The Bliss Factor (15 page)

“If it was me,” the cashier said, “I’d open whatever he wanted me to.”

Rae ran her credit card through the reader, pushed the appropriate buttons, and signed on the little electronic line.

“I’m just saying,” the cashier persisted, her eyes on Conn.

“Is the advice extra?” Rae asked her.

“Honey, if you need that kind of advice, there’s no hope for you.”

Rae snatched the receipt and shooed Conn out of the way, pushing the cart out of the store.

“Did I hear that woman say we could open something?” he asked her.

Rae grabbed the first item that came to hand, a package of Oreos, ripped it open, and handed it to him. Good thing he was clueless most of the time, she thought, as she beeped the Hummer open and started loading groceries in the back. If he had any idea of the effect he had on women, her included, he wouldn’t be munching obliviously on cookies. He’d be nibbling on her instead. And she’d be letting him.

CONN WAS WEARING THE BLACK PANTS RAE HAD
bought for him earlier, the ones with all the pockets. The rest of his clothing was black, too, and he was wet from head to toe. Dripping. But the real problem was his hands. One of them held a long, wicked-looking knife with a blade two inches wide, one side of it serrated. The other hand held a gun.

He was hunkered down at the very edge of a village surrounded by jungle, one shoulder pressed to the trunk of a huge tree. He eased around, lifted a device to his eyes and saw men dressed as he was, faces smeared with stripes of black paint, working their way silently between the crudely built huts, signaling to one another to coordinate their movements.

And then the night exploded, rocket blasts punctuated by staccato bursts of gunfire, desperate shouts, and the screams of the hurt and dying. Those who’d chosen to be a part of the conflict, and those who hadn’t.

Conn waited for a streak of light, chose a target not dressed in black, and in the space between heartbeats he squeezed the trigger. The gun jammed. He threw it aside, flipping the knife to his right hand, even though he knew it was no use against large artillery and automatic weaponry. And even though the men being slaughtered weren’t his mission, he left cover, put himself in the chaos of gunfire and death, moving in close to his victims, slashing a throat or jamming the knife between ribs, hearing the grunts of his victims, their eyes going flat and dead even as he moved on, searching for the next target. He caught movement out of the corner of his eye, flipping the knife and catching it by the tip as he turned and let it fly, just as a rocket blast illuminated the face of a child—

He jerked awake, already off the couch before his surroundings registered, and then he stayed on his feet, went through the kitchen and out the back door, scrubbing his hands back through his hair. The feelings lingered, despair and self-loathing, but the scene was fading from his waking mind, lost to an illness he didn’t understand. And didn’t want to, just as he didn’t want to know what had happened to that child.

But he knew what had happened to that child. And who was responsible. There was only one way that situation could have played out.

His breath steamed on the air. He wore only cotton boxers, but the cold outside couldn’t compete with the one within. He stood there in the dark and quiet, letting the peace of the place wash over him, through him. But the dream lingered. The affliction that seemed such an irritant for Rae Blissfield became his last line of defense as he slipped the ugliness behind it and stepped back on the other side.

“Is everything all right?”

He didn’t turn, didn’t have to when Rae stepped up beside him, wearing her fuzzy white robe. She settled into a metal chair, pulling her knees up and tucking the robe around her bare feet.

“I heard the door open,” she said, resting her chin on her knees. “Trouble sleeping?”

“Dreams.”

“Memories?”

“God, I hope not.” But he knew they were, and it was becoming harder to pull himself back from the ugliness each time.

“Bad, huh?”

“You have no idea.”

“Maybe that’s why you’re not remembering,” Rae said. “Maybe it’s not just that there was something terrible in your life, maybe you were . . .”

“Terrible?” He didn’t disagree, but he couldn’t shrug her off, either.

“You have to admit it’s a real possibility that you’re not a nice guy, right? You react to trouble like you’re no stranger to it. And those guys chasing you, they could have shot us today, but they didn’t. Maybe . . . maybe they’re not the bad guys.” Maybe that was why her parents had made her promise to keep the police out of this, Rae thought. Not that Annie and Nelson would protect a criminal, but they had . . . unusual ideas about what constituted right and wrong.

