A Playboy in Peril Read online

  "Oh, sure," Maizy said. "Right up there next to the Walmart and the Home Depot."

  I gave her a look. "Not helpful, Maize. We're only in this situation because I was trying to help you out."

  A set of headlights appeared in my rearview mirror.

  "We're not the only survivors," I muttered. "Could do without the high beams, though."

  "Maybe we could flag him down," Maizy said. "Ask him where we are."

  "Are you kidding?" I said. "We're two women in the wilderness in the middle of the night. We're an episode of CSI waiting to happen."

  "Not if we have a rocket launcher," Maizy said.

  My jaw went slack. "Do you have a rocket launcher?"

  "Where would I put it? I'm just saying." She glanced in the side mirror. "He's really moving, isn't he."

  She was right. The car had just about closed the distance between us. The glare from the high beams lit up the Escort's interior brightly enough to read a road map. If I'd had a road map to read. The headlights sat up high, which had to mean either a pickup truck or an SUV. Either way, my car was no match for it.

  I was getting a bad feeling, maybe thanks to all those old Movies of the Week I'd watched featuring women in jeopardy making inexplicably poor decisions, like pulling over on a desolate road in the middle of the night.

  "Lock your door," I told her. I waited until I heard the click of the lock before I slid over toward the tree line, giving the truck ample space to pass. Because of the high beams, I couldn't tell what make it was or see who was driving it. But I could tell it had no intention of passing, because a second later it nudged up against my bumper and pushed. The Escort lurched sickeningly.

  "Hey!" Maizy twisted to look behind us. "What's he doing?"

  I had both hands on the wheel, fighting to stay on the pavement. "I think he's trying to run us off the road. Can you see who's driving?"

  She tried to shield her eyes against the high beams. "It's too bright. Or too dark. Anyway, I can't tell."

  Thump.

  The Escort's front right tire veered into dirt shoulder and skidded along for a foot or two before I pulled it back onto the pavement.

  "That cuts it," Maizy said. "First Nicky D, now this. I've had it." Clutching her cell phone, she unbuckled her seat belt, rolled down her window, and pushed herself up so she was sitting on the passenger door, half inside the car and half outside.

  "What are you doing!" I yelled at her. "You're going to get killed!"

  "I'm filming this moron," she yelled back. "Just keep us on the road!"

  Thump. Swerve. Straighten. Maizy kicked me in the shoulder.

  "Hold it steady!" she yelled. "I can't get a clean shot!"

  "Get back in here, and put your seat belt on!" I yelled back. I sounded panicked even to my own ears. I was panicked. The Escort wasn't exactly an impenetrable fortress. It wouldn't take too many hits before it disintegrated into a pile of metal chips and tattered upholstery. At least I didn't have enough gas in the tank to explode into a fireball. So we had that going for us.

  "I'm gonna put this on YouTube, you doofus!" she shouted at the maniac behind us.

  "Don't—" I began, but before I could say anything else, it abruptly dropped off our bumper, veered sharply to our left, cut its headlights, and rocketed past us, its deafening horn blasting through the darkness. It was a pickup. I stared after it, trying to commit details to memory. Panic kept me from perceiving the make, but it had two or four doors and a short or maybe long bed and was some shade of blue. Maybe dark green. Or red. At that point I didn't know if it had four tires.

  Seconds later, the pickup I'd committed to memory disappeared into the night.

  Maizy dropped back into her seat. Her windblown cheeks were pink. Her poofy blue hair was unchanged. "That was pretty smart," she said. "I couldn't read the plates in the dark, and I didn't get a look at the driver. He was up too high. I bet the state police would like to have a word with him. It's illegal to leave the scene of an accident."

  "That was no accident," I muttered.

  "Agreed," Maizy said. "I just didn't want you to fry your wires. Now hit it. We need to get a partial plate, at least. I want to know who that goober is."

  "I don't care who it is," I said. "Probably someone from the bar trying to get some kicks by terrorizing two helpless women."

  Maizy rolled up her window. "First," she said, "Virtual Waste fans are not homicidal maniacs. Generally speaking. And second, we are not helpless women. I've got the video to prove it." She shoved her cell phone back into a pocket. "And third, where's your sense of adventure? Live a little. What's the worst that could happen?"

