Deep Rising (An Outside the Lines Novel) (Entangled Select) (16 page)

He followed her down the stairs. “So much for early retirement.”

Chapter Nineteen

“Give me your cell phone.”

“Do you need to call someone?” Lana asked.

Jared didn’t respond.

Grabbing it from her hand, he pitched it out the window. He pulled his from his pocket and hurled it after hers into the middle of the highway. Lana watched a eighteen-wheeler plow directly over the phones, scattering plastic and electronic debris across the roadway.

Aside from inquiring about her well-being, he had not spoken since they departed the cabin. He clenched her hand tightly, and it reassured her more effectively than words.

“I’ve been watching the mirrors since we left,” Lana admitted. “I didn’t notice anyone closing in, but I probably wouldn’t know what to watch for.”

“We aren’t being followed,” he confirmed.

“Jared, why would someone come after us now? It doesn’t make sense.”

“I don’t know. But I plan to get to the bottom of it.” He shifted into a higher gear and pulled into the fast lane.

She wanted to say more but sensed that Jared was being silent for a reason. Far be it from her to give away information that might get them killed.

Jared abruptly pulled into a service station.

He limped around to her side and opened the door. He pressed his fingers to his lips, indicating for her to maintain the silence. He’d given the same gesture back at the cabin when they had entered the Jeep. When prompted to answer the few questions he asked, Lana provided only terse yes or no responses. She held her tongue now, waiting for him to tell her otherwise. Jared directed her toward a section of parked cars, away from the bright lights of the diner and gas station. They passed a newer Mustang, two custom Ford pickups, and a late-model Hyundai. An old Suburban was parked two rows back, beside the Dumpster.

“We need a car,” he explained. “Your Jeep might be bugged for sound or wired with a GPS. I don’t have the tools to check it properly.”

Jared marched to the Suburban. He tried the door. When it didn’t budge he put the butt end of his Glock through the window.

He pulled out as much glass as he could manage before reaching inside, unlocking the door, and wrenching it open. He swept the remaining glass off the seat.

“Get in,” he ordered.

Lana climbed in and slid across to the passenger side.
Okay, so now they were going to steal a car.
A hysterical laugh bubbled up the back of her throat. After her standoff with terrorists inside a lava tube on Hawaii, the prospect of a little grand theft auto didn’t seem so bad.

“Buckle up.”

Jared ripped the wiring from beneath the steering wheel. He found the two wires he sought, peeled back the insulation, and twisted the copper together.

The truck grumbled twice, and with a little priming, it turned over.

“Won’t they put an APB on this vehicle?”

“Yes. But we’re close to the state line. Once we cross over, it’ll be less of a concern.”

“But won’t they see my car here and automatically assume we took off in this one?”

“Yes. But it won’t matter because they don’t know where we’re going.”

“Okay, I’ll bite. Exactly, where are we going?”

“Home.”

…

Jared drove through the night, pausing only to refill the old truck. Come morning, when they reached the eastern border of Wyoming, he stopped at another service station. He peeled off a couple of bills and handed them to Lana.

“Tell ’em forty on pump six. Buy us some water, snacks, anything you think we might need to get through another day of driving.”

“Okay.”

He stopped her with a kiss. “Leave the water at the counter. I’ll carry it for you.”

She smiled tenderly then, amazing him with her resilience and beauty.

Jared waved at the gas station attendant as he slipped from the truck. He shoved the nozzle into the truck and set it to fill. He glimpsed a pay phone at the corner of the building. After another careful observation of the deserted station, Jared decided to chance a call. Circumstances necessitated his touching base with Gordon at some point. He opted to take advantage of this opportunity.

As he approached the phone booth, Jared noticed a police vehicle pulling into the lot, and he cut a beeline for the store. Once inside, he located Lana. He nodded for her to finish shopping. She started for the checkout counter. He met her there and smiled at the attendant, a teenage girl with a Bluetooth attached to her ear.

The girl tallied their purchase while carrying on a full conversation with a boy named Billy. Jared wished the kid would stifle the small talk and bag their items. The door jingled and in the reflection of the security mirrors, he watched the cop walk into the convenience store.

The cop did a cursory glance of the store, apparently decided nothing appeared amiss, and strolled toward the coffee section.

