Read Leaving Annalise (Katie & Annalise Book 2) for Free Online

instructed me to keep beneath my seat. “How about this?”
    Nick slid down me, in a very nice way, and to his feet outside the door. “Now that’s what I call a knife,” he said in a bad Australian accent. “A little big, though. Do you have a flathead screwdriver?”
    I pointed to the giant toolbox I had in my truck bed, because that is how a butt-kicking goddess in the St. Marcos rainforest rolls. “Back there,” I said. “But, really, shouldn’t we search the house first?”
    Nick winked. “Who knows where they could be, and we’re in a hurry. A very, very big hurry.”
    He pulled his phone out of his pocket and used it as a flashlight. I heard my tools tumbling around as he made a shamble out of my organizational system, but he was back in seconds with a screwdriver. I moved aside to let him in and he set to work quickly.
    “In these old trucks like yours, it’s easy,” he said, removing screws one by one from the steering wheel cover until it fell onto the floorboard with a plop. Every nerve in my body tingled with anticipation. The whole slightly-criminal-past thing was unexpected, and hot. I wondered how my father would have felt about Nick. And how my kindergarten-teacher mother would have, for that matter.
    “You have to pull the wire harness out of the steering wheel, like so. This is the female end, with openings for each wire that comes in the back.”
    “Cool,” I said, and leaned in to kiss the dark skin below his ear. If he thought I was paying any attention, he was mistaken, but I liked the rumble of his voice from his chest.
    “That’s going to slow me down,” he said, but he didn’t sound upset about it. “I need to find the wires for the power supply, the starter, and the dashboard. Power is usually red, the dashboard normally has some yellow, and the starter is generally green.”
    “Um hmmm,” I said. My hand snaked its way to his nicely defined chest somehow. Not on purpose, of course.
    “You’re being very bad.” He turned his head just enough that I could catch his lips in mine for a moment, then pulled away. “Focus, Kovacs, focus. OK, I’ll stick one end of the bobby pin into the yellow wire’s dashboard hole like so. Then I’ll stick the other end of the bobby pin into the red power hole. Ouch!”
    I stopped. “What’s wrong?”
    “Old thing gave me a little shock. Not bad, though. It’s only twelve volts.” He tried again. The dashboard lit up, and I lit up with it. This was almost better than sex.
    “Now we leave the bobby pin in here like this until we want to turn the car off. Then we just pull it out.”
    I was pretty sure I was going to start rubbing against him like a cat if he didn’t finish soon.
    “Now we stick a second bobby pin in the red power hole, and the other end into the hole with the green starter wire, and leave it there until the engine engages.”
    The engine started to crank, then caught.
    My stomach flipped with the engine. One step closer to wherever we were going and whatever we would do there. Nick jumped out and ran around to the passenger seat and I crawled into the driving position.
    “You make that look awfully easy,” I said as I put the truck in drive and pressed the accelerator.
    “Years of practice,” he admitted. “But it’s not so easy if you don’t have bobby pins. Then you have to rip the wires out of the harness and twist the right ones together. Or if you have a new car with one of those electronic anti-theft devices, then you’re SOL unless you’re a semi-pro thief.” He put his hand on my leg a few inches above my knee and gently squeezed. It tickled just enough for me to jump a little.
    “Where are we going?” I asked.
    “I’m staying at Stoper’s Reef. How about we go there?”
    I held myself to a smile that I hoped didn’t look easy. “I think that would be all right.”
    The Reef was on the near side of Taino, which was better known as just “Town.” In fact, it was only five minutes away from