The Devil and Ms. Moody (18 page)

There seemed to be only two possibilities of escape: Slip out of the side door unnoticed, or somehow make her way into the front seat and drive the car out of there. Either way, her movements would probably alert them.

She tried the car-door handle first, holding her breath as she drew it down with excruciating slowness. She heard a slight click, and her heart nearly stopped. The men’s low conversation was the only discernible sound. Straining to hear what they were saying, she let several seconds pass before she returned to the handle. She began to depress it, inch by inch, stopping instantly as the click sounded again.

Silence flooded her. And then all hell broke loose.

The world seemed to explode around Edwina. She ducked down into the cover of the car, protecting her head as the barrage erupted—staccato bursts of noise and sharp pops of light that she could see, even through her sheltering arms. It sounded like machine-gun fire, hundreds of machine guns all rattling at once. A devil’s tattoo.

In the midst of the bedlam, a flash of darkness moved past the car. A man’s cry of pain brought her up, and she saw the man in the trench coat crumple against the hood of the car. Diablo swept into her field of vision next. He dragged the man up and lifted him off the ground with one fist, planting the other solidly in the man’s stomach.

Pungent gray smoke rose in a mushroom cloud, and the racket continued, deafening. Edwina stayed in the car for cover, and it was only as she scrambled into the front seat that she saw Mad Dog. The biker looked momentarily paralyzed, as confused as Edwina was by all the craziness and chaotic noise. With a howl of startled rage he turned and made a run for it, sprinting down the road.

Edwina acted on instinct. She twisted the key in the ignition, hit the gas pedal, and was flung backward in the seat as the car lunged forward. Laying on the horn, she barreled down the road after the fleeing man. A cry locked in her throat as she roared up behind him and spiked the horn repeatedly. The shock sent him stumbling off the road and into a thicket of brambles. Edwina swerved off too, chasing him deeper into the undergrowth.

Pinned by the car’s bumper, Mad Dog spat out threats. He was hopelessly tangled in thorny vines, but that didn’t stop him from kicking and clawing at the car’s hood. Edwina was terrified he would break loose any minute. She honked the horn frantically and screamed for help.

Sirens wailed behind her. The car door flew open, and Diablo pulled her out of the cab and into his arms.

“Thank God,” she sobbed, clinging to him.

Within moments sheriff’s deputies had swarmed the area and apprehended both Mad Dog and his accomplice.

“What’s going on?” Edwina asked as Diablo led her out of the smoke and chaos. “Diablo, what’s this all about?”

“Let me get you out of here first,” he said. “You’ve been through some hell.”

“No,” she insisted. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“It’s a drug bust, Princess. You flushed out the action I was going after. I knew someone in the Warlords was running drugs. I just didn’t know who it was.”

Edwina gaped at him. “You’re a policeman?”

He settled her on a fallen log and sat down beside her. “No, I’m not the law. I’m an investigative reporter. I’ve been trying to put a story together on the Warlords for months now. I was tipped that their run to Mexico might be more than a pleasure trip, but I wasn’t expecting the deal to be cut until we crossed the border.”

Edwina was still trying to assimilate what he’d told her. “You’re not a biker? You’re an investigative reporter? For a newspaper?”

“A newspaper reporter who rides a bike.”

“Then your name—it’s not Diablo?”

“I’ve got a lot of names, Princess, and Diablo is one of them. An alias comes in handy on a dangerous assignment.”

A string of rough language brought Edwina’s head up. “And this really is a drug bust?” she said, watching Mad Dog verbally abuse the deputies who were trying to handcuff him. She was still dazed by the sudden violence, but at least a few things were beginning to make sense—Diablo’s desire to infiltrate the gang, Mad Dog’s furtiveness. “What about the other Warlords? Are they Involved? Not Carmen or Squire, I hope.”

He shook his head. “Mad Dog’s a loner. It looks like he was planning to use the club’s runs to Mexico for cover.”

A cloud of gray smoke wafted toward them. Edwina ducked into Diablo’s chest, covering her burning eyes and waving the smoke away with her hand.

“Didn’t care much for my fireworks?” he said, knuckling a smudge of soot from her cheek. His touch was gentle, his voice faintly amused.

