The Defiant Hero (37 page)
He snorted. “That’s ridiculous.”
But that was exactly what he would do and say if she were right and he was trying to throw her off course.
“No, it’s not. And, guess what? I can still follow you.”
She stood up, just to prove her point. The world wobbled, but she wouldn’t let herself teeter. She lifted her chin defiantly at Starrett. See?
He laughed again. “Yeah, right. Siddown, Locke, before you fall on your face.”
“I can. Go ahead.” She motioned toward the door. “Leave. I’ll follow you.”
He was sitting on the bar stool, one elbow on the bar, the other on the back of his seat, just looking at her, something dangerous in his eyes.
“Well, now,” he finally said. “As lovely as that sounds, you don’t need to follow me. My big plans for tonight include going back to the hotel and scoring some dinner, maybe watching a movie on pay-per-view while I try to rehydrate just a touch, then sleeping this off for about twelve hours straight.”
Locke was searching her jeans pockets for her car keys. She had a pair of handcuffs in her back pocket—useful if she ran into public enemy number one, maybe on her way to the ladies’ room—but no keys. “I can follow you, and I will.”
“Come on, I thought we were friends now. And I’m telling you, friend to friend, that I’m not going anywhere tonight—”
“We’re not friends, Starrett, we’re nemeses who just had a few too many drinks together. Friendship is built on trust. And I trust you about as far as I can throw up.” She looked up from her search for her keys. That hadn’t come out right. “Throw you.”
He was laughing again. “I like the first one better.”
She refused to be distracted by his sparkly eyes, white teeth, and that dimple that appeared alongside his mouth. He had a nice mouth, a great smile and— No, no!
She focused on his forehead. “I’m being very, very serious here. I don’t trust you, Starrett. I’m not going to trust you and—”
“Okay, fine,” he said, giving up. “You don’t have to trust me. You can come back to the hotel with me and watch me like a hawk all night long. Be my guest.”
Locke finally found the key to her car stuck inside several folded five-dollar bills in the front pocket of her jeans. She’d forgotten—she wasn’t carrying her usual twenty pound key ring. She’d taken her car key from the ring and tossed the rest of them into her fanny pack, in the trunk of her car. She just had this one little key with her right now.
Starrett swiftly scooped it from her hands.
“Hey!” She glared at him.
“Nemeses don’t let nemeses drive drunk.”
She had to laugh at that one. “I’m not drunk.” She corrected herself. “Okay, I’m a little drunk. I shouldn’t drive, I won’t drive, but neither should you.”
“This is exactly why God invented taxicabs.” He stood up and pocketed her key. “Look, I really was just planning to get room service and kick back tonight—I mean, that’s what I planned before getting sidetracked by Uncle Jack. Years of heavy drinking’s taught me to go home after getting a buzz on instead of walking the streets and looking to pick a fight. So I’m not going to fight with you, Ms. Nemesis. I’m going home—or at least to the nearest semblance of home that I’ve got right now, which happens to be an enormous two room suite in the Marriott. If you want to baby-sit me, I’m fine with that. You can come on up. You can even sleep on the couch if you want. That way you’ll know where I’ve been all night, and I won’t have to worry about you, shit-faced and alone—”
“I am not shit-faced, thank you very much—”
“And pretending that you’re not shit-faced when you damn well are, lurking in the hall outside my hotel room, attracting God only knows what kind of attention from whatever lowlifes wander those unprotected halls.”
“You mean Karmody and O’Leary?” she asked.
He grinned. “I love it that you just made a joke about two of my best friends. If someone had told me four hours ago that I’d be in a bar laughing at a joke Alyssa Locke made after helping me polish off nearly an entire bottle of Jack Daniel’s, I’d’ve laughed in their face.”
“I wasn’t joking.”
“Let’s find us a cab.” He headed for the door, looking back to ask, “You following me?”
As Locke went out into the still warm night, it occurred to her that going back to Starrett’s hotel room with him was probably a really bad idea.
But the idea of dinner sounded good, and the thought of lurking in the hall outside of Starrett’s room all night when she was already exhausted and at least partially inebriated—yes, it was true—sounded even worse.
Besides, she certainly had a better shot at keeping an eye on Starrett if she were right there in his room, didn’t she?
It wasn’t as if she were going to do something really stupid, like sleep with the man.
No, she was just a little drunk, she wasn’t stupid.
Locke followed Sam Starrett’s perfect ass right into a cab.
“Meg’s got her weapon pointed right at you,” John said to Razeen as they headed toward the highway. “She’ll shoot you right through the back of the seat if you so much as move a muscle.”
He gave her a look, and Meg quickly took out her gun, angling slightly in her seat so that she could see Razeen.
He’d pulled the blanket over himself—that’s why the cop hadn’t seen that he was cuffed and tied.
“How much longer until we get to Disney World, Mom?” Razeen looked her dead in the eye.
Meg tried not to react. That was the second time he’d mentioned Disney World. Did he somehow know that her drop off point was in Orlando?
Maybe the Kazbekistani Extremists had some kind of home base there and Razeen knew about it. But if Razeen knew it, wasn’t it likely that the FBI knew, too? God, if she was going to come all this way only to walk straight into the FBI’s waiting arms . . .
She couldn’t think about that right now. “How long have you been awake?” she asked Razeen.
“A few hours,” he told her. “I would greatly appreciate something to drink.”
“Don’t get close to him,” John warned her sharply. “Don’t hold a soda for him, don’t reach over the back of that seat—don’t even think about it, Meg.”
She looked at him in exasperation. “He’s thirsty. What am I supposed to do? Ignore him? I hope that wherever Amy and my grandma are, someone’s kind enough to give them water if they’re thirsty.”
