Even as she reached its front bumper, the driver's door opened and Tom jumped out, drawing his gun as he moved.
"Kate!"
"Tom! Tom, help!"
He yelled something else, a question, she thought, at her as he raced for her and she bolted toward him, but her pulse was thundering so she couldn't understand what he was saying. She reached him at last, running straight into his arms. Gun and all, they closed around her, catching her up against him, holding her tightly.
Oh, God, I'm safe.
Clinging, burrowing her face into the velvety smoothness of his coat, breathing in the warm, Downy-tinged scent of him as she gasped for air, she was aware that he was cursing and asking her what had happened all in the same breath, but she was too shaken to hear properly or reply. Then the light must have changed, because suddenly all around them everyone was back in their vehicles and traffic began to move and the cars behind the Taurus began to honk their horns impatiently as they started trying to cut around the stopped car.
With a quick glance over her shoulder, Kate could see that her Camry was gone with the rest of the traffic ahead of them.
Mario stole my car.
That was her first, instinctive reaction. Then, I
made it. I got out.
Thinking of what might have been, she shuddered convulsively from head to toe.
"Damn it to hell and back anyway." Holstering his gun, wrapping his arm tightly around her, Tom hustled her around to the passenger seat of the Taurus and bundled her inside. Then he loped around the front of the car again and slid back behind the wheel, flashing his badge at an irate motorist who made an obscene gesture out the window at him as he drove past. The motorist yanked his arm back inside and sped off.
Heart racing, still breathing way too fast, Kate lay back against the plush leather seat in a boneless bundle of nerves as Tom put the Taurus into gear and drove off. Her face was turned toward him. He glanced her way, his eyes narrowed and dark in the uncertain light.
"What just happened here?" His voice was sharp. His face was tense as his gaze slid over her. "Holy mother of God, were you just carjacked?"
She was going to have to lie to him again. The thought made her sick to her stomach. The temptation to tell him the truth and let the chips fall where they may was almost overwhelming. But if she did, she would lose everything. For Ben's sake, she had to be strong, had to think fast, had to come up with one more halfway plausible lie. She couldn't tell him about Mario. But if she left out the identity of the man in the car ...
If you're going to lie, stick as close to the truth as possible.
"There was a man in the backseat when I got in my car." Her voice was unsteady. "He had a gun."
She couldn't help it. She shivered at the memory. The curses that fell from Tom's mouth then turned the air blue. Kate watched the clean lines of his face tighten, watched his lips thin and the set of his jaw grow grim.
"Did he hurt you?" he asked as he pulled the Taurus over to the curb and shoved its transmission into park. His eyes raked her, as if he were searching for some visible sign of injury. The entrance to the Vine Street Expressway was yards away, and traffic was rushing onto it. She wondered if her Camry was on that expressway, speeding away. She hoped it was speeding away. "No." She shook her head.
"Anybody you know? The guy from last night, maybe? " She saw that he had his cell phone in his hand and was punching numbers into it. Clearly, the reason he had pulled over was to report her car stolen, along with the circumstances surrounding the theft. She couldn't ask him not to; he would immediately become suspicious. She was just going to have to deal. And lie, lie, lie.
He was already talking to somebody on the phone. When he asked, she gave him the license plate number and a (slightly wrong, although she had to be careful not to be too wrong in case they actually caught Mario) description of the perpetrator, while claiming she hadn't really gotten all that good a look at him, thanks to the dark, shock, etc. All the while, she prayed that Mario wouldn't be caught, because if he was caught, he might talk. Although if he told the police about Baltimore, at least she would no longer have to lie and the hold he had on her would be broken forever.
If it wasn't for Ben, she thought, she would almost be glad of it.
"They're putting out an APB on your car. Somebody'll come by your house later to take your statement," Tom said when he was finished. They were still parked beside the curb on Thirteenth Street, with traffic, both vehicular and pedestrian, flowing past in a steady stream. A pink-and-green neon palm tree advertising the Oasis Bar flashed changing rectangles of color over the black dashboard. The headlights of oncoming traffic plus the streetlights that stood on every corner made it easy to see him. He was staring out through the windshield, frowning thoughtfully. Then his eyes cut toward her.