“Fireworks? As in the Fourth of July? Cherry bombs and roman candles?” Edwina pulled back to look at him. “Is that what all that racket was? I thought the Marines had landed.”

“That was the idea. I needed a diversion until the law got here, and—”

“Excuse me, sir, we’re going to need to ask the lady a few questions.” A young deputy sheriff hovered over them.

“The lady’s not in any shape to answer questions right now.” Diablo rose, dwarfing the nervous young man. “I’ll bring her down to the station later.”

“No, it’s all right,” Edwina assured them both. “I’d like to get it over with.”

Persuaded, Diablo surrendered Edwina to the deputy’s questions and went off to call his newspaper. Edwina was still badly shaken, but she recounted the entire incident to the deputy and assured him she’d testify if it became necessary.

Once she’d given her statement, she found Diablo tightening the chain drive on his bike. The machine’s scratches and dents brought his accident rushing back to her. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yeah, I’m tough,” he said, a grin flickering. “Let’s get you out of here.”

Edwina clung to him as they flew down the mountain on his motorcycle, away from the rodeo, away from the Warlords. Perhaps she’d always had an inkling that he wasn’t really a biker, at least not a hard-core gang member. But an investigator like herself? That possibility had never occurred to her. He looked too wild and untamed. Too much like his dangerous name.

A realization hit her as they streaked down the highway. He’d saved her life. She could have been lying dead at the bottom of a canyon instead of very much alive and riding into the wind with him on the motorcycle. She closed her eyes and pressed herself to the warm strength of his back. He felt powerful and rock-solid, a balm to her shaky nerves.

She couldn’t remember the last time a man had made her feel protected. Adrenaline was still zinging around in her chest, and her nerves were as bruised and tangled as the brambles that had snared Mad Dog. But she felt safe with Diablo and totally surrendered to his care.

She had no idea where he was taking her, and crazy as it seemed, she didn’t care. She was alive. She was with him. Nothing else mattered. Edwina Moody, rescuer of pigs and people, had just been rescued herself. And the experience was transforming. She wasn’t yet certain how it had changed her, but she knew that it had.

The mountain rushed past her as she turned to look at it. Sunshine bounced off great jagged rocks and stubborn, scrubby wildflowers. It was all beautiful, even the dusty brown creosote, and she would miss it desperately when the time came to leave.

She squeezed Diablo tighter and felt a thrill of surprise as he released a handlebar long enough to bring her fingers to his lips. His mouth was warm and insistent against the pulsebeat in her fingertips. Yearnings sprang up in Edwina, so sudden and sharp, they frightened her. Was it supposed to be this way? she wondered. Was passion supposed to ignite like a roaring brushfire? One look, and she wanted him. One touch, and she
had
to have him.

He stopped at a light and turned to her. The moment his eyes caught hers, it was done. He knew. Everything she was thinking, everything she wanted. She’d never known anyone who could read her desires the way he could.

“Let me take you somewhere, Princess,” he said. “A motel.”

“Yes.”

They careened off in search of a place, and Edwina simply couldn’t keep her hands off him. She slipped her fingers under his vest and reveled in the hard smooth glide of his torso. He was vibrant and alive under her touch. Muscles rippled like crosscurrents beneath his skin. The feel of him was more than thrilling. It was a sensual remembrance. She ran her fingers through the hair on his chest and heard a soft groan as his nipples tightened under her fingertips.

She was wild by the time they found a room.

He had her clothes off before they reached the bed.

The fever in his touch, the urgency in his lips, was ecstasy to Edwina. She wanted to be crushed in his arms, thrown onto the bed and made love to with a passion that was soul-shattering. His lips bruised her tender skin and filled her belly with fire. It was torment—beautiful torment. She’d never known such need, such naked longing for physical completion.

He entered her, and she let out the soft shocked cry of a surrendering female. There would be no slow, sensual seduction this time. No tender coaxing of feminine muscles. He thrust deeply and recklessly, and she took him fully. A moan shook in his throat as he buried himself inside her. Buried himself alive.

Edwina dug her fingers into his flexing muscles. With each succeeding thrust the thrill intensified until he was so deeply buried in her body, so indelibly burned in her psyche, that she felt impaled to her soul with a fiery light.

