Hiding in Plain Sight (3 page)

Chapter Three

I didn't know why it bothered me that he held the keys to my car, but it did.  I felt my heartbeat, which had grown calmer during our meeting, ratchet up.  I had learned the hard way that men liked to have control and to have him grab my keys was the very picture of gaining dominance.

He went to the trunk and used the key to pop the latch.

I knew what he would see.  My purse.  Two huge suitcases with a small train case alongside two crates of water and a backpack full of canned food were probably the very picture of someone on the run.

Shit.

His golden green gaze hit mine again as I followed him to the back, holding onto the side of the car for reinforcement since my knees didn't want to work right.   His eyes roved over the goods in the trunk before they came back to mine, and I saw his helmet, held in his left hand, begin to beat a cadence against his hard, leathered thigh.

"You are running," he said baldly.

I closed my eyes at his words to hide the flare of panic that shot through me. 

I didn't answer.  How could I when anything I could and would say would be a lie?

"We cannot take all of this on the bike," he said slowly before turning his gaze to me.  "You must choose."

His golden eyes which had initially hit all within my trunk came back to mine.

"Ne razumijem," he said, his head shaking in the universal sign of 'negative’ as he sank his head between his shoulders and stared at my keys in his hand.  I didn't know what he specifically said or what he meant as his orbs turned back to my suitcases.  I only knew a smidgeon of French and more than a few words of Spanish But from the words he'd used, the language was different than those I'd learned.  All I knew was that this beautiful bastard was frowning into the stuffed space of my VW trunk, which everyone knows was beyond small.

I shrugged, glancing down onto my suitcases. 

"Figure out what you need and pack it," he said finally, taking a step back and crossing his huge biceps across his large chest.  "We leave in three minutes."

Three minutes?  He was out of his mind.  And, then, I took in his stance, his physique and his attitude.  Which produced an immediate bristle within me.  I'd had about all I could take from big ol' boys ordering me around intimidating the shit out of me.

"Why can't I wait until I get a clear signal and can call Triple A?" I asked.  I could hear the strident frustration, the determination in my voice.  I didn't need him to rescue me, and his rescue plan was not to my liking.  

Hadn't I learned the hard way that I could only depend on me and no one else?

I heard him chuckle and turned myself away.  I so did not need to see a gorgeous motorcycle guy with a smile when I was in one of my pissy panics.  "You won't get a signal until you are within seventeen point five miles of North Platte."

Oh, hell.  Really?  You've gotta be less than twenty miles from the next major city, in the next state, to get cell phone reception?

He must've seen my face even though I made a point of turning away because his hand gripped my shoulder, sending heat into the skin not covered by my sundress.

"Take what you need for four days and leave the rest," he said from behind me.

Yeah, right.

I glanced up to see if he was actually serious.  I mean, four days?  Why four days, for god's sake?

He tilted a hand as well as his head as he started pushing buttons on his expensive looking watch, and I realized he was serious about the three minute rule thingie, the bastard.  I quickly unzipped the first suitcase and began slinging clothes over my arm. 

No, this wouldn't work.  I had to pick and choose.  Okay then.  Jeans, check.  Yoga pants, another check.  Four t-shirts, a jeans skirt and a jean jacket, double check.  Three pairs of panties and an extra bra.

I stumbled at the shoes portion.   Okay, I wasn't Imelda Marcos, but I was totally and completely into shoes as much as the necessity of my penny-pinching allowed.  This was gonna be hard even though I was figured I only had about thirty seconds left.  I was already wearing my cute, pink chucks so I grabbed a pair of black strappy low-heeled sandals before snagging a towering pair of plat-formed heels.

In my mind, black goes with everything, even in the middle of bum-fuck-Egypt.

I emptied out the backpack of food and shoved my shoes in, then the clothes I'd taken.  I quickly opened the cosmetic case and just upended it into the top, then shook the backpack, allowing all the little bottles, eye pencils and stuff to fill up the empty spaces.  As I zipped the nylon bag closed, I lifted it from the bottom, able to touch the hard stacks of my security inside.

In the meantime, he'd been working between the car and his bike, loading up the bottles of water, which due to size, were uncased and being stored in the bottom of his panniers.  Room that would prevent me from having an explanded wardrobe.  I was hoping to grab another couple of outfits from my other suitcase.

"Hey," I yelled from my place by the trunk and saw his eyes drag back to mine as his massive hands continued to load water into his leather saddlebags seated on either side of the large motorcycle.  "More clothes, less water."

"No," he said, holding my gaze.  "Less excess."

"I don't do excess," I chuffed, emboldened more by the distance between us than anything else.

"Yes, you do," he said and his eyes dropped again to his leather satchels.

I raised my eyes in order to roll them at his stubbornness but got caught on the billowing dark clouds that seemed to be churning towards us quickly and resolutely.

"Uhm…" I began.  "Mister?"

