Twelve
Claire rolled her carry-on down the motel hallway, heading for the rented SUV. As soon as his office in Houston had opened, Ben had been on the phone with his friend, looking for information.
As soon as they had gotten out of bed.
Claire beat down the thought. All morning Ben had been eyeing her warily, waiting for her to bring up their wild night of lovemaking. More amazing than she ever could have dreamed. She was pleasantly sore all over and relaxed all the way to her bones.
Ben was waiting for her to bring it up, but it wasn’t going to happen. The man could wait till hell froze over. Until his icy eyes turned pea-green. The subject of last night was over. Closed. Finished. As if it had never occurred. She had never done anything so impulsive, never behaved with so much abandon. She wanted to forget it even more than he did.
Not to say that she ever would. A woman didn’t forget a night of multiple orgasms—especially when it had never happened to her before. Ben was an incredible lover, or at least he knew how to press all her personal hot buttons. And she had a hunch he had been holding back, not pushing her for more than she was ready to handle.
As they reached the stairway leading down to the parking lot, she heard the sound of his heavy leather boots behind her. She shoved down the handle of the bag to carry it down the stairs, but Ben nudged her aside and picked it up, carted it down to the parking lot and over to the Tahoe. He tossed both their bags into the back and closed the lid.
“I looked up El Paso on my iPad,” she said as she pulled open the passenger door. “It’s a little over four hundred miles from here.”
It was the town Duke Hutchins lived in, according to Ben’s friend Sol. It had taken two hours for Sol to locate the man whose legal name was Dennis Arthur Hutchins. Apparently, only his close friends called him Duke.
Ben had been pacing the floor of the motel room by the time Sol had called him back with the information they so desperately needed.
“It’s about a seven-hour trip,” Claire said. “I take it we’re driving, not flying.”
“We know Bridger’s headed for Louisiana, or at least that’s the way it looks. We need to stay hard on his tail, try to intercept him somewhere along the way, hopefully in El Paso. So yes, we’re driving.”
“According to Google Maps, we could shave off a few miles by heading back to Phoenix and cutting over on I-70.”
Ben fired up the engine. “Less traffic if we stay on I-10 and just keep going. I’ll make up the time.”
She remembered his Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride driving and figured indeed he would.
Instead of heading straight to the freeway, he drove a few blocks from the motel and pulled into a minimart next to the freeway on-ramp. “I need some more coffee. How about you?” They had finished the in-room coffee hours ago while Ben worked on his laptop, but had come up with nothing more on Duke Hutchins.
She yawned as she cracked open her door. “I could definitely use a cup.”
A heartbeat passed. He was eyeing her again, sure she was going to add a comment about how little sleep they’d gotten last night.
Not gonna happen, tough guy. They’d made a deal and she was sticking to it. She could deal with a single night of passion, handle the idea that they were adults and it was something both of them wanted, but she couldn’t afford to get in any deeper with Ben.
She didn’t say a word, but she couldn’t stop another yawn.
They went their separate ways inside the minimart, Claire scooping up a couple of breakfast bars, a carton of orange juice out of the refrigerator section, filling a big cup with coffee and adding cream. Walking up beside her, Ben looked down at the cocoa-colored brew in her cup.
“I thought you drank it black.”
“Not unless someone leaves me no choice.”
He muttered something and held up the paper bag in his hand. “They’ve got fresh doughnuts. I got a couple of extras in case you wanted one.”
She held up the breakfast bars. “These are healthier. I got an extra one for you.”
They grabbed their goodies and headed for the register. Ben insisted on paying for all of it.
“You don’t have to keep doing that. I can pay my own way.”
“Yeah, I remember—you’re a liberated woman.” His gaze ran over her in a way that made her think of last night and feel like blushing. Instead, she turned and headed for the car.
They ate on the road, finishing off their makeshift meals, then settling in for the long ride to El Paso.
“Have you ever been there?” Claire asked as the vehicle roared along, well over the speed limit.
“I’ve been to Juarez. That’s just across the Mexican border.”
“What were you doing there?”
“My job.”
He didn’t add more. He didn’t have to. He was a SEAL. Their work took them to every corner of the world. As they’d made love last night, she’d noticed a long puckered scar low on his back and another on his thigh. She knew he had left the SEALs because of an injury he’d received in the Philippines, and wanted to ask him about it. But last night was about pleasure and satisfying needs, not delving into the past.
