He laughed like we were on a first date and I’d just told a good joke.
Like we were walking through a fucking meadow and not a vandalized gas station convenience store.
And somehow, that husky grind of vocal cords made me smile too.
He tugged on my hand again, breaking into a jog as we hit the door to the shop. We rocketed through it into the hot spring night. The scent of asphalt was rich in the air from being baked all day under the sun and then rained on during a brief spring shower. Under that, a faint whiff of Aaron’s masculine cologne reminded me of cigarettes after sex.
We pulled up short at a massive black Harley Davidson motorcycle with blue flames painted onto the body. Seeing it doused me with cold water. It was a good reminder that the man holding my hand was just as dangerous, if not more so, than the guys he’d beaten into mincemeat back in the store.
This man was a weapon. The only question was whether he would attack or defend me.
Given what just happened, I was optimistically inclined toward the latter.
“Fucking motherfuckers,” Aaron cursed savagely as he noted the slashed tires on his bike. “Fuck!”
He turned as if he planned to stalk back into Evergreen Gas and beat themagainfor daring to touch his ride. A part of me wanted to roll my eyes,bikers and their fucking bikes.
It was lucky that we turned back to look at the store, though, because one of the nylon-masked men had dragged himself to his feet and was stumbling to the door.
“Fuck,” Aaron cursed again, and I had the sense it was a well-used word in his lexicon.
“The van,” I pointed out, jerking my chin at the rusty, dishwater-grey van parked at one of the pumps. “You have thekeys in the pocket of the jacket you took from one of the guys, remember?”
Now that I wasn’t being threatened with sexual assault, my natural calmness had kicked in. Sure, it was a fucked-up situation, but I’d been through enough like it, if not worse, to keep my head.
Aaron cocked a brow at me, then shook his head as if he wanted to piece me together like a puzzle, but he knew he didn’t have the time. Instead, he led me again by the hand to the van and opened the driver’s side door with a key on a Morton BBQ keychain. When I moved to go around to the passenger side, the door to the gas station exploded open.
“You’re both fuckingdead,” the man screamed across the tarmac.
“Get in,” Aaron barked, lifting me easily with both hands on my waist and thrusting me into the driver’s seat before following in quickly after me. For a single moment, we were tangled in the seat, his big hand on my thigh, squeezing tightly in a way that shot sparks straight to my groin. And then I was scrambling over the console awkwardly with the bat in my hand, his shoulder pressing into me for momentum.
The first gunshotcracked across the empty lot and pinged against the metal pillar beside the van.
“The fuckin’ idiot,” Aaron grumbled as he cranked the old engine to life and peeled the van into a half donut to reverse out of the station. “Shooting at a goddamn gas station.”
On cue, our attacker fired again, the bullet lodging with a sharpclickandthudinto the side of the van. Aaron cursed again under his breath but otherwise seemed perfectly calm as he efficiently maneuvered the ungainly van around the pumps and out onto the street leading to the Sea to Sky Highway.
I sat there for a moment before I realized I’d clutched the bat to my chest like a shield. A little laugh expelled with my breath as I carefully lowered it into my lap.
“You got a thing for baseball?” Aaron asked so dryly that I wasn’t certain he was joking at first.
A shocked smile tweaked the left side of my mouth. “Please, the Seattle Mariners are the only team to support over here, and they suck.”
I tried not to be too pleased when Aaron tipped his head back, strong throat working around a hearty laugh. When he was finished, he peered at me under a dislodged piece of dark hair falling across his forehead. I noticed his slight widow’s peak and loved the slightly piratical look it gave him.
“You seem pretty damn calm after what just happened,” he noted, but a question was buried there.
“Because I’m making quips about one of the world’s most boring sports?” I returned with a shrug. “Some people use humour as a shield, you know?”
He snorted, checking the rearview mirror for pursuers. “Yeah, I know a little somethin’ about that.”
“You think they’ll follow us?” I asked, turning in my own seat to train my eyes on the dark stretch of the highway behind us. The ocean glittered like navy velvet beneath diamanté moonlight to one side of the asphalt, and mountains rose on the other, steep and forebodingly black in the night.
“Depends on what they got in this piece’a shit,” he muttered. “You wanna check it out?”
I hadn’t buckled my belt yet, so I just turned in the seat and crawled over the console into the shadowy depths of the van. It only took me a moment to realize I wished I hadn’t.
There was money, stacks of it, in an open duffel bag to one side and another that rattled when I unzipped it to reveal thousands of dollars worth of jewelry. My sparkly silver nailcaught on the scalloped edge of a diamond necklace, lifting it from the tangled mess of expensive gems. It had to have been at least a hundred thousand dollars just for the one adornment hanging from my finger.
