Page 47 of Fight for You
“Yep. Also, I didn’t want to sully your mind with a few scenes fromPretty Woman, Saint Jamie.” I grinned.
Jamie rolled his eyes.
The smile tumbled from my face when I heard a whirl above us. Helicopter blades.
“Aerial support, crap,” Jamie muttered. “I’m about ready to ditch Bluey.”
“Bluey?”Oh,yeah.The truck. “You know, that’s a cartoon character’s name.”
He lifted a brow as if unaware, then returned his attention to the road.Ah.Got it. More pressing matters than my love of television. “Where? How?”
He tipped his chin toward one of the runoff tunnels half concealed by a wrecked van—nearly a fossil with missing doors. Just when I thought he’d bypass it, Jamie cut a hard right and hit the brakes.
“Ahhh!” I screamed as the vehicle spun sideways, but the impact against the Gladiator and the embankment never came. The truck stopped two feet away. Jamie came around my side of the vehicle as a police SUV stopped thirty feet away. As someone yelled again for us to get out and get down, my trembling hand fell into his outstretched one.
Shaking the daze from my eyes, my vision came into focus. Rebel was in his arms. He wore his backpack and handed me the other. “Sorry. I can’t hold your backpack. I have to hold Reb.”
We ducked into the tunnel just as the LAPD SUV doors opened, and darkness swallowed us up. Jamie flicked on his phone light. To our right, putrid water flowed in a storm catch. To the left, a maintenance area. Jamie pounded the pavement, going left.
Behind us, officers shouted into radios, but no one followed us. Not yet.
I wasn’t sure how long we stayed underground after hiding out. We emerged from an old overpass many hours later. The homeless encampment smelled better than the passageway we’d just run through. Almost. I blinked my eyes to the light, although the sun was nearly gone, and the sky bled orange.
“Well, now that Los Angeles has become a war zone,”—I sighed, glancing up at the multiple freeway overpasses above us—“where do we go?”
I trembled from the chill. Winter wasn’t here yet, but the icy coldness of evening nipped through my dirty sweatsuit.
“Gimme a second to figure out our next move.” The adrenaline faded from Jamie’s face and then came uncertainty before his handsome features faded into cold, tactical clarity.Gah. I had watched too many action flicks and read too many similar books.Maybe to prepare for this?
Scratching my head, which felt like a nest of cobwebs, I asked, “Um, I noticed someone has been blowing up your phone. Do we need to ditch it? And the laptop?”Yep. My life was actors and the heroes in books that took me away from the sin I lived in.
Jamie chuckled. “You’re a regularauldspy.”
Embarrassment clawed up my throat, so I snapped, “You meanold.”
“That’s what I said.”
“No, you saidauld. Okay. Gerard Butler?”
“Who?”
Actor. “Oh, never mind.”
He offered a perfectly laid eye roll, then pulled me into his arms. “Admit it, you like my accent. One I didn’t know I had untilyousaid so. Maybe all this alpha male rage brings the Scots outta me?”
“Hah. I’m inclined to agree with that. The angrier you get, thethickerit gets.” I winked, letting him know that he always sounded Scottish.
Jamie rolled his eyes again, like he still didn’t believe it, but humored me anyway. “Alright, alright. Don’t say it out loud, though a nod will do.”
I snorted. “As if.”
He chuckled, squeezing my hips. “I love how you insist on having the last word.”
And I loved how he’d incorporated the L-word in this conversation. I pulled away from him. “Look at you, tryna make a Black girl blush.”
“Trying?” He scoffed. “Mission accomplished. Or shall I say, this mission wasn’t impossible?”
“Mm-hmm, aMission Impossiblereference?” I chuckled.
