Fugitive Heart - By Bonnie Dee Page 0,32
help you, but I can’t.” He set down his beer bottle and walked toward the open door of the shed, signaling it was time for them to leave. “Nice meeting you, Sam. Sure I’ll see you around town.”
Amiable Jake had never sounded so icy. She’d pushed too hard and gotten nothing out of him except a certainty he knew more than he’d let on. So now what?
She dug in her heels. “Look, Jake, I’m putting all my cards on the table. I know for a fact that Elliot’s in deep, and no matter what you say, I think you’ve had contact with him. If you know anything about a…a package he may have hidden, you have to tell me.”
“Christ, Ames. Are you suggesting I’m in on some kind of criminal conspiracy? Does that sound like me?”
Had she said anything about criminals? “No. But being a loyal friend does. If Elliot came to you for help—”
“I told you I don’t know anything. You should go now.” He jerked a thumb toward the driveway.
Nick moved to join her moving in that graceful, slightly menacing way of his. He stopped in front of Jake. “Guess you’ve figured out I know Elliot from New York. We were friends in college. Trust me, I’m trying to help him too, and the only way I can is by returning what he took. So if you know anything—”
“I don’t.”
Jake stared at Nick until he nodded. “Okay, then.”
As they walked back to the car, Nick rested a hand on Ames’s back and leaned in close. “He knows something.”
“Yeah. But we can’t beat it out of him, and even if he’s talked to Elliot, he might not know where the money is. I don’t think Elliot would trust him with a bundle of cash.”
“So it’s back to searching for something we don’t even know for sure is here.” Nick voiced her discouraged thoughts.
They couldn’t both be in negative mode at the same time, so Ames brought on the positive. “We’re exhausted. Tomorrow we’ll search again. In the woods again, maybe.”
“I told you I already dug craters in that clearing you showed me. It looks like a blown minefield.” He held her car door open—the end of a perfect date. “I’m starting to think I should head back to New York and try to convince Bert I had nothing to do with any of this and that Elliot’s probably gone for good. Maybe we have enough history that he’ll trust me and let me off easy.”
“Or maybe he’ll have you whacked.” Why in the world did she keep using that word? This wasn’t some mob movie. This was the real thing. “Anyway, you think the guy’s on his way here since I tipped off his girlfriend, Sandy. Why not just wait for him and have it out here? Your turf instead of his. Plus he’ll see you’ve been searching hard and that you can’t do any more than you’ve done.”
“Maybe.” Nick looked doubtful, but it was hard to tell because he frowned a lot of the time. He closed the car door and came around to the driver’s side.
She caught a faint whiff of his scent when he slid behind the wheel, warm male and soap. Riding beside him in his car already felt completely natural, as if they’d done this a hundred times, even though they’d known each other only a couple of days.
“It’d be better if you had something to offer him, wouldn’t it?” Ames thought aloud. “And we know Jake knows more than he’s saying. Maybe we should, I don’t know, stake him out or something.”
“Bug his garage? Trace his calls? Put a GPS on his car? Believe me, I wish I knew how to do any of that stuff.” Nick pulled the car away from the curb without talking about where they might go next.
“Look, I think we should…” She paused, not even really sure what they could do next. Her head swam.
“Not right now. You’re right. We’re both worn out. We need to get some sleep. Tomorrow we’ll make some decisions.”
“Will we have that much time?”
He sighed, tapped the steering wheel. “Maybe not.”
Chapter Ten
Ames argued that they should go to her place, but he put the kibosh on that idea. “We can’t go to your apartment. Period. Not gonna happen. Sandy knows your name.”
“The house isn’t much better. They’ll track you down,” she said. “You’re using an alias, but everyone in town knows you’re a New Yorker.”
He shook his head.
“It’s true,” she protested.
“Yeah, I believe