Drive: Cougars, Cars and Kink, Book 1 Read online

  Suzanne had one of those thoughts that made her giggle despite everything. “So she also knows John. Does that mean what I think it means?”

  He snorted. “If I refuse to answer, you’ll just know the answer’s yes. So yeah, we know each other through Boston Kinksters. And that’s all I’m saying.”

  “Fine. I’ll pick Janice’s brain tonight.” She hesitated then added, “I mean, I appreciate the offer of a place to stay, but I don’t want to impose, and I’d be safe at Janice’s.”

  “Scary as Janice can be when it suits her purposes or her friends’ fantasies, I’d rather have you with me.” His voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper and she realized that despite everything, her libido wasn’t dead, though it was shell-shocked and exhausted as the rest of her. “I’m a cop, after all. Protect and serve. It’s what I do.”

  Part of her desperately wanted to agree, but she was too frazzled to gauge whether it was the sensible part or the scared-shitless part or even the sensitive, excitable, sexy one that suggested that hot, rough sex would work as stress relief. “I’ll meet you at your place after we’re both off work. I’ll even stay there tonight—hell, we might as well get some fun out of this mess. I’m not moving in or anything. Don’t want to disturb your dad.” Don’t want to endanger your dad, she meant, picturing a frail older man, but not wanting to say it.

  “Eh.” Neil shrugged. “Once a cop, always a cop. Feeling like he has something to do other than fix cars will do him good.” He paused. “I have to get going. I’m running late as it is. But I don’t want to leave you.”

  He drew her into his arms.

  Suzanne waved at Mrs. Wurstoff’s window before throwing herself into the kiss.

  It wasn’t like yesterday’s passionate devouring, but Mrs. Wurstoff had had a long, happy marriage herself and she’d know what she was seeing. This was a kiss that reassured and comforted on one level, but at the same time it was a kiss that marked and possessed. If Suzanne believed in New Age fluffer-nutter stuff, she’d say Neil was imparting some bit of his spirit, some spark of himself, into her as a shield. Something to bolster her courage, but also meant to ward off danger by sending up an invisible signal: this woman is under my protection and I will keep her safe. Do not harm her or you’ll mess with me.

  She opened her mouth beneath his lips, welcomed his tongue and felt some of the tension flee her body.

  Maybe there was something to New Age fluffer-nutter stuff. She felt stronger already, more able to cope. And if he actually did put some kind of glowing magic shield on her, well, she could use it.

  The kiss ended much too soon, though she supposed they both had to get to their respective jobs. As she stepped away, Neil grasped her wrist, pulled her close again. “Take it easy today,” he said, “because I have plans for you tonight. We may both be fried, but I think we’ll need to blow off some steam.”

  A frisson of pleasurable nerves cascaded through her body. It didn’t overcome the cold anxiety that filled her, but it took the edge off.

  She could get through today. And tonight she and Neil would help each other find the bliss they’d enjoyed before everything went crazy.

  Chapter Eleven

  Neil’s shift was drawing to a blurry, over-caffeinated close when he got a call on his cell from an unfamiliar number. Normally he ignored such calls; on the rare occasions they were legit, he’d get a message. But he had a feeling about this one.

  Yup. Suzanne. “Got a new phone. I think I’ll last about another day without going nuts because I can’t get online easily, or listen to my music, but at least I can say I have a burn phone, which sounds very spy-like.” She took a deep breath. “Don’t mind me. I’ve personally made sure the Bellwood Dunkin Donuts is having a profitable month, so I’m babbling. Hell, they could close until Thanksgiving and they’d still be in the black thanks to me.”

  He wanted to still her mouth with his, capture her tongue. Not that he had a problem with babbling. Talking that much would take more energy than he had right now or he might be doing it too. He had definitely had too much caffeine in his system and too many disjointed thoughts running through his brain.

  At the moment, all the random thoughts were being replaced by ones of kissing Suzanne. That was good, right?

