Well, at least the SOB was honest, Butch thought with a curse.
Manny really didn’t like other people driving his Porsche 911 Turbo. In fact, short of his mechanic, no one else ever did.
Tonight, however, he’d allowed Jane to get behind the wheel because, one, she was competent and could shift without grinding his transmission into a stump; two, she’d maintained that the only way she could take him where they were going was if she were doing the ten-and-two routine; and three, he was still reeling from seeing someone he’d buried pop out of the bushes to hi-how’re-ya him.
So maybe operating heavy machinery going seventy miles an hour was not a good idea.
He could not believe he was sitting next to her, heading north, in his car.
But of course he’d said yes to her request. He was a sap for women in distress . . . and he was also a surgeon who was an OR junkie.
Duh.
There were a lot of questions, though. And a lot of pissed off. Yeah, sure, he was hoping to get to a place of peace and light and sunshine and all that namby-pamby bullshit, but he wasn’t holding his breath for the kumbaya-all-cools. Which was ironic. How many times had he stared up at his ceiling at night, all nestled in his beddy-bye with his new Lagavulin habit, praying that by some miracle his former chief of trauma would come back to him?
Manny glanced over at her profile. Illuminated in the glow of the dash, she was still smart. Still strong.
Still his kind of woman.
But that was never happening now. Aside from the whole liar-liar-pants-on-fire about her death, there was a gunmetal gray ring on her left hand.
“You got married,” he said.
She didn’t look at him, just kept driving. “Yes. I did.”
That headache that had sprouted the instant she’d made her appearance instantly went from grouchy to gruesome. And meanwhile, shadowy memories Loch Nessed below the surface of his conscious mind, tantalizing him, and making him want to work for the full reveal.
He had to cut that cognitive search-and-rescue off, though, before he popped an aneurysm from the strain. Besides, he wasn’t getting anywhere with it—no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t reach what he sensed was there, and he had a feeling he could do permanent damage if he kept struggling.
As he looked out the car window, fluffy pine trees and budding oaks stood tall in the moonlight, the forest that ran around Caldwell’s edges growing thicker as they traveled away from the city proper and its choking knot of population and buildings.
“You died out here,” he said grimly. “Or at least pretended you did.”
A biker had found her Audi in and among the trees on a stretch of road not far from here, the car having careened off the shoulder. No body, though—and not because of the fire, as it had turned out.
Jane cleared her throat. “I feel like all I’ve got is ‘I’m sorry.’ And that just sucks.”
“Not a party on my end, either.”
Silence. Lots of silence. But he wasn’t one to keep asking when all he got in return was I’m sorry.
“I wish I could have told you,” she said abruptly. “You were the hardest to leave.”
“You didn’t dump your job, though, did you. Because you’re still working as a surgeon.”
“Yes, I am.”
“What’s your husband like?”
Now she winced. “You’re going to meet him.”
Great. Joy.
Slowing down, she took a right-hand turn off onto . . . a dirt road? What the hell?
“FYI,” he muttered, “this car was built for racetracks, not roughing it.”
“This is the only way in.”