Dangerous Refuge

chapter Nineteen



Fourteen minutes. No. Fifteen and a half.

Sixteen.

Shaye looked away from her glowing watch face. She told herself she should keep waiting, but her hand kept closing around the door handle. She kept thinking about all the ugly things that could be happening to Tanner.

Two or three minutes to walk up there, she thought for the tenth time. At most a few minutes to find out if Rua is home. Maybe five minutes to get him talking. Then two minutes to walk back.

Unless something went wrong.

Like Lorne, lying faceup.

She told herself again to wait, everything was fine, she was letting her imagination run away with her mind. She even tried to believe it.

Seventeen minutes.

Twenty minutes.

Shaye opened the car door and got out as quietly as she could. She told herself she was just going to check and make sure everything was all right. If it wasn’t, she would call the local 911 and do whatever she could until people with badges arrived.

Trees shivered and rushed around her, wind making sounds like distant conversations and whispered warnings. Pale-barked aspen gleamed like bone in the moonlight.

Nothing moved but the wind and her.

The wind was a lot more confident than she was. Every noise she made sounded like a cannon shot to her.

Damn it, Tanner. Where are you?

Wind died into the kind of silence that quivered with dark possibilities. Moonlight on the granite peaks gleamed like remembered snow. A look over her shoulder assured her that no one was coming up behind her on the gravel lane.

Carefully, she circled the house as quietly as she could, but didn’t see one of the beer cans in time to avoid kicking it. The racket it made sounded huge in the empty night.

Nobody called out.

Nobody came to a door or window to check out the noise.

Part of Shaye’s mind yammered at her to go back and wait in the car like Tanner had told her to. The other part of her, the part that had vowed never to let her desires come in second to a man’s again, kept her going. She was an adult who could make her own decisions.

Warily she eyed the front of the house again.

Nothing moved.

Okay. If Rua is there, I just need to make a phone call because my cell ran out of juice and my car quit. If I look nervous, so what? What woman wouldn’t when she’s stranded on a dark road and has to approach a strange house to ask for help?

At least I have on shoes I can run in.

Not bothering to be quiet, she climbed the steps and went to the front door. It was slightly ajar. Nothing moved in the narrow strip of light coming through the doorway but the restless flicker of the TV.

Now would be a good time to call the cops, she thought.

Without it meaning to, her shoulder brushed against the door. It opened wider in silent invitation. It didn’t creak like she half expected it to, just waited silently for her to make up her mind.

A sudden rush of wind startled her and pushed the door farther open. The motion sensor light at one corner of the porch came on with an irritated buzz and died seconds later with a crackle.

The room beyond the doorway looked so ordinary she felt like a fool for being jumpy. The biting smell of stale beer flowed out as the wind retreated. There was an underlay of gym odor in the air, probably explained by the crumpled workout clothes and stray socks scattered at one end of the room. The television was happily chattering to no one.

Maybe the owner had gotten bored with the ads and gone back to the kitchen for another beer. The erratic lights and shadows cast by the television were distracting—imitations of life in an empty room.

She thought about calling out, but her mouth was too dry. So she tiptoed inside the room. No matter how hard she listened, there was no sound but her breathing, her rapid heartbeat, and the television selling vitamins to dirty socks. Weights, some empty food containers, and the big LCD screen rested on a cinder-block shelf.

The TV lights shifted from vitamins to sweating, beefy men. Across the bottom of the screen a scrolling line displayed the logo of MMA and the dates of future matches. One of the men had a shaved head and wore eye-watering colors on his shorts and shoes. Feints and tentative poking exploded into brutal clutches. If there were any rules, or anyone to enforce them, it wasn’t reflected on the screen.

Off to one side of the TV, the worn set of dumbbells and cracked vinyl bench reflected the light from the television in sickly shades of blue.

When Shaye stepped all the way inside, she saw another source of light, almost as blue and restless as the TV, yet different. The light moved slowly, almost hypnotically, but there was no sound coming from it.

Tanner, where the hell are you?

She crept closer to the second source of light, somewhere in a room off a bare hallway. The television covered any of the small sounds she made.

The room that was the source of the flickering light was at the end of the hall. Two other doors gaped open, advertising a bathroom and another darkened room. The hall itself was barren, its pine floor scratched and scuffed. The empty room before the end of the hall looked like the floor was the same.

She was walking toward the odd blue light at the end of the hall when she decided to check out the room that had no light at all. She would feel better knowing that there was nothing at her back but the yammering TV.

Tentatively she entered the unlit room.

If Tanner isn’t here, I’m going back to the car.

What good does that do? He could be hurt, needing help, and there I’ll be shivering in the car like a kid afraid of the dark.

The thought of Tanner needing her, and her too much of a coward to help, pushed Shaye’s reluctant feet forward. She went in a few steps, feeling her way. The black shine of a window across the room was her only light. Despite her care, she kicked something on the floor. The sound it made seemed like an avalanche echoing in the silence.

She froze, waiting for her heart to settle, and felt carefully in front of her. The back of her wrist brushed over a wastebasket. She let out a long breath and gathered up her nerves. When her heartbeat finally slowed, she could hear more than the hard bang of her pulse.

That was the only reason she noticed the small sounds coming from somewhere behind her. Footsteps.

In the hall.

Coming toward her.

Shaye’s heart hammered inside her chest and tried to jump up her throat and strangle her. Even as she was berating herself for being stupid stupid stupid, she knew that the only exit left to her was the window across the room. She started toward it, tripped over the wastebasket, and barely managed to stay upright.

The window was just ahead. Beyond it, the safety of the forest was only twenty feet away.

Screw stealth.

She lunged for the window.

At the same instant that she registered a whisper of movement behind her, a hand clamped over her mouth and a man’s muscular strength banded her arms against her waist. She was yanked back against him with dizzying speed.

And she was helpless as a child.