Page 32 of Entranced
“Oh, yeah? Well, where are we going?”
Sebastian zipped around a sedan and punched it up to sixty.
“Utah.”
It was a good ten miles before Mel managed to close her mouth.
***
Three o’clock in the morning, in the ghastly light of the parking lot of a combination convenience store and gas station. Mel’s bottom felt as though it had been shot full of novocaine.
But her mind wasn’t numb. She might have been tired, cranky and sore after riding on the back of a bike for four hours, but her mind was functioning just fine.
Right now she was using it to develop ways of murdering Sebastian Donovan and making it the perfect crime.
It was a damn shame she hadn’t brought her gun. Then she could just shoot him. Clean and quick. On someof the roads they’d been traveling, she could dump the body into a gully where it might not be found for weeks. Possibly years.
Still, it would be more satisfying to beat him to death. He had her by a few inches, and maybe fifty pounds, but she thought she could take him.
Then she could ditch the bike, hop a bus, and be back in her office bright and early the next morning.
Mel stretched her legs by pacing the parking lot. Occasionally a semi rattled by, using the back roads to avoid weighing stations. Apart from that, it was dark and quiet. Once she heard something that sounded suspiciously like a coyote, but she dismissed it.
Even out here in the boonies, she assured herself, people had dogs.
Oh, he’d been clever, she thought now, kicking an empty soda can out of her way. He hadn’t stopped the bike until they’d been past Fresno. Not exactly walking distance back to Monterey.
And when she’d hopped off, punched him, and let loose with a string of curses that should have turned his ears blue, he’d simply waited her out. Waited her out, and then gone on to explain that he’d wanted to follow James T. Parkland’s trail.
He’d needed to see the motel where David had stayed with the first woman he’d been passed to.
As if there were a motel. Mel kicked the hapless can again. Did he really expect her to believe they would drive up to some dumb motel with a dinosaur out front?
Right.
So, here she was, tired, hungry, and numb from the waist down, stuck on some back road with a crazy psychic. She was two hundred and fifty miles from home, and she had eleven dollars and eighty-six cents on her person.
“Sutherland.”
Mel whirled and caught the candy bar he tossed her. She would have cursed him then, but she had to snag the soft drink can that came looping after it.
“Look, Donovan …” Since he was busy with the gas pump, she stalked over, ripping the wrapper off thecandy bar as she went. “I’ve got a business to run. I have clients. I can’t be running around half the night with you chasing wild geese.”
“You ever done any camping?”
“What? No.”
“I’ve done some up in the Sierra Nevadas. Not far from here. Very peaceful.”
“If you don’t turn this bike around and take me back, you’re going to have an eternity of peace. Starting now.”
When he looked at her, really looked, she saw that he didn’t appear tired at all. Oh, no. Rather than suffering from four hours of traveling, he looked as if he’d just spent a week at some exclusive spa.
Under the relaxation, the calm, was a drumming excitement that took hold of her pulse and set it hopping. Resenting every minute of it, Mel took a healthy bite of chocolate.
“You’re crazy. Certifiable. We can’t go to Utah. Do you know how far it is to Utah?”
He realized the temperature had dropped considerably. Sebastian peeled off his jacket and handed it to her. “To the place we want, from Monterey? About five hundred miles.” He clicked off the pump, replaced the nozzle. “Cheer up, Sutherland, we’re more than halfway there.”
