“No. Not yet.”
She stayed down and matched his silence with her own.
A lifetime passed in the backseat before Neil slowed the car down and pulled it off the road.
Neil slammed the car into park and jumped out. He opened her door and reached for her hand. Her stiff muscles protested as she stood and moved to a different vehicle.
What felt like forever was less than an hour. While Neil opened the trunks of both cars and transferred objects between them, Gwen sat in the front seat and stared into the night. They were parked in a commuters’ park and ride lot with a dozen cars surrounding them.
Gwen waited until they were on a narrow highway without a car in sight before she uttered a word. “Neil?”
He glanced at her and then looked back at the road.
“What are you doing?”
His fingers gripped the wheel and for a full minute he didn’t say a thing.
“Backing off wasn’t an option.”
At first, Gwen didn’t understand what he meant. Then she remembered her ultimatum in the bar.
Gwen folded her hands in her lap and rested her head back on the seat.
All of her questions and more importantly, all of Neil’s answers, could wait.
Chapter Thirteen
Heat-sensitive night vision goggles captured the cars as they crawled out of the Malibu driveway.
Both cars indicated the heat of the driver and heat in the backseat.
He scrambled from his perch, tossing the candy from his hand, and jumped into the front seat of his car.
Looked like MacBain was taking matters into his own hands.
“Wouldn’t be good if you rolled over on your back and gave up, now would it?”
Both cars were identical, the license plates removed. His tracking was down.
Even a stupid man knew not to turn on his cell phone if he wanted to hide. Sooner or later he had to turn it back on. But the man wasn’t in a hurry. In fact, he could do this all year.
The cars split up, going in separate directions. He took a chance and followed the car going east.
The other moved west.
The sun glistened on the horizon as it rose over the eastern sky.
Dark sunglasses kept Neil from staring directly into it. On his right, Gwen’s head slumped against the passenger window and the even rise and fall of her chest told him she was fast asleep.
He kept his speed only a couple of miles over the posted limit. He didn’t need something as simple as a speeding ticket breaking his cover.
The deserted highway stretched for miles in front of him. The only thing to break up the dirt landscape was the occasional high desert mountain range off in the distance.
And Gwen slept.
He was proud of her for what she’d done or maybe more importantly what she hadn’t done. She could have insisted on knowing what he was doing, argued with him…but she hadn’t done that. Gwen followed his instructions to the letter and he left Southern California without a good-bye.
Neil swept his gaze up and down her lithe frame. Dressed like a cat burglar, she’d never been more beautiful. And even though he never said one word to her about his naked thoughts about the two of them, someone else had figured it out.
Figured it out and used it against him.
Stay out of Vegas, Mac, he told himself. His poker face needed some work.
Gwen moaned beside him. A throaty sound that tightened his balls and made him squirm.
She blinked her eyes awake and stretched. “Good morning,” she murmured.
Her simple greeting made him want to smile. “Good morning.”
“Where are we?” She looked behind them.
“We’ll be in Nevada in about half an hour.”
“Nevada? Is that where we’re going?”
“Driving through.”
“Oh.”
He waited for several breaths before he spared her a glance. “What…no questions?”
She smiled and something inside him burst. “Somewhere last night, between you dragging me out of bed and throwing me in the back of the car, and falling asleep once you stopped driving like a madman, I decided to take each moment as it comes.”
“You’re not going to ask me where we’re going?”
“Would you tell me?”
No. The less she knew the easier it would be for her to keep where they were a secret. A stop at a gas station could result in a simple conversation that would blow their location.
“That’s what I thought. Which is all well and good for a little while.”
He only needed a little while. He hoped.
“Did you tell anyone where we’re going?”
“No.”
Her brother would worry, and her mother would be frantic.
“Are we going to call—”
“No,” he interrupted. “We can’t call…not until I say. The phones in Malibu were bugged.”
“If you knew that, why not just remove them?”
“If the man following us thinks some of his toys are still in place he’ll hear only the information I want him to.”
“Then how are we going to tell Blake and the others that we’re OK?”
“Leave that to me.”
Gwen rubbed her forehead. “You think someone is after us?”
In the rearview mirror, a car approached. Neil kept his speed steady and squelched the urge to stay ahead of the car.
“I know someone is after us.”
“Why me? I’ve not made any enemies here, or anywhere that I know of.”
The car moved up on them fast and sped around.