she was right about the torture.
Oh, geezus. He’d woken up strapped to a gurney. Oh, God.
“We should … I mean, I need to … no. No, what you need to know is that these guys chasing us are your friends.” That’s what she meant to say. “The best friends you’ll ever have. They can help you. We should go back to the garage right now. You’ll be safe there.”
“I’m safe now,” he said, his voice so cool and steady.
Of course he was. What was she thinking?
“These boys are going to try to run me to ground,” he continued. “And I’m not going to let them do that, whatever it takes. Do you understand?”
She nodded. “Whatever it takes.” Whatever the hell that meant. “Maybe you should let me drive.”
The grin he flashed her was brief and devastating, a crooked curve of boyish dimples and white teeth that erased the years and the scars and made him what he once had been.
He shrugged out of his jacket, and her gaze dropped lower, to his chest. He was wearing a black Jimi Hendrix T-shirt with the words “Voodoo Child” across the middle, below the drawing of Hendrix.
Voodoo child for sure, she thought, witchy and wild, popping his pills and Corinna’s clutch, dark and dangerous and beautiful, and lost to himself. So lost.
“You got your seat belt cinched real tight?” He finished pulling off the jacket and laid it next to him on the console.
Yeah, tight. She gave the belt another tug and wondered if it was time to start with the Hail Marys: Hail, Mary, full of grace …
Oh, sweet Jesus—she glanced over at him.
Talk about tight. The Jimi Hendrix T-shirt defined the word, and the word defined everything about his arms from the breadth of his shoulders, to the hard, sculpted fullness of his biceps and the confluence of veins running under his skin down the inside of his forearms. He had no tattoos, only the fine, incised tracks of his scars.
With her gaze riveted to him, to the hard line of his jaw and the straight line of his nose, to the softness of his cotton T-shirt and the even softer worn denim of his jeans, she tightened her hold on her zebra purse.
Touching him was not a good idea. She’d remembered it too many times for her own good, what it was like to wrap her arms around him, to be held by him, how he’d tasted when they’d kissed, how he’d felt inside her, the aching loss of it all when he’d left—and then he’d up and died, and she’d been forced to put her childish dreams away.
But here they were, despite death and everything, sitting in a car.
If this was fate, she was buying.
Yes, she was starting to see the bright side to the day. Her ears had stopped ringing, her nerves had calmed, and two of the greatest guys in the world were ready to do God only knew what to them the instant they moved off this corner at 30th and Vallejo.
What were Creed and Hawkins thinking? she wondered.
Then she knew. The sound of another set of perfectly tuned headers rumbled into earshot before Coralie made her appearance at the intersection with the rest of them. Now the board was set, but for what?
“Okay, time to get out of here,” J.T. said, looking over at her with his oh-so-calm gaze. “Last chance, Jane. You in or out?”
“In,” she said without hesitation, whatever “in” turned out to be.
He stretched his hand out to grasp the back of her seat and shifted around so he could look over his shoulder, out the rear windshield.
“The, uh, next run is going to be in reverse?” Maybe she needed to rethink her decision.
“Only the first stretch. Then we’re sliding off the map, and these guys can spend the rest of the night chasing each other.”
He seemed awfully sure of himself for somebody who didn’t know Denver was his hometown, and what the hell did “sliding off the map” mean? It sounded like something she should know about—like something she was going to find out about the hard way, unless she bailed on him, and she wasn’t bailing. She couldn’t bear the thought of watching him disappear and wondering if she’d ever see him again—because, baby, that seemed like a real damn long shot.
“Still in?” he asked, slanting his gaze back to her and gunning the motor.
Oh, geezus.
She gave a short, quick nod, and he pressed down hard on the gas. The