Fugitive Heart - By Bonnie Dee Page 0,43
details about Elliot and Ames and me. Just say something about some strange activity.”
Jake wrinkled his big nose. “No one will believe me if I go all vague. The details make the story.”
“Then keep your mouth shut.” Nick lost some of the calm, and his eyes held the dangerous gleam she’d seen in the garage.
“Boring,” Jake said.
Nick’s arm shot out; he twisted, and suddenly he had yanked Jake in a hold, arm around his throat, another holding his arm back. Big Jake the football player scrabbled ineffectually at the forearm across his neck. “If I pull any tighter, you’ll pass out. This is something I learned as a kid. The people we’re talking about know a hell of a lot worse than this.”
Jake gasped something like, “Hurt.”
Nick had transformed into a frightening man. She’d guessed this casual violence lived in him, but the sight of it made her breath catch as if Nick pressed his arm to her throat.
The next second, he pushed Jake away from him and took a few steps back. Jake glared, panting.
“What the fuck?” His voice rasped as if his throat had been hurt.
“I need to get you to understand.” Nick sounded calm now. He might have just showed Jake an interesting dance move instead of attacking him. “If we do this right, we’ll be okay. But if we screw up, it’ll be a world of hurt. Got it?”
Jake fingered his throat and glared.
“Jake, listen. You could beat the crap out of me in a fair fight—and that wasn’t fair. But those guys you’ll be watching won’t be either.”
Nick could go from calm to seemingly angry to calm again in a matter of seconds. Or maybe he wasn’t really pissed off; he was a guy who had grown up in a world where viciousness was a form of communication. Ames shivered, wishing she hadn’t seen him in action. No, she should be glad, because she hadn’t truly understood until then. Could she trust him to touch her without that careless violence coming to the surface?
Jake picked up his cap that had fallen off and jammed it onto his head. Nick reached into his car and turned off the lights so the darkness took over the house and the gravel drive. Jake grunted something that might have been “Fuck you” before he climbed back into his truck and drove away.
Ames blinked, still adjusting to the dark. Nick must have had great night vision, because he walked across the driveway to the front door.
“Come on in, for a little while, anyway.” He didn’t even fumble with the key—he had the right one out immediately and opened the door without trouble.
“No way Bert’ll wait until ten a.m., of course.” Nick opened the fridge, stared inside and eventually pulled out some peanut butter, jelly and a loaf of bread.
“Why do you keep that in the fridge?” She was determined to shake off the shock of seeing him grab at Jake a few minutes earlier.
“Mice. I haven’t seen any, but the Realtor suggested I keep the food locked up.”
He spread peanut butter on two slices of bread and pointed the messy knife at her. “Want one?”
She shook her head. They’d just eaten, hadn’t they? And the thought of eating again curdled her insides. Bad men were coming for them. Men who thought nothing of killing, and Nick seemed so comfortable with it.
Nick licked the knife. She thought about how that tongue had touched her, and her sex contracted in giddy anticipation. Apparently, some of her hungers didn’t disappear in the face of danger.
He tossed the knife into the sink. “I bet he’ll wait until after dawn, so that gives us some time.”
“What are your plans?”
“Sleep.”
That struck her as even more impossible than eating.
He screwed the lids back on the jars. “I have a tent and some other junk, not that I know squat about camping. I think I should go to the woods.” He cleared his throat, glanced over at her. “And you should hike over to Mrs. Whatever-her-name-is. The one you said is about a half mile away?”
“Mrs. Landry,” she said absently. “Why are you so cheerful?” Why do you want to get rid of me?
He slapped the bread together and took a big bite of one of the sandwiches. “This idiocy is ending. I’ll get to go back to my old life, I hope.”
His old life away from her—but at the moment, the immediate future worried her more. “Aren’t you nervous?”
“Sure,” he said. “I wish I could get ahead