Joe remained silent. She shot a look at him, alarmed by the way he lay half-sprawled across the seat. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” he gritted in a tone that told her he was anything but.
Her heart dropped. “You got hit.”
“I don’t think it’s bad.”
Jane gripped the steering wheel and pressed the pedal to the floor. “God, where’s the nearest hospital? Maybe we should stop and call 911-”
“No!” Joe pushed himself up to a straighter sitting position. “No paramedics. It’s not that bad.”
She flicked on the interior light and he squinted at her, his face pale and sweaty. “Not that bad?”
“Just-the next wide place on the shoulder, pull off. Okay? And turn off that light!”
She turned it off, plunging the interior of the truck cab into darkness again. She could hear Joe’s soft pants of pain and considered defying his wishes. But then she spotted a widening of the shoulder straight ahead and slowed to pull to the side of the highway. She put the truck in Park and turned to Joe. “What now?”
“I need you to get out of the truck and start feeling around the undercarriage.”
“What?”
“Just do it!” He took a couple of swift, shallow breaths and added, “Please?”
Jane cut the engine and got out of the truck. She left the door open so she could hear Joe. “What am I looking for?”
“Anything stuck to the truck’s underside that doesn’t feel like it belongs,” he answered, his voice thready.
“Keep going.”
She felt her way around the front of the truck and started down the passenger side. Just behind the passenger door, her fingers ran into something hard and cold. “I think I found something.”
Joe lowered the window. “Can you pull it away from the truck?”
She jerked her hand away, a sudden, horrifying thought darting through her mind. “Is it a bomb?”
“I doubt it. Why shoot at us if we were rigged to blow?” Joe leaned his head against the window frame. “Just see if you can pull it off.”
She reached under the truck, grabbed the edges of the square object and gave a tug. It popped free and she stood up straight, holding it out for Joe to see.
He took it from her and studied it in the pale glow of the truck’s dome light. Muttering a soft curse, he handed it back to her. “Throw it as far away as you can.”
“What is it?”
“Just throw it away and get back in the truck. We need to get a move on.”
Biting back her irritation, she hurled the small metal box into the scrubby underbrush lining the highway, then slid behind the steering wheel. “Done. Now, are you going to tell me what the hell that was?”
“It was a GPS tracker.”
It took a second to place what he was talking about. “Someone was tracking us? Who?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” He reached for the seat belt, grimacing as he tried to slip the metal tab into the buckle.
Jane reached across and buckled the belt for him. She took a moment to adjust her own seat forward so she could better reach the pedals. Taking a couple of slow, deep breaths to fight the flood of adrenaline coursing through her bloodstream, she pulled onto the highway. “So, what do we do now?”
“We don’t keep going to Boise,” Joe said. “We need to find a place that nobody would think to connect to either of us.”
“Somewhere secluded?” she asked, her mind racing to think of an answer.
“Yeah.”
The problem was, she was almost as much a stranger to the area as he was. She’d spent most of the past five months in the little apartment she’d shared with Angie. Most of her trips out of town had been doctor’s appointments in Ketchum or the occasional day trip to Boise. The only time she’d spent more than a few hours out of town had been the previous Christmas, when Angie had invited her to spend the holiday with her family up at their cabin in the Sawtooth Mountains-the cabin!
“I know a place,” she said aloud.
THOUGH JANE had closed the door to the tiny bathroom, Joe couldn’t miss the retching sounds. He had to hand it to her, however; she’d made it through the nasty job of cleaning up and binding his gunshot wound before her stomach finally rebelled.
He pressed his hand to his aching side, where Jane had carefully picked singed pieces of his shirt from his ragged bullet wound, then bandaged him with what he suspected was a sanitary napkin, although he hadn’t wanted to ask. At this point he hurt too much to care.
He heard the bathroom door open and Jane’s soft footfalls moving up behind him. She smelled like mint toothpaste and soap. He pushed himself up to a wobbly sitting position to watch her approach.
She sat next to him. “You still hanging in there?”
Her hip pressed against his, warm and soft. It chased away some of the chill that had wrapped itself around him like a shroud. “Yep.”
She brushed his hair back from his forehead, her touch soothing. Now that she was closer, he could smell the soft, clean scent that belonged to her alone. He breathed as deeply as he dared, filling his lungs with her. Filling his muddled mind with memories.
“Do you remember-” he started, then caught himself. “’Course you don’t remember. You don’t remember anything.” His brain was beginning to feel fuzzy.
“Shh,” she soothed him, laying the back of her hand on his forehead. “You need to try to sleep.”
He caught her hand and squeezed. “The room’s spinning.”
Her lips curved slightly, prompting him to try to remember what she looked like with a full smile. “Joe, let’s lie down now-”
He let go of her hand and curled his palm around the back of her neck, ignoring the jolt of pain in his side. “Let’s do,” he said, pulling her to him.
She tumbled against his chest, her hands flattening against his chest. “Joe-”
He shushed her with his mouth.
Chapter Five
He tasted of heat and a hint of bourbon from the couple of sips she’d given him from the Carlyle family stock before she cleaned his wound. Her head swam and her whole body seemed to go tingly and numb as his tongue danced against hers in a deep, shattering kiss.
He slid his hands lazily down her back, his fingertips tracing the contours of her spine in slow, deliberate circles. Heat poured into her center, sheer sensation driving her as she straddled his hips and pressed hard against him, seeking more.
But as her whole body burst into flaming need, his hands slackened against her back and slid away. His mouth went soft beneath hers.
She pulled away and pushed her tangled hair out of her eyes, gazing down at him. His eyes were closed, his mouth still slightly open and glistening with the moisture of their kisses. His breathing was slow and even, and when she touched his bare chest, she felt his pulse strong and rhythmic beneath her fingertips. He was just asleep, she reassured herself.
A low, unsteady chuckle escaped her as she pushed herself off him and retreated to a chair a few feet away from the bed. Her body still thrummed with arousal, but she pushed away the sensation ruthlessly, closing her eyes against the sight of Joe’s bare, toned torso and tight jeans that revealed arousal, even now. He shifted slightly in the bed, a low sound grumbling up from his chest.