  "We could catch him," I said. Immediately I realized what a ridiculous idea that was. I couldn't catch a tumbleweed in my glorified go-kart. I could barely top sixty without fear of shaking the engine loose.

  "Yeah," Maizy said, "and what if we could? It'd be radical, right? I bet he dented your bumper. Even worse than normal, I mean. That thing was huge."

  I frowned. That hadn't occurred to me.

  "And if he bent the frame," Maizy said, "your car is toast. You know what that means."

  "It means I want to know who totaled my car," I growled, stomping on the gas. The Escort coughed once, bucked, and died. We coasted to the side of the road and looked at each other.

  The chase was over. We were out of gas.

  CHAPTER THREE

  "You might want to think about a new car," Maizy said. "This one is a speed bump away from a major repair. I can talk to Honest Aaron, if you want. He runs a special every week."

  "We just ran out of gas. That's all," I said. I pulled into the driveway behind my landlord's Jeep and killed the engine.

  "Yeah, but why?" Maizy asked. "Your gas gauge doesn't work anymore, right?"

  Gas gauge, radio, dome light. It was still better than one of Honest Aaron's traveling crime scenes.

  "What's your point?" I asked sourly.

  "My point," Maizy said, "is it's a good thing that cop drove by."

  I stifled a yawn. "What's good about it? We sat there for almost two hours before he showed up." Worrying that the maniac would turn around and try again. Worrying that I'd have to try to sleep in my car. Worrying that the maniac would turn around and try again and catch me sleeping in my car.

  "At least he got us some gas," Maizy said. "And he gave us directions. It's funny how different things look in the dark."

  Funny, yeah. I grabbed my bag and poured myself out onto the driveway. I'd been afraid to leave the car since I figured it was better to be lost with shelter than on foot. I'd also been afraid to roll down the window more than a few millimeters. The night had devolved from subtropical to fires of hell hot, which I hadn't expected. Summer days were supposed to be suffocating, but the nights were another story. One I usually slept through.

  The house was dark, which was reasonable since it was nearly three a.m. I lived on the renovated second floor of Curt Emerson's tidy bungalow, which had tan siding, a brown roof, a drag strip of a driveway, and an immaculate lawn, regardless of the season. It sat in the middle of a block full of tidy bungalows with bright shutters and midsized sedans in the driveway.

  Maizy followed me around back, and we clomped up the stairs leading to my apartment. "Have you got anything to eat? I'm hungry."

  "How can you be hungry? It's almost three o'clock in the morning," I said. "Aren't you tired?"

  She snorted. "Hardly. Do you know how many years of your life you waste sleeping?"

  "Not enough," I said. "You can make yourself a PB&J if you do it quietly."

  "I'd rather have a strawberry banana smoothie with flaxseed," she said.

  I jammed the key in the lock. "Then you'd better go knock on your uncle's door. I'm fresh out of flaxseed."

  "Yeah, I guess I could visit Uncle Curt." She hesitated. "He might not like it if I wake him up, though. And he might sleep in the nude. I don't want to embarrass him. Guys are funny about stuff like that."

  I almos
t dropped my key at the thought of Curt sleeping in the nude. I couldn't imagine any scenario where he'd be embarrassed by that. Curt was built like Thor right down to the big hammer. Curt should be proud to sleep in the nude.

  Wait.

  "How do you know guys are embarrassed by stuff like that?" I asked.

  "My friend Sydney told me," she said. "She read it in Cosmo. She learns a lot of stuff from Cosmo. Like what boobs would say if they could talk. You'd be surprised. Boobs are pretty opinionated. Anyway, the unexpected drop-in is one of the seven things that'll turn off a guy."

  Only seven? I'd managed to find a lot more than that. I turned on a table lamp, and Ashley lifted her head on the recliner, blinking in irritation at the disruption to her twenty-two daily hours of sleep. My apartment was on the small side: a kitchen, a bathroom, and a living room that doubled as a bedroom thanks to the sofa bed. Thanks to Curt, it had neutral colors, upgraded appliances, brand new carpet, and more closet space than I needed since I had no wardrobe to speak of.

