Hayes had helped her over the low wall separating the balconies. They’d scrambled through the neighboring suite and out the door.
She was almost giddy with disbelief over what she was doing. She was fleeing into the unknown with a man being sought in connection with a mass shooting. Yet she felt much safer with him than she had with the law enforcement officers who were now kowtowing to Jeff for having suspected him of murder.
Placing her hand in Hayes’s and escaping with him had been instinctual. She had no reason whatsoever to trust that instinct, but she did. She ran with it. Literally.
Silently, and half blinded by blowing snow, they sprinted between buildings and across streets. Finally, they left the commercial area and entered a residential neighborhood that was notably run-down. Dogs barked at them from behind chain-link fences, but no one came out to check on the nature of the disturbance.
They didn’t slow down until they reached a midsize sedan parked at the edge of a rutted street. The model of the car was too old for a remote. Hayes used the key to unlock the passenger door. Without questioning him, she slid into the seat and buckled herself in as he rounded the hood and got in behind the wheel.
As Connell had predicted, he’d ditched his truck.
Staying off the main roads, keeping to streets that wound through neighborhoods, he drove carefully and within the speed limit, gradually increasing the distance between them and the suite hotel.
He’d told her he’d been successful at evading capture, and once again he was proving himself to be true to his word.
“Is this a stolen car?”
“Nope. Bought and paid for, registered in a fake name, and stored in a mini-warehouse for just such an occasion as this.”
“Why’d you leave it in such an unsavory neighborhood?”
“That’s why. It’s unsavory. Lots of drug dealers in that area. Meth labs, I’d guess. To survive, everybody minds their own business. They see nothing; they report nothing. Main reason, somebody had busted the security camera mounted on the light pole.”
She was no longer shocked by his unique power of observation and knowledge about such things. “They know who you are, Hayes.”
Upon hearing his name, he jerked his head around and looked at her, then pulled the car to the shoulder, braked hard, and left the engine idling. For a panicked moment she feared he was going to force her to get out.
“They’ve already searched your cabin.”
“Then it seems I cleared out just in time.”
“They lifted a fingerprint from it. You were identified by an FBI agent.”
The opal fire in his eyes sparked. “FBI agent?”
“He came straight from New York.”
“Shit! Special Agent Jack Connell.”
“You know him by name?”
“Unfortunately. He’s been on my tail for four fucking years.”
“He wants you in connection with a mass shooting in Virginia. I heard you mention the excitement in Virginia to Norman Floyd.”
He studied her for a moment, then said, “Knowing that, you still came with me tonight, no questions asked?”
Huskily, she replied, “So it seems.”
He continued to look at her through the mingling vapor of their breath. Then he lifted his foot off the brake pedal and steered back onto the road.
Just outside Drakeland’s city limits, he took a state highway and made several turns onto roads that became progressively narrower and more winding. She didn’t inquire where they were going. He obviously had a destination in mind. It turned out to be a mobile home, situated semipermanently on a concrete slab fringed with dead vegetation. It was set back from the road but still in sight of it. They would be warned of anyone approaching.
He kept the headlights on as he got out and went up to the door, opening it with a key and switching on an interior light before coming back for her and turning off the car.
She climbed the three steps and entered the main room of the rectangular structure. It was small, compact, sparsely and inexpensively furnished.
“I hope you weren’t expecting fancy,” he remarked from behind her as he closed the door and slid the bolt. “Heat works, though. You won’t be cold for long.” He reached out and brushed melting snow off the shoulder of her sweater.
She turned her head and looked at his hand where it rested there. “I didn’t even realize until now that I left without my coat.”
“Adrenaline.”
“I suppose.”
His gaze remained steady on hers. “Why didn’t you give me away?”
“You told me not to.”
“I’ve told you not to do a lot of things. You’ve done them anyway.”
“I trusted you.”
He stroked the side of her neck with his thumb, then quickly withdrew his hand and took a step back. He removed his outerwear and piled the garments on the small dining table.
“A dangerous business, Doc. Trusting me.”
“You talk about dangerous? There were two armed men just downstairs, either of whom would gladly have taken you into custody. You took a huge risk to get me out of there.”
“I had to get you away from him.”
“Jeff.”
“Your husband,” he said with palpable disgust. From his jeans pocket, he fished out the silver trinket. When he’d showed it to her on the balcony, there had been no question as to whether she would stay with Jeff or flee with Hayes.
She took the charm from him and rubbed it between her fingers. “You had it all the time I was with you?”
“Found it underneath you when I picked you up off the trail.”
“Why didn’t you ever ask me about it? I could have identified it immediately.”
“I was afraid you’d want it back.” He seemed embarrassed to have admitted that and made a defensive rolling motion of his shoulders.
“You wanted a keepsake of me? Very sentimental. And very unlike yesterday when you opened the door of the truck and said a terse good-bye. You seemed eager to get rid of me.”
