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His molars crunched. Mitch strangled the steering wheel. Why was he upset? He didn’t want to touch her either. Every time he did, his certainty dug a deeper groove that any sex they might share would be off the Richter scale. “Fine.”
“Except in case you need to pull me out of danger.” Her slender throat moved in a swallow. “Like yesterday.”
He focused on loosening his jaw. “You sure?”
“I think it’s best.” She crooked her little finger. “Pinkie swear?”
He ignored her bent digit and turned the ignition. “That involves touching.”
“If I know it’s coming, I can brace for it.” She still held her finger toward him.
“Why not just shake hands?”
She rolled her eyes. “Never mind. I can see you’re afraid to try something new.”
Potatoes, potahtoes. He wrapped his little finger around hers and tugged, grateful she hadn’t insisted on the blood brothers ritual. She’d been kind and considerate with Kurt too. “I appreciated how you handled my brother.”
“Least I could do. A lot of people are afraid to talk with someone who’s hard of hearing.” She clicked her seat belt into place. “Tell me your plan.”
“I want to check out the fugitive’s classes. Try and find someone who knows him.” Mitch whipped the card he’d discovered in the backpack from his pocket. She winced and he held up a hand. “If I hadn’t pinched this, it would have been destroyed in the fire, and we would have no starting point.”
He studied the classes listed. “Your brother is taking a music class? Doesn’t he have to listen to music in that class?”
“He hears with his aids. To some degree. Not as well as hearing people, but that class is mostly history and theory he can read about in a book. I think he wanted to challenge himself. Even though he’s a special scholarship student, he insisted the school not make an exception for him on their course requirements.”
“He just wants the justice system to make one.”
“They should never have arrested him.” She glared at him. “We should check his apartment first. He could have gone back there. He might even be there now.”
“The plan is not to waste time. We can check his place later.” Mitch headed down the long driveway. “If we have a chance.”
Prickles danced along his right side. He flicked a glance her way, and she immediately raised her eyebrows. “Whose brother are we talking about here?”
He headed through the tunnel of trees arching over the street. “That makes no difference.”
“The difference is I know him a whole lot better than you. We grew up together. We’re even closer now that we’re both living in New Orleans.”
“Not so close you knew he’d skipped bail.” Mitch drove in and out of the dappled sunlight, pressing back against his seat and checking his watch.
“I should have known you wouldn’t believe in compromise.”
“It’s a dirty word.” Mitch lifted his sunglasses from the visor. Behind the criminal courts building they were passing rose the parish prison where he and Hal should have ended up two nights ago. He now had only five days to find Cath’s brother and get him here. “We need to get uptown before the lunchtime traffic hits, and we’re running late.”
Cold drifted across the front seat like an iceberg moving down from Greenland. “We’re making a mistake. If you take Carrollton to Fontainebleau, you can stop by his apartment, then come into the campus from that direction.” Cath stared straight ahead.
“This is the best way.” Mitch looped a wrist over the top of the wheel. “Trust me.”
“I thought you were in a hurry.” She pulverized each word.
“You want to flip a coin on where to go first?” He sifted through the loose change in the dash tray and handed her a quarter.
She laid the coin on the top of her fist. “Heads, we check out the school first. Tails, we go to the apartment.” She tossed the coin in the air at the next stoplight, slammed it onto her hand, and threw an arm over her eyes.
What was wrong? Was she hurt? “What’s the matter?”
“It’s heads,” she said, her voice flat as a tabletop. She checked both sides of the coin as if he might have cheated somehow, and he clenched his jaw. She automatically thought the worst of him. They couldn’t work like this, but hadn’t he told Hal he planned to do whatever he could to gain her cooperation?
* * *