  Maizy plopped down cross-legged in front of the recliner, stroking Ashley's head. "I'll bring you the article. It's very helpful, if you're into that sort of thing. Personally, I find it kind of anachronistic."

  Yeah, that's just what I thought.

  "By the way," she said, "do you have a hand mixer? According to Cosmo, you can use a hand mixer to—"

  My phone rang, making me jump. I snatched it up before it could do it again.

  "Just tell me one thing," Curt said in my ear. "Was it legal?"

  I mouthed Curt, and Maizy called out, "Ask him if he has any flaxseed."

  I frowned at her. "Of course it was legal," I told Curt. "She…we just went to a concert."

  A tick of silence. "What concert? There's no one in town."

  "Volatile Waste."

  "Virtual Waste," Maizy said. "Tell him about Nicky D."

  I shook my head. Telling him about Nicky D would only lead to telling him about the maniac driver, and that would only lead to telling him about running out of gas, which would only lead to a lecture on good automotive upkeep. Been there.

  "Who's Nicky D?" Curt asked.

  "He's in the band," I said.

  "Drummer," Maizy said. "He's the drummer. Was. Before he died."

  A longer tick of silence.

  "Another dead person," Curt said.

  We'd been there before, too, a couple of times. Curt thought I was a human divining rod for dead people. My defense was I never went looking for them. They just seemed to find me. Curt considered that defense lacking. But he hadn't shredded my lease yet, so how annoyed could he be?

  Still, it couldn't hurt to distract him.

  "Are you naked right now?" I asked.

  Maizy gave me the thumbs-up.

  "Nice try," Curt said. "Maizy told me all about that Cosmo article. She wanted to know if it was instructional."

  I narrowed my eyes at her. She did the wide-eyed who-me? shrug and went back to petting Ashley.

  I turned my back and lowered my voice. "What'd you tell her?"

  "Come on downstairs," he said. "You can find out for yourself."

  My stomach gave a little flutter.

  "What happened to this Nicky D?" he asked.

  I forced myself to focus. "An amplifier fell on his head."

  "When someone dropped it there," Maizy added.

  "You don't know that," I told her. "Just because you saw some guy going backstage and Nicky D was found dead not long after that doesn't prove anything."

  "What about the guy who tried to run us off the road?" she asked. "Did that prove anything?"

  "What'd she say?" Curt asked sharply.

  "Don't worry," I said. "You know Maizy's prone to exaggeration. It was just a meaningless little road rage encounter. That's all."

  "That's not a thing," Maizy said.

  "I agree with her," Curt said. "Tell me this. If I go outside right now, will I find dents in your car?"

  "Is that a trick question?" I asked.

  "Right." He sighed. "Don't move." He hung up.

  "Great." I turned to Maizy. "He's coming up."

  "Is he going to be nude?" Maizy asked. "Because if he is, I'm going to wait in the bathroom."

  "I'm sure he won't be nude," I said.

  "You don't know," she said. "Sometimes Uncle Curt likes to flout convention. We wouldn't want to see his giblets at three a.m."

  We wouldn't?

  "I'm sure Curt's giblets will be safely out of sight," I told her.

  "I hope so," Maizy said. "'Cause you can't unring that bell."

  Footsteps thumped up the stairs, and Curt burst through the door. He wasn't nude, but it wouldn't take much to make him that way. He was already barefoot and shirtless, and that was a good start. I fought the urge to lick my lips as I took in the faded jeans slung low on his hips. He needed a shave. His hair, dark and thick, stood up in unruly little spikes from sleeping. His eyes, so dark they were nearly black, were penetrating and a little scary in a I'm-going-to-throw-you-over-my-shoulder-and-haul-you-off-to-bed kind of way. His agitated breathing made his six-pack abs flex and relax in time. Forceful Curt.

  Yum.

  "Talk," he said.

  I peeled my eyes off his abs and my mind off his giblets. "It wasn't as bad as Maizy made it sound."

  "That's true," Maizy said. "Running out of gas was much worse."

  Curt stared at the ceiling for a few beats. "Someone tried to run you off the road and you ran out of gas?"

  "Not at the same time," Maizy said. "The gas thing happened while we were chasing the dink who tried to run us off the road."

