Page 47 of The Scenic Route
“Let’s check their hotel, see if they returned last night.”
She doubted that Clint and Dino would do that, but Bennett was right—they should check, just in case. “Okay. Then back to that dive bar, so I can punch that bartender in the throat?”
“Balls, maybe?” Bennett suggested, looking doubtful. “Throat punch makes it hard to answer questions.”
“Good point, but the throat is extra satisfying.” She considered her options with grim satisfaction. “I’ll decide when I see him. Either way, we’ll see if he knows where the two drink-spiking jokers headed.”
“If we don’t find them here, we know where they live.”
Felicity grinned at him. “I love how casually brutal you can be.”
He actually blushed, sending her a bashful look from beneath those thick lashes, and her smile faded as she studied him. “What?” he asked, fully focused on her again.
“Nothing.” With a shake of her head, she paid more attention than was necessary to starting the car. “I just thought of something.”
About how we probably kissed last night…and I don’t remember it.
He gave a skeptical grunt so Bennett-like that it made her smile again, the unexpected sting of their forgotten first—nosecond, although the first didn’t really count because it’d just been a ruse to get out of a trespassing charge—kiss fading. Instead she focused on finding her skip. She’d allowed herself to get distracted, but that was done. Everything—her unexpected marriage, her felonious mom, her longing for a pause to justrelax—was put aside until the job was successfully finished.
“Watch out, Dino,” she said as she shifted into drive. “We’re coming for you.”
***
“I’m sorry,” Felicity said half a day later, after a long, silent length of I-70 had disappeared under her car wheels.
Bennett gave her a questioning look.
“If we’d just stayed in the car last night like you wanted to, we would be back in Colorado by now, a cuffed Dino in the back seat.”And unmarried, she thought but didn’t say out loud.
“Maybe.”
It was her turn to give him a look.
“They knew we were following them.”
“Right,” she said, “but we still could’ve taken them by surprise—if we hadn’t been drugged.”
“Maybe.” This time, the word sounded even more skeptical as he studied the desert landscape around them. “They were armed and knew we were there. More likely we just would’ve gotten shot.”
“I did.”
“What?” He whipped his head to stare at her, his gaze raking up and down her body as if he could see through her clothes to wherever the gunshot wound was.
“Minor.” She patted the air in a soothing gesture, although he didn’t seem very soothed. In fact, he looked positively frantic. “It barely broke the skin.”
“Where?”
“I can’t remember all the details, but we were running toward the diner, Dino and Clint were chasing us, and then there was aclunksound and the side of my calf burned. I cleaned it in the shower, and it’s barely a graze.”
He faced forward again, his jaw muscles working. “I want to see it when we stop next.”
“Uhh…” She looked down at her skinny jeans. “Not sure that’ll work. I’m not stripping down to my underwear at a rest stop. I’ll show you tonight.”
Although he gave a tight nod, he didn’t look happy. Felicity decided it’d be a good idea for his stomach lining if she changed the subject.
“How much doyouremember about last night?”
He didn’t answer.
