Or even the back of my van. Hell, at my age I wasn’t picky. Insane for getting involved in this, but definitely not picky.
“So are you going to give me some clue as to your plan, since I’m your accomplice and all?”
“No. The less you know the better.”
“Hmmm. That sounds mysterious.” Did the runaway groom have a secret in addition to the fact he was insane, which was not a secret to me at all.
Tall, dark and mysterious shot me a glance before checking the rearview and spinning us around in a u-turn that nearly flipped the vehicle. My curiosity began to wane, overshadowed by the very real fear of death by van, until Frank Sinatra’s voice filled the air.
Oh the shark, babe, has such teeth, dear…
“Um, your pants seem to be singing.”
“Yeah, I hear it.”
“Want me to answer it?” Sticking my hand in his front pocket and feeling around in his pants for the phone would be quite a hardship, but I was willing to make the sacrifice.
“That’s the ring tone I assigned to all the DiNardos. You really want to answer it?”
A “Mack the Knife” ringtone? Was he serious? What a cliché
.
“Uh, no. That’s okay.” I was kind of enjoying the music anyway. The van’s radio had been broken for months now.
Old Blue Eyes wrapped up the song’s refrain and the phone went silent. Driving faster than I thought my old piece of shit was able to go, my personal carjacker dug in his pocket, took out the phone and tossed it into my lap. “Take out the battery.”
I raised a brow but did as I was told. “Not in the mood to talk to the little woman at the moment?”
He smirked. “Now who’s the comedian? For your information, they can track us using the cell phone signal.”
Hmmm. You learned something new every day. “How do you know that?”
“I, uh, saw it in a movie once.”
Yeah, right. And if that was true, I was twenty-five and the reigning Miss Rhode Island. I was about to tell him that when I heard the unmistakable sound of a phone vibrating. I looked down at the cell phone in my lap, panicking I had missed a spare battery or something and the DiNardos were tracking our progress from their evil underground lair at this very moment, until mystery man reached under his pants leg and pulled a second phone out of his sock.
I watched wide-eyed as I saw what else his pants were hiding, aside from the very interesting spare cell phone and the portion of his anatomy I’d already briefly fantasized about. He was wearing a gun holster.
He flipped open the phone. “Jackson here.”
Jackson. Well at least now I had a name for the man who had the means to shoot me if he wanted to. Wondering if that was his first name or his last, I listened without one iota of guilt for more clues. After all, the man had not only stolen my van, so he owed me, he’d also invited me to come along. Really, if he wanted privacy, he shouldn’t have done that.
As he swung us sharply into an underground parking lot and I was momentarily blinded by the sudden darkness, I had to wonder how this story would fly with the insurance company when he inevitably crashed and I had to file a claim.
He swerved into a spot and slammed the van into PARK one-handed. “Okay. I’m out of sight. Now you tell me, what the hell went wrong?”
His eyes shot in my direction. He covered the phone and said, “Excuse my language.”
“No problem.” A thief with manners. Good to know there was still some chivalry left in the world.
Whatever Jackson heard on the other end of that conversation didn’t make him happy. “That’s going to be difficult. I’ve picked up some…collateral.”
I felt my eyebrows shoot up at that. I’d been called a lot of things in my life. Collateral had never been one of them.
He ran his hand over his face. “Fine. I’ll take care of it.”
Flipping the phone shut, he turned in his seat to face me. This was becoming way more exciting than prime time television. Jackson was definitely handsome and intriguing enough to be a leading man.
“What will you take care of?” I asked.
“You.”
That sounded promising. “Oh? How do you plan on doing that?”
“What’s your name?”
“Beth.”
“You got family, Beth? A husband, kids?”
“Nope. Just me.” In other words, I’m available. Hint, hint. Wait, what the hell was I thinking? This man was trouble with a capital T. He was Lorraine DiNardo’s runaway fiancé on top of whatever shit he was involved in that required a secret second cell phone and a concealed weapon. Starting to wonder now if I’d just given this man permission to make me disappear permanently by telling him I had no family to notice if I was gone, I said, “Why do you ask?”
“Because we’re about to be spending a lot of time together. Ever been to a safe house, Beth?” He asked the question while backing the van out of the spot.
“Um, no. Is that where we’re going?” Safe sounded good to me at the moment. Maybe I wasn’t going to die at 38, unmarried and alone.
Jackson drew in a deep breath. “If I can get us there alive, yeah.”
Then again, maybe I’d spoken too soon.
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