  Doing anything more than kissing might take more energy than he had, not that he’d ever admit it to anyone else, but damned if thinking about it wasn’t giving him a pleasant little jolt. Not in his brain, where he really needed it, but at least the blood was flowing less sluggishly somewhere.

  “Glad you have a phone again. Any problems today?”

  “Other than almost falling asleep standing up, and getting distracted by the jar of wooden utensils on my client’s kitchen counter? It’s been quiet, thank goodness. I talked to Detective Cardoza again. She checked in to say it would be a while before they had any real information, which you’d already told me, but she said I’m not being paranoid to not want to stay here, just sensible.” Her over-caffeinated, exhausted babbling was kind of adorable, but since he was over-caffeinated and exhausted too, he wasn’t sure he could say that and have it sound like a compliment.

  “I could have told you that. In fact, I did tell you that.” He lowered his voice as he said it, tried to sound as sexily menacing as he could manage in his sleep-deprived state. Damn, the woman just brought out his Dom side, no matter what the circumstances. “Weren’t you listening?”

  “You did. I just thought it was good…well, not good, but useful…that she agreed.” Suzanne dropped her voice. “Do I get a spanking for not believing you or something?”

  He pictured Suzanne over his knees, bare ass waiting for the spanking to come. Now that was an image that woke a guy up. “Maybe.” It might have to be tomorrow, but that was a cold dose of reality they’d worry about later. He was teasing and flirting now, not making definite plans. “But not as a punishment, as a reward for being smart. Though you may get a spanking for not telling me about Janice sooner. Not that you had any idea there was a reason to, but it’s the principle of the thing.”

  “I’m sure she’d agree with you. She’s big on the principle of the thing with her boys, as long as it’s fun for everyone.” She made a small, happy noise. “I’d like to talk more about that, but you’re still at work.”

  “Until four. I was catching up on reports, but I should still get going. Never know when things will stop being so quiet.” He gave her directions to his house, knowing she hadn’t been paying attention last night, resisted the urge to blow a kiss into the phone since someone was bound to notice and ask pointed, locker-room type questions. Cops were big on giving each other a hard time as a way to blow off steam.

  Not being at work, she did make kissy noises into the phone, which gratified him than he cared to admit. “See you later, then.” She drew in a deep breath and blurted out, “Frank had a second phone, which was part of why I thought he was cheating. I stashed it at Janice’s because I figured someday I’d have the guts to try to crack his password but I didn’t want to look at it. I need to get it back.”

  He realized his sergeant was staring at him from across the room, so he shuffled papers on his desk and rolled his eyes, pretending he was listening to the blah-blah-blah of someone who wouldn’t let him get a word in edgewise to hang up without being rude.

  “We need to,” Neil said, lowering his voice. “I think the two of us paying Janice a visit has humor potential. Or horror potential, but I’ll go with humor for now.”

  * * * * *

  Ensconced in a comfortably shabby pleather chair in the Bellwood library, Suzanne double-checked Neil’s directions on Google maps on her tablet; he’d rattled them off so quickly she wasn’t sure she’d caught them all. She chose the most important contacts from her iCloud account and added them to her phone, cursing the necessity of a simple burn phone that wouldn’t sync. But at least she had the numbers. She lef
t a voice mail for Janice, who was probably writing and ignoring the phone (or maybe doing something pleasurably evil to some lucky man; Suzanne preferred that idea). And then, since she had WiFi here and traffic closer to Boston was going to be a bitch at this time of the afternoon, she decided to check her email.

  She was proud of herself for not screaming when she opened her Gmail account and saw an email with the subject line, “Require information on Frank Mayhew’s work.” The sender was an obvious alias, and the sheer blandness of [email protected] made her shudder.

  A legit business contact wouldn’t use such a lame alias.

