that landscaping.
Flip-flops would have been great. Instead, she found a Ziploc bag full of IDs and bank cards, and a wad of cash held together by a rubber band.
And a gun.
Her fingertips went cold, the air suddenly froze in her lungs, and clothing became the least of her problems. His mentioning weapons was one thing; sitting next to a nasty-looking firearm was another. It brought the severity of her situation into sharp focus.
“I’ll take that.” He held his hand out and, when after a moment of hesitation, she gingerly gave him the gun, he said, “See if you can find some bullets in the front pocket.”
She did. A whole box of them. She handed them over, and he started to load the handgun without slowing down or taking his eyes off the road, driving with one elbow. Like he was one of those guys in spy movies who practice taking apart and putting together their weapons while blindfolded. If she weren’t so scared, she would have been impressed.
She considered staying in the backseat, as far from him as possible. But she had questions, and she wanted to look at his face while he answered them to see if he was lying to her.
She climbed to the front, nearly knocking him out with her left knee when she slipped—which she didn’t feel too bad about, to be honest—then fastened herself in. First things first. “Why is the Mafia after you?” She braced herself for some grizzly story. It had to be something pretty serious.
He gave her a blank look.
“Witness protection?” she prompted.
The tanned skin around his caramel eyes crinkled. “I never said anything about the Mafia.”
She thought back. True. She’d assumed.
“You did witness a crime, right? That’s how people get into witness protection.” What did she know about that, anyway? Whatever she’d seen on TV. And real cops always said how those shows were wildly inaccurate.
Still, if he was in the program, there had to be a good reason for it. She hoped he wasn’t a criminal who’d rolled over on his buddies. She pulled as far away from him as possible without being too obvious about it, and put on the best poker face she could, preparing for his answer.
“I’m not in witness protection.”
She glared. “You said—”
“I said kind of.”
She really should have asked more questions before she handed him the gun. Oh, God. She’d just armed the man who had kidnapped her. Stupid, stupid, stupid. She was so far out of her element, she couldn’t keep up, couldn’t think fast enough. She had to start using her head to gain some information and make some decisions. “Any ideas on who is after you?” Would he tell her?
“Take your pick. Could be a drug lord, weapons smugglers, terrorists…”
Okay, so that was probably the truth. Nobody would make up a list like that. The options were enough to give anyone heart palpitations, yet he was oddly nonchalant. Like a professional. He did know how to handle that gun. He was either a bad guy who’d ticked off some other bad guys, or a good guy with a lot of enemies. She decided to be optimistic. She desperately needed some hope to cling to, even if for only a few more moments. “You were in law enforcement?”
Say yes. Please say yes.
“Kind of.”
Her nerves were as frayed as the cuffs of his jeans. “If you say kind of one more time, I’m going to scream.”
“Nothing I haven’t heard before,” he said, humor glinting in his eyes.
He thought this was funny? The man lived to drive her crazy. Swear to God, if she had a grenade launcher…
She caught herself. She believed in a universe that could be influenced by positive and negative thoughts. In the situation she was in, there was no sense thinking violent thoughts. She closed her eyes for a moment and briefly envisioned getting away from the man.
He pulled into the parking lot of a diner, which, unlike the post office lot, looked fairly full.
DeDe’s was a plain, square clapboard building that never made it into visitors’ guides. Tourists who came to Chadds Ford to discover the country’s colonial past wouldn’t have looked at it twice, anyway. But the food was divine, which made it a favorite meeting place for locals. She used to have breakfast here with her grandmother every Sunday, before she’d passed.
She closed her eyes for a moment and drew a deep breath. “What are we doing here?”
“Getting breakfast.” He was checking out the lot carefully.
“How can you eat at a time like this?”
He shrugged. “If you don’t eat, you won’t have the strength to face whatever comes next.”
He had a very pragmatic view of eating. Judging from his lean body, he’d never spent a day of his life overeating, or dieting, or wrought with emotion that made ice cream a necessity, for that matter. “I don’t think I can eat right now.”
“You can always give it a try. A sandwich and orange juice?”
“Okay. And coffee.” Although if there were ever a morning when she was wide-awake without caffeine, this would be it. Still, old habits died harder than Duracell batteries. And caffeine wasn’t just about waking up. It was her comfort food of choice. Among others. Suddenly she could have killed for a bag of Cheetos.
Not that there was a chance of getting Cheetos out of Cade. She’d seen his grocery bags before—he was a health nut. He shopped at Trader Joe’s.
“You stay here.” He scanned the parking lot one more time before starting out. “I’ll get it to go.”
She watched him walk to the front door and hold it open for a group of old ladies. He trusted her to stay put. He really had seemed competent until now. So competent that she was beginning to feel dejected about her chances of getting away from him. Well, everybody makes mistakes.
She was out of the SUV the second the door closed behind him. And she nearly got run over by the cop car pulling into the lot.
HE THOUGHT HE’D LOST Palmer, but spotted him in that SUV by accident and thanked his lucky stars for it. Luck had always been on his side. And why not? Luck favored the prepared mind. Wasn’t that what they said? And he always was prepared.
So was Cade Palmer, it seemed. He’d escaped that explosion. That had been a surprise in the middle of his morning surveillance. He’d been checking out the house, making his own plans. He wouldn’t have minded if someone else took care of Palmer. He wasn’t vain that way, didn’t take his business personally like some others he knew—no sense in that. Whatever way the man was rubbed out was fine with him.
As he had stalked closer, he’d watched the woman Palmer left in the car. He wanted Palmer, but he could settle for her now. Palmer would come after her—he could never resist saving everyone in sight and then some. He would have grabbed her were it not for the damn cop who came at the worst moment, when he was a few feet from
