She watched, as if in a dream, as Dylan slid sideways into the cramped space. Her heart lurched. For a split second, their gazes met. She only had a flashing image of him. He wore a suit with no jacket, his tie was loosened, and his thick hair was mussed, his bangs falling onto his forehead. His narrowed gaze was trained on Kehoe. He looked furious and glacial, focused and dangerous.
Kehoe’s eyes sprang wide when the meat pounder suddenly altered directions. Dylan shoved Kehoe’s arm back at the same time that he hooked his thumb and fingers beneath Kehoe’s chin. Gripping his throat, he pushed Kehoe’s head and wrist at once, banging Kehoe against the wall with a force that rattled the surface behind Alice’s back. The meat tenderizer fell from Kehoe’s grip, clattering to the unfinished concrete floor. Before Kehoe could recover, Dylan lifted Kehoe’s head and smashed it again into the wall.
It was a brutal blow. There was a crunching sound. Alice suspected the back of Kehoe’s head had splintered the plaster. That . . . or Kehoe’s skull itself had cracked. Air popped out of Kehoe’s lungs.
Dylan pulled Kehoe’s head forward and whacked it against the wall yet again. Kehoe’s body went slack. He sagged down the wall several inches, but Dylan still had his neck and jaw in a squeezing grip. Dylan pulled his head forward yet again.
“Enough, Dylan,” a man shouted breathlessly. “You’re going to kill him!”
It was like she was watching the scene through a ten-foot tank filled with water. Everything was hazy and muffled. She saw a man peer around the opened back wall of the pantry. He wore a uniform. It was Jim Sheridan. He was too big to squeeze into the already overfilled space.
“Dylan,” Sheridan barked.
Dylan stilled.
Slowly, Dylan turned and met Alice’s gaze. In that quick second, she knew that killing Kehoe was precisely what he’d planned to do before Jim found them. She didn’t flinch from his savagery, but she was struggling to keep her eyelids from drooping and losing consciousness again. Dylan’s grip on Kehoe’s throat loosened. Kehoe’s body slid and crumpled to the floor.
Alice stared fixedly at Dylan’s face as he drew closer to her. He crouched over her and gently touched the skin at the side of her ribs. She recalled hazily that she’d flung off her T-shirt because it had betrayed her in the darkness.
All the focused savagery that had frozen Dylan’s handsome face before melted away, only to be replaced by a poignant, helpless pain. That mysterious, inexplicable bond they’d shared even as children pulled tight. He was feeling her pain in that moment, and she hated it.
“It’s going to be okay, baby,” he murmured, his hand moving and his gaze flickering over her anxiously, searching for wounds.
“My deputy has called an ambulance. Don’t move her, Dylan,” Jim Sheridan said, but Alice’s stare didn’t budge off Dylan’s face. She didn’t want to stop looking at him.
“It’s okay. I’m fine. But Thad,” she whispered hoarsely. Dylan’s expression stiffened.
“What about Thad?”
“He fought with Kehoe down by the bluff. Maybe he’s still down there . . . hurt,” she managed to get out. The effort of speaking exhausted her. A tear leaked down her cheek. God, what if it was worse. What if Kehoe had killed Thad? She shouldn’t have left him. He’d saved her, and she’d abandoned him.
“Shhh, baby, it’s going to be okay,” she heard Dylan say, but his voice was very muffled. He said something to Jim in a clipped tone, and Jim replied, but she could no longer decode their words.
She went into the darkness without a struggle. It was an escape, she knew, an avoidance of all the ugliness. But this time, she didn’t fear succumbing.
Dylan was there, and it was safe.
TWENTY-ONE
The first thing Alice saw when she awoke in the hospital was Dylan. He was staring directly at her, as if he’d known she was rising into consciousness . . . as if he’d been waiting for the event. Her whole body ached with a dull throb, but it hardly mattered. All of her focus was on him. For a moment, neither of them spoke as they looked at one another. For Alice, it was like she was drinking him in. She vaguely recalled, like she might a hazy dream, that he had been wearing the exact white shirt, dress pants, and tie last night . . .
. . . in the pantry.
She winced when the graphic, terrifying memory rushed her consciousness. Desperately, she tried to focus on the moment. On Dylan.
There were smears of blood on the front of his shirt. The bright crimson seemed to blaze against the snowy white background. She realized the stains must have come from her. She couldn’t recall the ambulance or getting to the hospital, but at some point, he’d leaned over her and gotten some of her blood on him.