Dead or Alive (8 page)

“Someone please hand her an Oscar.”  He laughed his agreement.

“She really had me convinced that she was some lonely old woman—all to lure you into her house.  God only knows what she would’ve done to you if I hadn’t been there.  It’s a wonder no one visits her.  She’s insane.”  Violet stopped talking when it occurred to her that she and Barbara really weren’t all that different.

Remy gripped the steering wheel in dismay, and tried to speak the gentle words that teetered on the edge of his tongue.  Gentle words for Violet.  For some reason he couldn’t speak them out loud.  He wanted to, but couldn’t. Slowly, so slowly, his eyes began to flutter closed.  They flew back open.  No!  He had to focus on getting them where they needed to be.

“Pull over,” Violet called.

He sat tall and threw her a look.  “We can’t pull over, Chambers.  We can’t pull over, we can’t stop at Target, we can’t stop for Hot Cheetos.  What aren’t you understanding about me being a fugitive of the law?”

“You almost just fell asleep at the wheel.  Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?  God only knows what’s in those meds we stole from Barb.  You’ve been half awake for this entire drive and I’ll be damned if you drive us off the road because you can’t keep your eyes open. Now stop the damn car.”

Remy finally pulled the car off to the side of the road, for no other reason than to get her to shut the hell up.

Violet slid across the long seat of the truck, and met Remy in the middle, climbing on top of his lap to get to the other side.  For a moment, she was sure she felt something hard and fast against the back of her jean shorts and, as she tossed him a look over her shoulder, catching his eyes, his heavily lidded baby blues gave her all the confirmation she needed.  Those meds may have been making him drowsy, but there were certain parts of his anatomy that clearly hadn’t been so strongly affected.

Blushing, she slid off his lap and into the driver’s seat, waiting for him to collapse against the passenger side window before she started the truck and raced off.

“You better start being more careful about where you’re putting that gorgeous ass of yours,” he whispered.  “You’re going to climb all over the wrong man someday.”

Violet listened to his slurred words, throwing him a look, catching his lidded eyes. “Pretty sure I already have.”

“Seriously, V…”

She smirked at ‘V’.  He was definitely high on those pain pills. Remington Archibald didn’t use nicknames, or terms of endearment, especially not with her.

“V…”  He licked his full lips. “You really are… so beautiful,” he whispered.  His words began to blend together, each one running on top of the next before he could finish saying them. “So soft… and sensual… just beautiful…”

Violet clenched the steering wheel. “Thank god we swapped places, and apparently not a moment too soon.”

“I would do the most…. nastiest things to you.  In the bed.  If you let me,” he garbled.

“You are so completely delirious. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I haven’t touched a woman in a long time, V.  Once my bum leg isn’t so bum anymore, god only knows what I’ll be capable of.”

“You’re threatening me?  Trying to scare me?  All while on the verge of complete collapse?” She had to laugh.  “I see what you’re trying to do, and I admire your tenacity, but I’m not afraid of you, and I never will be.”

“Trust no man,” Remy slurred, giving her a shake of his head that quickly transformed into a bob of his head.  He couldn’t even hold his head up.  “So beautiful…”  His words dragged to a stop as his chin slowly collapsed into his chest.

“That’s right, pass out.”  Violet chortled softly, taking in the sight of his sleeping face.  Her smile was gone as soon as it was there when she realized the poor guy probably hadn’t had a proper night’s sleep in at least seven months.  He needed rest.

And she needed to figure out how she was going to prove to the country that Remington Archibald was an innocent man.

***

Violet climbed back into the truck and pulled the door closed behind her, stirring Remy awake.

Through his blurred vision, he could see they were sitting at a gas pump.  The key was still in the ignition, engine running.  He had half a mind to tell her how dangerous it was to pump gas with the engine running, but he was too overcome with complete exasperation that there was simply no room for any other emotion but sheer exasperation.

