Honor Bound(8)

"How long will I be gone?" she asked. Her question was casual and out of keeping with her busy eyes.

He didn't stay close to another car long enough for her to make eye contact with either the driver or passengers. There were no police cars in sight. Greywolf was driving carefully and well within the speed limit. He was no fool.

Nor was he talkative. He offered no answer to her question. "I'll be missed, you know. I have a business to run. When I don't show up for work, people will start looking for me."

"Pour me a cup of coffee."

Her mouth fell open at the imperious way he issued orders, as though he were the big bad brave and she his squaw. "Go to hell."

"Pour me a cup of coffee."

Had he shouted at her, flown into a fit of temper, she might have met him nose to nose. But the words left his mouth quietly, like serpents slithering from a cave. They sent chills down her spine. He hadn't hurt her so far, but he was a dangerous man. The kitchen knife was still tucked into his waistband. One look into the hard gray eyes that left the road long enough to nail her to the car seat convinced her that he was an enemy to be reckoned with.

She found two Styrofoam cups in the sack he had brought with them. Carefully she poured him half a cup of steaming, fragrant coffee from the Thermos and passed it to him. He didn't thank her, but sipped from the cup, squinting his eyes against the vapor that rose out of it.

Without asking his permission, she poured another cup for herself before recapping the Thermos. She stared down into the coffee as she rolled the cup between her palms and tried to imagine what his plans for her were. She was concentrating so hard that she jumped when he suddenly spoke.

"What kind of business?"

"What?"

"You said you have a business to run."

"Oh, a photography studio."

"You take pictures?"

"Yes, portraits basically. Brides. Babies. Graduates. That kind of thing."

If he understood, approved, or disapproved, he kept it a secret. His chiseled profile revealed nothing. Granted, her work was nothing to get excited about, she thought with an inward sigh.

When she had graduated from college with a journalism degree, she had had aspirations to set the world on fire with her provocative photojournalism, to travel the globe capturing flame, famine and flood on film. She had wanted to evoke intense emotions such as anger, love and pity with each photograph.

But her parents had had vastly different plans for their only child. Willard Andrews was a prominent businessman in Scottsdale. His wife, Eleanor, was a society queen bee. Their daughter was expected to do the "suitable" thing, that being to amuse herself with suitable projects until she decided to marry a suitable young man. There were any number of clubs she could join, any number of committees she could chair. Charity work was permissible, so long as it didn't entail getting personally involved.

A career, especially one as gritty as traveling to remote parts of the world to take pictures of things too horrid to discuss at dinner parties, certainly didn't fit into her parents' plans for her. After months of endless argument, they finally wore her down and she bowed to their will.

As a concession, her father bankrolled a photography studio where Aislinn could take vapid portraits of her parents' friends and their offspring. It wasn't a bad occupation; it was just a far cry from the meaningful work she had always wanted to do.

She wondered what her parents would say now if they could see her in the company of Lucas Greywolf and she was unable to withhold a laugh that bubbled up from her throat.

"Do you find the situation amusing?" he asked.

"Not at all amusing," she replied, becoming serious again. "Why don't you let me go?"

"I didn't intend to take a hostage. I intended to eat your food, avail myself of your house for a few hours' rest, and then leave. But you came in and caught me plundering your kitchen. Now I have no choice but to take you with me." He glanced at her before adding, "Actually I do have a choice, but I'm no murderer. At least not yet."

She suddenly lost her desire for the coffee. Instead the acrid taste of fear filled her mouth. "Do you plan to kill me?"

"Not unless you give me no choice."

"I'll fight you every step of the way."

"In that case we might have difficulties."

"Then I wish you'd go ahead and do it. The anticipation you're putting me through is cruel."

"So is prison."

"What did you expect?"

"I've learned to expect little."

"It's certainly not my fault you went to prison. You commit a crime, you pay for it."

"And just what was my 'crime'?"

"I … I don't recall. Something to do with—"

"I organized a demonstration at the courthouse in Phoenix. It resulted in violence, injury to police officers and damages to federal property." He said it in a way that made her think he wasn't confessing, but only quoting verbatim what he'd heard repeated numerous times. "But I think my real crime was being born an Indian."

"That's ridiculous. You have no one to blame for your misfortune but yourself, Mr. Greywolf."

His tight grin was mirthless. "I believe the judge said something to that effect when he sentenced me."