her from above. Then he exhaled hard, groaned loudly, pressed the gun barrel harder against her head. “You have got to be kidding me. There’s a gun pressed against your head. Do what I say. Do it now, damn it.”
Jill didn’t reply. She didn’t dare look up at him either. She considered slamming on the brakes in the hopes that it sent him hurtling off her roof. But the guy looked unbelievably muscular, seemed to be agile like a tiger, had reacted fast enough to avoid getting his knees broken by her car-bumper. He’d smashed through the thick moonroof that was steel-framed shatterproof glass, and judging by the gun barrel pressed down securely on the top of her skull, he was pretty stable in his position atop her roof. So her best bet was to keep driving. He couldn’t shoot her so long as she kept driving.
“All right, listen. I’m not going to shoot you,” the man said gruffly after a few seconds. “Just pull over. I’m one of the good guys.”
“That’s what all the bad guys say,” Jill said, starting to shake her head before freezing when she felt that cold gun barrel press painfully down on her scalp. “Also, you have a gun pressed against my skull. Doesn’t give me a lot of confidence in your promise to not shoot me if I stop. And why wouldn’t you shoot me? You just killed that poor gas station attendant. One murder or two, it’s a life sentence anyway. Nope. Not pulling over and making it easy for you. I know the statistics. Home invasions and carjackings are often fatal for the victims. You comply, you die.”
The man groaned again, said nothing for several long moments. Jill could feel his gaze penetrating her from above. He was studying her like she was a curious creature from outer space. She fought the urge to glance up into his eyes.
“Look, I’m not carjacking you.” The man took a loud breath, then grunted out a sigh. “Well, actually, I guess I am carjacking you. Kind of. I need your vehicle to chase down a very bad man. He killed that attendant. It wasn’t me. I’m one of the good guys, damn it.”
“Nice try.” Jill’s face tightened to a smirk. “But if you’re a cop or FBI, you’d have identified yourself immediately. Too little, too late, buddy.”
The man huffed out a breath. “Not a cop. But I’m military. Well, former military.”
Jill glanced up quickly, blinking and then blushing when she saw that he was smiling now, his dark green eyes shining with amusement. “Well, that’s something, I suppose,” Jill conceded, blinking her gaze back to the road but not able to lose the tingling blush that burned on her cheeks from the way he’d been looking at her. “Well, if it”s true, it would be something. But I can’t be certain it’s true.” She shook her head stubbornly. “No, I can’t take the chance. Bad men lie like dogs in the sun. And the worst men are the best liars.”
The man chuckled above her. “You seem to know a lot of bad men. Enough that your instincts should tell you I’m not one of them.” He grunted, then chuckled again. “Well, not that sort of bad man anyway,” he whispered with an almost flirtatious wickedness, like he couldn’t turn that part of himself off. “OK, listen, sweetheart. Here’s what we’ll do. You know how to handle a weapon?”
Jill frowned at being called sweetheart but let it go. She shrugged out a reply to the question about her weapon-handling skills. “Kind of, I guess. I took a class at the shooting range. Why?”
“Because I’m going to place my weapon in the passenger seat beside you,” said the man. “You’re going to pull over, then check the weapon. You’ll find that it has a full magazine plus one in the chamber. It hasn’t been fired. I didn’t shoot that gas station attendant.”
Jill swallowed as she thought. “You might have used another weapon. Or you might have reloaded.”
The man huffed out another frustrated breath. “Look, honey, I’m being really fucking patient with you here. This isn’t my first time hanging onto a moving vehicle’s roof. You won’t be able to throw me off. I’m better than the world’s greatest rodeo star once I’m locked in position. And this isn’t a real carjacking, anyway. More like a car-borrowing. No kidnapping. I want the car, not you, sweetheart. You’re clearly way more trouble than you’re worth.”
Jill felt her cheeks burn again, but with a different sort of blush now. She swallowed a rude reply that probably wouldn’t be helpful. Something about how she wasn’t the one pointing guns at other people’s heads and calling them honey and sweetheart. She was about to say all that anyway, but then she felt the gun barrel lift off her head.
Suddenly her body relaxed in a way that told Jill she’d been tensed up without fully realizing it. She blinked as her vision blurred from the adrenaline draining away as the immediate fear subsided. Then she flinched as the guy reached halfway into her car, placed the gun carefully on the passenger seat, pointing it away from her. He drew his body back, but not before leaning in close to her ear, his warm breath rustling the soft curls of her sandy brown hair.