  "You chased him?" Curt said.

  Maizy nodded. "Only for two yards. Then we ran out of gas, not that it mattered. Jamie could have had a full tank and all night, and she still wouldn't have been able to catch him."

  "Thank you," I said with ice.

  "It's not your fault," she said. "My hair dryer has more RPMs than your car."

  "Again," I said, "thank you."

  Curt's voice was steel. "Why would you do that?"

  "I wanted to get at least a partial license plate," Maizy said. "So I could report him to the police." Her eyes got wide and innocent. "Wasn't that the right thing to do, Uncle Curt?"

  Maizy had a gift for making the insane sound logical. I could practically see Curt trying to conjure up a counterargument.

  "Did you get it?" he asked finally.

  Maizy shook her head. "But I got some film while he was busy rear-ending us." She pulled out her cell phone.

  I pretended not to see Curt glaring at me. I knew he thought I was a bad influence on Maizy. Personally, I thought it was the other way around. If not for Maizy, I'd have been snug in bed with Ashley draped over my head, dreaming of a life that didn't involve homicidal maniacs and lawyers.

  We huddled around Maizy's phone. The video was shaky and dark except for occasional flashes from the maniac's headlights when he dropped back to make another run at the Escort. Watching it gave me the willies all over again.

  "How did you shoot this?" Curt asked her. "It looks like you were on the roof of the car." He looked at her. "You weren't on the roof of the car, were you?"

  "Of course not," Maizy said. "I was sitting on the door. And yes, the door was closed at the time."

  "That makes me feel much better," Curt said.

  We watched the video all the way through until the pickup's headlights went black and it tore past us and vanished. I could feel Curt's tension radiating off him in waves. I could see it in the little muscle working in his jaw as he watched the screen. And in the way his dark hair curled adorably onto the back of his neck.

  Okay, maybe that was a different type of tension.

  "Did you hear that?" Maizy asked. "That's not factory equipment. He's got an air horn."

  "I heard it the first time," I said. I didn't know an air horn from a fog horn, but I knew loud when I heard it.

  "That'll make him easier to find," Maizy said.
<
br />   "Why would we want to find him?" I asked.

  Curt crossed his arms and looked at her.

  Maizy was unfazed. "Because I want to prosecute the doofus who tried to paste us to a tree." She held up her phone. "I've got proof, remember?" She restarted the video. "You can't see anything," she said, disappointed. "I thought maybe we would at least be able to see a face."

  She was right. The cab of the pickup was only partially visible to begin with, given how high it sat. Something sat crumpled on the dash; I could make out the number 20 on it in white print. Maybe a discarded bandana? A silver circle with what looked like a silver crucifix inside glinted as it swung from the rearview mirror. Beyond that, the cab was swathed in shadows that shifted with each movement. Nothing was distinguishable except that the driver had a head. And—

  "Is that a baseball cap?" I asked.

  Maizy squinted at the screen. "I think so. It's hard to tell."

  "Didn't you say the guy going backstage wore a baseball cap?"

  She nodded. "But a lot of guys at the b—the concert wore one."

  "Where was this concert?" Curt asked.

  "It wasn't a bad place," I said. "It's called the Pinelands Auditorium."

  "It's in a lovely bucolic setting," Maizy added.

  We turned to stare at her.

  "Well, there are trees," she said.

  "This wouldn't happen to be the Pinelands Bar and Auditorium, would it?" Curt asked.

  Maizy did her wide-eyed thing again. "You know, come to think of it, there may be a bar in the front."

  I rolled my eyes.

  Curt glowered at her. "Hand it over, Maize."

  "I don't know what you're talking about," she told him. "I only did what millions of other teenagers do on a Friday night."

  "Use fake ID to get into a bar," he snapped.

  "It's not fake ID," Maizy said. "The ID is legit. It's the application that's open to interpretation."

  "Don't tell me," Curt said. "It says you're a forty-year-old Russian."

  "Nyet," Maizy said. "But that's not a bad idea. Can I use that?"

  Curt sighed.

  "I don't know why you're getting so agitated about this," Maizy said. "It's not like I drank anything. Alcohol kills brain cells."