“Just hurry up with the translation.”
“I’m doing my best. My Spanish is rusty. Besides, this could very well be nothing at all.”
“We won’t know that until youhurry up with the translation.”
“Fine!” Knox grumbles. “You better get yourself and that woman someplace safe tonight. I’ll call you once I’ve finished.”
“Thank you, little brother.”
“You better come back alive so I can kick your ass.”
“I’ll hold you to it.”
My brother hangs up the phone with a sharpclick.His snarky attitude never fails to make my cortisol levels shoot straight through the roof.
Behind me, a woman clears her throat. I turn and do a double take. Willow looks so different that I hardly recognized her. Her hair is cropped short, a cute pixie cut that suits the sharp angles of her face. She’s still as stunning as ever, but where she was beautiful and soft before, she’s now sexy and domineering.
“Oh, it’s not that bad,” she chides, bringing a hand up to comb through her short locks. “Cat got your tongue, did it?”
I chuckle. “No, it’s just… You look great. Gorgeous, even.”
Willow smirks. “I was going for badass, but I guess I’ll take it.”
I step forward and circle my arm around her waist. “There’s a motel a few miles from here. We’ll stay there for the night and figure out how to contact the Marrones.”
“I could definitely use the rest,” she says softly. “Are we going to walk there? I guess we could hitchhike if we have to, but…”
“Absolutely not,” I say, gesturing to one of the beat-up old cars parked around the back of the gas station. “Only the best for my wife.”
I mean it as a joke, of course. Something to lighten the mood. I don’t expect her to smile so bashfully, her cheeks and the tips of her ears turning an adorable shade of pink. We’re probably going to have to talk about it at some point—this wholedrunk-married-in-Vegasthing—but I’m afraid we have far more pressing concerns.
“Keep an eye out,” I tell her, making my way over to a Toyota that’s seen better days.
It’s a simple matter of wrapping my fist with my jacket and swinging with as much strength as possible. The driver-side window cracks open, scattering bits of glass onto the seat and floor of the car. It’s such a clunker that the alarm system doesn’t kick in—which is fine by me. The less attention we draw to ourselves, the better.
I unlock the door and quickly get to work sweeping away the glass while Willow climbs into the passenger seat. It takes me a couple of seconds to locate the necessary wires under the dash.
“Did they teach you how to hot-wire cars in the Navy?” Willow asks, her tone mildly amused.
I chuckle. “No. This little skill is courtesy of my grandfather.”
Her eyebrows shoot up. “Your grandfather taught you to steal cars?”
“He was a mechanic,” I explain with a grin. “Owned his own shop in a small mountain town. Sometimes people would lose their keys, and the only ways to get their car to the shop was to tow it, but nobody in town could afford to buy a tow truck. So we had to hot-wire it.”
The engine sputters, then rumbles to life. When I look up, Willow is smiling at me warmly. “It’s hard trying to picture you as a gruff mountain man wearing flannel.”
“I’ll have you know I don’t look half bad.”
“Hey!” someone’s voice interrupts us. The gas station clerk rounds the corner, his eyes wide and his cheeks bright red with anger. “That’s my fucking car!”
“We’re sorry!” Willow shouts out the window as we rip away, tires squealing beneath us as we hit the road.
* * *
“Are you sure you don’t want to swap out?” she asks for the umpteenth time.
I’ve been driving for almost seven hours straight, stopping only once for gas just outside of the Arizona-New Mexico border. Now that we’re quickly approaching Las Cruces, I’m thinking our best option is to stop for the night, get some rest, and continue first thing in the morning.