Susan Phillips - The Great Escape

“You’ve been acting like you do.”

“I have not!”

He ran the flat of his hand over one pectoral and glanced toward the TV. “Just as well, I guess.”

The crazy part of her wanted to know why it was “just as well.” She clenched her teeth.

He returned his attention to her. “I like it rough, and you don’t seem the type.” He snapped her thigh with his thumb and second finger. “You sure you don’t want to change your mind?”

She wrenched her leg away and rubbed the sting he’d inflicted. “Positive.”

“How do you know you won’t like it?”

He was still looming over her, and her heart was thudding. Nine years of Secret Service protection had allowed her to take her safety for granted, but there was no friendly agent stationed outside the motel room door now. She was on her own. “I just know, that’s all.”

His thin lips twisted. “You’re fucking up my vacation. You understand that, right?”

“I’m paying you.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve decided you’re not paying me enough. I was straight with you from the start. I told you I wanted to get laid.” He reached for the sheet she’d twisted around her body.

She grabbed at it. “Stop right there! Back off.”

Something disturbing flickered in his eyes. “You’ll like it. I’ll make you like it.”

It sounded like a line from a bad movie, but he looked as though he’d thought it up all by himself. She couldn’t believe this was happening. She hauled herself up against the headboard, frightened and furious. “You’re not going to touch me, and you know why? Because if you do, the full power of the United States justice system is going to come crashing down on you.”

“Your word against mine.” He curled his lip.

“Exactly. An ex-con and the president’s daughter. You figure it out.”

She’d finally penetrated that thick skull. With a dark mutter, he shot her a sneer and retreated to his cave.

She stayed upright, her spine pressed to the headboard, her blood still racing. She clutched the sheet to her chest, as if that would protect her if he changed his mind.

It was over. He’d made the choice for her. She couldn’t spend another day with him, not after this. First thing tomorrow, she’d call her family, find an airport, and fly home. Her adventures as Viper, the biker girl, were over.

Fly back home to what? Her family’s disappointment? The job she’d started to hate?

She tucked the sheet around her body, feeble armor. Why couldn’t he be a harmless drifter who’d let her hitch a ride without giving her any trouble? She pressed her head between the pillows again, trepidation and resentment churning inside her. Through the slit of light, she watched him across the narrow space that separated their beds. The walls were thin. She was afraid to shut her eyes. If he made another move, she’d scream. Surely even in this seedy motel, someone would hear her.

He lay on his back with his ankles crossed, the remote propped on his chest, his hair inky against the pillow propped behind his head. He’d switched from monster trucks to bass fishing, and he looked perfectly relaxed, not at all like a man with rape on his mind.

Perfectly, totally relaxed…

Maybe it was a trick of the flickering light from the television, but she swore she saw the faintest smile of satisfaction lurking at the corners of those thin lips.

She squinted. Shifted the pillows ever so slightly. It wasn’t her imagination. He looked smug, not sinister.

He looked like a man who’d figured out the perfect way to get rid of an unwanted nuisance and come out a thousand dollars richer.

SHE GOT DRESSED IN THE bathroom the next morning and didn’t speak to him until they’d been served at a pancake place wedged between a service station and a thrift shop. Some of the diners were women, but most were men wearing caps that ranged from the trucker variety to sports teams. They eyed Panda suspiciously, but no one paid any attention to either her or her pregnancy bump.

He took a noisy slurp from his coffee mug, then dug into his pancakes, chewing without bothering to close his mouth. He noticed her staring at him and frowned. Her conviction that he’d been manipulating her last night wavered. She was almost certain he’d been deliberately trying to scare her off, but her instincts weren’t exactly foolproof these days.

She studied him closely, paying particular attention to his eyes as she spoke. “So, have you raped a lot of women?”

She saw it. A flicker of outrage camouflaged almost immediately by half-closed eyelids and a noisy slurp from his coffee mug. “Depends on what you mean by rape.”

“You’d know it when you did it.” She took the plunge. “I have to admit last night was interesting.”

His brows slammed together. “Interesting! You think that was interesting?”

Not at the time she hadn’t. But now? Definitely. “Maybe if you were a better actor, you could have pulled it off.”

He grew wary. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She ignored his scowl. “It’s obvious you want to get rid of me, but was that the best you could do?” Those sinister lips pulled tight, and his expression became so ominous she had to muster all the bravado she could find to set her elbows on the table and meet his gaze. “I’m not going anywhere, Panda. You’re stuck with me.” A small devil prodded her, and she pointed to the corner of her own mouth. “You have a little food right there.”

“I don’t care.”

“Are you sure? A fastidious eater like yourself?”

“If you don’t like it, you know what you can do.”

“Yes. Fly home and send you a check for a thousand dollars, plus expenses.”

“You’re damned right, plus expenses.” He swiped at his mouth with his napkin, more a reflexive motion than capitulation.

She curled her fingers around her own coffee mug. He could have dropped her off on the side of the road anytime and disappeared, but he wanted the money, so he hadn’t done it. Now he intended to scare her off and still collect the cash. Too bad for him.

She set down her mug. All this time she’d assumed he had the upper hand, but it was just the opposite. “You’re big and bad, Panda. I get that. And now that I get it, would you mind knocking it off?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The leers. All those references to ‘getting laid.’”

He pushed away his plate, leaving his pancakes half eaten, eyeing her with distaste. “Here’s the way I see it. Rich girl thinks she can add a little excitement to her life by slumming it with a guy like me. Am I wrong?”

She reminded herself who had the upper hand. “Well, the experience is definitely making me rethink the importance of decent table manners.” She gave him the same dead-eye look she gave her sibs when they misbehaved. “Tell me where we’re going.”

“ I’m going to Caddo Lake. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll be going to the airport.”

“Excuse me.” A sixtyish woman in a peach pantsuit approached their booth. The woman gestured toward a nearby table where a jowly man with a walrus mustache pretended to look in the opposite direction. “My husband, Conrad, said I should mind my own business, but I couldn’t help noticing…” She stared at Lucy. “Has anybody ever told you that you look like the president’s daughter? That Lucy character.”

“She hears it all the time,” Panda said. He looked across the table at Lucy and said in fluent Spanish, “ Ella es otra persona que piensa que te pareces a Lucy Jorik. ” And then, to the woman, “Her English ain’t too good.”

“It’s amazing,” the woman said. “’Course, now that I’m closer, I can see she’s a lot younger. Hope she doesn’t grow up to be like her.”