“Juarez has been in the news a lot,” she said. “Thousands of people murdered in drug-related shootings. I’m glad Duke Hutchins lives on this side of the border.”
“I just hope Bridger’s there with Sam when we get there.”
She drained the last of the coffee in her cup. “What about the police? Do you think we should call them, tell them about Hutchins? The local police can be there a lot faster than we can.”
“I’ve given it a lot of thought. You called Owens after we talked to Lyla. They know Bridger has Sam. They know he’s probably headed for Louisiana, likely down I-10. They’ll be watching the roads, looking for a man and boy in a beat-up white pickup. The odds aren’t good they’ll find them, but the roads will be covered. And we can be in El Paso by dark, maybe sooner.”
“The police could be at the house right away.”
Ben scrubbed a hand over his face. He hadn’t shaved that morning. He looked completely disreputable and handsome as sin.
“I wish I trusted them to handle it. The trouble is, if they make a mistake, maybe go in too hot or their timing is off, Sam could get hurt or Bridger could get away. If he does, he’s liable to take Sam and go underground. We might never be able to find him.”
Ben had made the argument before and it made a lot of sense. “I don’t like the idea of the police cornering him. I’m not sure how far he’s willing to go to pay Laura back.”
Ben’s pale eyes bored into her. “You think he might hurt the boy to get even with a dead woman?”
She swallowed, fighting a rush of guilt. “I think a lot of it has to do with me. He...um...called me once. Said if I didn’t stop causing him trouble, I’d regret it.”
“But that wasn’t something you could do.”
“I told you, Laura was my friend.” She sighed. “I don’t know what Bridger might do but it...it worries me.”
She could tell by the set of his jaw it worried him, too.
An hour out of Chandler, Claire leaned back in her seat and dozed for a while, the lack of sleep last night taking its toll. An hour later, she jerked awake, her heart hammering, her skin flushed and her body pulsing. She’d been dreaming of Ben, remembering the erotic sensation of his mouth on her breasts.
She didn’t look at him, just turned and gazed out the window, fixing her eyes on the flat, arid desert moving by outside, hoping he couldn’t read her thoughts.
“You okay?”
She managed to nod. “Bad dream.” But it was a very good dream, a delicious dream she was sure to have any number of times over the years.
Another fifty miles into the trip, Ben pulled off the highway to make a quick pit stop at a Chevron station.
“Why don’t you let me drive awhile,” Claire suggested as they walked back to the car carrying paper cups of fresh hot coffee. “Maybe you could catch a little sleep.”
He looked at her over the top of his steaming paper cup. “We need to get there.”
“I’ll get us there as fast as I possibly can.”
He hesitated a moment, then nodded. “All right.” Climbing into the passenger side of the vehicle, he stuck his coffee in the cup holder next to hers and tilted his seat back. By the time Claire pulled onto the freeway, Ben was fast asleep.
* * *
Ben didn’t sleep long. Just enough to refresh himself. So far, things had gone extremely well, but he didn’t expect that to last. Eddie Jeffries had cooperated. He was in jail and didn’t want any more trouble. Sadie had a bone to pick with Bridger—no problem there. Lyla had been charmed by Sam and wanted to see him returned to his family.
Ben had a hunch Duke Hutchins wasn’t going to roll over on Bridger so easily. He hadn’t told Claire the rest of the information Sol had dug up. That Hutchins had a criminal record that included assault with a deadly weapon and armed robbery. He’d been busted for selling marijuana and cocaine, spent time in half a dozen Texas jails and finally wound up in Huntsville Prison.
He was out on parole, but there was no question in Ben’s mind the man would be armed and dangerous.
It was one of the reasons he didn’t want to involve the police. He didn’t want to take a chance that Sam might wind up collateral damage if someone started shooting.
One of the things SEALs were trained for was extraction. With the right planning, he could be in and out with Sam before Hutchins and Bridger knew what the hell had hit them. He’d hold off bringing in the cops until he had no other choice.
He adjusted his seat, bringing it back into position. “Why don’t you pull off at the next gas station and I’ll drive the rest of the way.”
“Are you sure? You only slept a little over an hour.”
“I’m good. Besides, driving gives me something to do.” Besides sit here and think about peeling off that cotton blouse and nibbling on those lovely white breasts. If he closed his eyes, he could still feel the texture of her rose-colored nipples, hard against his tongue.
Claire seemed to be doing just fine not thinking about last night. He, on the other hand, couldn’t seem to stop.
