Analise. He might have known. He drew his fingers over his stubbled jaw, needing to feel the slight prickle of reality. “How long have you known Analise?”
“Since about seven this morning. Sit. Eat. You don’t want to be late for church.”
“Church?” He plopped onto the edge of the bed. Damnedest motel he’d ever stayed in. Being served breakfast in his room by the motel owner was nice, but being sent to church was, he thought, a little pushy. However, it was a small price to pay for this kind of food.
He unfolded the napkin, picked up the fork and began to eat.
“Analise told us all about why you’re here, looking for that Abbie Prather person.”
Nick broke open a flaky biscuit, poured gravy over it and crunched another piece of bacon. He wasn’t going to let Analise interfere with this unexpected feast. He wasn’t
“Horace and I bought this place ten years ago from the Claxtons who sold out and moved to Arizona because he had arthritis and they’d heard the climate was better there. We’re from Wisconsin, so this climate seems better to us. It’s all relative, I guess. Anyway, we don’t know Abbie Prather or June Martin, but if she lives out away from everything and keeps to herself, we might not know her since we’ve only been here ten years. I told Analise that the ministers would be the ones to ask because they know everybody.”
Like an embezzler would go to church, Nick thought, breaking open the second biscuit.
“And sure enough, when Analise called Bob Sampson, who pastors the Freewill Baptist Church on Grand Avenue, he told her to come talk to him. Analise said she was sure you wouldn’t mind her borrowing your car and going over there so we wouldn’t have to wake you.”
More gravy on that biscuit, Nick ordered himself Muffle everything this woman is saying with eggs and bacon. Drown it in coffee.
But it was no use. She had his attention.
Analise had borrowed his car? Since he had the only key, that must mean she’d practiced more of her questionable skills and hot-wired it.
“She said to tell you that she’ll be back to get you during Sunday school so you can both go to the service at eleven,” Mabel continued, then shook her head slowly, the action not disturbing her tight curls. “I don’t believe the good Lord will mind if she wears those purple shorts to church, but we’re Methodists. I’m not so sure about those Baptists. I offered to loan her one of my dresses, but she wouldn’t hear of it.”
Purple shorts?
He laid down his fork, drained the cup of coffee and gave up.
Before he was even out of bed, Analise had befriended the motel owners, procured breakfast for him, found a contact who remembered their missing party, stolen his car and gone to church in purple shorts.
And he’d thought he was finished with taking care of, riding herd on and bailing out irresponsible, resourceful females.
Not that his ex-wife, Kay, had ever sent his libido spiraling out of control the way Analise did.
How the heck was he going to keep her out of trouble when he was in major trouble himself?
Analise left the Reverend Robert Sampson’s house and headed back to the motel to get Nick so they could go to church and talk to other long-standing members of the congregation who might remember Abbie Prather—a.k.a. June Martin—and Sara.
A vivid picture was emerging of the woman who’d caused Lucas’s family untold agony, and it wasn’t a pretty one. She’d been so strict on her daughter that even the Reverend Sampson, a by-the-book clergyman, thought she was cruel rather than dedicated.
The decrepit car Analise had borrowed from Nick inched along the asphalt, so slow she wanted to open the door, put her foot out and push. What a difference from her own car, a small red sporty model with five on the floor and enough power to keep her in regular speeding tickets.
But her car was parked at the Tyler airport while she chugged along in this clunker, fighting her impatience to get back to the motel, back to Nick to share her news with him. Not that she was especially anxious to see him again, or that she felt any need to tell him what she’d accomplished, to prove that she wasn’t flaky. It didn’t bother her one bit if he thought she was flaky. And after last night, she’d bet her beloved fast red car that he definitely thought she was.
Yesterday had not been one of her diamond days. More like a lump-of-coal day, actually. And Nick had been the crowning lump, a promise of escalating fiascoes to come if she couldn’t control her obsessive penchant for flirting with trouble.
Nick was the complete opposite of Lucas. Lucas was safety, security, a friend she could count on. Nick was danger, an invitation to the unknown, to taste the exhilaration of a flight into skies that terrified her even as they tempted her, to prove she could do it.
For most of the night she’d lain awake in the hot little room at the motel, trying to forget the way his accidental touch had made her feel, the way the scent of him had invaded her senses and lingered as surely as if he’d been in that bed with her.
She gripped the steering wheel tightly and ordered herself to stop thinking about that. Not only were those inappropriate feelings for an engaged woman, they were inappropriate feelings for a sane woman. Her bad habit of dancing with disaster usually resulted in a catastrophe rather than success.
She’d left her room early and, to her surprise, found a lead, something she could do to be useful, to take her mind off those hazardous-to-her-health feelings. She’d come up with information that would help them locate Abbie...and rescue Sara.
The familiar sound of a siren intruded on her thoughts.
Automatically her foot hit the brake while her eyes scanned the descending speedometer needle.
Damn! Had she been speeding again? What was the speed limit, anyway? She’d been too caught up in her thoughts to notice.
This decrepit car couldn’t possibly be speeding! Maybe the dangling taillight had fallen completely off, or the wire Nick had used to hold up the muffler broke or maybe the car with its three shades of rusty paint and primer violated some law of ugliness.
In her rearview mirror she watched the young officer swagger up to her car.
Swaggering was not a good sign.
She located her driver’s license and held it out the window as the man approached. She didn’t want him to look too closely inside, to see that she’d hot-wired the car rather than wake Nick to ask for the keys, rather than risk going inside that overheated motel room where he slept, probably in the nude, when she was already overheated.
The policeman accepted her license wordlessly then went back to his car to, she assumed, check for wants and warrants. Good grief! The police in Briar Creek never did that! She could be here all day!
Finally he swaggered back and leaned down to look in, dark sunglasses hiding his eyes. She leaned toward him so he couldn’t see the dangling wires.
“Going a little fast, weren’t you, Ms. Brewster?” And she’d have to go twice as fast to make up for lost time after this. “Only a little,” she protested. Why didn’t he give her a clue? Tell her what the speed limit was?
“Oh? How fast do you think you were going?”
How did she know what answer she should give when she had no idea what the speed limit was? “Well, I think possibly the speedometer said somewhere around about the vicinity of fifty-eight.”
He straightened and began to scribble on his clipboard. “The speed limit through this stretch is forty-five. Big sign a mile back.”
Great.