on the top of the battered old television and said simply, “Toiletry items.”
“How the hell am I supposed to brush my teeth, not to mention shave or take a shower, with my right hand cuffed to the drainpipe?”
“No showers, Mr. Granger. We’ll both get a little ripe before we reach Boston. For the rest, you’re a big boy. Be resourceful and you’ll figure it out.”
I’ll be a hell of a lot more resourceful than you’d ever imagine, Sammie, babe. Matt let her lock him in the bathroom. He always thought clearer on an empty bladder.
While he was taking care of business in the other room, she peered through a broken slat in the blinds. No one in sight. Might as well go to the office and see what she could scare up for breakfast.
When Matt heard the outside door close, he fleetingly considered yelling his lungs out for help. But then he recalled that she’d told him they were the only customers in the fleabag. Probably true. Even if he could make himself heard over the blaring TV, it was doubtful a desk clerk in a dive like this would give a shit. Even if he did, “Nurse Ratchet” would make him believe her poor “patient” was having a seizure or a conversation with Bart Simpson.
Matt set to work on the gooseneck pipe. “Great. Everything in this dump is made of Lego blocks except the plumbing. Which is made of friggin’ Swedish steel!” He grunted, red faced with strain, wrapping both hands around the connection to give it one last desperate try. No go. He needed something for leverage. “Not even a Boy Scout would carry a pipe wrench in his jammies,” he muttered savagely as his eyes swept frantically around the small mold-encrusted room for anything he could reach that might help.
That’s when he saw it. A rusty old C-clamp holding together the broken curtain rod over the window. It was partially obscured by the hideous blue-and-orange plastic ruffle and a generous layer of cobwebs. Matt Granger was a tall man with long arms to match his lanky frame. But stretch as he might, his fingertips could only come within six inches of the damn clamp. He yanked on the ruffled “window treatment,” hoping to rip the rod loose from its mooring. No go, again.
With a sickening thwap the rotted brittle plastic flew off the rod, smacking him in the face with sticky cobwebs. Snarling an oath about spider spit, he threw the filthy monstrosity into the tub and pulled the shower curtain closed to cover it up. Then he wiped up the mess around the sink and in his hair, praying she wouldn’t notice the missing plastic ruffle on the window. No sense giving Sam any ideas about checking out the next accommodations more thoroughly than she had these. Then he heard the front door open.
“Ready or not, here I come,” she sang out.
Matt decided if he was ever going to get away from this single-minded broad, he’d better take his chance now. Just thinking of her little “object lesson” with the stun gun made him wince, but what the hell. She’d have to move in real close to use it—not that he doubted for one instant she’d hesitate. Still, he reasoned, he was a big man and she was a small woman. How hard could it be to overpower her before she got a shot at him? Trained medical professional. He snorted as the bathroom door opened.
“All I could get was a carafe of their coffee and a couple packages of cake doughnuts, artifacts that must’ve been in the vending machine since the dawn of automation.” Sam glanced at his bare chest and the droplets of water dripping from his hair and face onto those broad shoulders. No good, Ballanger. Ah, not good, but beautiful. She tossed him the key and spun around, stalking out of the doorway to wait while he unlocked the cuff.
Matt noted the way she’d looked at him. Maybe he could give good old lust one last college try before chancing the stun gun. “Coffee smells good,” he said. In fact, it smelled like a blend of road tar and battery acid, but he was used to the stuff in the Herald’s newsroom, which was even worse.
When he reached for his clothes, piled in a heap on the floor, Sam said, “No. Leave them. I’ll put them in the van later.”
He gave her a quizzical look, then grinned. This was working out even better than he’d hoped.
“Put on the pj’s again and slip on the robe and house shoes. It looks more convincing if a patient’s not dressed in street clothes,” she explained quickly, too quickly.
“So much for romance,” he mumbled as he reached for the discarded pajamas and coarse terry robe, taking his time, letting her stare at his naked chest. After he’d belted the robe casually around his middle, he walked over to the table, never breaking eye contact with her. “Pour me some java?”
“Pour it yourself,” she snapped, gesturing with the gun. As he did so, she watched the front of the robe gap open. He hadn’t buttoned the pj top, either. She could see his chest again. Had he done that deliberately? Of course he had. Ballanger, you have to be a moron to fall for this guy, she chided herself, watching him take an experimental sip of the coffee and reach for a doughnut as he sat down across from her.
Smiling, he swallowed down the large Styrofoam cupful as if it were medicinal. “Ah, nothing like a jolt of caffeine in the morning.”
“You must have a cast-iron mouth,” Sam said as he poured a second cup and chomped into a doughnut.
“Newsroom habit. Reporters learn to drink this sludge like water. Only thing that redeems it is it’s too hot to taste. I really do work for the Herald, you know.”
“Yeah, well your aunt said you ‘dabbled’ at writing stories. Didn’t say where. Look, I checked out Claudia Witherspoon before I took this job, believe me. She’s a female Warren Buffet. We’ve been over this before, remember?”
Matt snorted in disgust. “She never approved of my career choice. I was supposed to be a good little Yalie, stay in Boston and work for the family brokerage firm.” He shuddered.
Sam looked at him with renewed interest. “Yale, huh? Figured you’d have ivy of some kind growing out of your ears. Why not just chill out at the family manse, live off your trust fund?”
“Would you like to sit around and do nothing?” he asked.
Sam shrugged. “Never had the option. It might be nice to jet-set around though, you know, sipping martinis.”
He couldn’t help the frustrated bark of laughter. Oh, would his great-aunt pay for this if he got dragged all the way to Boston right in the middle of the biggest story of his career! He’d wring her scrawny, manipulative old neck! “That’s what you imagine the life of a Boston Brahmin is like?”
“It isn’t?”
He knew she was humoring him. “It’s boring beyond measure and filled to the brim with social obligations.”
“No wonder you ran away and joined a cult then.”
Matt sighed. “I did not join a cult.” It came out through gritted teeth.
“Not what Aunt Claudia said. You were living in that complex just the way she described it. I believe her term was ‘a pack of California coconuts.’”
He raised one eyebrow as a thought occurred to him. “I wonder if the old girl’s finally gone around the bend.”
“You’re the one around the bend. She sounded plenty sharp.”
“Sharp she always has been.” His eyes narrowed in cunning intensity. “She’s paying
