LITMIR.BIZ

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thought you said you couldn’t see,” Joleen reminded him as the powerful car picked up speed.

      “I’m managing.”

      “Lord, I hope so.”

      “And this baby handles like a dream.”

      “Oh. Good news to all of us, I am sure.…”

      Sam laughed in pure glee from the backseat. He let out a string of almost-words, followed by a rousing, “Vroom-vroom-vroom!”

      Joleen clutched the armrest and thought of all the times she’d suggested her friend ought to get himself a new car. And now he had done it. She could almost wish he hadn’t.

      But then again, his old Road Runner, which still sat beneath the carport outside his apartment building, boasted 383 cubes on a V-8 block—a fact he mentioned often and with considerable pride. If he’d been driving it right now, they’d be going at the same speeds—and the ride would have been a whole lot rougher.

      They barreled around a corner, tin cans rolling at her feet. “Dekker…”

      He wasn’t listening. “Very fine,” he murmured, “like a knife through warm butter…”

      In seconds they reached another corner and spun around it. Joleen shoved the cans out of the way, braced her feet more firmly and told herself she ought to be grateful he hadn’t bought that Ferrari he’d mentioned Wednesday.

      “Maybe later,” he’d decided, after considering the Ferrari. “First, I want to get us a nice family car.”

      The Lexus was a four-door. In Dekker’s mind, that made it a family car, though clearly, what it had under the hood would stack up against that old Road Runner of his any day of the week.

      They took two more corners at speeds faster than Joleen wanted to think about. Then at last Dekker applied the brakes. “Well?” he asked.

      She glanced behind them. The dark street was deserted. “You lost them.”

      “Vroom-vroom-vroom,” said Sam.

      Dekker readjusted his rearview mirror. “You haven’t seen any of them hanging around your place, right?”

      “No, I have not.”

      “Good. Then maybe they haven’t figured out where you live yet. Which means we’ll be left alone tonight. And tomorrow, we are outta here.”

      “I cannot wait.” She gave him a look, one that told him just what she thought of his driving so fast.

      He grinned back at her, not sorry in the least.

      Dekker drove around—at a sedate speed—for another fifteen minutes. “Just to make certain I shook those fools.”

      The dashboard clock said it was 9:33 when he pulled up in front of the tidy one-story house that Joleen had been calling home for a little over a year.

      “We’d better hide this car,” he said. “If our ‘friends’ decide to cruise the neighborhood, it would be a dead giveaway.”

      So Joleen got out and moved her own car from the small detached garage at the side of the house. Once Dekker had parked in the vacant space, she went to get Sammy. “And put those tin cans in the recycling bin,” she said as she leaned in the car to free her son from his safety seat.

      Dekker, who stood behind her at that point, made a put-upon sound in his throat and muttered, “What? You? Anal?”

      She pulled her head out of the car just long enough to make a face at him before she reached back in to scoop Sammy out of the seat and into her arms.

      * * *

      Joleen’s house was very much like a lot of the smaller houses in Mesta Park. A classic prairie cottage, it had no hallways. Living room, dining room and kitchen opened into each other, a bedroom off each. The single bath was tucked between the two back bedrooms.

      Joleen had the room off the kitchen and Sam had the one in the middle. The largest bedroom, in front, with a nice window facing the porch but without direct access to the bath, served as her guest room. Dekker carried his overnight bag in there as Joleen took her son with her into her own room. She swiftly changed out of her wedding dress and into a pair of capris and a crop top.

      Then Sammy had his bath. He went right down when she put him to bed, turning his face toward the wall and sighing in tired contentment. Joleen tiptoed from the room, switching off the light and pulling the door quietly closed behind her.

      She found Dekker sitting in the kitchen, his back to the window, at the old pine table she’d picked up at a yard sale and refinished herself. He’d changed clothes, too. Now he wore faded jeans and an OSU T-shirt.

      She tipped her head at the open Rolling Rock in front of him. “I see you managed to find the beer.”

      He picked up the bottle and toasted her with it—then set it down without drinking from it. “What a damn day.”

      “You said it.” She got herself a Coke from the fridge and dropped into the chair across from him. “At least Uncle Hubert didn’t get falling-down drunk.”

      “That’s true. We need to be grateful for small favors. But I have a request.”

      “Name it.”

      “Can we stop having weddings for a while?”

      She raised her right hand, palm out. “I do solemnly swear. If there is another weddin’ in the next five years, we will not have a thing to do with it.”

      He leaned back in the chair, crossed his feet in front of him and tipped his beer at her again. “But what if it’s cousin Callie’s?”

      “Callie is on her own.”

      “You think I believe that? If Callie and that cowboy tie the knot, you’ll be planning the menu and helping her pick out her long white dress.”

      “Think what you want.”

      “And what about Niki?”

      “What about her?”

      “What if she decides to get married?”

      “My baby sister is thirteen. I will not allow her to get married in the next five years.”

      “Maybe Camilla—”

      “Dekker. Please.”

      “I think she likes the ice cream man. A lot.”

      “She likes them all a lot. But they never do last, and you know that as well as I do.”

      “Who’s the cynical one now?”

      “I’m not bein’—” She cut herself off. Something had happened in his face, though his body remained just as before, slouched in the chair, totally relaxed.

      “Don’t tense up,” he said low. “Pretend nothing has changed.”

      “Well, all right.” She sat back herself, crossed her own ankles and drank from her Coke.

      He winked at her. “You’re a champion.”

      “Thank you. And what, by the way, is going on?”

      “Keep your eyes on me.”

      “Okay…”

      “I heard something. I think there’s someone outside the window behind me—and don’t shift your focus there.”

      “You mean—?”

      “Reporters. It looks like they’ve found us, after all. But don’t say it—don’t say anything about it. Whoever’s out there won’t be able to hear much through the window, but the view of your face through those lace curtains should be pretty good, considering that the overhead light is on and the shades are up.”

      She understood. Whoever it was might be able to make out her words as

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