“I was. Short of killing the Floyds, I’d settled my score with them. I should have left yesterday as soon as I delivered Lisa to her relatives. Driven away and not looked back.”
“Instead…,” she said.
“Instead I joined the crowd outside the hospital.”
That astonished her. “You were there?”
“Making myself as inconspicuous as possible. You were escorted inside. Jeff was detained by reporters seeking a sound bite. Didn’t look to me like he minded the attention. All pumped up and full of himself, he walked right past me. Close enough for me to get a good view of the zipper on his slick ski jacket.”
“You noticed it was missing the pull.”
“And I realized what I had.” He let that settle. “I don’t know one designer’s emblem from another’s. At first I assumed it had come off the zipper of your running jacket. Yesterday, I knew otherwise. It fell off Jeff’s jacket when he attacked you.”
“And left me for dead.” Even though she’d come to suspect that Jeff was somehow involved, it was dismaying and painful to accept he could have been so cold-blooded, heartless, and deceiving. By contrast, Hayes had risked everything to protect her.
Looking into his eyes, she said, “You came after me.”
“I couldn’t leave you to him. It was hard enough taking you back before I knew he meant to kill you.”
Jack Connell might just as well have saved his breath. What he’d told her about Hayes Bannock had no effect on her yearning for him to pull her against him and steal the very breath from her with one of his kisses. She took a step toward him, but he staved her off.
“You and me, it still can’t happen.” A second elapsed before he added, “If it could, I’d already be on you.” He spoke in a low rumble that was rich with carnal implications.
Her own voice was heavy with emotion. “Connell asked me if you had mentioned leaving.”
“He knows me. Nothing’s changed. I’ll disappear again. But not until I’m sure this murderous bastard is nailed.” He motioned for her to sit. “Let’s talk.”
She backed up to the built-in sofa and sat down on the edge of the cushion. He pulled a chair from beneath the dining table, positioned it in front of her, and straddled it backward.
“Must say, you didn’t seem a bit surprised to learn that Jeff is the culprit.”
“He tipped his own hand. Last night, he asked me who had repaired my sunglasses.” She told him about her panic attack and the conversation she’d had with Alice. “I had retold the story several times. I began to doubt my recollection. Alice reasonably pointed out that I was exhausted, on medication, and she swore Jeff couldn’t have harmed me. But it continued to nag me. Tonight I confronted him with it. His explanation for knowing the glasses had been broken was plausible, but he became defensive.”
“Defensive how?”
“I’ve long suspected that he is involved with someone else. I asked him point blank if he was having an affair, and he admitted it. He also confessed to resenting me. Not without some basis,” she added. “But to a much greater degree than I realized.”
Hayes frowned. “Problem is, resentment is a motive, but it isn’t proof.”
“The trinket is.”
He shook his head. “You could have taken it off his jacket yourself and made Jeff out to be the bad guy as payback for his cheating. Or do the investigators know about his affair?”
Regretfully, she nodded. “If I raised the question of his missing zipper pull, it would be my word against his as to where he’d lost it and when.”
“Then it’s a damn good thing I kept that rock.”
“I’d forgotten that!” she exclaimed. “You still have it?”
“Oh yeah. A hard fall could have caused a concussion. Even the gash. But you took a blow that left strands of hair on the rock. That bothered me, enough so that I thought I’d better hold on to it. That’s also one of the main reasons I didn’t drop you at an ER when I found you. If that rock had been a weapon, whoever wielded it—”
“Remained a threat.”
“Correct. As it turns out, my hunch was right. Jeff was a threat up until you took my hand on that balcony.”
“Why didn’t you share your apprehensions with me immediately when I regained consciousness? Why didn’t you explain then why you were reluctant to take me to an ER?”
“The shape you were in, would it have calmed you down if I had started asking who in your life might want to kill you?”
She had the grace to look chagrined.
“If there was a villain, I was the logical choice,” he said. “Then you found the damn rock, and that cinched it.”
“It looked so menacing,” she said, remembering her fear when she saw it. “Can fingerprints be lifted off a surface like that? What can it prove?”
“Your blood and hair will be typed.”
“A prosecutor will still have to prove how they got there. An accident? Or with intent?”
“I don’t know what good it will do, but it’s better to have it than not. Who investigated your disappearance?” After she told him about Knight and Grange, he asked, “How much confidence do you have in them? Even with two pieces of evidence that raise questions about your ‘fall,’ will they take you seriously or dismiss you as a jealous and vindictive wife?”
“I’m not sure,” she replied honestly.
“Before you stick your neck out, you gotta be sure of them, Doc.”
“Neither likes Jeff, but they’ve been deferential and apologetic for suspecting him. I lost a lot of credibility when they saw that video.”
“Video?”