Careful to keep one hand in his pocket with the gun pointed away from Holly—Shane had made him promise to keep the bullets in the glove compartment, but he’d said an unloaded gun should be treated like a loaded one just in case—Elijah unlocked the passenger door and opened it for her. The door was long and heavy like the car and seemed to open for days. Finally he stepped back and nodded to the interior. “Get in.”
Without moving her head, she scanned the half circle of parking lot in front of her with her eyes. Elijah saw what she saw and thought what she was thinking: if she ran now, he might shoot her. Her chances for escape would be better later. So she eased into the car, ducking her head to prevent her bouffant hairdo from hitting the roof.
He slammed her door and hurried around the car, concentrating carefully on her to make sure she didn’t change her mind and bolt. He slid into the driver’s seat and said, “Lock your door.” If she wanted to bail, at least she would have to think about pulling up the old-fashioned button first. Elijah would have warning and could grab her before she did it.
She put out one shaking hand, perfectly manicured in pink, and locked the door.
He bit his lip as power surged through him. He’d been tingling ever since the Mentafixol began to wear off, and the tingles intensified the more he delved into someone’s mind. But he couldn’t let MAD take him over completely. He was a nice person with a hereditary mental disorder. No matter what happened now, it was crucial that he remember his one task, to get that medicine.
For him, and for Holly.
He took a deep breath and squeezed the steering wheel. “Get out your cell phone.”
She dug through her purse.
“Text Kaylee,” he said. “Tell her you’re spending the night with me, like you’re happy about it. Be convincing.”
Holly’s heart beat violently. She was scared to death. But she’d felt close to him on the bus, and she didn’t want to let go of the hope that the Elijah she liked so much was still inside him somewhere. She touched the keypad with her thumb. The screen lit, illuminating her beautiful face, her false lashes casting long shadows as she closed her eyes and said a little prayer. Then her thumbs moved.
Spending the night with Elijah Brown. We started talking about the night at Glitterati and it just sort of happened.
Elijah leaned close to watch her enter the characters. She smelled like oleander. He removed his hands from the steering wheel and balled them into fists, cutting his fingernails into his palms to keep himself from touching her. “Squee,” he said.
Squee! Catch u tomorrow morning.
“We won’t be back tomorrow morning,” Elijah said. “Put ‘later.’ ”
Holly backspaced over “tomorrow morning,” panic rising with every keystroke. Elijah couldn’t stand much more of this without putting his hands on her, MAD or no MAD. But the more turned on he got, the closer she moved to tears. As she typed “later,” she was thinking of the few mornings Kaylee and she had walked to this very café, and the many mornings she’d come here alone because Kaylee was almost always working. When Kaylee came, she read the newspaper. Holly brought racy romance novels. She wanted a do-over of those mornings now. This time, instead of ordering coffee with skim milk and artificial sweetener, listening to her mom’s voice in her head demanding that she count calories, she would splurge for the chocolate muffin she’d dreamed about the entire year she’d lived in this neighborhood. What would it matter that her corpse carried a few extra pounds? Would this be bad for publicity for her dad’s show? Surely they wouldn’t have an open casket at her funeral, or bury her in this godforsaken bikini? She didn’t want to die without a muffin.
Elijah’s stomach growled, and he swallowed. “Fasten your seat belt.” He cranked the huge engine.
“Do you know how to drive?” Holly asked in a small voice. “I never learned how to drive. It’s dangerous to drive on Mentafixol.”
“Well, I’m off Mentafixol.”
“You are way off Mentafixol,” she whispered, hoping she wouldn’t be as crazy as he was in a few hours, when her own last pill had worn off.
“It ought to be perfectly safe.” He put the gearshift in first, pressed down on the gas, and let up on the clutch, as he had seen Shane do a million times.
The car lurched forward and stalled. Elijah extended his arm just in time to prevent Holly from hitting the dashboard. His hand touched her breast, and she felt it. Elijah felt it times two: the shape of her breast under his hand, and also what she felt. Awareness, pleasure, horror, guilt. He snatched his hand away.
She crossed her arms tightly over her chest. “Safe?” she squeaked.
“Definitely, as long as we’re not moving.” He started the engine again, pressed down on the gas, and let up on the clutch more slowly this time. The car lurched but kept rolling, and he maneuvered it onto the main road. For Vegas, the traffic wasn’t too bad at the late hour. But as he cruised this straight, easy road, it was all he could do to focus on keeping the car in his lane. Each time he passed a car going in the opposite direction, he could hear the thoughts of the drivers and passengers.
Then there was Holly’s terror, forcing him to the edge of a meltdown. They paused at the wide intersection with the Strip, and Holly gazed longingly past the towers of cheerful lights toward their casino, wondering if she would ever see her parents or Kaylee again. Elijah gripped the steering wheel and accelerated onward. Luckily the entrance to the interstate was straight ahead. He looped around the ramp, onto the elevated highway.
And then the gun in his pocket wiggled. This wouldn’t have startled him so much, because they did hit an occasional bump on the interstate. But Holly was concentrating hard on that gun, willing it to move, using her mind to tug it toward the opening of his pocket. If she was successful, it would tumble to the floorboard and she would make a grab for it under the steering wheel while Elijah dared not take his eyes off the road and kept driving.
Of course, Holly could concentrate on the gun as much as she wanted and nothing would happen, because people couldn’t move things with their minds. So when Elijah thought it really did shift a quarter inch upward in his pocket, defying gravity, he nearly jumped out of his skin.
Another bump in the road had jostled it, he assured himself, gripping the steering wheel harder with sweating palms. He stared into the traffic, focusing on the eighteen-wheelers zooming past them rather than on Holly tugging at the gun and now shoving him a bit, trying to push him out the door of the car. She wasn’t moving him at all, and she knew this. She didn’t really want to kill him. But she had no idea Elijah not only sensed she was trying to shove him but also actually felt little pushes on his shoulder.