My phone buzzed once. I checked the screen.
Coordinates confirmed. Vehicle recovery pending.
Good.
I set the phone face down on the table and went to the vending machine outside, after putting her where I could see her through the open doorway and taking the room key with me. The machine did, in fact, need a kick to the bottom left corner. I came back with two waters, peanut butter crackers, and a bag of pretzels that had probably entered the machine during a previous presidential administration.
Crystal sat on the edge of the bed, boot heels on the carpet, posture too straight for a woman who hadn’t slept enough.
I tossed the pretzels onto the bed beside her.
She looked at the bag. “Dinner and a show.”
“You want something else, don’t run through the woods at dusk.”
“I’ll update my meal-planning strategy.”
I opened one bottle of water and set it on the nightstand within reach. “Drink.”
“You always bossy with women in motel rooms?”
“No.”
Her gaze flicked to mine.
The answer had come too fast and too honest.
I opened my crackers because doing something with my hands was safer than looking at her. “Most women in motel rooms aren’t wanted by the court.”
“Most?”
I took a cracker from the sleeve. “Eat something.”
“You’re dodging.”
“I’m feeding you.”
“You can multitask.”
“I can. I’m choosing not to.”
Crystal picked up the pretzels with both hands and tore the bag open with her teeth. The motion should not have gone straight through me.
It did.
It had been months since I’d had a woman in any bed I could call mine. That wasn’t because I lacked options. A man with a truck, a clean shirt, and no ring could find company in most towns if he wanted to make bad decisions and leave before breakfast. I’d done my share of that. Less lately. Work had a way of sanding the appetite off a man when every highway led to someone else’s worst night.
But this wasn’t a bar. This wasn’t a willing woman smiling from the next stool because she liked the look of my hands.
This was a fugitive sitting on a motel bed, eating stale pretzels like she wanted to bite the world, and I was the man responsible for getting her to daylight without letting her run, seduce, or claw her way through a wall.
I looked at the chair.
The chair looked like it had been built for regret and lower-back damage.
Crystal followed my gaze. “You’re not sleeping there.”
“I wasn’t asking.”
