Who do you think it was?”
“I have no idea.” Wayne knew Tatyana didn’t want to believe him. Which wasn’t comfortable, but there was nothing he could do about it. If she had come to him and told him she’d been confronted by a man who might be the same guy as hit on Grey …
No. Scratch that and rewind.
Might as well say it, at least in his head.
The same angel.
If she had done that, he would have been suggesting she switch her ride for something both stationary and padded.
Tatyana shut the conference room door and stood there, as far from him as the room’s confines would permit. He had not actually said the word. He had not needed to. The thought hung there in the space between them.
She used the phone on the side table to call downstairs and ask security if they had passed in a man by the description Wayne supplied. Security took her seriously enough to check and phone back. No, no one. Tatyana reported it as a possible security breach, asked them to report back to her on her cell phone, and gave them the number.
Tatyana said nothing more until they were downstairs in the garage and she was firing up the car. “Are you hungry?”
“I missed lunch.”
“I thought about that. But something happened after I left you.”
“You got sidetracked.”
She did not race out of the garage so much as ignore her speed. “I got pulled before the disciplinary board that questioned my ability and my record.” She stopped for a light, jammed in the clutch, and pressed the gas pedal hard enough for her next words to be lost. When the engine whined down, what Wayne heard was, “—questioned my handling of a case two years ago. They said there had been a complaint brought against me that potentially tarnished the entire corporation. Then they wouldn’t tell me what it was!”
“Green,” Wayne said.
“What?”
“The light. It’s gone green.”
Somebody beeped from the left-turn lane behind them. Tatyana slapped the lever into first. Gunned the motor. Eased off the clutch. The engine roared, jerked the car forward, and died.
Tatyana sat there as the light went red again. “I hate this car.”
It was only then Wayne realized the woman was close to tears.
“Easy does it,” he said. “Deep breath. Okay. Start the car. Good. Ready now, the light’s about to go green again.” Walking her through like a new grunt on the firing range. “Is your blinker on? It’s important to breathe. Okay, green light. Steady on the gas. Ease off the clutch.”
“I’m okay now.”
“I know you are.” But he remained poised to reach over and take control as she navigated the turn. “Okay, there’s a bus stop coming up. Why don’t you slip over into the right-hand lane. Good. Might be a good idea to stop here and sort through things.”
He thought she would probably snap at him. Instead, she pulled over, braked, cut the motor, and said, “Would you drive?”
“No problem.” Calm as ice. Like he was asked to drive a beautiful woman’s Ferrari every day of the week.
Before she could take it back, Wayne sprang from the car. He hurried around and was there to offer a hand as she rose in unsteady stages. He didn’t need to ask if she was okay. A woman who made a profession of being in total control did not ask a guy to drive unless the day was seriously fractured.
The seat was so far forward he had to wrestle himself behind the wheel, then thought he might become asphyxiated before he found the seat controls, which were on the door. Even with the seat all the way back, he could feel his hair graze the roof, and testing the clutch brought his knee in contact with the steering wheel.
Not that he was complaining the least tiny bit.
The clutch resembled that of an aging Humvee, one eaten up by highland desert driving and guys who treated military equipment as toys they were paid to destroy. He had to bunch his entire leg to get the thing down to the floor. He started the engine. Punched the gas. Just sat there a second and listened to the lady sing.
He knew it was an awfully macho act. Even before he gunned the motor and checked his mirror and slapped the gearshift into first. Long before he spun the wheel, he knew he was acting like a fourteen-year-old in a stolen vehicle.
He laid a smoking track down the entire block. Had a trio of youths shout a warning or a cheer or maybe just a shout in time to the engine. Redlined it through the caution light and slapped it into second. Burned a second streak of smoking tires.
Hit ninety-three miles an hour. In second gear. In downtown Orlando. In rush hour traffic.
Impulse control, Sergeant Grusza. It will kill you one of these days.
He caught a glimpse of his idiotic grin in the rearview mirror and silently replied, So sue me.
“Take the next right.” Tatyana had to almost shout the words over the engine’s bellow.
The Ferrari was the most perfectly balanced machine he had ever experienced. All he had to do was think, and the car was already halfway through the turn. He wasn’t suspended upon tires, but claws.
He owned this road.
He let the traffic slow him. A miniature airspace invited him to slip over two lanes and cannonball through the intersection. But just as he was preparing to downshift, he glanced to his right.
Tatyana looked so utterly unhappy.
He resisted the car’s rumbling urge to let go and release the power and fly. He sat there. Idled between an SUV and a pickup. Ignored the stares flung at him from all sides. And said, “Sorry.”
She shook her head. “Take a left through the stone gates.”
He did as he was told, calm and slow. Which was easier said than done. The Ferrari resisted his hand upon the reins. It lived to buck and roar and leap. The tiniest punch upon the gas, and he would be ten miles beyond sheer abandon.
Ten feet beyond the open gates, Wayne left behind all the weary stress and entered a world of gentility and old wealth. Trees that had been planted long before the first white footsteps graced a perfect lawn. A manor of peaked corners and Victorian foppery rose in the distance. “Where are we?”
“Easton’s club.”
Wayne parked in what was probably the guest lot, given its distance from the clubhouse. He cut the motor and sorted through a number of things to say before settling upon a simple repetition of what she had said. “You hate this car.”
“I have to fight it all the time.” The ice woman sounded about six inches from tears. “I can’t go slow. I can’t take it easy. I don’t …”
He twisted in his seat as much as the car’s confines allowed. And waited. Either she would tell him or she wouldn’t.
She looked at him then. For the first time since they had left the company. Her eyes matched the sky overhead, a grey so dark it could be mistaken for sheer night. “It was my husband’s.”
Wayne nodded. Like he understood.
Which, in a very strange way, he probably did.
She seemed to want to speak, but couldn’t.
So he said the words. “You drive it around his town for revenge.”
He did not notice the tear until she wiped it away. “I caught him with …”
He did not let the laugh out, except for the tight punching of his chest and the quick breaths through his nostrils. It did not matter who she had caught the guy with. “Your husband,” he said, “is a loon.”
“My ex,” she corrected.
“How long?”
“Nineteen months.”
He gave a slow nod, as though the number required deep thought. Gave her time to come up with the next thought herself. “But you hate the car.”
“Yes, but he loved it. Sometimes I think …”
“Nineteen months, Tatyana.” He gave it another moment. “I’m assuming you didn’t marry a guy dumb as an oil stain. Which means the guy has definitely gotten the message.”
She took an easier breath. And nodded to the gathering gloom. “You’re saying I should sell it and move on.”
“I’d be the wrong fellow to offer you advice. Seeing as how I’ve got all the experience in the world at not being able to let go. But I can tell you this.” A shard of his own pain sliced at his voice. “That knife you’re carrying stabs you a hundred times worse than it ever will him.”