“Pull over,” he whispered gently against her skin, that wickedly wolfish flirtatiousness shining through like it was habit, instinct, just how this asshole interacted with women, calling them sweetheart and honey, speaking with a cocky confidence that Jill recognized as the sign of a player, the kind of man who takes what he wants and then moves on without looking back. “Check the weapon. And if you still don’t believe me, then use the damn weapon. Blow my brains out, sweetheart. Tell the cops it was self-defense. You’ll be a hero. They’ll put you on all the morning talk-shows where you can inspire millions of others to act like an idiot and argue when someone’s holding a loaded gun to their fucking head.”
“Ohmygod, you are such an asshole!” Jill hit the brakes, not all the way but enough that she heard the dickhead’s breath catch as his heavy body slid forward on the roof. He didn’t slide off, though, making her believe that maybe this wasn’t the guy’s first rodeo after all. “All right. I’m pulling over. This better not be a trick. Because I will shoot you.”
“Well, if it’s a trick, then you’ll be tricked, and therefore you won’t be shooting anyone,” he pointed out from above her as Jill slowed the car and pulled onto the shoulder before rolling to a stop.
Immediately the man slid off the side of the roof, yanked open the passenger side door, snatched his gun back before she could grab it, and planted his butt in the seat. He’d moved so fast Jill was left breathless, her mouth hanging open in disbelief that anyone that big could move so quickly.
She stayed silent and speechless as the guy pointed his weapon at the floor, pulled back the slide to show a chambered bullet, then removed the magazine and held it up.
“Full mag plus one in the chamber,” he informed her before sliding the gun into a shoulder-holster beneath his leather jacket. “Now, where were we? Oh, right. You were calling me an asshole.”
Jill gulped back a mix of racing emotion that wasn’t just fear but something more intoxicating. There was something about this cocky muscle-bound dickhead’s tiger-like physicality that made Jill feel funny beneath her clothes. Now she felt his gaze move down along her seated body, shamelessly taking in the gentle swell of her breasts beneath her knitted gray sweater, those wolfish green eyes moving all the way down her legs which were nicely wrapped in black tights and knitted gray-wool leg-warmers that matched the sweater.
“You knit that sweater and those leg-warmers yourself?” He glanced up at her with a quizzical frown.
“Um, yes. Why do you look so surprised?” Jill replied with her own frown.
The guy shrugged. “Didn’t peg you as the knitting type.”
Jill’s frown cut deeper. “Why are you pegging me as any type at all?”
He grinned to show annoyingly well-aligned teeth, white and sharp, like everything about this cocky military man screamed alpha wolf. “It’s human nature. We all apply labels to one another within the first few moments of meeting. Pretty sure you pegged me as a certain type.”
Jill snorted. “Yeah. Murdering psychopath carjacker.” She smiled with exaggerated sweetness. “That’s a type, right?”
The guy’s grin spread wider. “Is that your type, baby?”
“OK, you are just—” Jill was about to lay into him for his tasteless jokes, but he’d already turned his attention away from her and was talking to someone on his cell phone—which was expensive-looking but unbranded, definitely not something available to the average citizen. “Great. Now he’s on the phone, chilling in my car like it’s his living room,” she muttered before shutting up when she realized the guy’s phone was close enough and loud enough that she could hear both sides of the conversation.
“He’s already ditched your bike,” the man on the other end of the line was saying. “Paige picked him up on the traffic-cams when he merged onto I-95. He just took an exit leading to a small urban center and left the bike in a strip-mall parking lot. Paige is tapped into the closest traffic cams, but there’s no sign of Diego. We’ve called it in to the local police. They’ve got the manpower to sweep the area, check the strip-mall stores. Benson wants Darkwater to hang back until the cops turn up something or Paige picks up the trail again. We have no legal standing to take Diego down in public.” A pause before the voice continued. “Where are you, Jack? Paige says your phone GPS shows you a few miles down the road from the gas station. You got a vehicle?”
The man—whose name, interestingly enough, appeared to be Jack—glanced over at Jill, cracked a half-grin, then flashed an arrogant wink. “Yeah, I’ve got a vehicle.”
“Um, no you don’t,” Jill fumed, crossing her arms beneath her boobs and glaring at his annoyingly handsome face.
Jack winked at her again, then talked into the phone. “I’ll pick up my bike and hang back until Paige gets a line on Diego again. Send me the strip-mall location.”
“Roger that,” came the reply. “Oh, and be careful that Diego hasn’t booby-trapped your bike. Benson’s already grumpy about losing the trail because you were holding your dick while Diego was getting away. I mean, literally holding your dick.”
Jack’s face darkened. “Wait, how does Benson know I was holding my dick at the time?” He winced, mouthed the f-word silently, then shook his head and groaned. “The helmet-cam. Damn it. How many people at HQ just saw my cock, Keller?”
