Waiting until both guards were looking away, Kurt made a run for it. His shoes were too big to fit into the gaps betweenthe stones, so he treated the top of the column like the edge of a swimming pool, pulling himself up and then pushing his torso onto the flat space next to the planter.
All that gym time had been worth something after all.
Shifting onto his butt, he lifted his legs over the fence and then rolled to slide on his stomach over the edge of the column until his shoes almost touched the ground.
He slipped in the mud and landed on his ass, but it could’ve been worse.
“You okay?” Caitlyn asked quietly, her tone brisk and no-nonsense.
Thank God. He didn’t want her pity. “Fine.” He let her help him to standing.
“That was impressive,” she said, her gaze roaming over his chest and shoulders. “You’re stronger.”
In so many ways. And weaker in others. But who wasn’t? Her attention made himwant to preen. “Thanks. You were pretty amazing yourself.” The image of her dress up around her hips as she scrambled over the pillar like a natural sent a bolt of heat through him. God, she was sexy.
She smiled. Even with her triumph tempered by her sadness over Rose, he had to look away and take a few breaths.
Now all they had to do was get to their van. The original plan had been for thelarge taxi—driven by a volunteer with The Underground—to wait for their call, pretending to be for one of the other guests that Caitlyn knew was on the list. Kurt would have entered the taxi as if leaving alone, then it would have rendezvoused with her and the others about halfway down the driveway near a stand of banana palms, leaving Kurt behind with Caitlyn to rejoin the party.
Instead, theywere on their own, and even though she hid it well, he could sense her disappointment in the round of her shoulders, the fatigue around her eyes.
The fence cast a helpful shadow, and they stuck to the darkness as they hustled toward the van’s waiting point. Ten minutes later, they stood on the side of the road, right where their ride should have been.
“You sure this is the place?” he asked.
“Positive.”
The street was deserted in both directions. “Fabulous.”
Of course the van was gone. Why had Kurt expected anything to go right? He knew better.
On the bright side, they weren’t dragging along a bunch of people they were supposed to have rescued. Little consolation for Rose being God-knew-where, and the others still stuck with Lambert, clearly being mistreated.
“Back to the limos?”Caitlyn asked.
“Yeah.” Kurt wiped at his wet face in vain as the rain kept coming. “I don’t see what choice we have, but Lambert’s guards have had more time to spread out, and the police might have joined the search. We’re going to have to be extra careful.”
They plodded toward the plantation, hanging in the shadows. Red lights flashed in the dark, illuminating the falling water, the trees,and the fence surrounding the large property as they approached. The road ended in a T at Lambert’s street, and Kurt peered around the corner.
“Fuck. There’s a roadblock.”
Caitlyn snuck a glance. “Do you know how to hotwire a car?”
“Yeah, but I haven’t seen any cars in this neighborhood old enough. Anything manufactured in the last twenty years will have an alarm and a starter lock that wouldmake it pointless.”
She frowned.
He surveyed the street from behind a trailing vine growing over someone’s wall. “The good news is the limos are outside the police line. The cops are set up to prevent us from leaving the plantation, which means they won’t be looking for us to come back.”
“They will be on alert, though,” she said. “And there are probably guards along the fence line.”
“Right.If we stick to the shadows, I think we can get to the limo parked on this side of the street.” He looked over his shoulder at her. “You game?”
“Always.”
His kind of woman. He kissed her hard and fast on the lips. Before she could utter a wide-eyed response, he crept forward. She followed until they were ten yards off the black car’s bumper. Kurt hung back as Caitlyn tapped on the driver’s window.The man’s surprise was visible in the side mirror, but he rolled down the window.
“I’m already on a fare, ma’am. If you need a ride I can call my service for you.”
