Ghost Days, page 12
He watched her for a moment longer than necessary, as if waiting for her to flinch, then nodded. “Okay. Have you got everything you need?”
Parrish held up the bag. “Yes, sir.”
“Okay. Let me drive you back to the airport.”
On the drive back, they sat closer together in the backseat. Garza had the bag on her lap and her right hand on the seat between them. Parrish slid her hand across the seat and slipped her fingers around Garza’s, then tightened her grip. He may suspect something improper between them, after catching them half-naked having breakfast together. And he didn’t seem to have an issue with it, other than vague discomfort, but the less evidence they supplied, the better.
“There is… one more thing,” Elver said once they crossed the town limits. He sounded reluctant, flexing his fingers on the steering wheel before he spoke again. “The money in your bank account, Miss Parrish. It’s a pretty hefty sum.”
“Yes,” she said.
“According to records, you deposited all of it yourself. All cash transactions. No transfers from Mr. Oakhill’s account. Which means we have no way of knowing where exactly that money came from. And I have no legal reason to press you to tell me where it came from. Or… hell.” He sighed and looked out the window. “Maybe I do. Who the hell knows. The point is, I have no interest in pursuing that line of inquiry. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“I do,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” Elver said. “Just making you aware of the situation.”
Parrish smiled. “Well, then thank you for the information.”
Garza cleared her throat. “So do you think there’s actually a chance you’ll find these guys?”
Elver met her eye in the mirror. “Honestly, I think having you bunker down is an abundance of caution. I thumbed through the book and I recognized some of the names. These guys, ah, they’re financial crooks. They got in over their head when they murdered Oakhill and they probably rabbited. Like I said. Not a movie, not James Bond. We’ll track them down and then you can get back to your normal lives.”
“Whatever that looks like,” Parrish muttered.
Garza looked at her. Her whole adult life had been built around Saul, waiting for him to summon her, waiting to be paraded around like a prop. It had gotten her a home, but at the expense of a life. Parrish turned to meet her gaze and smiled, squeezed her hand.
Maybe after all this mess, they could both end up with something good.
***
“She bit back a scream as the rogue pressed her against the tree. She barely reached his chest, which she could see through the shirt she’d torn as she ran from him. Though she tried with all her might to wriggle free, he pressed his body against hers, and she felt his desire hard and thick against her stomach even through all the clothes between them.”
Garza struggled to keep her face neutral as she closed the book on her thumb to look at the cover models, then looked at Parrish. They were lying together in bed, Garza in pajama bottoms and a T-shirt and, for the first time, Parrish was wearing one of her own nightgowns. It made her look softer, frailer somehow. She was curled against Garza’s side, and what she’d intended to be titillating had, instead, turned into something more like a bedtime story.
But the content…
“You… you like this stuff?”
Parrish laughed. “I know it’s not great literature. Or even good writing, for that matter. But that’s not what I read them for.”
Garza kissed the top of Parrish’s head. “It turns you on?”
“Well, yeah,” she said, squirming closer. She brushed her hand over Garza’s stomach. “It just has to be good enough to give you the mental images. And… sometimes…” She bit her lip and chuckled softly, then shook her head. “Never mind.”
“No, say it.”
Parrish looked at her, searching her face, clearly having a mental debate about whether or not to say what she’d been planning to say. Finally she gave a defeated sigh and shook her head.
“Sometimes… the way it’s written… not this one. Hold on.”
She got out of bed, making Garza regret her question. Parrish crouched next to the bag and searched until she found another book. She brought it to bed and handed it to Garza as she reclaimed her position, wiggling until she found the warm spot she’d just abandoned. Garza looked at the cover, which seemed almost identical to the previous book. Sexy muscular man, chest exposed, pants tight enough to hint at his attributes. One muscular arm wrapped around a small woman’s waist as she bent away from him with a look of terror on her face.
“This looks like a crime,” Garza said.
“In real life, sure. These guys would be locked up for sure. But that’s not what the books are about. They’re about fantasies and giving in and… and…” She hunched her shoulders. “Sometimes I would pretend I was the man in the scene.”
Suddenly Garza was interested. “Oh really.”
“The way some of them are written, the sex scenes are from the man’s point of view, and I don’t know, I started imagining it was me. And I was aggressively going after these sexy women.”
“Kind of the way you walked in here and came after me that first night.”
Parrish laughed softly and pressed her face against Garza’s shoulder. “God, that was so much fun. And so terrifying. I thought maybe… given how you were dressed and your swagger, and the way you looked at me. I thought, if anyone is going to react right to this, it’s her. It took every ounce of courage I had, but I did it. When you told me to leave, I felt like such an absolute fool. Like a little kid playing dress-up and being sent to my room.”
“Wow. I didn’t get that at all. It felt like you were very in control.”
“I knew what I wanted. And I’m so glad I took the risk and went for it.”
“Me too.” Garza flipped open the book. “So you imagined you had a throbbing shaft that you wanted to sheath in her willing…” She raised her eyebrows. “They can publish that word…?”
