A PERFECT RENDEZVOUS

PLEH!!

A quarter of an hour later, Zayn ordered him to pull over at a roadside phone again, and he made another phone call. He had not spoken a word except to tell Harry to pull over, and Harry suspected he knew that silence wreaked more havoc on his nerves than anything else he could do to intimidate him. This time when he made his phone call, he never took his eyes off Harry.

When he got back into the car, Harry looked at his impassive features and couldn't endure the silence another moment. Giving him a haughty stare, he nodded at the phone booth and said, "Bad news, I hope?"

Zayn bit back a grin at his rigid, unremitting rebellion. His pretty face belied a stubborn courage and acid wit that continually caught him off guard. Instead of replying that the news was very good, he shrugged. Silence ate at him, Zayn had noticed. "Drive," he said, leaning back in his seat and stretching out his legs, idly watching Harry's graceful fingers on the steering wheel.

***************

In a few short hours, a man who looked very much like Zayn would drive from Detroit through the Windsor Tunnel into Canada. At the border, he would make enough of a nervous spectacle of himself to cause the customs officials there to remember him. When Zayn remained at large for a day or two, those customs officials should remember him and notify U.S. authorities that their escaped convict had probably crossed into Canada. Within a week, the hunt for Zayn Malik should be mostly centered in Canada, leaving Zayn much more free to continue with the rest of his plan. For now, for the next week, it rather looked as if he had nothing whatsoever to do except relax and revel in his freedom. It seemed like a delightful notion and it would have put him rather in charity with the world if it weren't for his troublesome hostage. He was the only kink in his relaxation. A very big kink, since he apparently wasn't half so easily subdued as he'd thought he would be. At the moment, he was driving unnecessarily slow and casting angry looks at him. "What's the problem?" he clipped.

"The problem is that I need to use a bathroom."

"Later!"

"But—" He looked at her then and Harry realized it was useless to argue.

An hour later, they crossed the Colorado state line and he spoke for the first time. "There's a truck stop up ahead. Get off at the exit and if it looks all right, we'll stop there."

That truck stop turned out to be too busy to suit him, and it was another half hour before he found a service station that was relatively empty and laid out to please him with an attendant positioned in the island between the pumps so he could pay for gas without going inside and with rest rooms on the outside of the building, "Let's go," he said. "Take it slow," he warned as he got out of the car and started toward the rest room door. Zayn grasped his elbow as if to help him walk through the snow, his feet crunching the crusty powder in perfect rhythm with Harry's as he matched him stride for stride. When they reached the rest room, instead of letting go of his arm, Zayn reached out and opened the door, and Harry's temper exploded. "Do you intend to come in here with me and watch?" he burst out in furious disbelief.

Ignoring him, Zayn looked around the tiny tiled room, checking for windows, he supposed, and finding none, he let go of his arm. "Make it quick. And, Harry, don't do anything stupid."

"Like what?" he demanded. "Hang myself with toilet paper? Go away, damn you." Yanking his arm free, he marched inside, and it was as he was closing the door, that the obvious solution of locking the door and staying inside hit him. With an inner cry of triumph, he turned the lock with his fingertips and slammed the door at the same time, throwing his shoulder against it. The door slammed into the jamb with a satisfying metallic thud, but the lock didn't seem to catch, and he had a sickening feeling he was holding the doorknob on the other side to prevent it from happening.