It might have been my tone, or even my words, but the man on the other side of the road lifted his head, then followed my eyesight.  He quickly completed his task before zooming across the asphalt to slam the trunk closed and led me quickly to the passenger side of my own vehicle, my backpack bumping heavily as we moved.

The panic, which always shimmered underneath my skin, the panic I'd been fighting every step of this journey, bloomed full up inside when he sat in the driver's seat next to me.  The pinching of the scared-sweat was back due not only to the impeding storm but mainly due to being enclosed in the small space with a man.  In the best of times, I didn't trust males any further than I could throw them.  Shoved into a confined space with one of them during a disaster? 

No.  Oh
hell
, no.

I copied his movements though as he quickly cranked the windows up, cutting off the ever strengthening wind that began to buffet the car.  At the first sway that caused the vehicle to rock, I looked at the sky, the zigzag pattern of lightening embedding itself enough that I could still see it after I'd squeezed my eyes shut at its brightness.

The first wave hit with sheets of rain and a wind so strong that I felt my small automobile start to move.  I'd turned the tires, right?  It wasn't gonna slide off into that deep canal with the wheels pointed a different direction.  But I couldn't be certain and that alone sent my heart again into overdrive.

But it was when the hail began then increased in both intensity and size, I lost it.  I'd never seen or been in weather like this. 

Sure, I'd ran to the tornado shelter on more than a few occasions back home and tornados are scary.  But I'd never been out in one above ground.  I hadn't ever been exposed to nature's raw power like this.  It was like something you read about, something you'd see in a movie where the heroine could get killed or maimed.

Which, in this case, could be, like, me.

My breath was hitching and every muscle in my body was on lockdown, my heart exploding in my chest.  I was covered again in the thick, sticky scared-sweat, but it was the strange low volume keening coming out of my mouth, which fueled the severity of my panic attack.

Almost as if it knew a human was about to lose it, the storm kicked up a notch and my eyes darted to the windshield as dints and tiny cracks appeared. 

Holy crap! 

The windshield was breaking! 

What would happen when it went all the way in?

And, at that thought, I lost my hold on any shred of composure I might have had.

I screamed and cried, scrambling as I tried to get into the tiny backseat.  To get anywhere away from where I was. 

So, was it any wonder that as the storm passed over us, I found myself jammed in the juncture between his neck and shoulder, both of my hands shoved between our bodies, one of his fists holding my wrists tight?

"I have you," he muttered at one point as I felt his arm tighten around me, the hand on my hair that kept my head close to his chest flexed as he spoke.  "You are safe."

The pounding on the roof seemed to be the only sound in the world other than the heartbeat I was hearing underneath my ear.

"Do not be concerned. It will be over soon," he offered again as the storm still raged around us, shaking my tiny car, although with perhaps a touch less force.  I held to my position even though the steering wheel was starting to hurt since it was pressed into my spine.  I didn't want to think about the bruise on my hip from the emergency brake handle.

"Fuck," I heard him complain against my place against his chest.  "North by northwest."

"Is that bad?" I asked, hardly recognizing the small, shaky voice coming from my mouth.  I knew who the decision maker was in this scenario, and it
so
totally wasn't me.

"It is moving towards the direction I am heading.   Because it has many miles to travel, it is possible we will see it again, and it may be angrier than when it hit us here," he said, his voice still coolly calm. "Or it could be joined by others.  Storms are unpredictable in this part of the country." Something was weird about the way he used his words and even more so the words that contained a 'r' sound.

"Will we still be able to use your bike?" I asked, though my voice sounded more like a demand, as I struggled for something to say to disconnect from the feel of him holding me tight and safe.  While I may have needed that illusion of shelter, I definitely didn't want to accept it.  Experience had taught me that depending on other people, especially men, was the wrong thing to do in any situation.

"What is your name?" He asked after a long length of quiet, ignoring my question.

"Renee," I said after my own considered length of time.  "Yours?" 

"Bayco," he said slowly, almost uncomfortably. 

"Bay-coh," I repeated, trying to sear the syllables into my brain.  He had tried to come to my assistance and it seemed important somehow to get his name right.  But it wasn't a 'normal' name, a good old American name, so I knew there had to some other one he used.  "But what do people actually call you?"

"Uhm, Brand," he said after a short pause.

I could feel the sides of my lips tip at his confession.  Okay, he was called 'Brand' but had confessed his real name was 'Bayco' or was it the other way around? 

I glanced up at the sharp jut of his jaw from my place of safety on his chest.

"So you call yourself Renee now.  But what is your
real
name?" he asked and I found my hands were yet again sweaty.  I'd known him all of about ten minutes, and he had already unraveled that I was on the run.  That I was alone and that I was terrified of stuff like loud windshield destroying, cow-country type of storms.  And now, he'd just determined I was lying about my name.  I was hoping he was a hell of a lot smarter than most people in figuring all that out.

I could hear the pounding on the roof begin to ease and yanked myself back into the passenger seat as I strained to look out of the wet side window as my shaky hands smoothed my skirt.