Kate braced herself.
"Put on your seat belt" was all he said. As she complied, he restarted the car and pulled out into traffic. "Where to?"
"I have to pick up Ben." She gave him the address.
He nodded. She borrowed his phone to call Suzy and explain about being late, without telling her precisely what had happened, because she didn't want Ben finding out and worrying before she could tell him herself. When she disconnected, they drove in silence for a while. After they crossed the bridge over the Delaware, Philly's glittering skyline gradually receded into the distance. Traffic thinned out and speeded up, and except for the occasional slash of oncoming headlights cutting through the Taurus's interior and the
swoosh
of wheels on pavement, the ride was quiet and dark. Having almost recovered her composure, Kate looked out to see a bone-white moon rising over the jagged line of rooftops to the east. Its roundness was reflected in the black waters of the river that ran alongside the expressway. The scene was beautiful, she thought—and cold.
Almost as cold as she felt. Wrapping her arms over her chest, she glanced at Tom.
Big mistake.
"So, you still hell-bent on stonewalling me?" he asked. They weren't too far from the West Oak exit, the one she took to get Ben. His tone made it almost a throwaway question, no tension behind it at all. But as Kate looked closer, she saw that his jaw was tight and his mouth was thin.
"I don't know what you mea—" she began, but he cut her off with an impatient sound.
"Let's see: A right-handed woman uses her left hand to shoot and kill a vicious punk with a rap sheet as long as my arm. Then she's harassed at home by another punk who just happens to know her and her kid's names. Later that same night, a man—Same punk? Different punk? Who the hell knows? Because it seems to be open season on this woman—tries to break into her house. The following night, an armed man is hiding in her car when she gets into it, and she barely manages to escape." He slanted a hard-eyed look at her. "So, what do you think, counselor, in your professional opinion? Is our girl having a run of really shitty luck, or is she involved up to her pretty neck in something she's not coming clean about?"
By the time he finished, Kate was glaring at him.
"You know what? I don't appreciate your attitude."
"Well, gee, isn't that just the biggest coincidence? Because I don't appreciate being jerked around."
"You know what else I don't appreciate? You trying to trick me. Why didn't you just ask me outright whether or not I'm right-handed? Instead of pretending that you had a gift for Ben so I would reach for it?" That still stung.
A beat passed. "I did have a gift for Ben. The basketball is a gift."
Kate snorted. "Which you got for him so you could give it to me so I would reach for it."
"I got it for him so he'd have a decent shot at learning the game of basketball. Handing it to you—okay, maybe I had an ulterior motive in the way I handed it to you."
"Maybe?" Scorn dripped from the word. But at the idea that the gift itself possibly wasn't part of the trick, she felt a little better.
If
she believed that part of it, which, thinking about it, she guessed she kind of did. After all, he could have handed her anything.
"Get off here," she added, because West Oak was the next exit.
He pulled into the right lane. The exit was just ahead.
"You want to talk about ulterior motives, seems to me like you might have an ulterior motive in the way you just changed the subject," he said, as he guided the Taurus off the expressway and around the dark, curving ramp. "Like dodging giving me any kind of explanation for the run of bad luck I mentioned."
"Okay." Her voice was tart. "You want an explanation? I'll give you the best one I have: Did it ever occur to you that maybe, just maybe, all the publicity I've gotten since I managed to survive being taken hostage has brought these creeps out of the woodwork? That they're homing in on me right now because I'm on TV all the time? And that maybe the reason a right-handed woman—and yes, I admit it, I am right-handed, you've got me there—shot a man with her left hand was because I grabbed the gun with my left hand as I was scrambling to my feet and didn't have time to switch it to my right hand before I fired it to save my life?"