“Let’s go, darlin’.” He grabbed the bottles of water. “You take the food. I’ll meet you outside.”

Lana’s face turned chalk white but she stayed there at the counter while the young girl punched in the last of the items and took her money.

Making his way outside, Jared concentrated on Lana and the cop. He climbed into the Suburban, casting the water bottles into the backseat. His leg knotted so badly he could barely depress the gas pedal. It wasn’t the leg so much as the cast causing a problem—making it difficult to maneuver and so damn itchy, he’d rather roll around in a patch of poison ivy.

He idled past the entrance as Lana exited the store. She ripped open the door and climbed inside. Like him, she threw the bags into the backseat.

Jared carefully accelerated into traffic. He took the ramp for the interstate and once they greeted the open road he slammed the gas pedal to the floorboard.

“I thought for sure that cop was going to arrest us!” Lana whispered.

Jared glanced at her before switching his attention back to the rearview mirror. “I would’ve been able to evade him, but I make it a habit to avoid hurting innocent people. I’d never intentionally harm a man for doing his job.”

“Every moment in this vehicle makes me nervous.”

“I know. But the farther we go the less likely we are to have a problem. Besides, I’m only pushing a couple of miles over the speed limit. As long as we don’t get pulled over for something stupid we should be fine.” He took his hand off the steering wheel. “Come closer.”

She scurried across the bench seat.

He wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “We’ll have to drive for the rest of the day. If we’re lucky we’ll make the ranch by tomorrow.”

“Who would’ve thought?” she whispered.

“Hmm?”

She smiled up at him. “You, me. Saving the world. Stealing cars.”

“Life’s full of twists and turns.”

She giggled. Resting her head against his chest, she fell asleep within the space of a breath.

“Hopefully soon we’ll get an opportunity to enjoy each other,” he murmured. Her lips remained slightly parted and the faint whisper of her breathing assured him exhaustion had finally claimed her. His grip tightened.

He’d finally found something worth holding on to, and he wasn’t letting go.

…

Darkness had descended again when Lana finally awoke. She examined her surroundings. Same beat-up truck, typical roadway, and no flashing lights roaring up the road in hot pursuit. She heaved a sigh of relief until she glanced at Jared. His red-rimmed eyes blinked rapidly in his efforts to remain awake. Lines radiated from his eyes and mouth.

“Pull over and let me drive for a while,” she said.

“I’ll make it.”

“Jared, you need to rest. Driving I can handle. Warding off killers is outside my milieu.”

His lips twitched. “There isn’t a shoulder for another seven miles. I’ll pull over as soon as I’m able.”

The miles dragged on, and Lana counted down the minutes until she situated herself behind the wheel.

She shifted lanes, keeping her eye on the rearview mirror. At any moment, she expected a SWAT team to come flying up the highway, or a slew of bullets to blast into the back of the truck.

“Lana, we didn’t make it this far to be caught by cops.”

She smiled, forcing her attention forward. “Would it be better if we did? Maybe a jail is more secure than your home?”

“No one knows about the ranch. It’s in my grandmother’s maiden name.”

“She’s still alive?”

He smiled now. “Yeah. She’s a pistol. She smokes, loves to gamble, and has a penchant for moonshine.”

“No!”

He nodded. “My poor mother has her hands full with that ol’ bird. But Grams is in Florida now. She’s fallen into the snowbird routine.”

Lana smiled. “She sounds great.”

“She takes a little getting used to, but she’s fairly irresistible once you know her. Anyway, getting back to my point, no one has this address.”

“If my cabin was bugged, couldn’t someone have overheard us discussing it?”

“We only referred to it as ‘the ranch.’ I never mentioned anything about its specific location.”

“What about before? Surely someone knows your address?”

“My boss, the director of the CIA, is the only one who has access to the location. If the corruption goes that far we’re screwed anyway.”

“Should you call someone to help?” she asked. “Maybe that man from Hawaii?”

“Evan?”

“The guy from the hospital.”

Jared nodded. “I could. But until I know what we’re up against, the fewer people who know our whereabouts, the better.”

“You don’t trust him?”

“On the contrary, I’d trust Evan with my life.”

“Does he work for the CIA too?”