Conn bent, picked up a handful of dead leaves, and crumbled them in his fist. “I see no merit in speculation.”

Considering the path of her thoughts, Rae wholeheartedly agreed. If Conn was a criminal, she didn’t want to know why her parents were protecting him. “How about breakfast? You always feel better when your stomach is full.”

Conn took in her soft smile, a smile that accepted without judgment, without pity. She was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, that smile said, but when she held out a hand he didn’t take it.

She kept saving him, and he didn’t want to get used to being saved. Not by her. He had no doubt he could protect her from the men chasing him, but when it came to returning the favor in ways that really counted, he had a feeling he wouldn’t be so successful.

 

 

THE DEALERSHIP WHERE RAE HAD BOUGHT HER CAR, and where it was currently being serviced, was located in Troy, on a side street that curved around from West Maple Road to North Crooks.

Thanks to Conn’s early morning upheaval, they arrived long before the office was open. The service department was in full swing, though, so Rae pulled into the lot and parked by the service entrance. She didn’t get out of the vehicle.

“Worried about the Stooges?” Conn asked her.

“The mall is less than a mile from here,” she said. “They found us once, by accident from all appearances.”

“Then it’s unlikely they will be so lucky twice in two days.”

“True, and the real problem is them.” She pointed at a pair of black Lincoln squad cars, white stripes along their sides bearing the seal of the city and the words “Troy Police Department,” parked at the curb in front of the main office.

Cole sat up straight in his seat. “Do you think they’re here for us?”

“Why don’t you sit tight and I’ll go find out.” She opened the driver’s-side door and hopped out, literally, then looked back in at Conn. “Aren’t you going to ask me how one sits tight?”

“I think I can figure it out this time.”

Rae grinned at him, then took herself off in the direction of the police cruisers, going right to the source. She didn’t even have to ask any questions. It was pretty clear what had happened, and when she joined the circle of gawkers, it turned out that most of them worked there. Just listening to them talk filled in the rest of the blanks.

“They were broken into last night,” she told Conn when she got back to the Hummer.

“Broken?” he said, craning his neck see the front of the office.

“Someone went into the dealership illegally after hours. To steal things. From where I was standing I could see one of the computers on the floor by the door, but they didn’t get away with it, and from what I heard nothing was actually stolen. The police responded to the silent alarm too fast.”

Conn didn’t have anything to say about that, but he must have been scenting trouble, because his expression had gone flat, the blue of his eyes going impossibly sharper as he scanned the dealership.

“You think this has something to do with us,” she said.

“Don’t you?”

Rae clambered into the Hummer, but she left the door open, folding one foot under her so she could sit facing Conn. “If we stick with the assumption that they don’t know who I am, the only way they could trace us would be the dealer plates . . . Shit.”

Conn twisted around. “Where?”

Rae pointed to the multi-colored Honda, parked just inside the driveway, the driver’s and front passenger’s side windows covered with plastic and duct tape.

“It doesn’t look like anyone is in there,” Conn said.

“Hard to see, considering the makeshift windows, but I’m willing to bet they’re there. They probably got stuck when the police showed up. And we stumbled right into their laps. I guess they don’t want to start anything with the Boys in Blue right there.”

“Boys in—”

“The police. Blue uniforms.”

“Right. We can’t sit here forever.”

“Neither will the police. As soon as they leave Harry and Joe are coming for us.”

“Then we leave now. We already know this vehicle is proof against their worst.”

Rae sighed. “I’m getting really tired of this.”

“Then change the rules,” Conn said, as if it were the obvious course.

“Change the rules?”

“Like this.” Conn got out of the van, sauntered into the service bay and up to the little counter where the orders were written up.

Rae froze, all her breath leaking out at the idea of Conn working without a net. She fired up the Hummer, jammed it into gear, and wheeled it into a tight turn, flooring it into a parking space she’d never have been able to navigate without desperation on her side.