Her words hung in the air between them as they reached the bottom of the ramp and he stopped, looked both ways, and then pulled out onto West Oak. She got the feeling that he was weighing them, testing them, going over them again in his mind.
"That's your story?"
She bristled. "No, that's not my story. That's what happened." She glanced out at the passing streets, which were lit only by the moon and the illuminated windows of houses in this residential area. "You want to turn right up here at Pine."
They reached Pine, and he complied. "So you think this guy who was hiding in your car targeted you because you've been on TV?"
The skepticism in his voice was too much. She was lying, he suspected she was lying, and she knew it, and the thing was, she didn't want to lie anymore. She hated telling lie upon lie, especially—and she hated facing this, too—to him. But she could not tell the truth.
"I don't know." Her voice wobbled with the helplessness she was feeling, and ironically, that made it more convincing. Lying was the only option she had, but she didn't have to like it. "I don't know, okay? All I know is he was in my car, and he had a gun, and I think he would have hurt me—or worse—if I hadn't gotten away."
Something, either her obvious emotion or the thought of what might have happened to her had she not managed to escape, shut him up.
Kate took a deep breath, trying to get herself under control, and glanced around. They were just about half a block from their destination. The yards were bigger here where the Perrys lived, and the houses were farther apart. Consequently, it was much darker. Shiny black bags full of leaves were piled beside the road, waiting for city services to come and pick them up, and a few stray leaves blew across the pavement in front of the car like small golden magic carpets caught in the headlights. The Perrys' rambling ranch house was set far back on its lot, and she could see it as they approached. Big trees dotted the yard, most of them nearly leafless now, although a couple of sturdy evergreens did a good job of providing privacy from the street. Kate caught just a glimpse of light spilling from the windows.
Her heart ached at the thought of Ben innocently waiting for her inside. He had no idea of the jeopardy they were both in.
Whatever it took, she had to handle this, for Ben's sake.
"Next driveway," she said.
"You know, there's just one problem." He pulled into the long, un-paved driveway that led back to the Perrys' house. Gravel crunched beneath the wheels as he drove toward the house. "None of what you said explains why you've been scared to death ever since I first walked into your office. The hostage situation had been resolved by then. You were safe. But you were still scared. You
are
still scared."
She wanted to tell him the truth then. She really did. But she couldn't, and because she couldn't, she had to play the game as if her lies were the truth.
"If I said you were wrong, you wouldn't believe me, so what's the point?"
The car was even with the walkway that led into the house now, although a fat pine tree kept the front door and most of the front of the house except for the garage, which was directly ahead of them, hidden from view. He braked, and the car stopped.
"I'm not wrong."
"See?" She gave a brittle little laugh. "Listen, I appreciate all your help, but I wish you'd leave now. I'll get one of the Perrys to give Ben and me a lift home."
Putting the transmission in park, he turned off the ignition. The headlights shut off automatically. The interior of the car went as dark as the night outside, but she could see the hard outline of his forehead and cheek and chin, and the gleam of his eyes as he turned to look at her.
"You don't want me to leave." There was cool certainty in his voice. "I think you're forgetting something. The guy who took your car has your keys. I assume your house key was on the same key ring?"
Kate sucked in air. She hadn't thought of that. Now Mario and company wouldn't even have to break in.
"I'll drive you two home, and I'll sleep on the couch again. Tomorrow, you can have the locks changed, and get a damned security system put in." His voice hardened. "After that, you're on your own."
Kate wanted to refuse, wanted to send him away, wanted to say something like
No way in hell,
but she couldn't. The idea that Mario could now walk in on them at will was absolutely terrifying.
"Fine," she snapped, and opened her door and got out of the car. It was cold and dark there in the lee of the big evergreen, and the air smelled of pine and wood smoke. Walking quickly around the hood, she was surprised when he got out, too. Before his door shut all the way and the interior light went out again, she saw that he was coming toward her. She could hear the quick crunch of his footsteps on the gravel, see the dark outline of him against the background of light-limned trees.