Tightrope (Burning Cove #3)(40)

“What constitutes an easy out?” Amalie asked.

“I informed her that I would not be joining my family’s engineering firm. She was horrified. Dropped me and took up with a man I considered a friend.”

“Okay, that is a bad ending.”

“It certainly struck me that way,” he said.

He unfastened his cuff links, dropped them into the pocket of his trousers, and rolled up his shirtsleeves. He went to the rear of the convertible and opened the trunk.

She climbed out of the front seat.

“I can help,” she said. “You learn a lot of things when you work in a circus. I’ve changed a few tires in my time.”

He leaned inside the trunk. “Thanks, but there’s no reason for both of us to get dirty. I’d lose whatever claim I’ve got to being a gentleman if I let you change the tire.”

“You worry about that sort of thing?”

“In my family we do.”

“You come from an old family?”

“Seems to me that if you’re alive today, it’s proof positive that you come from an old family. It’s not like you just appeared under a cabbage leaf. Everyone’s got ancestors.”

“I take your point. But you know as well as I do that there are very particular definitions of the term old when it comes to families.”

“Let’s just say I come from a very tightly knit family, as in the kind that puts a lot of pressure on the offspring to join the family firm.” Matthias walked toward the front of the convertible. “Here, you can hold the flashlight. Wonder what made that tire blow. The tread was good.”

“Tires blow,” she said. She switched on the flashlight. “Fact of life.”

“True. This one blew at a particularly bad time, though.”

Amalie shuddered. “That’s for sure. For a few seconds there I thought we were going over the edge of the cliffs. Your driving was brilliant.”

“I’ve got pretty good reflexes.”

She smiled. “Like me?”

He flashed her a quick grin. “Something else in common.”

She watched Matthias crouch next to the ruined tire and start loosening the lug nuts. She discovered that she liked watching him work. There was something very masculine and very interesting about the way he handled tools.

Halfway through the project he stopped, listening. Amalie heard it then, the faint rumble of an approaching vehicle. She turned her head and caught the flash of headlights just before they disappeared into a curve. A few seconds later the twin beams once again lanced the darkness.

Instead of ignoring the oncoming car, Matthias got to his feet, gripping the wrench in one hand.

“Switch off the flashlight,” he said quietly.

She obeyed and followed his gaze. The oncoming car was moving fast.

“I don’t like this,” Matthias said.

“Now you are making me nervous. What, exactly, don’t you like?”

“We just left the Carousel after picking up our first solid lead and we just happen to have a blowout on a deserted stretch of road. We could have gone over the cliffs. Instead we just happen to be stuck here, out in the open. And now another vehicle just happens to come along.”

“I assume this goes back to your problem with coincidence?”

“It does.” Matthias closed the trunk but he kept the wrench in his hand. “Let’s go.”

She looked around. “Where?”

“Behind that farm stand. With luck, whoever is in that car will assume that we decided to hitchhike into town to get some assistance.”

They made their way to the boarded-up stand and moved behind it. Amalie listened to the approaching vehicle. She heard it pause briefly at the turnoff onto the farm road, and then it drove onto the unpaved lane. Tires crunched on gravel and dirt. Headlights blazed.

She looked at Matthias. There was enough moonlight to let her see that he was listening intently. He had his gun out now.

A car door opened. Footsteps sounded.

“Anybody around? Looks like you blew a tire. Be glad to give you a hand.”

A man, Amalie thought, but not one she knew.

Matthias was very still but Amalie was almost certain that he was radiating an icy-hot fever. She knew that he was ready to do battle.

There were more footsteps. A moment later a car door slammed shut with far more force than necessary. An engine rumbled back to life. The vehicle roared off down the road, spitting gravel.

Matthias moved out from behind the back wall of the farm stand.

“Damn.” He said it very quietly and with feeling.

Amalie walked around the corner. She was just in time to see the headlights of the other car vanish on the twisty road above the sea.

“What?” she asked.

“I didn’t get a look at the driver,” Matthias said.

“What about the car?”

“A late-model sedan.” Matthias holstered his gun. “Ford, I think.”

“There are probably a lot of Ford sedans in Burning Cove at the moment.”

“Probably.”

Matthias walked back to the Packard and crouched beside the tire.

Amalie switched on the flashlight. “I couldn’t help noticing that you did not respond to that man when he offered to help us.”

Matthias concentrated on loosening a lug nut. “No.”