“Reyes, uncuff me.”

He bit down and turned away. “I couldn’t be responsible for my actions if I did.”

“I’m not asking you to be.”

“But they’ll be here any second,” he said, regret edging his voice.

“What?” I asked, surprised. “Who?”

He stood and rummaged around in the bag before he kneeled down next to me again. “I apparently made the ten o’clock news. The clerk recognized me, probably called the cops the minute we walked out.”

My mouth fell open. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because this has to look good.”

“I can’t believe I didn’t pick up on that.” Then I found out why he needed the duct tape. “Wait!” I said as he readied the tape. “How did you text me from my sister’s number?”

“I didn’t,” he said with a grin, and before I could say anything else, I had duct tape covering part of my face.

Reyes grabbed the duffel bag, then took my chin into his palm and planted a kiss right on the tape. When he was finished—and I was breathless—he looked into my eyes apologetically. “This is going to hurt.”

What? I thought, half a second before I saw stars and the world darkened around me.

10

The police never find it as funny as you do.

—T-SHIRT

Moments after I’d been clocked by the man voted Most Likely to Be Killed by an Angry White Chick, the world came spinning back with a nauseating vengeance. A SWAT team crashed through the door, rifles at their shoulders as they swept the room. One of them knelt beside me and I moaned, partly to make it look good and partly because that was all I could do.

Reyes hit me! He’d actually hit me! It didn’t matter that hitting me wasn’t really like hitting a regular girl and I’d be completely healed in a matter of hours. I was still a freaking girl, and he damned well knew it. I’d just have to hit him back. With a lead pipe. Or an eighteen-wheeler.

“Are you okay?” SWAT guy asked, studying my eye.

Damn, I loved it when men in uniform studied my eyes. Or my ass. Either way. I nodded as he slowly peeled the tape off. He secured it onto a piece of plastic and sealed it in an evidence bag as a detective and two patrolmen strolled in to talk to the sergeant in charge. With the help of one of the patrolmen, the officer unlocked the cuffs and helped me onto the bed after they righted it.

“Would you like some water?” he asked.

“No, I’m good, thank you.”

“I think we should arrest her.”

Startled, I looked up at the patrolman. It was Owen Vaughn. The Owen Vaughn. The guy who tried to kill-and-or-horribly-maim me in high school with his dad’s SUV. Well, this sucked ass. He hated my guts. And everything about my guts. He even hated the cavity encapsulating my guts. What was that thing called?

“I don’t think that’ll be necessary, Officer,” the detective said. “Wait a minute.” He stepped closer. “You’re Davidson’s niece.”

“Yes, sir, I am,” I said, testing my eye with my finger. It stung. Not my finger, but my eye.

After releasing a long breath, he looked at Vaughn and said, “Okay, arrest her.”

“What?”

A satisfied smirk spread across Vaughn’s face and an evil grin spread across the detective’s. “Just kidding,” he said.

Vaughn scowled in disappointment and stalked off as the detective sat beside me.

“What’s going on here?” he asked.

“I was carjacked.” Obviously, my telling the cops was the plan. Otherwise, Reyes wouldn’t have hit me. Or I hoped not. “And handcuffed to this bed frame with handcuffs.”

“I see.” The detective took out his notepad and jotted down a few notes right as a U.S. Marshal came through the door. “Does he still have your car?”

With a mental sigh, I realized this could take a while.

Annnnnnnnnnnd it did.

Two hours later, I sat in the back of Owen Vaughn’s patrol car waiting for Uncle Bob to pick me up. I’d been checked out by an EMT and harassed by a rascally officer named Bud. After that, I figured it was time to get the heck outta Dodge, so I called for backup in the form of my favorite uncle to convince Albuquerque’s finest to let me go. The black eye helped. Holy cow, Reyes packed a punch. And I doubted he was even trying. Which, thank God.

I looked into the rearview mirror at Vaughn. He was sitting in the driver’s seat, which was cool, since it was his car. “Are you ever going to tell me what I did?” I asked, hoping he wouldn’t pop a cap in my ass for the asking.

“Are you ever going to die screaming?”

That would be a big fat hopefully not. Man, he hated me, and I’d never found out why. I decided to try to humanize myself so he’d be less likely to kill me if ever the opportunity arose. I’d read that if you say a victim’s name repeatedly to, say, a kidnapper, then the kidnapper forms a mental attachment to the person they’re holding hostage.

“Charley Davidson is a fair person. I’m sure if you just told Charley what she did, she’d be more than willing to fix it.”

He stilled, then eased around to me, slowly, as though I’d mortified him. “If you ever talk about yourself in third person again, I’ll kill you where you stand.”

Okay, he was clearly sensitive about narrative forms. I wasn’t sure it was legal for a police officer to threaten a civilian like that, but since he had a gun and I didn’t, I decided not to question him on it.

I learned two things about Owen Vaughn as we sat there waiting for Ubie: First, he had the uncanny ability to stare a person down in a rearview mirror without blinking for like five minutes. I wished I’d had eye drops to offer him. And second, he had some kind of nasal deformity that made him squeak a little when he breathed.

* * *

Not long after my nerve-racking stretch in hell—otherwise known as Owen Vaughn’s patrol car—a very grumpy man named Uncle Bob gave me a ride to my apartment.

“So, Farrow carjacked you?” Ubie asked as we pulled into the parking lot, unconcerned with his bed head.

“Yes, he carjacked me.”

“And why were you at a convenience store in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night in the middle of a flash flood warning?”