“Oh they can publish all kinds of things,” Parrish said. “But they like tiptoeing around the really harsh stuff as much as possible. They make you work for it. I like ‘shaft.’ And ‘sheath’ is good.” She took the book back from Garza and flipped through it. “Here. This one. He gazed down into her wide open eyes, his passion almost painful inside his trousers. He took her hand and guided it to his desire. Her small fingers traced the length of it and her eyes widened further, her mouth forming a wide oh, wide enough to…” She cleared her throat and squirmed.
“Should I leave you three alone?”
“Absolutely not.” Parrish rolled over on top of Garza. “You will not escape my clutches. I will have you tonight before anyone else defiles your honor.”
Garza laughed but let herself be pinned. “These authors should be in prison.”
Parrish grinned and rose up over her. “Perhaps I should give that whippish tongue of yours something else to keep it occupied...”
“There’s got to be better smut in the world,” Garza said as she sunk down into the mattress under Parrish’s overwhelming attack.
But, for now, she was willing to explore Parrish’s interests and see where it went.
***
Something cracked. Garza tensed as she woke up, her head lifting off the pillow. Parrish hadn’t woken up, and Garza remained as still as possible to avoid disturbing her just in case it turned out to be nothing. She listened closely and another sound came. It was a quiet squeak, prolonged, like someone prying nails out of wood. She wasn’t ready to panic, but she knew it was more than just the house settling on the foundation.
Their pre-bed activities had left her sore. Parrish had played the man, using her fingers and being as rough as Garza allowed her to be. It had been thrilling to look up and see Parrish thrusting against her, breasts swaying, hair covering her face, lips parted in what was almost a predatory sneer. She had become an animal, and it had been incredibly arousing to watch her truly let go.
But now it was Garza’s turn to be the predator. She slipped out of bed, checked to make sure Parrish remained asleep, and pulled on her pajama pants and a shirt. There were more sounds coming from the outer room now, and she could pinpoint it to the office. She didn’t have any weapons. The best option was sitting in an evidence room at the Red Kite police department. When she passed through the kitchen, she took a knife from the chopping board and held it low by her side.
She paused at the threshold to the office. The security light by the runway was on, and that shone brightly enough through the windows that she could see one man standing by the desk while a second was still halfway through the window they’d wedged away from its frame. She stepped forward and smacked the light switch, filling the room with light that she hoped would startle the intruders into dropping their weapons.
The man who was still halfway through the window swore, lost his balance, and fell back to the outside. The other man threw his hand up to block his face, holding the other up in what would’ve been a submissive pose if it wasn’t for the gun it held.
“Hold on, sweetheart.”
“Bad opening,” she said. “Get out.”
The other man was making another attempt to get in through the window. The first man said, “We don’t want to hurt you. In fact, hurting you goes against what we’re trying to do. We need you in one piece so you can help us.”
“You have a funny way of asking for help, buddy. Hey!” She pointed the knife at the second man, who was once again straddling the sill. “Go the other way. I’m not kidding.”
The first man said, “We’re not exactly in a position to go through normal channels, so we had to resort to extreme measures. We’ll be happy to pay the cost of the window once everything is said and done here. But we’re in a real bind and we could use your help.”
“Not interested. I’ll pay to have my own window fixed, thanks.”
The gunman sighed. “Look, we got off on the wrong foot here. Let’s start over. Friendly-like. My name is Loomis. The guy squatting in your window is March. And we know you, you’re Erika Garza. You’re the pilot here. As it turns out, we have need of a pilot. See, your friend Sergeant Elver has eyes all over the county looking for us. Ain’t nowhere we can go around here without someone dropping a line and letting him know which way we’re going. But if we can start a hundred, hundred fifty miles from here, well, we might have a real chance of making our great escape. You get me?”
“And you expect me to fly you.”
“Not even for free. Paid very well. Very, very well. We just have to get out of town. We stuck around too long trying to get our hands on money that piece of...” He stopped himself, becoming aware of how fried his voice had become. “We missed our window to get out before the net fell. This is our only way to slip off without making a fuss.”
Garza was very aware that these were probably the men who had kidnapped Parrish and tied her up, keeping her prisoner. If she hadn’t escaped, she doubted they would have come back with such a friendly offer of partnership. And if they found out she was in the house... March finally managed to get all the way inside the building and was checking his suit for tears.
“How much money are we talking here?”
“A thousand bucks. Cash on the barrelhead, free and clear. Plus whatever the cost for the window is. We’re real sorry about that, but we couldn’t just come knocking in the middle of the night.”
“It might have helped the whole ‘we just want help’ angle. That, and losing the gun.”
Loomis shrugged. “We’re criminals, Miss Garza. We have to take precautions. Get the upper hand. That’s the secret to negotiating, you know. Start strong.”
Garza considered taking the offer, getting them into the plane and away from the airport as quickly as possible.
“Where do you think I’m taking you?”
“We’ve got some loose ends to tie up in Calgary. Sally caused a real fucking mess there when he tried screwing us, so we need to deal with that before we move on. But that won’t be your problem. You get us that far and we’ll be out of your hair and you’ll have a nice stack of bills in your pocket when you fly back here.”
