Dark Lover

“Convince me,” he said.

He was hard already—clearly, it didn’t take much. Not that she should criticize, he had a similar effect on her. “Love to,” Sam said softly.

She moved. He held her hand and she ducked under his arm and twisted it behind his back, at lightning speed. It was a move she’d performed hundreds of times, always with the same results—it incapacitated a man, because if she didn’t stop, she’d break his arm. But he moved with her.

As if he knew what she meant to do, he went with her, preventing her from twisting his arm, and they wound up in their starting positions, face-to-face, holding hands, breathing hard.

He grinned. “I was hopin’ fer a different kind of persuasion, Sam.”

She went for his solar plexus. He dodged the attack and lightly blasted her with power, sending her backward, into her car. “Sorry,” he taunted.

She cursed.

He hurried into the street, raising his hand to flag down a taxi. Brakes screeched. Sam launched herself upright as he waved the parcel containing the page at her. Then he opened the driver’s door, pushed the driver out and got in, taking over the wheel.

Sam leapt into her car, turned the ignition on, jammed it into Drive and peeled out after him. Horns blared at her. She ignored the outrage. A Honda crashed into a parked car to avoid hitting her as she barreled through the traffic.

She hit the gas. She was not going to lose him, but there were half a dozen yellow cabs ahead, each identical at this distance. She was careful to keep him in her sights.

His yellow cab suddenly veered away from the group, turning abruptly onto a side street.

Sam cursed, weaving past two taxis to follow him. But a woman and a child were already stepping into the street and she had to slam on the brakes. Maclean was almost at the end of the block and she saw that he was going to run the changing light. “Shit!”

She leaned out of her window. “Move!” she screamed at the woman. She turned her siren on.

The woman leapt across the street, the boy in tow. Sam slammed down the accelerator. Maclean was entering the next intersection, and the light between them had turned red. She cursed and hit the gas harder, using the horn. Miraculously, the New Yorkers about to cross the street actually stopped and she drove furiously forward, into the uptown traffic.

Horns blared, tires screeched. An SUV hit her passenger side door. Sam kept going. The Lexus leapt into the next street, only a half a block between them now.

He was laughing—she just knew it.

Ahead, she saw the cab veer left, heading back downtown.

Sam drove faster, the light ahead still green. Not that it mattered—she was on Broadway now and dozens of pedestrians were jaywalking. She held down the horn, the blare incessant, her sirens still screaming, but the pedestrians ignored her. She braked hard to avoid vehicular manslaughter.

The crowd streamed across the street, blocking her way.

She leaned out of her window, firing her gun into the air. “Get out of my way!”

The men and women walking past her car ran for the safety of the sidewalk.

Sam shot through the intersection.

About twenty yellow cabs were ahead of her.

She slowed, her heart racing, scanning the mass of taxicabs. From behind, most of them looked alike. “Shit.”

The light changed. The traffic moved on. She followed the pack of yellow cabs, now trying to feel him. “Where are you, you sonuvabitch? Which one are you?”

She didn’t expect an answer. But she focused as never before.

And she felt his hot male power. Oh yeah, she did.

Her gaze slammed onto a cab on the right side of the mass. “Gotcha,” she snarled. She turned the wheel hard, cutting off a delivery van, ignoring the driver, who hit the brakes, cursing her through his window. She slammed down the gas and drove her vehicle right into his rear fender.

The cab bounced hard at the contact, the fender crumpling. Then Maclean turned and looked over his shoulder at her.

He was laughing.

“I’m having the last laugh, Maclean,” she said. “And I am staying right here, glued to your shiny yellow ass.” She smiled, wondering what he would do next.

She found out two blocks later. Suddenly he swerved toward the sidewalk and she followed him, determined to stay with him. Maclean looked like he was going to hit the patrons of a sidewalk café, and the masses screamed, people diving away from their tables and chairs. He swerved again. Sam followed as he drove into the exit ramp of a parking garage—at full speed.

He was testing her, she thought grimly, her hands clamped on the steering wheel. But she did not have a death wish. The exit ramp spiraled tightly upward—making it impossible to see who was coming down.

Sam slowed fractionally.

And as she turned the corner, she saw a car swerving away from the down ramp to avoid a head-on collision with Maclean.

Maclean swerved between two pillars to avoid the next descending car and Sam came hood to hood with it. She swerved, hard, bouncing into the ramp’s concrete wall, metal screaming. The oncoming Volkswagen hit the ramp wall dead on.

Breathing hard, Maclean no longer in sight, she took the next corner. She swerved to avoid another descending car and sideswiped some parked vehicles, while the passing vehicle hit the garage posts. The next car coming down the ramp swerved to avoid a head-on collision, as did Sam. She drove her Lexus hard up the ramp, against the concrete wall, sparks shooting off her car. She heard the car she had just passed collide with either the ramp wall or a pillar.

And when she turned the next corner, she was on the garage’s top level. Maclean was racing the taxicab through the rows of parked cars.

Sam hit the brakes. The top level was mostly unoccupied, and she could see that the roof of the garage was a rectangle. The buildings on three sides were taller; she did not know what was on the fourth side.

Where was he going?

The only place for him to go was down, but he’d sped by the entrance ramp, and he was far from where she sat at the top of the exit ramp.

Sam realized he was heading for the open side of the garage. She shifted into gear and drove toward it.

Maclean didn’t stop.

Sam was close enough now to realize that the roof of the adjacent building was about two stories below the garage’s top floor. And she realized what he was going to do.

She braked hard. “Are you crazy?” she cried.

And as she spoke, the cab hit the low barrier wall, went through it and was briefly suspended in the air.

Then it fell.

And it landed hard on the lower roof.

Sam leapt from her Lexus and ran across the garage to the barrier wall. Below, she saw the cab on the asphalt roof, looking somewhat mangled. The driver side door opened and Ian Maclean got out.

He waved at her and, holding the parcel, started across the roof. A moment later he’d entered the building, disappearing from her view.