LOL: Laugh Out Loud (After Oscar, #2)(2)

Three black cars idled in front of me. “Can you be more specific? The Honda or the SUV?”

“Never mind. Up there—make a right!” he barked. “Head to the Chelsea Piers as fast as you can!”

Well, that clarified things. Not much, but at least a little. Now I knew the officer had a destination in mind and that we weren’t in the middle of an actual horse-and-buggy low-speed chase through central Manhattan.

By this time we were kind of, sort of on our way to the stable where my horse, Nugget, lived. So this route wasn’t entirely unfamiliar to me. It was just odd, and at this time of day, very illegal. Normally, I spent my day driving tourists through Central Park. Besides the drive to and from work and a quick U-turn in traffic between customers, I didn’t normally drive poor Nugget through the city streets.

And people were staring.

“When you say the Chelsea Piers,” I began, “is there some kind of sting operation happening down there, or…?”

I noticed the cop seemed to be breathing just as heavily as he had when he’d hopped in the carriage. And we’d been going long enough that he should have been able to catch his breath by now unless he was horribly out of shape. I cast a quick glance over my shoulder. He didn’t look out of shape. In fact, despite the bulk of his winter uniform, he looked like he had a pretty fine shape.

But the color of his face concerned me. The bits of skin I could see between his turned-up collar and pulled-down hat appeared pale. And the way he had a hand pressed against his stomach didn’t bode well.

“Are you okay? You’re not going to be sick, are you? Nugget really hates vomit. Like seriously, the results aren’t pretty. Trust me. This one time—”

“I’m not going to be sick, all right?” the cop said gruffly, cutting me off. “Just keep going. It’s urgent.”

It was times like these I wished for a rearview mirror so I could get a better look at the man. When it was just a stroll through the park, I could swivel around in my seat to chat with my customers while I trusted Nugget to keep her nose on the horse butt in front of her.

But this was city traffic—stoplights and pedestrian crossings. And we were going at a pretty decent clip which meant less time to react to the unexpected. I had to keep my focus on what I was doing.

“You know I’m not allowed to be driving on city streets like this right now, right?”

“You have my permission,” the officer called from the back. “Stop asking so many questions. Jesus.”

Not going to happen. Ever. Not asking questions wasn’t my thing.

“Are you from the Seventeeth?” I asked, ignoring him and wondering why he was heading so far out of his precinct. Not that I really had a good handle on how NYPD cops handled jurisdictions. It was more that I was hoping to pry information from him about what the hell was going on. “Or Eighteenth maybe?”

“Mpfh,” he grunted. “Again with the questions.”

A group of tourists with their noses buried in a guidebook suddenly darted into the street in front of Ellen’s Stardust Diner, frightening Nugget and scaring the bejeezus out of me. Nugget snorted and veered away from them. Directly toward a sidewalk crowded with street vendors.

I yanked on her reins, but the horse wasn’t having it.

The cop let out a curse behind me. “Take Seventh—up there on the left.”

“I don’t think that’s a good id—”

“Do it,” he barked.

“If you say so,” I said on a sigh. I tugged on the reins, following his directions.

Almost immediately we ground to a halt.

“Can’t your horse go any faster?”

Oh hell no. I wasn’t letting brave Nugget get blamed for this man’s poor decisions. “Not to be a front-seat driver or anything,” I said, pausing to cluck my tongue to keep Nugget from nosing the back of a taxi, “but we might get there faster if we didn’t head straight into the heart of Times Square.”

“What? Oh, god, why? For the love of all that’s holy, just get me to the piers.”

As soon as I got to Forty-Ninth and turned right, I swiveled back to get a better look at my cop. Or my potential carriagejacker. I wasn’t sure which he was at this point.

It seemed like the sort of thing I should probably find out. “So I think perhaps it’s time we have a chat, mmkay?”

He looked up from where his face had been buried in his hands. His pallor was ghostly white, and the poor man still appeared a little too close to vomiting for my taste. I took in the bulk of his winter uniform over body armor, dark beard scruff above the black NYPD turtleneck. I couldn’t see much of him other than his face, but that was all I needed. He was hot enough to answer the question of whether or not I’d press charges against my kidnapper (no) and whether or not he was worth the loss of income I was experiencing while on this jaunt (also no, because gorgeous didn’t pay rent).

I sighed and turned back to face the road, nearly tipping sideways when a couple of tourists jumped into the carriage with their cameras out.

“Get out!” I barked. “Police business! Go!”

“What the hell, dude?” one of the young men asked when the carriage suddenly lurched forward. Nugget must have seen a break in the traffic and taken advantage of an open passing lane. I was pretty sure it was for bicycles only. Regardless, she put on the gas, sending one tourist spinning off the bench to the street and the other one grasping at the reins in my hand.