She felt raw enough as it was, on the run and alone with this large, dangerous man. Fleeing from some unknown, unseen danger.
She knew John wouldn’t force himself into her bed, but she’d proved to herself the other night that she had a fatal weakness for this man. If he asked, she’d say yes. She was cold from the bones out and sex with John was guaranteed to warm her up, take her out of herself, make her forget. She’d climaxed in an explosion of heat the other night. Kissing John, feeling his hard body against hers, in hers, oh yes, that was guaranteed to make her forget her troubles. But sex right now, when she felt so shaky, so unsettled, would be disastrous.
She’d nearly come apart at the explosive orgasm, leaving her weak and out of control. She’d fly into a million pieces now that the shards of her life lay in a heap at her feet.
A muffled whump told her that he’d switched on the heating. By the time she’d used the bathroom, scrubbed her face clean, brushed her teeth and changed into her pink flannel nightgown, the air was already starting to heat up. Good. She needed the warmth.
He was sitting at the table, two steaming mugs of dark liquid before him. He looked her quickly up and down, seemingly satisfied with what he saw, and pushed a mug over to her. “Drink. Then we’ll talk.”
Suzanne picked it up, nose wrinkling at the smell. She took a sip and coughed, eyes watering. “Is there any tea at all in this whiskey?”
His mouth lifted in a half smile. “Very little,” he confessed. “Tea is for wusses.”
Must be, because there wasn’t much in her cup. Suzanne sipped again and found on the second try that the hot tea-flavored whiskey went down like a dream, warming her all the way down, curling into her stomach and chasing the coldness away.
The warmth kick-started her brain. She looked around the bleak, sad, little room, then back at John. He’d abandoned the teacup and was drinking his whiskey straight, from a glass. That was a good sign. John struck her as the kind of man who would never drink alcohol if he felt danger was imminent, but she wanted to be certain.
“Where are we?”
“Near Mount Hood. The closest town is Fork in the Road, about three miles away.”
Fork in the Road. The name was familiar. She had a vague memory of someone mentioning it at a cocktail party, laughing as he described it, some dinky one-horse town.
She looked down into her mug for a moment, the tea muddy and unclear. Like her life. “Are we safe?” she asked quietly.
He drained the glass, never taking his eyes off her. “Safe? Yeah.” He poured another finger of whiskey into her mug and gestured for her to drink it, waiting until she’d choked it down. “Absolutely. To find us, they’d have to look for me, but I don’t think anybody besides Bud knows we’re connected. Unless you checked me out with anyone else on that list I gave you?” He raised an eyebrow.
“No,” she sighed, “I didn’t. Bud’s word was enough.”
“Remind me when all this is over to chew you out for that. You should have checked me out with everyone, but given the circumstances, I’m glad you didn’t.”
“Unlike you, I’m not constantly on the lookout for danger,” Suzanne said dryly.
“Yeah, well, if you’d been more like me then maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place.”
Suzanne opened her mouth then closed it, appalled. What was there to say? He was right.
“Sorry,” he muttered, a muscle jumping in his jaw. “That was way out of line.” He poured himself another shot of whiskey and drank it in one swallow, like water. “So let’s get back to risk assessment. Nobody knows you’re with me. We hadn’t signed the lease yet and anyway I’m going to make sure Bud won’t let anyone in the house to go through our stuff, get my name. I’m almost certain there were only two killers. That’s standard procedure when you want to wipe your tracks. The second shooter’s there to kill the first and erase the connection.
“I parked well out of sight of your street, but just in case the second shooter managed to notice my vehicle and called it in to whoever his boss is, I changed the license plate numbers. And I made damned sure nobody was following us.”
She blinked. “You changed…what?”
John shrugged. “I keep several spare sets of plates in the back. They come in handy from time to time. ”
“But isn’t that illegal? Driving with false license plates?”
He shrugged again, not even bothering to answer.
“I own all the land for several miles around,” he continued. “The land is registered in the name of a shell company. It would take a very determined and very skillful person several weeks to get to my name, assuming he knew what he was looking for. And even then, I hacked into the land register and changed the data, so they’d be looking fifty miles west, in a state park. The perimeter’s got trip wires and I know whenever anything bigger than a rabbit gets through. So yes,” he concluded. “We’re as safe as we’ll ever be. We could probably stay holed up here forever, though I’m counting on finding out what’s going on before that.”
Suzanne just stared and stared, feeling more than ever as if she’d stepped into an alternate universe. And yet, deep inside herself she knew.
She hadn’t, like Alice, fallen down a rabbit hole. This wasn’t an alternate world. It was this world, as it really is, as it has always been. Dirty and dangerous and violent. She’d spent her entire lifetime avoiding this reality, steeping herself in pretty things, fretting over colors and shapes and textures, maybe in an effort not to think about what the world was really like.
Look what it had got her, hiding her head in the sand. Pretty, perfumed sand, taupe and ecru, but sand all the same, and her head sunk way down in it.
She hadn’t seen danger coming at all.
It was entirely possible that if she’d taken just half the care in installing a proper security system in the building that she’d taken with the color scheme, none of this would have happened. There wouldn’t have been an intruder. She wouldn’t be here—wherever here was—holed up, hiding from God knows what and God knows who, having endangered the life of a good man and dragged him away from his growing business.
He’d come running to her rescue without hesitation and if he hadn’t been so skilled, it would have been his blood staining her hardwood floor, his head a bloody pulp. Now he was here with her, and plainly he was planning on staying with her for as long as it took. How long until Bud was able to figure out what was going on?
Days? Weeks? Months? Years maybe?
What had she done? Her throat closed tight with guilt and sorrow.
She put her mug down with a clatter. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, unshed tears burning in her eyes.
He was sipping from his glass. He swallowed heavily, coughed. “What? You’re sorry? What the hell for?” He looked genuinely astonished, which made her feel even worse.
Suzanne bit her lip. I will not cry, I will not cry. “I’m sorry for involving you in this mess, John. And I don’t even know what the mess is. I’m sorry for endangering your life, I’m sorry you had to kill someone—two someones—for me. I’m sorry if you’re going to have trouble with the law because of what you did for me. I’m sorry…“