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Her car sped out of the parking lot to the access road.
For a second Alex wondered if the two were getting together for sex, long yearned for and idealized. If so, the physical act would probably be hot as hell. Until it wasn’t. Even still recovering from the accident, Jonas looked tough. Muscular. Sexy. Or was there something else going on? She hoped not. Sliding her SUV into gear, she told herself that she wasn’t worried, then eased the Lexus onto the access road, drove across the overpass and turned onto the freeway.
As she increased her speed, she switched on the wipers.
Jonas was right, she reminded herself as she sped past a huge truck that was spraying sludge behind its big tires. If he got himself into more trouble, he’d just become more valuable.
A win-win.
As long as he was her client.
She pressed down on the accelerator, her LX 570 shooting around some muscle car, her wheels humming on the asphalt, the engine a soft, steady purr.
Jonas McIntyre could leave tonight and screw his brains out—or whatever.
But he’d be back.
Alex and the remaining McIntyre son who had survived the massacre and been so wrongly charged were symbiotic.
Jonas needed her as much as she needed him.
* * *
Kara slid into Tate’s SUV. “Buy me a drink?” she asked.
“It’s not even noon. You serious?”
“Just kidding. Drive.” She hadn’t been kidding. Cooped up with the detectives in the interrogation room had been excruciating. Her nerves were shot and nothing would calm them more than a Bloody Mary or a mimosa or a damned wine cooler.
“Where to?”
“Back to your place to pick up Rhapsody, then I guess I should go home.” There was vodka and wine waiting for her in the kitchen and she felt a gnawing ache to taste it.
He pulled into the slow-moving traffic, then glanced her way. “How’d it go with the police?”
“It went,” she said, glancing at Tate as he slowed for a red light. “Look, I haven’t been totally honest with you.”
He didn’t seem surprised.
Great. Probably meant he hadn’t been honest as well.
“I don’t trust reporters, I don’t trust men, hell, I don’t trust anyone because I have abandonment issues and blah, blah, blah. It’s been explained to me by a dozen shrinks.”
“Okay.” He slowed as traffic was clogged.
“Anyway, I told the police that I think I saw Marlie at the hospital and—”
“Marlie? In the hospital?” He glanced at her.
“No, in the crowd outside.”
“You saw . . . ?” He didn’t finish the thought, but cast a concerned glance. She held up her phone. “I got this back and . . . well, crap, Tate. I was getting weird calls and texts. I mean when Jonas got out . . . or around there, but before I went to Merritt’s cabin, before I found him with his throat slit, before the accident, when Jonas was getting out, and I think they’re from Marlie. But then that’s not right because she wouldn’t talk about herself in the third person, saying she’s alive, and I saw a police composite picture of her . . .” She stopped, realized she was babbling, nearly hyperventilating.
“Marlie? You think you got a text from her?”
“Yes! I should have told you sooner,” she said. “I know it, but everything’s just so weird, so out of control so—”
“Shhh. It’s okay,” Tate said as he braked for a red light, idling behind a dirty black pickup with a load of firewood beneath a blue flapping tarp. He touched her shoulder. “When we get back, you can tell me all about it. I can stop for coffee. There’s a kiosk up ahead.”