In an oddly perverse turn, he was the one who wanted to talk about it, wanted to hear her say how good it was. Because it had been. He wouldn’t have figured it, not with a woman as reserved as Claire.
Or maybe he would. All that bottled-up sexual energy. All that untapped heat. Making love to her was like popping a cork on a shaken bottle of champagne. Like riding a roller coaster on a ninety-mile-an-hour dive. He had the scratch marks on his shoulders to prove it.
And yet under all that hidden passion, there was an underlying innocence. Michael Sullivan might have taken the lady to bed, but he hadn’t begun to give her what she needed. Not by a long shot. Now that Ben knew exactly what those needs were, all he could think of was satisfying them again.
It wasn’t going to happen. They had made a deal—one night of hot, no-strings sex and nothing more. Claire was clearly sticking to it, and that meant so was he.
That didn’t mean he hadn’t noticed how pretty she’d looked this morning. How sexy she’d looked in her teddy-bear nightshirt with her long legs exposed and her red-painted toenails.
It didn’t mean he hadn’t noticed the way her jeans cupped her sweet little ass, didn’t mean his fingers didn’t itch to unzip those jeans, shove them down and rip off another pair of bikini panties.
Jesus, he was getting hard just thinking about it.
“There’s a Shell station up ahead,” he said a little gruffly. “Take the next off-ramp.”
Claire pulled off and he gassed up while she went in to use the head. He did the same, then they continued down the road with him behind the wheel.
“What do we do when we get there?” Claire asked as they neared their destination, bringing his thoughts full circle back to Sam. Except for those few hours with Claire last night, the boy was never far from his mind.
“It’ll be dark when we get in. Sol says Hutchins lives in a crummy apartment on the south side of town. I’ve already plugged the address into the GPS. We’ll drive by, take a quick look at the area.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky and spot Bridger’s pickup.”
It was a possibility. “On second thought, I’ll drop you off at a motel, then drive by. If Bridger’s there, I don’t want you getting hurt.”
“But—”
“No arguments this time, Claire. I need to focus on Sam and getting him out of there safely.”
“Time is crucial, Ben. You’ve driven four hundred miles at the speed of light to get here. Drive by the apartment, then you’ll know what you need to do.”
She was right, dammit. Finding a motel and getting her checked in took time. As far as he knew, Bridger had no idea he was being followed. A drive-by would probably be safe enough.
“The sooner we get to the apartment, the better our chances of finding Sam,” Claire added, as if he needed a reminder.
“All right, but Hutchins has a record, and he’s probably armed. He’s a dangerous man, Claire. If something seems off or if we come in contact with him or Bridger, you do what I tell you, okay?”
“Why didn’t you tell me he had a record?”
“I didn’t want you to worry.”
“I’m already worried, Ben. From now on, please, I want to know what’s going on. That’s the only way I can help.”
He tended to work on a need-to-know basis, but he could see her point. “Fine, but you do what I tell you, okay?”
“Okay.”
Neither of them said more till he pulled off the freeway and began following the GPS directions toward the south side of town.
As the area changed from a clean commercial neighborhood into run-down apartments, boarded-up businesses and graffiti-covered walls, he began to regret his decision to bring Claire along. He should have followed his instincts and left her someplace safe. He checked the black SEAL dive watch he’d been wearing for years, saw it was a little after 8:00 p.m.
“We’re getting close,” Claire said.
“Up ahead.” He pointed through the windshield. “That’s the apartment building on the right.” Two stories. Dirty brown stucco with a black wrought-iron railing around the upper floor. A lawn that was mostly dirt and looked as though it hadn’t been watered in years.
“I don’t see any white pickups.”
“No, unfortunately.” He slowed as they approached. “That’s unit five on the end upstairs.”
“There aren’t any lights on inside. It doesn’t look like anyone’s home.” Claire pointed toward the building attached to the apartments. “Look! Someone’s pulling out of the carport.”
Ben pulled in behind a parked car, stopped and turned off his headlights. He dug a piece of paper out of his pocket, the info Sol had given him that morning, including the model and plate number of the vehicle Dennis “Duke” Hutchins drove.
“Ninety-nine black Chevy Camaro. Texas plate BQ1 BB13.”
“That’s it! It’s Hutchins, Ben. There’s no one in the apartment. We have to follow him!”
Taking Claire with him into what could be a very bad situation was the last thing he wanted. He watched the black Camaro pulling farther and farther away.
Ben stepped on the gas.