“How civil of you.” She grabbed Rachel from his arms. “Not often one meets a car thief and killer who’s such a good citizen.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “I do my best.”
“How did you get from the parking lot to the terminal?” she demanded. “You weren’t on my shuttle. You weren’t in the lot.”
“I had a motorcycle in the back of the van,” he said. “And that is the last question I am answering for now, so shut up. Try not to leave prints on the van, no? Things are complicated enough. Do not put the child in the seat yet. Stay down on the floor until we are on the road.”
That sounded wise, so she placed Rachel on the floor in front of the backseat and huddled beside her until she felt the van stop. The window hummed down, the exchange was made. The turn, a smooth acceleration, and they were off. She went limp with shivering relief.
“All clear,” he said.
Tam hoisted Rachel up into the car seat and strapped her in. She grabbed the clammy, chilly little hands and chafed them. It alarmed her, the way the child’s head lolled. Her heartbeat was frantic, like a little bird. It made her feel horribly helpless.
“Janos, do you have a plan?” she demanded. “And does it include telling me what the fuck just happened back there?”
“Yes and yes.” He was using that super-cool, even voice again. “We leave this van in the mall parking lot, retrieve my car, and go straight to a comfortable hotel where we can rest safely, and talk at great length about many things that will interest you. That is the plan.”
“Why don’t you tell me about the things that will interest me now, and then I decide if I’m interested in going to this hotel with you?”
“No,” he said. “I am driving now. Not talking.”
“What bullshit,” she said sharply. “You appear to be a very talented multitasker. And I am curious right now. Not later.”
“You will be just as curious later. How is the child?”
Hah. The master of diversion. She stroked Rachel’s clammy cheek. “Ice cold, racing heart, won’t talk to me, won’t make eye contact. Shocky. Why? Don’t try to tell me that you care.”
He caught her glance in the rearview mirror and gave her a reproving frown. “That is unjust.”
His aggrieved tone set her right off on a rampage. “Oh, is it? None of this crazy shit would have happened to her at all if you hadn’t fucked with our lives and put us on the run, you meathead moron.”
“It would have happened,” he said. “Be glad it happened here and not at your home, where I would not have been able to help.”
“I’m supposed to be grateful? Spare me. Rachel, baby, are you in there? Anybody home? Talk to Mamma. Come on.” She patted Rachel’s cheeks, gulping back tears. Now was not the time, damn it.
Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a large dark splotch high on Janos’s coat sleeve. She leaned over the seat to take a closer look.
“Hey. You were shot,” she said in an accusing voice.
He grunted. “It is nothing.”
Macho cave man talk. Nothing, her ass. “Nothing meaning what?” she demanded. “Meaning there’s a bullet embedded in your arm, but it’s really nothing?”
“It is not embedded. It grazed me only. It is nothing,” he reiterated, his voice hard. “Please do not try to tell me that you care.”
Was he for real? “I most certainly won’t and don’t,” she informed him. “Go ahead, Janos. Bleed. Do you need me to drive?”
“No,” he growled.
“Do not, I repeat, not faint behind the wheel with my kid in the car,” she warned. “Or I will rip your head off your neck. Is that clear?”
He made a frustrated sound. “Be silent. We will talk later.”
He stopped responding to anything she said after that, maintaining a silence that drove her insane, but it wasn’t long until he pulled into the strip mall lot. He pulled in next to a BMW SUV, and began transferring her diaper bag, purse, and jewelry case from one vehicle to the other while she pried Rachel out of the car seat.
As if it was a done deal. Arrogant dick.
He jerked open her door and held out his arms for Rachel. Tam shrank back, clutching the limp child to her chest. “Actually, this is the part where Rachel and I thank you for your help, and wish you a very nice life,” she said. “Good-bye, Janos. Please don’t keep in touch.”
The steel in his dark eyes was utterly at odds with his goofy disguise. “You need help,” he said.
“And you think you’re helping me?” she flared. “By messing with my babysitter? Turning the cops on me, slandering me to Rachel’s adoption agency? Trashing my passports?”
“I did my best for you and your daughter back in that shuttle,” he said. “Draw your conclusions, but draw them fast. If you want to fight me, you will lose. You are strong, but I am stronger. You have your poison trinkets, I have knives and guns. You have a child who needs rest, perhaps medical care. Think, Steele. If I wanted you dead, you would be dead. Don’t be a fool. Get in the fucking car, and stop giving me trouble.”
She assessed her options in a split second. She could call the McClouds for backup, but if these men had gotten so close to her, chances were they already knew about her connection with the McClouds, which meant that Rachel wouldn’t be safe with any of them.
Nor would any family be who was looking after her.
But she could not deal with this alone and unarmed. With a toddler in her arms, she was toast. If she’d needed any further demonstration of that, she’d gotten it this morning.
She was just so tired, so rattled. She needed so badly for Janos’s offer of help to be real, she could not trust her own instincts. After all, Georg Luksch had paid him to drag her in, for God’s sake. And the man had a hidden agenda the size of Hong Kong. She could feel it like a subterranean earthquake, rumbling in the depths. And whatever the hell his agenda might be, it could not possibly be good news for her.
But God, she was tired. Inside and out. Tired of being alone, relying only on her own strength, her own energy. And already well into an adrenaline crash, as if some part of her had decided that the danger was past and she was safe to have her meltdown here and now. Hah.
She looked around. It was the crack of dawn, it was really cold, they were in a desolate, deserted strip mall where nothing would be open for hours. Rachel was shivering in her arms.
Janos waited, challenging her with his eyes to look inside him and find a lie. She blinked at the stinging fog of tears and looked, hard.
She did not see one. Fuck it. He’d saved their lives, even if he’d messed with them first. She let out a jerky breath and handed Rachel to him. “All right,” she whispered.
Chapter
10
Val slouched in a chair by the bed, grateful for the warmth and silence of the hotel room. Steele cuddled her child under the blankets.
He was immensely relieved that he had not been compelled to use force. He did not want to hurt her, and she was so quick and strong, it would have been inevitable if she had resisted. With the child already so traumatized, it would have been unpleasant, to say the least.
Steele was not doing well. Her lips were bluish, her eyes shadowed, her face an ashy gray. She hugged the child tightly to her body, stroking and murmuring. Rachel’s closed eyes looked sunken in her pinched white face.
He,