Page 153 of On A Manhunt: Complete Series

THEO

We were an hour outside of Vegas in a remote section of Nevada that looked like a sandbox. Dusty brown hills. Not a spec of water or greenery, except for small patches around popup motels or fast food restaurants clustered at the highway exits.

I stood in front of a clump of this greenery, squinting against the bright sun at a random palm tree.

Mallory had made me pull into a truckstop so she could change out of the dress clothes she wore to court, to grab snacks and take a bathroom break.

She was inside now choosing processed snacks loaded with salt and hydrogenated palm oil while I baked in the hot sun.

I’d planned to be in Vegas long enough to grab Mallory.

Back and forth from Montana in a few hours.

I wasn’t even dressed right for the hot weather.

“You’ve never been on a road trip before, have you?”

I spun around at Mallory’s voice, took in the food she hugged against her body. Chips. Candy. Drinks. “That stuff is going to kill you.”

She glanced down at the stash, then back at me. She wore sunglasses, so her pale eyes were hidden. “Yeah, no road trip for you. Snacks are a requirement. How old are you? Forty?”

I gave her a steely look. “Thirty-six.”

She paused, studied me. “You seem much older.”

“Thirty-six,” I said through gritted teeth.

“Well, I can’t believe you made it this long without one.”

“I have a plane.”

“Right.” She reached out and handed me sunglasses I hadn’t noticed since her arms were so full. “Here.”

I took them automatically. “What are these for?”

“We’re in the desert. It’s bright. You’re driving.” She shook her head. “How did you get through medical school again?”

The shades were a cheap truckstop throwback to the eighties. Thick plastic frames. In electric blue.

I put them on. Fuck, that was better.

She pinched her lips together to hide a smile. I had no doubt I looked like an idiot. Being in the middle of that desert she mentioned, I didn’t really give a shit. “Lookin’ good.”

“Thanks.”

She went to the driver’s side.

“What the hell are you doing?” I asked, crossing over to her and blocking her from opening the car door.

“What?”

The hot wind ruffled her hair, which was pulled up in a sloppy bun.

Since Mallory had driven her car to the courthouse with the intention of leaving from there to drive back to Montana, it had made it easy for us to get on the road.

But her wardrobe hadn’t been a comfortable option.

She entered the truck stop like she was ready for a middle management job interview and came out looking…

like Mallory. She was dressed down in another pair of those stretchy yoga pants and a short-sleeved Silvermines t-shirt.

Fuck, those pants and her ass. And that shirt and her tits.

“You’re not driving.”

“It’s my car.”

“You’re not driving.”

She stared at me. I stared at her. And waited.

She huffed, then turned on her sneakered heel to go around the car. “Fine.”

We were back on the road, and she was breaking open a tube of formed potato chips.

Horrible music blasted from the stereo. I pushed the scan button.

Radio stations were few and far between.

The next one that came up was a religious sermon.

I hit scan again. It circled all the way around to the original station.

“I can’t believe Bridget told you about my arrest.” With her ridiculous flexibility, she put her feet up on the dash. I imagined them like that but wrapped around my waist. Inwardly, I groaned. This drive was going to be fucking long for so many reasons.

“She didn’t,” I said as I checked in the rearview mirror so I didn’t keep ogling those toned thighs.

She froze with a chip halfway to her mouth. “Then how did you know I was in Vegas?”

“She told me you had a court appearance. Nothing more. I think it’s time for you to fill in some blanks.”

Shoving a few chips in her mouth wouldn’t stall her for long. The canister was only so deep and we had hours to go.

“Fine,” she said finally.

I was quickly learning that fine didn’t mean that anything was actually fine.

She handed me the canister. “If we’re going to do this, then you need some chips.”

If it would get her to talk, then I’d eat some heart clogging chips. I stuck my hand in, grabbed a small stack and set them on my jean-clad thigh.

The blue sky was crisscrossed with contrails from planes going in and out of Las Vegas. I had to wonder if one of them was the James Corp jet returning to Hunter Valley without us.

“I flirted with a guy who turned out to be an undercover cop. He arrested me,” she explained.

“Flirting doesn’t indicate you’re a hooker.”

“I prefer call girl. It’s much more high-class,” she countered.

I couldn’t help but grin. I shoved a chip in my mouth. The salty taste was… really good.

I shoved in another.

“Fine. Call girl,” I said with a mouthful of chips.

She went on to detail how she’d pushed the guy on his price, and it made me laugh. When Mallory realized I was laughing with her instead of at her, she smiled too.