“Don’t listen to them, Erika.”
Garza’s shoulders slumped. “Seriously?” she said under her breath. “You’re going to do this twice in the same day?”
Parrish came out of the hall. She was still in her nightgown, hair mussed with sleep, but her eyes were clear and focused. To Garza’s surprise, she also had a gun, and it was aimed directly at Loomis’ head.
“Christine, what...”
“They’ll kill you the second you land the plane. They keep saying they’ll pay you cash. Where is it? Stuffed in their coat pockets?”
“It’s out in the car. We were going to go get it once we settled on the price.” Loomis smiled. “Lovely to see you again, Mrs. Oakhill.”
“That’s not my name, Andrew. I never married Saul.”
He shrugged as if the distinction didn’t matter to him. “Well, whatever your name is, it’s a lovely coincidence to find you here. We thought we’d have to give up on ever closing the book on you. The hair is a nice touch, by the way. Never liked the ice queen look. But now things have gotten very interesting.” He raised his gun and leveled it at Parrish. “Because this bitch is hoarding money that’s rightfully ours, and fate has led us right to her.”
“If that’s what it takes to end this,” Parrish said, “you can have the goddamned money.”
Loomis narrowed his eyes. “Forgive me if that sounds a little too good to be true, darling.”
“I’m dead serious. Here’s the deal. You want Erika to fly you out of here? Fine. She’ll do it. You’ll pay her appropriately. And in exchange for letting her leave Calgary alive, you get everything in the bank account Saul set up for me. Every red dime.”
“That’s a fortune,” Loomis said. “And you’d just give it up?”
“Don’t underestimate the price of having you out of my life forever, Andrew.” She gestured with the gun. “It’s a simple deal. Once Erika drops you off and radios that she’s back in the air safe and sound, I’ll contact the bank manager. It’s late, but he’ll take my call. He had a little crush on me when I worked there. I’ll arrange to have the money transferred anywhere you choose first thing in the morning. You can give the info to Erika, that way she’ll have to get back to the plane safely or you get nothing.”
Loomis looked at March. He shrugged. “It’s a good deal. And it’s one less body to deal with.”
“What’s to keep her from backing out once the pilot is back in the air?”
“Because as long as she’s alive, I don’t give a shit about the money,” Parrish said. “It’s worth it to keep her alive.”
“Who the hell is she to you?”
“She’s my rogue,” Parrish said.
Despite the circumstances, Garza couldn’t help but smile a little at that. Loomis looked between them, trying to figure out what he was missing, but then he gestured with the gun and shook his head.
“Fine. Whatever. We’ll walk away with most of what we want in the end. Miss Pilot, you can go get changed. We’ll wait.” He looked at Parrish with something almost like respect. “But I have to admit, I wish I had half an idea who the hell you really are, lady.”
Garza looked at Parrish as she passed by her to go get dressed. “I wouldn’t mind getting an answer to that question myself...”
Chapter Fourteen
Before
Christine sat with her legs tucked under her, reading one of her romance novels. She was biting her lip, her fingers teasing the collar of her shirt. She fanned herself a little and widened her eyes as she pictured what she was reading, squeezing her thighs together, wanting to touch herself but not daring to. Not yet. She knew the really steamy scene was still ahead and she wanted to wait for it.
***
Christine smiled and handed the deposit slip to the customer, shirt buttoned to her throat, round glasses perched perfectly on the bridge of her nose. “Thank you for banking with us,” she said for the tenth time that day, the hundredth time that month, the millionth time in her life. Sometimes she wondered how many more times she would have to say it. “I can take the next customer, please.”
Saul P. Oakhill stepped forward. With his long face, his deep voice, perfectly tailored suits. His long tapered fingers lightly holding the pen as she signed the withdrawal form. She had noticed him before, oh yes. She was very familiar with his well-tailored suits and quiet demeanor. Those steely eyes...! She had always fantasized about him coming up to her window with an invitation to dinner. Unfortunately today he only had a deposit slip.
“Well, hello, sir.” Maybe he wanted to do a little roleplay. Pretend they were strangers. That could be fun. She processed his deposit while he waited silently, hands folded on the counter. She placed the money in the drawer and handed back a receipt. “Always nice to see you,” she said, hoping her voice sounded steady.
He looked confused, as if he didn’t know how to respond. Then he nodded, and walked back to his desk without saying anything.
She watched him go, full of longing.
***
Christine dreamed of Saul in her books. But he wasn’t always the hero. Sometimes she was the hero, a knight or a duke, some mysterious royal who was used to getting what she wanted, and sometimes she tore Saul’s clothes off and had her way with him. She woke from those dreams sweaty and desperate, her clothes usually twisted and pulled out of place. She wanted him to take her and she wanted to be taken by him, but she also wanted to be the taker.
She slipped a pillow between her thighs and rubbed against it until she could get some relief and fall back to sleep.
***
“I have a proposition for you.”
Saul’s voice was businesslike, serious and sincere, and she nodded eagerly. “Anything.”
He finally met her eye.
“It’s a bit unusual.”