“I know, we can’t stop.” Violet turned to him from where she’d been staring out of the windshield.  “We
had
to stop.  We needed gas,” she explained. “It’s pumping right now, should be done any minute. I’ve been keeping to the back roads on the map, and the radio says it’s going to flood later and keep up until tomorrow.  So that should help us.  If they send choppers, they won’t be able to see us from the air if it’s raining.”

We.

Us.

The words made his teeth itch every time they made an escape from her busy mouth—which was often.  Just when he was sure he’d heard the last of them, she’d blast him back with more. Remy let her ramble on, not unaware of the approval seeking tone of her voice.  Why in the world would this woman want his approval on anything? He squinted at her as if she were a complicated puzzle he’d never crack.

“I got us some snacks for the road.” She motioned to the backseat where piles of junk food were piled up.  “And, apparently, I owe the store owner a blowjob for giving us all this shit for free.  Do you have any money?”

His head was spinning far too wildly to respond to anything she’d just said.  He waited for his vision to clear as he lifted his bare wrist, blinking at the soft red ring that embedded his skin where the handcuffs used to be.

“I found a paper clip on the floor of the truck and managed to jimmy the lock, so, you’re free now,” she said.

He sat up tall, running his hand down his forehead before shooting her a look out of the corner of his eye.  The smile she gave him blew his hair back and sank his stomach.  He had to get rid of her. “I didn’t know it was possible to jimmy police cuffs.”

“It’s possible to jimmy anything if you know what you’re doing.  In grade school, my sisters and I used to handcuff each other to any solid object we could find—with
real handcuffs--
and then run home and tell our parents that we had no clue where the handcuffed sister was. You learn to jimmy locks pretty quickly when you’re a hungry kid whose parents will kill you if you’re not home before the streetlights come on.”

Remy watched her, horrified.  He waited for a punch line that never came. “What the hell kind of demon house were you raised in, Chambers?”  And how the hell did a grade schooler manage to get her hands on a pair of real handcuffs?

“I beg your pardon, I was raised in a beautiful, loving home.”

“Is that right?  Because it sounds like your folks raised three demon babies.”

“That’s rich coming from a guy who hotwired a police helicopter--with one hand, might I add.  You’re on a whole other level of criminal than me and my demon baby sisters, okay?”

“I didn’t hotwire anything.  If you know the right sequence of switches to flip, and buttons to press, you can start almost any aircraft.”

“So you really are a glorified bus driver, huh?”

His jaw clenched at that.

Violet swallowed the victory with amazing thirst.  “My sisters and I were not demon babies.  We have deep love for each other.”

“I don’t have siblings, so maybe I’m wrong, but… Choking one another until you pass out?  Handcuffing and abandoning one another?  That doesn’t sound like deep love.  It sounds like…” Remy pretended to think.  “Demon babies,” he concluded.

“You didn’t think I was such a demon baby an hour ago when you were telling me all the nasty things you wanted to do to me in bed.”

Remy felt his heart somersault in his chest, which caused a chain reaction, and soon his stomach wanted in on the gymnastics, as well.  His cheeks grew pink in seconds.  “I don’t believe that.”

“Believe it.”

“I don’t say ridiculous shit like that.”

“You did.  You said it.”  She found it adorable that the first hint of color on his drained face had been an embarrassed blush, and decided to give him a break.  “You were high as hell on those pain pills.  You didn’t have any idea what you were saying.  It was actually pretty unfair of me to have even brought it up, because you were gone.  Gone, gone, gone.”

Remy’s eyes searched hers, but the crimson tint on his cheeks didn’t subside. His voice lowered without warning.  “I wasn’t that gone.”

Violet bit her bottom lip, and decided to pretend she hadn’t heard that.  The admission had sent warm chill waves running a race all across her body.  It had been a long time since a man had made her body do that.  He still had that medication in his system, however.  She still couldn’t trust anything he said.  Even if he did seem pretty lucid, even if she did like it a little more than she knew she should.

