A PERFECT RENDEZVOUS

Ex Wife

With a gallantry that had been absent before their kiss and which Harry felt was entirely ludicrous—and even alarming in their present, altered circumstances—Zayn escorted him around to the driver's seat, but he didn't have to open the door for him, it was still open from his aborted attempt to escape. He closed the car door and walked around the front of the vehicle, but as he slid into the seat beside him, Zayn noticed that he winced and gasped when he shifted his position. "What's wrong?"

"I hurt my hip and leg when I jumped out of the car and when you tackled me," Harry retorted bitterly, angry with himself for having actually enjoyed that kiss. "Does that fill you with concern and remorse?"

He said quietly, "Yes, it does."

He jerked his eyes from Zayn's somber smile, unable and adamantly unwilling to be charmed into believing such an implausible lie. He was a convicted murderer, and he must not, dared not, forget that ever again. "I'm hungry," he announced, because it was the first thing he could think of to say. He knew it was the wrong thing the moment Zayn's gaze fastened on his lips. "So am I."

Harry stuck his nose in the air and turned on the ignition.

His answer was a soft chuckle.

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

"Where in hell can he be?" Carl Mathison paced across the small cubicle that his brother occupied in the Keaton Sheriff's Office, then he stopped and glowered at the silver shield on Ted's grey uniform shirt.

"You're a cop and he's a missing person, so do something, damn it."

"He's not officially missing until he's been gone for at least twenty-four hours," Ted replied, but his blue eyes were troubled as he added, "I can't do anything through official channels until then, you know that."

"And you know," Carl countered angrily, "that it's not like Harry to suddenly change his plans; you know how methodical he is. And if he absolutely had to change his plans, he'd telephone one of us. Besides, he knew I needed my car back this morning."

"You're right." Ted walked over to the windows. With his hand resting on the butt of the 9-millimeter semiautomatic he wore at his side, he stared absently at the cars parked in the town square while their owners browsed in the local stores or hunted for bargains in what had become a haven for antique hunters. When he spoke again, his voice was hesitant as if he feared to voice his thoughts aloud. "Zayn Malik escaped from Amarillo yesterday. He'd been made a trustee and he skipped out after driving the warden into Amarillo."

"I heard it on the news. So what?"

"Malik, or at least a man answering Malik's general description, was last seen at a restaurant near the interstate.

Very slowly, very carefully, Carl laid down the paperweight he'd been rolling between his hands and stared hard at his younger brother. "What are you getting at?"

"Malik was seen near a vehicle that sounds like your Blazer. The cashier in the restaurant thinks he saw him get into the Blazer with a man who'd stopped there for a sandwich and coffee." Ted turned away from the window and reluctantly raised his gaze to his brother's face. "I talked to the cashier—unofficially, of course—five minutes ago. The description he gave me of the man who drove away with Malik in the Blazer sounds exactly like Harry."

"Oh, my God!"

The clerk at the desk, a middle-aged woman with wiry grey hair and the face of an irate bulldog, had been listening to the Mathisons' conversation about Harry while simultaneously filling out an arrest warrant and watching for an assistant deputy to arrive in a black and white patrol car. Now, she glanced up and her gaze riveted on a shiny red BMW convertible that pulled up beside Ted's patrol car across the street. When a beautiful blond woman of about twenty-five stepped out of the car, Rita's eyes narrowed to slits and she swung around on her chair to the two men in the office. "It never rains, but it pours," she warned Ted, and when both men glanced at her, she tipped her head toward the window and explained. "Look who's back in town—Miss Rich Bitch herself."