She got inside just as the counter guy, whose name, according to the embroidered patch on his pocket, was Jim, said to Conn, “Can I help you with something, Mac?”

“Who’s Mac?” Conn asked him.

“He’s with me,” Rae said. “I’m here to see if my Jaguar is ready.”

“Name?” Jim said, standing a little straighter, which made sense when the other customer said, “What about my van?” and Jim pointed behind him to a sign that said, DEALERSHIP CUSTOMERS HAVE PREFERENCE.

“I’m a customer, too,” the other guy protested.

“You’re here for an oil change. Not the same thing.”

“If I don’t get the oil changed in this thing every three thousand miles like clockwork it breaks down. This is the only place open this early, and time is money when you’re self-employed. I ain’t losing half a workday waiting.”

“That’s all right,” Conn said. “We’re in no hurry.”

“Fine with me, Mac.” Jim turned back to ask the other customer for his mileage, then rolled his eyes when he didn’t get the answer he wanted. “What, you’ve never gotten your oil changed before, genius?” he said, heading out to the parking lot, the less-than-apologetic customer trailing along behind him.

“We’re not in a hurry?” Rae said to Conn.

He shrugged, but this time she could tell he was up to something. His shoulders were loose, but his eyes were focused, watching Jim and his customer stop at a white delivery van parked a couple spots down from the Hummer with a HOW’S MY DRIVING? sign on the back.

Jim opened the door and bent into the van, getting the mileage, Rae presumed. She turned back to Conn, just in time to see him reach over the edge of the desk and pick up the keys lying on the partially filled out work order.

“No,” Rae said, keeping her voice down, staring at the mechanics in the other service bays.

By the time she’d assured herself Conn’s larceny had gone unnoticed, he was headed out to the parking lot. She caught up with him at the door and dragged him to a stop. It wasn’t easy. “We are not stealing that van.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

He was already shaking his head before she said, “The police—”

“We only go far enough to lose the Stooges, then we leave the van and double back here. No one will be harmed.”

She blew out a breath. “That’s it. I give up. I’m going to jail, but at least it will be peaceful.”

“At last, you learn to find the silver lining,” Conn said, grinning. “Can I drive?”

“Let me put it this way, I want to be alive to go to jail.” She took the keys, but Conn was running the rest of the show. Except he didn’t seem to realize that. “We should probably go before Jim comes back and notices the keys missing.”

He bowed slightly, gesturing her to go ahead.

“This is your operation. You go first.”

The word
operation
seemed to do the trick. Conn stopped smiling and started moving. He led her across the parking lot as if they were headed for the Hummer, passing Jim and his customer, still bickering, on the way back. As soon as they were out of sight of the guys in the Honda, Conn caught her by the wrist, towing her around to the passenger side of the white HOW’S MY DRIVING? van. As soon as Jim and the driver had finished with the odometer reading and closed the driver’s-side door, Conn stuffed Rae in, and climbed in behind her. Rae moved over into the driver’s seat.

So far so good, she thought, firing up the van before she could have second thoughts. She eased it out of the space, driving down to the end of the parking aisle, away from the open service bay. They would have gotten away with it, if they hadn’t needed to go right by the Honda to get out. And if the Honda hadn’t been full of guys who wanted to stop them—even with the police sitting mere yards away.

They were almost on top of the Honda, still moving at a speed designed to evade notice, when the Honda’s driver popped up behind the wheel. His gaze locked with Rae’s.

She didn’t hesitate, putting the gas pedal to the floor. The van sputtered and coughed, barely picking up speed, which meant its front bumper and the Honda’s got to the same place at the same time. The van shuddered to the sound of metal shrieking, and for a second they were hung up on the other car’s bumper before they tore free and shot toward the driveway.

The Honda, minus its front bumper, the hood partially buckled, makeshift plastic windows flapping, swung out behind them. A few seconds later she heard sirens.