“Yeah. Evan is the real deal, an intelligence agent. He infiltrates organizations, gets close to the terrorists and warlords. That takes a certain kind of finesse that frankly, I don’t have.”

“What’s your forte?”

“Information and demolition.”

As if she didn’t know that already.

He yawned.

“Stretch out,” she told him. “Put your head on my lap and sleep for a while. Or climb in the back and lie down.”

“If I put my head in your lap, the last thing either one of us will be thinking about is sleep.”

“At a time like this?”

“I’m a man, darlin’.”

He offered this as a reasonable explanation. It made her smile.

“Did you happen to pack my knife?” he asked, distracting her yet again.

“It’s in the bag behind the seat.”

Jared reached over. She heard him rummaging around. When he resurfaced he clenched the wicked blade and sported a grin from ear to ear.

“What are you going to do?”

Keeping her eyes on the road, Lana heard the sound of the knife sawing through plaster, and she had her answer. He was supposed to keep the cast on for another three weeks. But if their pursuers caught up with them, his leg healing incorrectly would be the least of their worries.

“Hey, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” he said.

“Okay.” Gosh, but the man radiated heat. From his large body, the way he looked at her. She primed herself for whatever he’d say next.

“What is isostatic equilibrium? The cover-up on Ischia featured it.”

She expelled a breath of relief. No talks of her brother or how good she is at outrunning gunfire, nothing life-altering. Science she could handle. “The earth is divided into layers.” She settled into thesis mode. “Which you’ll probably remember from grade school.”

“Mrs. Cleveland made us slice open an apple—like it was supposed to explain everything.”

“Did you do it? It’s a useful means of illustrating the core, mantle, and crust.”

“No. I ate the apple.”

She grinned back at him. “You like apples. How about hard-boiled eggs?”

“In a Nicoise salad.”

“When you peel a hard-cooked egg, you typically smash it against something to break up the shell, correct?”

“Yes,” he carefully responded.

“The fractured shell is basically analogous to the crust of the earth, or the lithosphere, as we call it. The egg whites compose what we call the asthenosphere.”

“I’m with you so far.”

“The lithosphere sits on top of the asthenosphere. When the downward pressure or weight of the crust is balanced by the buoyancy of the asthenosphere, we can say they are in a state of equilibrium. When changes occur in that balance, something called isostatic rebound takes place.”

“What’s that?” he asked, genuine curiosity infusing his tone.

“An earthquake.”

“So a little shaking resets everything.”

That about summed it up. “Yup.”

“So aside from friction from plates moving—I remember that much of the apple analogy—what else causes quakes?”

“Massive weight fluctuations. Melting glaciers can lessen the downward force. Flooding and storms can cause extensive erosion, again lessening the downward force. Or an erupting volcano can send billions of tons of molten rock shooting up and on the surface, disrupting the isostatic equilibrium by increasing the weight.”

He craned his head and diverted his attention to the rearview mirror. “So the governments weren’t really lying when they blamed isostatic rebound for the earthquake on Ischia?”

“It’s a stretch. Obviously, the explosion caused the tsunami and the displacement of the landmass. Any tremors came in response to it. But technically, yes, the disruption to the mass generated the earthquake.”

“Just one more question,” Jared said.

“It isn’t like we have anything better to do right now.”

“Oh, darlin’, there are a hundred better things we could be doing right now—if we weren’t in our current predicament.”

“Predicament, huh. Putting it mildly, are you?”

He laughed.

She couldn’t block the steamy images of their bodies intertwined or the searing intimacy of lying naked in his arms. The sex had been good. Really good. Hell, she hadn’t known it could be
that
good. Yeah, she could think of a number of things that she’d rather be doing with Jared.

“What are you thinking about, Lana?”

He grinned mischievously and his eyes sparkled.

“Er, nothing,” she said.

It wasn’t a trust issue. She trusted Jared with her life. It wasn’t a matter of intimacy because after hours of mind-blowing sex she was as comfortable with his body as her own. Her developing feelings posed the problem. He’d tapped into some deep wellspring of emotion she hadn’t known she’d possessed. And it scared her. She’d been married before,
thought
she’d been in love with her husband. But even in the good times with James, she’d never felt like this.