John glanced up from the road, and although he didn’t say anything, she knew he didn’t think her daughter needed water anymore.
He thought Amy and Eve were dead.
God damn him.
Fighting tears, Meg gathered up all the straws, both used and unused, that they’d gotten from their fast-food drive through excursions. There had been nowhere to ditch their garbage, so she had six of them all together. She set to work attaching them, one inside the very edge of the other—no easy task while she still held the gun.
“You need not worry. I am no longer trying to escape,” Razeen volunteered.
“I’m sure you’ll understand if I don’t just take your word for that,” John countered.
“My reaction in the motel was . . . what is the expression? Knee jerk.” Razeen looked earnestly into the rearview mirror at John. “I have been thinking, and I believe there are worse things than becoming a martyr for my cause by dying at the hands of the Extremists.”
He met Meg’s eyes. “Better yet even would be death by an American. Such an event might even make the news on CNN, bringing the world’s attention to the story of my people’s struggle with a government that works methodically to wipe us out. Although CNN will probably carry it just for one day.” He smiled—that same funny, crooked smile that she’d noticed in the photo the Extremist had shown her. “So, you see, your threats that you will shoot me through the back of the seat do little to alarm me.”
Osman Razeen wanted to die. For his people, for his cause.
Somehow, when the time came to shoot him—or to turn him over to the Extremists, which, as John had pointed out, was almost the same thing as shooting him—that wasn’t going to make it any easier to do.
Aware that John was watching her, Meg jammed one end of the straw—now close to three feet long—into the lid of a paper cup of watery, probably lukewarm soda. She put the other end of the straw over the back of the seat, moving it like a probe, until she got it close enough to Razeen for him to catch it with his mouth.
He sucked, and the liquid rushed through the straw.
John shook his head as he glanced at her again. “You care enough to give him a drink. So why don’t you do what you wish Amy’s captors would do for her—and turn Razeen over to the FBI?” he said softly in Welsh.
His eyes were too compassionate, too sad, too knowing, and she couldn’t look at him.
“That’s different,” Meg said. “I know the Extremists aren’t going to do that.” She knew that the Extremists weren’t going out of their way to make Amy and Eve more comfortable, too. If Amy and her grandmother were still alive.
The straw gurgled as Razeen sucked the last of the soda from the cup. “I thank you,” he said to Meg.
John took the cupful of soda he’d nearly finished drinking from the cup holder and swished it around. “Do you want more?” he asked, looking at Razeen in the rearview mirror.
“I am still thirsty, yes, thank you.”
John looked at Meg. “Do you have more of those sleeping pills?” He spoke in Welsh, and he had to get creative with the translation. But it didn’t take more than a second for her to understand what he meant.
She did have more pills. In the glove compartment. She got them out without Razeen seeing what she was doing, opened several capsules, and dumped their contents in the last inch of liquid in John’s cup.
She repeated the trick with the straw, and Razeen was soon sucking air from John’s cup.
“Thank you,” Razeen said again. “And . . . good night, am I right?”
Meg turned to look at him, and he was smiling. She hated the fact that he had such a gentle smile.
“That is to say, if I were you, I would have given me another dose of that sleeping medication. I know that I am exceptionally clever, but you have been quite clever as well, so . . .” He settled back, making himself comfortable. “Good night. Although, if a condemned man is entitled to one last wish, mine would be that I not be executed while I sleep. I should like to be awake, so I am able to pray.”
Oh, God.
Meg felt John glance at her, and she knew what he was thinking, knew what he was going to say before he said it.
“It’s not too late, Meg.”
Meaning to turn herself and Osman Razeen in. Meaning to put Amy’s life completely into the hands of people for whom saving Amy’s life might not be the highest priority.
One of those people being John Nilsson.
“Achub fi,” John whispered, in Welsh. Save me. “Save me by letting me help.”
She closed her eyes. “Just . . . drive.”
This was surreal. Sam was standing outside his hotel room with Alyssa Locke, using his key card to unlock the door. Knowing that she was about to go in there with him.
Into his room.
Into his hotel room.
Sam didn’t think of himself as particularly religious, but he never did anything as ridiculous as waste a good prayer on something as insignificant as sex. He was either going to get some or he wasn’t. And he was usually capable of being charming enough to get some completely on his own, so he’d always left God out of it.
Until now.
He concluded his prayer for divine guidance in not messing this up with a fervent promise of a lifetime of devotion as Alyssa walked past him into the room.
She smelled impossibly good.
She wasn’t, however, walking really straight.
And instead of sitting on the couch, she half lay down, pressing her cheek against the cushions. “I don’t think I want any dinner,” she said distantly. “I’m so tired.”
Sam went into the little kitchen area and got a couple of glasses and some ice. He poured them both another drink from the bottle he’d stuck under his shirt and taken out of the bar. After all, he’d paid for it.
“You need to keep drinking,” he advised her, setting the glass down on the coffee table. “Don’t stop until you’re ready to crash.”
“I think I’m ready to crash.”
She looked exhausted. There were shadows under her eyes, giving her a slightly bruised appearance. As if life had kicked the crap out of her, and the only way for her to fight back now was to get some sleep.
As Sam looked at her, he could hear a distant flushing sound. It was the sound of his hopes for a passion-filled night going down the drain.
If she was too drunk to sit up, it would be ungentlemanly to take advantage of her, wouldn’t it?
Even if she threw herself at him.
He looked at her, half lying there with her feet still on the floor, his eyes following the curve of her denim-clad rear end. Her T-shirt was riding slightly up, and he could see an inch or so of her bare skin just above the waistband of her jeans.
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