The hunger was overwhelming. Both of them were helpless in the face of it. Diablo’s body drove him mercilessly. He couldn’t stop. Not until he knew every pore of her skin. Not until he’d heard every sweet whimper in her soul.

He clutched her to him in the final throes of his climax and knew that he’d gone too far. His body could be sated by any woman, but his heart could not. His heart would never be content with anyone but her.

Afterward, as he held her and their breathing returned to some semblance of normalcy, he pressed his lips to her silky blond hair. She moaned a little and snuggled into him, seemingly oblivious of everything, even the words he whispered in her ear.

“Edwina, we have to talk.”

“N
OW?”
S
HE MURMURED
, nestling up to his kisses. “You want to talk now?” She laid her head in the hollow of his shoulder and traced the dark hair ribboning toward his groin. “Couldn’t we just do this stuff instead?”

He laughed softly, caught her marauding hand, and locked it firmly under the warmth of his arm. “You’ve got a one-track mind, woman.” His smile was gradually replaced by traces of seriousness. As he released her hand, he turned it over and studied her palm intently, trailing her life line with his finger. “Edwina, I need to talk to you about the man you’re looking for—Holt.”

“Yes.”

His finger stopped tracing. “You found him.”

“Mad Dog? You mean Chris Holt
is
Mad Dog?”

“No ... it’s me. I’m Chris Holt.”

“You?” Edwina’s facial muscles went slack with surprise. All the reasons he couldn’t be Holt scrolled through her mind as she stared at him. Chris Holt played the harmonica, he was afraid of snakes, he didn’t have vivid green eyes or long dark hair. In the next flurry of seconds, she realized what she’d done.

She had forgotten the cardinal rule of investigation: NEVER ASSUME. She’d taken it for granted that he
couldn’t
be Holt because of his reaction to the snake and the discrepancies in his physical description. She’d also let herself become emotionally involved, and that had undoubtedly fouled her instincts.

“I guess Columbo doesn’t have anything to worry about,” she said. “I really am one lousy detective, aren’t I?”

His voice registered surprise. “Is that what you are? A detective?”

Edwina didn’t answer him. Her mind was filling up with too many questions of her own. “The green eyes?” she asked, already anticipating the answer. “Your DMV stats say hazel.”

“I wrote ‘hazel’ on the form. Nobody bothered to check.”

She nodded. Of course. It was that simple. Bureaucracies were so damned inefficient, she could probably have gotten away with it herself. “What about the snake in my bag? You’re supposed to be afraid of them.”

“You’re a better detective than you think you are, Ed. That almost worked.” He laughed abruptly. “Snakes scare the holy hell out of me. But big boys aren’t supposed to scream, are they?”

“And of course you play the harmonica?”

“Play?” A flicker of sensuality emerged with his smile. “I won’t even try to tell you what I can do to a harmonica, Ed. It’s
adult
entertainment, know what I mean?”

Edwina wasn’t amused. “Then where is the thing? And why don’t you play it?”

“My harmonica? Mad Dog won it off me in a poker game.”

“Oh, Lord, a poker game?” She scooped the sheet around her and sat up, Indian-style. “Okay, let’s get this settled. You say you’re a reporter, but your employment history, such as it is, lists you as a laborer in a sweatshop, a stevedore, and a meat-packer, among other things. You’re not on a newspaper’s payroll, and if you’re free-lancing, why didn’t I come across a Christopher Holt byline anywhere?”

“Probably because I use a pseudonym. Most of my assignments are pretty dangerous, and the jobs you mentioned were my cover for the story I was working on at the time.” He adjusted the pillow behind his head and gave her a wry, appraising look. “I did one on the Mafia a couple of years ago. Did my employment history happen to list me as a numbers runner?”

“Somehow they missed that.”

“You seem to know a lot about me, Ed. Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

“One more question.” She stared point-blank into his eyes. “If you really are Chris Holt, why didn’t you tell me?”

“That’s easy. I couldn’t take the chance that you’d blow my cover with the Warlords. It seemed safer having you with me, where I could keep an eye on you, than letting you run around loose, asking questions.”

He smiled faintly. “Call it a form of damage control.”

“Thanks, I needed that.”

“Don’t underestimate yourself, Ed. You flushed out Mad Dog and handed me one hell of a scoop. I’m even going to give you a plug in my article.”