“Don’t worry about it, Jack. From what I hear, your cock isn’t exactly the nation’s best kept secret, buddy.” Chuckles crackled through the phone, like there were several dude-bro types on the other end, probably grinning and giving each other high-fives for a successful dick-joke.
Jill rolled her eyes, sighing loudly, then shaking her head as she glanced down at herself. Her gaze rested on her tights, which were black fleece for the winter. Her sweater had ridden up the gentle curve of her belly, and when she glanced down at her crotch she was horrified to see the beginnings of a camel-toe where her tights and panties had slid into her slit because she’d just waxed smooth for the first time in years!
Cursing inwardly that she even cared, Jill stole a glance towards Jack, who was off the call but squinting at his phone, perhaps checking the location of his stolen bike or whatever. Still annoyed at her own self-consciousness but unable to stop herself, Jill lifted her butt off the seat just enough to pull her long sweater down so it would cover her lap and hide what looked like her vagina giving Jack a big wink, like it was in on the joke, had already pegged him as a certain type.
Maybe the type it liked.
“Sorry to disappoint you, but there’s going to be no high-speed car chase,” Jack declared with a shrug, smiling out a fake apology before breaking out that irritatingly infectious grin. He was about to say something else—undoubtedly a tasteless follow-up joke—when Jill noticed his gaze flick subtly down towards where she’d just pulled her sweater over her lap to cover where her tights had slipped into her slit in the most vulgar way.
Instantly Jill realized that Jack must have noticed it earlier, his hungry gaze not missing the unintentional display by her wicked little pussy. Now that same little pussy clenched beneath her fleece tights and satin panties, and Jill gasped inwardly when she felt the unmistakable hint of wetness beneath all those layers of cloth, like the realization that Jack had basically seen the outline of her vagina did something to her body, something subtle but shocking, instinctive but appalling.
“Let’s go.” Jack hurriedly averted his gaze towards the front. It was the first sign of a flinch, and Jill blinked twice, puzzled at why a shamelessly cocky player-type like Jack would suddenly avert his gaze when so far he hadn’t given a damn about being obnoxious and tasteless.
Unless he’d suddenly realized he did give a damn.
“Go where?” Jill said, forcing herself to speak loudly so whatever her body was whispering would get drowned out.
“To get my bike.” Jack nodded towards the open road ahead. “Merge onto I-95 at the next junction. I’ll tell you which exit.”
Jill placed her hands on the steering wheel, exhaled slowly to calm her racing heart. She wasn’t sure if it was the adrenaline from being scared for her life that was making her entire body tingle, but she needed to rein it in before this guy thought she was sending him signals. He might not want to murder her, but he was still a stranger with the strength of a bear who’d just been making shameless dick-jokes on the phone.
“You all right?” His voice was surprisingly gentle suddenly, like beneath that cocky devil-may-care attitude was a hint of sensitivity, a shred of a decent man who could sense when he made a woman uncomfortable. “Hey, listen, I’m sorry for scaring you. I’m not going to hurt you. Look, I’ll get out right now if you want, OK? You go on your way. Sometimes I forget that not everyone’s been trained to handle extreme situations by making tasteless jokes.” He opened the passenger’s side door halfway, looked back at her and smiled. It wasn’t that wolfish grin but a real smile, warm and reassuring.
Now suddenly Jill felt her feminine instincts doing all sorts of recalculations, like her subconscious was rethinking the label she’d put on Jack, reassessing his “type” after he’d broken his frame with that flinch, recognized that it was indecent to have gotten a glimpse of Jill that was more intimate than she’d intended.
The reassessment clicked to completion inside her like some ancient calculator enhanced by millions of years of female evolution, millions of years where a woman had to rely on her body’s intuition to make snap-decisions about whether a man was a predator or a protector, whether he would take what he wanted and leave or if he was the type to stay.
“Stay,” came the sudden response from that ancient intuition inside her, the word popping out of her almost unconsciously. “I mean, sure, I’ll drive you to your bike,” she added hurriedly, touching her hair and pulling nervously at her sweater, which was feeling awfully heavy and incredibly warm. “I . . . I need to get on I-95 anyway, so it’s on my way, it’s no problem, I guess.”
Jack looked at her now, those dark green eyes studying her profile again, his gaze narrowing subtly like he was curious, intrigued . . . attracted?
“Great,” he said quickly, breaking the rising tension with a casual shrug. He pulled the door shut, reached for his seatbelt, snapped it into place, glanced at her again, then grinned with a hint of wolfish victory. “Let’s go.”