On The Run by Iris Johansen Page A

“Why are you here? I thought you—”
    “So did I.” He picked her up and swung her in a circle. “But then I thought about how much you need me to get you from brown belt to black belt. If I let it go too long, you’ll lose all your moves. So I decided to come along.”
    “Great.” She hugged him again and turned to Grace. “Isn’t it great, Mom?”
    Grace nodded. “We wouldn’t want you to lose your moves.” She met Robert’s gaze over Frankie’s head. “But you have a lot more to lose than Frankie. Unless Crane changed his mind?”
    Robert shook his head. “I was told to go mind my own business when I tried to talk to him.” He smiled down at Frankie. “And since I’d recently received a business offer difficult to refuse, I took his advice.” He glanced at Kilmer. “I called Stolz—my contact at the head office at Langley—and he’s trying to track down the leak that led Kersoff to Grace.”
    “Time frame?”
    Robert shrugged. “I don’t know.” He took Frankie’s hand. “Let’s get on the plane. I brought along a DVD of Sarah Chang’s latest concert. I thought you might want to see it.”
    “I do.” Frankie nodded eagerly as she walked beside him toward the plane. “You know, she started young like me. But she actually performed with the New York Philharmonic when she was eight. I don’t think I’d like that. It would get in the way. Maybe later . . .”
    Grace turned to Kilmer as soon as they were out of earshot. “Why?”
    “I promised you a comfort cushion for Frankie. He’s part of her life.”
    “So you lured him away from a government pension?”
    “He won’t suffer for it, and all I did was dangle the carrot. He’s the one who grabbed it. He cares about you and Frankie and he was ready to try something new and different.”
    “Being on your team will certainly fill that bill,” she said dryly. “If you don’t get him killed.”
    “I promise I won’t play David to his Uriah,” he murmured. “No matter how tempted I am.”
    “David and Uriah.” Her forehead wrinkled in puzzlement. “Who were—”
    “Never mind.” He was striding toward the plane. “Let’s get out of here.”
    David and Uriah.
    Then it came to her. The biblical King David and Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband, who had been sent to his death by David because the king had lusted after his wife.
    Lust.
    No, she wouldn’t think about Kilmer’s words.
    Jesus, but how the devil could she stop thinking about it? It had triggered memory followed by tingling sensuality, as dark accompanied night.
    He’d meant her to remember. Subtle son of a bitch. He’d wanted her to know that it wasn’t over for him. He’d dropped that reference to the biblical passion that had been all-consuming and then made her associate it with the sexual frenzy that had—
    Stop it.
    He wasn’t David and she wasn’t some biblical bimbo who took baths on rooftops. What they’d had together was over.
    She just had to make sure it stayed over.
             
    T he ranch was the Bar Triple X. The name was emblazoned on the wooden post beside the gate.
    “Let me undo the gate.” Frankie jumped out of the car. She stopped, her head lifted. “It’s cooler here than home.” Her gaze shifted to the stark grandeur of the Grand Teton Mountains. “And pretty. Real pretty. But it’s different. . . .” She frowned, trying to get it right. “Charlie’s place was like a gentle pony, and this is . . . a bucking bronco.” She chuckled. “That’s it.” She opened the gate wide, waited for the car to drive through, closed the gate, and got back into the car. “But different is interesting, isn’t it, Mom? And you’ve broken a lot of bucking broncos. You were going to break that two-year-old, but you—” Her smile faded. “Everything happened.”
    “I’ll do it when we go back.” Grace slipped her arm around Frankie. “But you’re right, it’s different here. We’ll just have to see what we can make of it.”