LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

the feelings it would resurrect. He’d come to this damn county in the middle of nowhere because Seth Hardin had promised he’d find peace and solitude, and that everything here was as far from his past as he could possibly get.

      Right.

      Apparently Seth hadn’t known about this woman. Corinne Farland. Cory. Regardless, who the hell would have thought that he’d find this mess through the simple act of renting a room?

      He leaned over and lifted the coffee mug from the top of the dresser, draining half of it in one gulp. Good coffee.

      The back of his neck prickled a little as he thought about the situation, and he never ignored it when the back of his neck prickled. That sensation had saved his skin more than once, or someone else’s skin.

      But he couldn’t figure out why the hell Gage Dalton had brought him to this particular woman. There must be other rooms for rent in this county. Surely.

      Well, maybe not. The place didn’t exactly look huge. So it could just have been coincidence. But he didn’t believe much in coincidence. At some level, conscious or otherwise, Gage had thought of this woman, her terror and her room.

      And there was a reason for that, a reason that made the skin on the back of his neck crawl. Cory’s level of fear suggested a long-term, ongoing threat.

      And here he was, smack in the middle of a place he thought he’d left behind. A place he wanted to leave behind.

      He needed to normalize, to stop being a SEAL and start being a reasonably ordinary member of society again. He needed to stop sleeping with one eye always open, constantly ready for death to lunge out of any shadow or hole. He needed to let his reflexes slow again, at least to the point where someone wouldn’t risk death simply by trying to wake him from sleep, or by moving too fast in the corner of his eye. That’s what he needed, and that had just skittered out the door of his immediate future.

      Because downstairs there was one hell of a scared woman, and she shouldn’t feel that way. And a phone call, a simple phone call, had caused her to collapse.

      From what he’d seen of Conard County and Conard City so far, he would have called the place bucolic.

      Well, that was a hell of a reaction for a bucolic place.

      It wasn’t normal. It didn’t fit.

      Apparently he would have to keep sleeping with one eye open.

      He could leave, of course, but that didn’t even truly appear on his menu of options. He couldn’t walk away from her terror.

      Someone that terrified needed protecting.

      For a change, he decided, he’d like to provide the protection, rather than the terror.

      A bitter smile twisted his mouth. That, at least, would be a change. A much-needed change.

      And wasn’t that what he’d come here for?

      The phone didn’t ring again, thank God. Cory ate a small salad for dinner, then tried to settle in with the TV. She didn’t think she could focus on one of the library books stacked on the small table beside the rocking chair, because her mind seemed to have turned into a flea, insisting on hopping from one thing to another, all totally unrelated. Even the sharpness of fear didn’t seem able to get her full attention.

      So it was easier to turn the TV on, for the noise, for the visual distraction, for the occasional moments in which she could actually tune into the program, whatever it was.

      She noted that her roomer upstairs had grown quiet, utterly quiet. Probably sleeping, but with her senses on high alert, the inability to guess what he was about made her uneasy. Solitude was her friend, her fortress, her constant companion.

      But she’d invited in an invader, and his silence was worse than the noise he’d made while settling in.

      She flipped quickly to the weather station, but too late, because the image of a crime-scene team entering a home where a man lay dead, just a reenactment, was enough to set off a string of memories she tried never to visit.

      Jim lying there, bleeding from multiple wounds. Trying to crawl to him despite the wound in her own side, gasping his name, knowing somehow as she crawled that he was lost to her forever.

      She squeezed her eyes shut as if that could erase the images that sprang to mind. Gentle, determined Jim, a man with a huge smile, a huge heart and a belief in making the world a better place. A man who could talk to her with such kindness and understanding, then in a courtroom or deposition turn into a circling shark, coming in for the kill.

      A gifted man. An admirable man.

      The man she had loved with every cell of her being.

      Their last dinner together. Jim had taken her to one of the best restaurants in Tampa to celebrate a positive pregnancy test that very morning. They’d laughed, coming up with silly names they would never in a million years give their child.

      And shortly after midnight, everything that mattered in her life vanished. At least she didn’t mourn the pregnancy as much as she might if she had had time to get accustomed to the idea. That little mark on the stick had scarcely been real to her yet when the gunshot ended it all.

      But Jim … Jim had been everything. Jim and her students. The life they had barely begun to build together after only two years.

      Now she drew a shaky breath, trying to steady herself, trying to prevent the gasping sobs she had managed to avoid for months now.

      But awake, or asleep, she still heard the banging on the door. Banging that had sounded like the police. Jim had laughed drowsily as he climbed from bed to answer it.

      “Somebody probably just tried to steal my car,” he had said. His car was also a joke between them, a beater he’d gotten in law school. It was certainly not worthy of stealing, but the very expensive stereo he’d put in it was.

      She had heard him open the door then …

      Her mind balked. Her eyes snapped open. No, she couldn’t do this to herself again. No way. It was done, the nightmares permanently engraved on her heart and mind, but that didn’t mean she had to let them surface.

      Sometimes she even scolded herself for it, because while grief was natural, and the fear she felt equally so, every time she indulged herself in grief or fear, she knew she was giving that man even more power over her than he had already stolen from her.

      And he had already stolen everything that mattered.

      The phone rang, jarring her. This time she didn’t jump for it, this time she didn’t think it was work calling. Part of her wanted to let it ring unanswered, but she didn’t even have an answering machine, and what if it was Gage?

      Slowly, reluctantly, she reached for it, coiling as tight as a spring. So tight some of her nerves actually objected.

      “Hello?”

      “Cory, it’s Gage. I just wanted you to know a few other women have reported similar calls, so it was probably just a prank, okay?”

      Her breath escaped her lungs in a gasp of relief. “Thanks,” she said. “Thanks.”

      “And I’m getting caller ID put on your service. The phone company says you should have it within a few days. And don’t worry about the cost. The department will pay for it.”

      “Oh, Gage …” Words deserted her yet again. Of all the places on this earth the Marshals could have put her, she was grateful they had put her in a town with Gage Dalton.

      “Hey,” he said kindly. “We take care of our own around here. It’s not a problem.”

      Before she could thank him again, he was gone.

      “Is everything all right?”

      Startled, she nearly cried out, and turned to see Wade Kendrick at the foot of the stairs. How had he come down so silently? Earlier his tread had been heavy. Or maybe

Скачать книгу