  Hell, a legit business contact would be in touch with Frank’s company, not with her. He’d been the mastermind behind it, but he’d had a lot of talented employees and Mayhew Robotics, led by his former second-in-command, Ly Vo, was doing fine without him. A business contact wouldn’t be bugging Frank’s widow in such a weird, unprofessional way.

  For a bitter second, she wanted to laugh. She’d be glad to tell them, whoever they were, about Frank’s work, except she knew nothing about his recent projects. The last one he’d talked about much was the improvements on robotic manufacturing thingamabobbies, but that had been a few years ago. More recently, his company had been working on a still-unreleased product to aid with situations like mountain rescue, but that was as much as she knew, and she’d gleaned that accidentally.

  How would robots help with mountain rescue? Her brain whirred frantically and she pictured R2D2 laboring up snow-covered Mount Washington, beeping and chirping to call for a lost hiker.

  Drones. Drones could be used for aerial searches in places humans couldn’t easily reach. And robotics and drones kind of went together.

  Oh holy shit. Frank had been developing drones.

  Drones had civilian uses, but any innovations could have military or intelligence applications too.

  That explained why he didn’t talk about work anymore. Not because he was banging a coworker, or because he’d finally gotten frustrated with how little she could understand his techthusiam, but because he was either working on something for the military or something that could be stolen and adapted by someone else’s military or intelligence against the US. Even if he’d designed these robots-or-drones for mountain rescue, and who knew if that was the whole truth, they could probably be repurposed for deadlier uses.

  The more people knew the more chances someone would let something slip to the wrong person, and you’d eventually get closed-mouthed even with your spouse.

  The quiet library closed in around her, its silence no longer peaceful but threatening, that moment just before something terrible happens in a suspense film too classy to resort to cheesy music to crank up the fear.

  She’d always thought silence worked just fine in scary movies. Silence in an almost deserted library worked even better.

  Something rustled in the distance. Footsteps on the marble floor. Maybe a voice.

  Her throat constricted, making it hard to draw a breath. Her hands shook.

  One of the librarians, someone she knew from Thursday night yoga classes, walked into the room with an older man carrying old-school honest-to-God microfiche. She waved at Suzanne but was seemingly too busy to talk.

  Thank goodness. If someone asked how she was doing, she might lose it. But seeing that familiar face and pleasant, neighborly smile, she could at least draw a breath again.

  Right. The email was alarming, but SUV-guy and his creepy cohorts weren’t going to hang around the library all day to see if she came in.

  She hoped, anyway.

  Suzanne logged out of her email. No way she was going to look at that one without Neil by her side. A moment later, she’d logged out of everything.

  Time to head to Neil’s.

  She might end up stuck in traffic, but a moving target, or even a stuck-on-the-highway target, was harder to catch than a stationary one.

  And she really liked the idea of being in a house with one current and one retired cop right about now. The fact that the current cop was sexy and dominant and miraculously hot for her middle-aged self might be a factor again when she actually saw his gorgeous face and smoking body.

  Right now, she was more interested in the fact that he had a gun and knew how to use it, and presumably knew what to do if trouble found them because her plan consisted of screaming and running.

  That never worked so well in the movies. She doubted it would work better in real life.

  Chapter Twelve

  Once she was locked in the car, she texted Neil with the latest development: They emailed. Want info on Frank’s projects. Drones? He answered almost immediately: Be careful. Nothing more. Maybe there was nothing more he could say until he got more information himself. And God knows it was good advice.

  Suzanne checked the rearview obsessively for the entire drive, but no one seemed to be following her on the highway. A car lurked behind her off the highway. A lot of them did, of course, but this one was right on her tail as she made her way to Neil’s street. That made her even more nervous than she already was, but it was a very ordinary looking Toyota Corolla with a replacement hood that didn’t match the rest of the car. You wouldn’t drive something like that if you were stalking someone, would you? The SUVs from yesterday were high-end, tastefully expensive, and powerful. The white hood and slightly battered blue body of this car were memorable and at the same time distinctly clunky. She’d think they’d want a car that could get away fast if it needed to, not what Frank would describe as a mom-box powered by hamsters—and judging from the looks of the car, tired hamsters.

