His Wicked Ways. Joanne Rock

      “I’m fine.” She glared at him with the bitch-look she saved for criminals she needed to intimidate. “Can we get out of here now, please?”

      The open expression in his eyes shuttered as he retreated, assuring her he hadn’t missed her point. For a moment, she regretted her attitude, regretted the need to lash out at anyone who got too close. Still, keeping men at arm’s length seemed a hell of a lot kinder in the long run than letting a guy think he was making progress with her, only to find out she couldn’t work up any enthusiasm in bed.

      Alec slid into the car and started the engine without a word while Vanessa readjusted her gun at her waist. As he pulled the car out of his subterranean lair and into the night, she realized the windows were tinted so black no one could see inside the vehicle. Illegally black, in fact, but she’d be willing to bet there were plenty of other cars roaming these streets with the same kind of windows. Eyewitnesses said the car carrying whoever shot Gena had blackened windows. The shooter had never been found.

      The morose turn of her thoughts called her to remember Gena had lived. After a week of fighting for her life, she had turned a corner. Of course, it had taken months of grueling physical therapy to retrain her legs how to walk, her thigh and hip sustaining grave damage. She’d never walk without a limp, but the rest of her had recovered faster than Vanessa, who still found ways to blame herself for what had happened and still sought out cars with tinted windows.

      Just like this one.

      “Have you had this car for long?” She remembered he said he grew up in Bensonhurst, but he had to be at least thirty years old. The lines around his eyes had seen some living.

      Had they seen an innocent twenty-year-old crumble to the curb?

      “I just picked it up two years ago.” Slowing for a stop sign, Alec leaned forward in his seat to peer down a one-way street. “It took me that long to decide it was okay to reward myself now and then.”

      As the streets grew darker in a less populated part of town, she realized they were heading toward the Cross Bronx Expressway, navigating the small side streets beneath the highway.

      Always a good place for crime.

      “And you haven’t had any problems rolling through the South Bronx in a sedan worth a hundred Gs?” Back in the days she lived here, kids in junior high would pry hubcaps off cars like this to wear as medallions off the cheap gold chains they bought from a guy on the street. She’d never been sure if the look was supposed to convey status—as in “look at what expensive cars I can rip off”—or if the trend merely served to show off unusually strong neck muscles.

      Vanessa had missed out on a lot of nuances in her preteens since she’d still been wearing the hand-me-down eyeglasses given to Nana by a social worker who’d wanted a smoke alarm installed. She’d spent two years of tripping over her own feet before they could afford to put new lenses in those frames. Damn, but she wanted to get out of this part of the city before she lost her mind to the past. Thankfully, the entrance to the highway should be just up ahead. Tension knotted in her gut.

      “I think the general assumption is that only a drug dealer would have the balls to drive through here in this kind of Mercedes. And the locals stay away from the dealers. Either way, I’ve never had any problems.” He slowed to a stop at the entrance ramp where a fire hydrant sprayed water in an arc over the street, flooding the road. Two sawhorses had been erected around the mess, but there were no road workers in sight.

      Damn.

      They wouldn’t be entering the freeway here. Unless she hopped out to move the sawhorses and they could plow through the water? “You think the Mercedes could make it through this? I don’t care where we go, Alec, but I’d like to leave the Bronx far behind.”

      Too bad he was already putting the car into reverse.

      “No problem.” Leaning on the accelerator, he redirected the car through the darkness, the majority of the streetlights broken. Maybe someone had tossed rocks at them. Or shot them out with a gun. “We can go this way.”

      The tension in her gut knotted all the more.

      “Freaking Tony.” Muttering under her breath, Vanessa cursed the abominable lack of effort by the local road crews as she shrank down in her seat. Thanks to the flooded ramp, they’d have to backtrack.

      ALEC HAD NEVER BEEN the sensitive type. He had no clue what women wanted, and no real desire to find out. He knew they smelled good and tasted better. This one in particular.

      So it didn’t surprise him that he had no idea what the sizzling cop in his passenger seat wanted from him. But it seemed to his limited understanding of women that Vanessa Torres was more complicated than the average female. If men were from Mars and women were from Venus, Vanessa had probably dropped by the rec center from Pluto, her ways unfathomable to his kind.

      She’d been brooding in his passenger seat for almost fifteen minutes straight, barely managing civil conversation. And now when she finally spoke to him, her only request had been to get her the hell out of here.

      Alec knew a shortcut, and the V12 engine could plow through these streets in record time. He’d do what she asked, and he’d cross his fingers that she would continue to ask for what she wanted, because he could never hope to understand cryptic phrases like Freaking Tony, without her interpreting.

      He shifted into high gear and blasted down a deserted street of businesses that had been boarded up twenty years ago, anxious to get them both someplace safe. His speedometer hit fifty miles an hour when a car pulled out of nowhere and stopped in the middle of the one-way, perpendicular to the narrow lane.

      “Shit.” Slamming on the brakes, the vehicle skidded and screeched across the asphalt with a squeal that could have been heard all the way to Jersey. The seat belt tore into his skin, his swerve lurching him so far sideways he was forced to view the scene in front of him from a ninety-degree angle. His head hit the steering wheel at some point, and he wasn’t sure if he shouted inside, or if Vanessa was screaming at the top of her lungs. Noise blared through his ears and filled his whole head. Through the dizzying spin of the vehicle, he thought he saw Vanessa crack her head against the window.

      Thank God for German engineering, or he would have creamed the other car. As they turned askew in the skid, he could see the beat-up Chevy that didn’t even have its headlights on.

      No wonder he hadn’t seen the thing.

      The smell of burned rubber assailed his senses, his sedan now cranked around perpendicular to the road. The street lamps must have been shot out on this block because the usual city lights were nowhere to be found. About six blocks away, he could see a blinking yellow stoplight, reminding him it must be after midnight by now. He reached for Vanessa’s hand, needing to make sure she was safe.

      Before he could touch her, the passenger window smashed through from the outside.

      “Get out of the car.” The male voice barked into the vehicle as arms reached in from the darkness to unlock the door and yank Vanessa from the sedan. The unseen speaker shouted obscenities while another man forced the barrel of an automatic weapon into the Mercedes.

      Alec tried to launch out of the other side of the car but his seat belt was still on, his head muddled from the blow on the steering wheel.

      Shit.

      He thought about the .22 caliber Beretta he’d stowed in his bag in the back seat. Three feet away might as well be three miles for all the good it would do him now.

      “Get out of the car.” The kid with the semiautomatic shotgun crouched into Alec’s line of sight, butting the barrel through the door and up against his chest. The piece vibrated with the guy’s nerves, adrenaline or possibly a drug high. His face was mostly covered with a Raiders bandanna, but his eyes remained visible. “No one tries to be a hero and no one gets hurt, you get me?”