With a small smile, she turned to him, and caught the intense look in his blue eyes just as she flopped one of the two Yankees hats she’d found in the backseat on his head, pulling it low and tight.  The brim of the hat shadowed his eyes and only served to highlight the deep, penetrating gaze he was bestowing upon her right then.

She forced herself to look off, her body betraying her completely as she felt a familiar rush. She shifted in the blue jean shorts.  They were extremely short and tight, rubbing up against her in all the wrong ways, ways that were dangerous when combined with the look of desire Remy was hitting her with at the moment.

“Stop looking at me like that.” She turned to focus on the gas gauge.  A few seconds passed, and she was unable to help herself from looking back across the truck.  He’d fallen asleep, once more.  She exhaled.  Good.  If he was sleeping, it meant he wasn’t looking at her with sex in his eyes, and that was for the best.  For both their sakes.  Just as soon as his eyes were closed, however, they’d popped back open.

“What is it?” Violet asked as he reached for his door handle.  “What are you doing?”

“Bathroom,” was all he grumbled, throwing her a look when she immediately hopped out of the car and circled around to the passenger’s side, throwing his arm over her shoulder.  “I don’t need your help, Chambers.”

“Your leg begs to differ.  You can’t even stay awake for five minutes at a time.  I’d say you do need my help, and if your pride won’t allow you to admit it, then I’m just going to have to give it without you asking.  Now come on.”

They began an uneven walk towards the run down, sanitarily questionable door of the gas station bathroom.  One look at that door had Violet cringing.  She didn’t even want to think about the treasures it had inside.  She doubted this shithole even had toilet paper in there, let alone soap.

Once the made it to the door she pulled it open for Remy and, to her surprise, it wasn’t nearly as disgusting as she imagined.  The appliances were old and run down, but it was apparent someone made an effort to keep it clean and stocked.

“Be quick,” she said, as he held onto the doorframe and stumbled inside, slamming it closed behind him.

From the distance, she heard the gas pump finally jolt to a stop, relieved that just as soon as Remy was finished in the bathroom they could get the hell out of there. She gave a knock on the door.  “Pump’s done, let’s go.  We can’t hang around for too long.”  She realized that people who bothered other people in the bathroom were the worst kind of humans, and she was now one of them, but Remy was truly taking longer than she cared for, and it was making her nervous.

As if confirming her paranoid thoughts, a police cruiser came driving slowly up the road in the distance.

“Oh my god,” she whispered, pulling the second Yankees cap she held in her hand on her head and over her eyebrows, watching the cruiser from under the brim as it rolled slowly down the road.  Was he slowing down?  “Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop…” She prayed softly, then cursed to herself when the cruiser made a sudden turn into the station, pulling up to the pump directly adjacent to the truck.

She was now hoping that Remy took his sweet ass time in the bathroom, and even pressed her back against the door, just so she could push it closed if he tried to open it.

She hoped he still had that Yankees hat pulled low on his forehead, then realized it wouldn’t matter. Remy was attractive to an unusual degree. If he came out of that bathroom, she knew the cop could look at him, because it was impossible not to.  He was too tall, too domineering, too blessed with a remarkably handsome face that
demanded
attention--from both men and women.  Once that cop got a look at him… his face would be instantly recognizable, even with that hat on. The full pink lips, the strong shadowed jaw, and the smatterings of dark blonde hair peeking out from the back were all more than enough to motivate an officer to take a second look.  The voices on the radio were already calling him the most wanted man in America.  Surely anyone who studied that his face of his for longer than half a second would immediately recognize him.

From what she’d seen on the small television screen that’d been playing the news inside the gas station, the police still didn’t know they were alive.  Still, she knew all it would take was one phone call, one blast, and word would spread like wild fire.  The man from the boat had almost surely been found.  Perhaps the police knew they were alive, but had yet to alert the public for fear of tipping them off.