  But what did she know? Maybe it was protective coloration to fit into this working-class neighborhood and that ugly shell concealed a powerful engine and 007-type toys.

  She’d seen too many damn James Bond movies because she could imagine the illusion of an old Toyota falling away to reveal something sleek, dangerous and armed.

  To her relief, it had pulled into a driveway halfway down the block. A perfectly ordinary, non-scary young black woman got out and started fussing with the toddler Suzanne hadn’t been able to see in the back seat.

  Suzanne breathed a sigh of relief when she pulled up in front of Neil’s. She was safe now.

  By some strange alchemy of sleep-deprivation and terror, Suzanne was more awake and less foggy than she had been more than twelve sleepless hours ago. This time the details of Neil’s house registered on her.

  His hands-on approach to cars extended to the house, or so she imagined. It was an older side-by-side two-family, nothing elegant, but both the pale yellow exterior of the house and the tiny yard were neat, well-maintained. The house had been sided recently, she’d guess. No flowers or anything frou-frou decorated the lawn, but one small, carefully pruned weeping tree of some sort, maybe an ornamental cherry, took up most of one half of the tight space.

  She parked on the street, mentally noting that she’d have to move it that evening. Maybe Neil would have a better idea where to leave it, but she didn’t want to take up the driveway, not knowing who might be coming or going.

  Before she got out of the locked car, she took a good look up and down the street, searching for anything that looked out of place. Not like she knew exactly what she was looking for, but she’d start with SUVs that cost more than the down payment on a house in this part of town or anyone who’d pulled in about the same time she did and was hanging out in their car for no apparent reason.

  Especially an “anyone” in an expensive-looking suit, which again didn’t fit with the tone of the neighborhood. She liked the neighborhood that was so similar to Neil’s house: well-maintained, comfortable, but not the domain of men in custom suits and women in Jimmy Choo shoes. Nor was it hipster ironically gritty and retro, like the neighborhoods inhabited by artsy types who drank Pabst Blue Ribbon with their grass-fed organic $20 a pound buffalo steaks because the favo
rite beer of broke college students and underpaid blue-collar workers was suddenly cool again.

  She didn’t see anything obvious. She looked again, because damn it, she’d feel like an idiot if she got kidnapped or died or whatever the mysterious “people” wanted because she missed something she should have spotted.

  Her mouth and throat were desert dry and she hadn’t thought to grab any water in the flight from Bellwood. She swallowed hard, took a deep breath.

  No fancy SUVs, no one in a suit or otherwise looking out of place. No one had any reason to know she was here. The break-in and the email both proved that whatever was going on, it was targeted at her, or more precisely at Frank through her, so they weren’t after Neil, had no reason to know who he was.

  Probably. But who knew what resources the mysterious “they” had? If this was really all about drones, “they” might be honest-to-God spies with covert information sources she could scarcely imagine.

  That train of thought would keep her sitting in the car all night, or at least until she swallowed her pride, phoned Neil inside the house, and begged him to come and get her—preferably armed.

  And that would be taking her fear too far. Sure, she had every right to be scared. Terrified, even. But she could make it a few feet from the curb to Neil’s door without an armed escort.

  She looked around one last time before she unlocked her door, thinking as she did that some neighbor was probably watching her and wondering if she should call the cops about the weird lady loitering on their quiet street.

  She grabbed her little bag of clothes and got out of the car, looking up as she did at a graying late-day sky with a few red streaks toward the west, electric lines and, far overhead, a seagull.

  For all she knew, that seagull might be a drone. She’d seen a few pictures of drones on TV, but there were many types. Wouldn’t it be genius to make a surveillance drone that looked like a common bird?