her face, and hesitated for another beat as she glanced back at the black-and-white—hesitated too long.
“You better look at their choices.” He grabbed her by the elbow in what looked like an intimate gesture but would have been impossible to shake off had she tried, and steered her toward the diner, growling only two short words under his breath. “Get inside.”
A waitress hurried by just as they stepped in. “Good morning. Would you like a table?” Her smile didn’t reach her tired eyes, her mind clearly someplace else. She was in her fifties but her shoulders sloped like someone decades older. She did not, thank God, notice Bailey’s bare feet and point to the No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service sign on the door.
“Just picking up. Thanks.” Cade headed to the take-out station once again, where a high-school kid was manning the counter. The line had disappeared while he’d gone to stop Bailey from making his life even more complicated than it already was.
“Hi. One cup of coffee with all the fixings.” He’d seen the syrupy stuff Bailey carried around all day long in her “Gardens are Art” oversize mug.
The kid grabbed a purple DeDe’s plastic coffee cup. “Anything else?”
Cade let go of Bailey’s elbow and draped an arm casually around her slim waist, ignoring the kaleidoscope of donuts with their colored frosting in the antique display case in front of him. “Two breakfast sandwiches on whole-wheat bagels. Two bottles of orange juice.” His body was a weapon—he didn’t put junk into it any more than he would have shoved sand down his rifle barrel.
“Fifteen sixty-five.”
He put a twenty on the counter. “Keep the change.”
“Thank you, sir.” The kid’s smile widened, and he put some spring in his step as he went to get their food.
He was handing Cade the bag when the cop came in. Cade watched the man for a moment from the corner of his eye. The officer sat at a corner table and buried his head in the breakfast menu.
“Thanks.” Cade grabbed their food while Bailey reached for her coffee.
“Thank you for stopping in. Have a great day. Good morning. What can I get you today, sir?” The kid was already serving the next customer.
Cade didn’t have a free hand to hang on to Bailey, so he did his best to herd her in front of him before she got another brilliant idea. Especially since the cop was done making his selection and was scanning the place for the nearest waitress.
Cade watched Bailey for signs that she was ready to bolt, but she’d been uncharacteristically quiet since he’d brought her into the diner. He moved between her and the cop to block his view, turning his back.
Once they were at the door, he checked out the parking lot before stepping out, scanning the cars and the man who had just pulled in before walking to the Escalade.
“Don’t do that again.” He didn’t raise his voice but made sure his tone conveyed his message sufficiently.
She bit her lip and tightened her grip on her coffee.
Was he scaring her yet? He sure as hell hoped so. He hoped he could scare her enough to stop her from doing something colossally stupid. She looked subdued, if not scared. That was something.
“Help yourself.” He put the food between them once they got into the car, but he didn’t touch his. He wanted to be a little farther down the road—and in a different car—first.
He glanced into the rearview mirror before backing out of his spot and saw the cop at the diner’s door, looking at the cars in the parking lot. Time to haul ass.
He pulled out onto Route 1 but veered off almost immediately onto a side street. He snaked through a labyrinth of housing developments. Maybe the cop was looking for the Escalade. Whoever owned it could easily have called it in by now.
Bailey sipped her coffee, set it in the cup holder and looked at him, anxiety in her eyes. “I understand that you think you are saving me, but I’m asking you to let me go. Please.”
She still didn’t get it. “No.”
Her jaw muscles tightened and her fists clenched. “I’m not going to quit trying to get away from you. You can’t watch me every second. You are going to have to sleep at some point.”
That was what she thought. He could go without rest for days when on a mission. But it would help both of them if she stopped struggling every step of the way.
“This is for your own good.” That sounded lame—she wasn’t going to go for that.
And she didn’t.
“I can decide what’s for my own good!” she shouted, clearly at the end of her rope. “Why does the FBI want us?”
The what? He lifted an eyebrow. He hadn’t told her about the FBI—there was no sense in getting her all worked up. He figured the shock of her house blowing up was enough for one day, considering she was a civilian.
She drew a deep breath, which pushed her breasts against the T-shirt of his that she’d borrowed. “Our picture was on that officer’s computer in his car.”
So that was why she’d stopped in her tracks when she’d reached the black-and-white. Could be the cop had recognized them in the diner.
He hesitated only a moment before reaching his decision. It would be easier to tell her the truth and gain her cooperation than watch her every second of every day until he figured out what was going on. “We’ve been implicated in domestic terrorism. Both of us,” he added for emphasis.
She went white and stared at him. “Why?” Her mouth closed and then opened again, but nothing else came out.
“You tell me.”
She was slack jawed for another minute before speaking again. “But they’re wrong. We can explain that it’s a mistake, can’t we? We just have to tell them that it’s crazy. They can’t have any proof. We have to go back and talk to someone.”
She seemed determined to rush into disaster. A real babe in the woods.
Her eyes pleaded with him. “Listen to me. We can’t run. This is probably the worst thing we could be doing.”
The fact that she still didn’t trust him after he’d spent his entire morning saving her curvaceous behind frustrated him beyond words. “How keen are you on a surfing holiday?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Think water and a board.”
Her eyes widened. She swallowed. “They wouldn’t do that to us. We are U.S. citizens. They can’t interrogate us like that.” But she sounded less than certain.
“You’d be surprised what gets done behind closed doors these days. At the very least, we’ll be taken in for serious interrogation. We’re talking days, at the minimum. They are not going to let us go until they figure out what’s going on. I’d prefer to figure things out on my own, then go in once we’re cleared.”
“But