“The undercover officer must have been blind. No way he’d mistake you for a hooker.” If she dressed up that night as she did for her court appearance, I couldn’t imagine how the guy would ever even walk up to her in a sting.

“Hey!” She grabbed her cell out of her purse, slid her finger over it for twenty seconds or more. “Here.”

She held out the phone so I could glance at it while driving.

It was a photo of Mallory and three other women.

It had clearly been taken in a casino, with slot machines in the background.

All four were in dresses leaning toward slutty on the appropriate meter.

I glanced at the road, then at Mallory in the image.

She looked gorgeous in the dark green sleeveless dress and she in no way looked like middle management.

Fuck, she was pretty. And now I was hard. I shifted in the seat as Mallory put her cell away.

“The officer wasn’t blind,” I admitted. “You definitely looked like a call girl. A high-class one at that.”

“Hey!” she said again, as if I’d insulted her again.

“Easy, tiger. You get mad when I don’t think you look like a call girl, and you get mad when I say you do.”

She huffed, shoved a chip in her mouth, then grudgingly said, “You’re right.”

She opened a bottle of some kind of iced tea and handed it to me. I gave the label a quick peek before taking a sip. Peach. Not bad.

“Let me get this straight,” I said, handing the bottle back where she took a swig herself. “You were in a holding cell and befriended two hoo– call girls and they gave you sex tips which you used on me.”

“Yes.”

“The blow job,” I said, then got instantly hard thinking about how insanely fucking incredible it had been.

“Oh, look!” she pointed at a swiftly approaching billboard. “A dinosaur site in five miles. Let’s stop.”

We were talking about her sex talents, and she wasn’t even focusing.

“Why didn’t you tell me about any of this?” I asked.

“Why? Because it was my problem.”

I frowned. “So? So I’d have offered the plane and we wouldn’t be out in the middle of nowhere.”

“Exactly. This was a mess I needed to fix on my own. Besides, the less people who knew about what happened the better. If it got out what happened, I could have been fired.”

“I’m not people, I’m–” I was going to say your man, but that was wrong. “I’m a doctor. I can keep things confidential.” Like chlamydia patients.

She shook her head. “I won’t be beholden.”

“Beholden? Was that blind date of yours an English Lit teacher?”

She rolled her eyes.

“I won’t be like my mother.”

Oh. Well, I hadn’t met the woman, but I really didn’t like her.

“She still bothering you?”

A shrug and a swig of tea was all the response I got. It seemed I couldn’t help her with that, either.

As she said, fine.

“Ooh, I love this song!” she cooed, reaching for the volume and turning it up, tapping her toes on the dash as she sang along. I’d never heard it before in my life.

This woman was a complete dichotomy. Junk food eating, sweet first-grade teacher with attachment issues, a fascination for weird side-of-the road tourist traps who sucked dick like a porn star and was just all around… happy. Maybe it was avoiding jail time that helped with that.

I took in the terrain. It looked like Mars, but hot. No one was around. A car was ahead of us about a half mile. Glancing in the rearview mirror, there was an eighteen-wheeler cruising a way behind us.

This stretch of road was deserted as hell and I had the cruise control set to eighty-five.

I imagined Mallory driving this all alone and clenched the steering wheel.

Instead of blowing past the exit–which seemed like nothing more than ranch access–I blinkered, for no other reason than abiding by the law, and took it.

She swiveled her head around. “This isn’t the exit for the dinosaur thing.”

I didn’t say a word, only turned right off the top of the exit ramp, then pulled over on the side of the dirt road about a quarter mile down. Shut off the car and the radio fell blissfully silent. I took off my seatbelt.

“I’ll stay in the car while you pee,” she offered.

I shifted my leg to face Mallory, grabbed the canister of chips and set it on the floor at her feet, screwed the lid on the tea, then unclipped her belt.

“I don’t have to pee.”

I didn’t know why I was brooding or bothered that she could’ve been out here all alone. Or that she hadn’t confided in me about her arrest. This was Mallory and this was just about sex. With sex, we were in agreement. We liked it hot. We liked it often. We liked it really fucking dirty.

“Ever fuck in a car before?”

Her eyes widened–I could tell even behind her sunglasses–and she glanced around, then back at me.

She shook her head and a sly smile spread across her face.

“Show me what else you learned from your friends,” I ordered.

“You really want to know?”

“Show, not know, tiger.”

She tapped her lip as if she had multiple possibilities she was considering. “Push your seat back.”

Reaching down between my legs, I grabbed the metal bar and did as she requested.

Then she crawled over the center console and into my lap.

“Get ready, doctor, to have your world rocked.”