Guilty Pleasures

She glanced at her watch. She’d only been asleep for a couple of hours. She reached for the gun and dragged it closer to her side.

“I’m thinking it’s been a while since you’ve gotten any decent sleep, huh? Actually, I’m guessing it’s been nearly forty hours. You know, the time that prosecutor bit it …”

She squinted at him, sorely tempted to pull the trigger.

“That’s a long time to go without rest. It messes with the system, big-time. Throws you off your game.”

Groaning aloud, she rolled smoothly to her feet, taking the gun with her.

“Hey, a movie song isn’t grounds for execution in most states.”

She opened a drawer, looking to grab something she saw in there earlier. “What movie song?”

“The one I was singing. You know, from Ghost? Patrick Swayze sang it to get Whoopi Goldberg to help him. Just call me Swayze Crazy. Isn’t that how the saying goes?”

“I wouldn’t know. Never saw the movie. As for the song, it was written in the early 1900s, and popularized by Herman and the Hermits in the mid-’60s, a long time before the movie in question.”

“Wow. You’re smart.”

The more he talked, the more her trigger finger itched.

She found what she was looking for and made her way back to him.

“Did you learn that in school? That song bit?” he asked.

“No. My father liked to pretend he lived in a time period other than the one he was in. Either that or he was stuck in the wrong time. I don’t know which.”

“What are you going to—”

She slapped a stretch of duct tape across his sexily infuriating mouth. Then just to be sure, she secured another in the shape of an X.

She looked into his eyes, the deep shade of blowtorch-blue, with lashes that were somehow too thick to be on a man, yet were ridiculously attractive.

Damn, but he was hot.

She licked her lips, momentarily recalling how it had felt to have them pressed against his. Her kiss had been a completely diversionary tactic, she told herself. If she revisited the naughty thoughts she’d originally had of him at the airport … well, that was between her and her bedroll.

His expression was altogether too suggestive. Could he be thinking along the same line?

She cleared her throat and sat back on her heels.

“Oh, and there is more to that song,” she said. “It goes …” She quoted him the full lyrics. “Just so you’ll know the next time you choose to annoy someone.”

If she didn’t know better, she’d say he was grinning at her through the tape.

She cocked her head, her gaze drawn to his mouth. She picked up a red sharpie from a nearby tabletop, uncapped it then drew another X over the tape.

There. A reminder of what was off-limits.

Trouble was? She was having a hard time not thinking X marked the spot.

Yes, he kissed that well.

She gave a mental eye roll, checked his restraints—both still firmly in place—then stretched back across the sleeping bag.

She stared at the grimy windows on the other side of the office.

While her attraction to Reece was purely physical, she needed to remind herself that it was another man who had put her in the position she was in now.

She’d been sixteen, had just lost her father, was living with an emotionally unstable and distant mother … and militia member Gerald Butler had smiled that devastating smile at her, offering her what she thought was everything she’d ever need.

She supposed that had been true … for a time. Two years, to be exact. It had taken her that long to figure out that the group and its ideals weren’t any better than the organized government against which they rebelled.

And that the man with whom she’d fallen in love didn’t know the true meaning of the word.

Of course, she understood how young she’d been then, emotionally as well as in years. And she was happy to say it had been a good long while since she’d actually thought about that time in her life.

Until now.

Until she’d been plucked out of Butler’s files and set up for murder.

Oh, she’d read the news that Gerald had been arrested some time ago for charges that ranged from crimes against the federal government to murder. But she’d barely given the news piece a cursory glance and a heart pang before closing the paper and then lighting her welding torch, returning to her artwork, something that never betrayed her, never lied to her, was always there for her.

If she’d worked for twenty hours straight in order to cleanse thoughts and memories of Butler from her mind before finally collapsing into a dreamless sleep … well, that was between her and the sculpture she’d been working on.

Now, she cleared her throat and rubbed her nose. It was one thing to know someone you loved had never really loved you. Quite another to be set up for murder for reasons she knew benefited him.

“You know, you didn’t ask if I did it …” she said quietly to Reece, her body already beginning to succumb to sleep again. “Just saying. If it were me, it would have been the first question I asked.”

He didn’t respond. Not that he could.

“See you in a while, Reece. Don’t try anything stupid …”

HOURS LATER, JON CURSED himself for not keeping a metal handcuff key in the secret pocket sewn inside the waist of his jeans. Then again, he hadn’t expected to need one.

He did, however, have a small pocket knife and had long since taken it out and freed himself from the plastic restraints, which were tighter then the metal ones. He’d blindly tried to pick the metal lock with the blade, only to cut himself on the pad of his thumb. He felt the blood drip from his fingers, but knew it wasn’t anything serious. It did, however, convince him to stop trying to pick the lock for a while, lest he accidentally hit a vein.

At one point, he’d drifted off to sleep himself, leaning against the metal pole he was tied to. While Mara had switched off the ringer to his phone, she’d left it on Vibrate. And he’d listened as it buzzed almost nonstop where it sat on the desk.

Julie, no doubt.

Damn.

He’d like to say his reaction was because he was afraid she was worried about him. Instead, he was more concerned his cell battery would go dead.

He leaned his head against the pole and cursed.

Julie …