LITMIR.BIZ

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after Eileen is home?” Catherine tried to put some force into the words, but they sounded weak and shaky.

      “You’re right. We’re wasting time. Call me, Randal.” Darius tossed the words over his shoulder as he hurried Catherine to the dirt road that she’d run along less than an hour before. Terror had fueled her then. Now, she felt nothing but tired. She’d known that returning to Pine Bluff after she’d been released from prison wouldn’t be easy, but she hadn’t expected it to be so difficult. She’d thought she could hide away in the farmhouse, tend to Eileen and ignore the people who whispered and pointed, but the townspeople didn’t seem willing to let her alone. Some of them simply wanted the story of her time in prison. Others were still convinced she was a murderer.

      Apparently, one of them wanted her gone.

      She touched her neck, then let her hand drop away. She didn’t want Darius to know how shaken she was. She didn’t want anyone to know it. Keep things close to the cuff. That’s what her grandmother had taught her, and it’s what she’d always done. There’d been a time in her life when she’d thought things might be different, that she could let down her guard, trust someone else with her emotions, but her arrest had proven just how foolish that had been. That was something else she kept close to the cuff...how much it had hurt to see her fiancé on local and national news programs saying he wasn’t surprised that Catherine had been arrested, that her compassion for the dying must have caused her to snap.

      She shoved the memories away. For Eileen’s sake, she tried to live in the present and let the past go. That was easier on some days than on others.

      Several officers stood near the curve in the road, crime scene tape marking off the area they were searching. They didn’t meet her eyes as she passed, but she hadn’t expected them to. The Spokane County sheriff’s department had issued an apology for the four years she’d spent in prison for crimes she hadn’t committed. She’d been paid a lump sum for the trauma and time the criminal justice system had cost her, but that couldn’t buy back her life or the time she might have spent with Eileen. They knew it.

      Still, if anyone from the sheriff’s department had asked, she would have said that she didn’t place the blame with them. Didn’t really place blame with anyone.

      “I tracked your attacker from the road, through the field and back to your place. He could have been waiting in the house when you got there, waiting anywhere along this road. The weeds and overgrowth are so dense you wouldn’t have seen him until he was on you. You realize that, right?” Darius said quietly, his hand resting on her elbow as he steered her onto his driveway.

      “The police had already arrived. You were out with a gun looking for the guy who’d attacked me. Why would he stick around?”

      “For the same reason he attacked you.”

      “Because he’s a stupid kid who gets his kick out of scaring people? Kids have been coming around here since the day I got out of prison.”

      “You think that’s what this was about?” He touched her throbbing jaw.

      She flinched away, the movement as unconscious as breathing, and his eyes narrowed as he studied her face.

      She kept her expression neutral, tried not to let him see her fear and anxiety. They were tools he might use against her one day, and she held them close, kept them hidden the way she had for years.

      “I really need to get to the hospital,” she said, because she felt his gaze more than she should have, felt it settling deep, demanding more.

      “Right.” He opened the door of an old Ford pickup. Repainted dark blue, everything shiny and new, it was probably as old as her grandmother’s car, but Catherine knew the engine would start and that it would probably purr like a kitten.

      Darius seemed like the kind of guy who had all his ducks in a row, everything shipshape and in order.

      He helped her into the truck’s cab, his hand on her back, then her shoulder, then her arm. Everything so easy and smooth, she barely realized it was happening. Gentling a colt. Only she wasn’t a colt, and she didn’t need to be gentled. She needed to be left alone.

      She started to close the door, but he covered her hand, his gaze so intense she wanted to look away.

      “Just so you know, we’re not done with our conversation. The person who did this meant business, and we need to find out exactly what that business was.”

      He ran a finger across the welts on her neck, and she shivered.

      “I told you, kids have been—”

      “This wasn’t done by a kid who got carried away. He meant business, Cat.” His eyes had gone soft and gentle, his words quiet, and she felt herself falling into that gentleness. Allowing herself to believe that it was real.

      “My name is Catherine,” she said, shoving everything else away and concentrating on that one thing.

      No one called her Cat.

      Not anymore.

      “Yeah? I’ll keep that in mind.” He closed the door and rounded the truck, and she scooted to the very end of the leather bucket seat. The seat belt was an old-fashioned lap belt, and she buckled it as Darius got into the truck, trying to slow her heart rate and pull herself together.

      She’d have to explain the bruises to Eileen, but Catherine wouldn’t let her see how terrified and shaken she was.

      “Where are we headed?”

      “Sacred Heart.”

      “I know it. Downtown Spokane, right?”

      “That’s right.” The hospital was twenty minutes away, a long time to sit in a truck with a man she didn’t know. She fidgeted in her seat, wishing she’d taken Logan up on his offer to have a police officer drive her to the hospital. So what if people saw her in a police cruiser and talked? They were already talking.

      “Has your grandmother been ill for long?”

      “I don’t know.” She felt his sideways glance, but didn’t offer more information.

      “It must be tough on both of you.”

      “It is.” Especially because Catherine felt responsible. If she hadn’t gone to prison, if she’d been around, maybe she would have noticed Eileen’s decline, forced her to go to the doctor sooner, given her a chance of surviving the cancer that was eating her liver.

      “She’s pretty frail, your grandmother?” he asked casually, but Catherine doubted there was anything casual about Darius.

      “Yes. Why?”

      “You two live at the end of a dirt road, Catherine. The doors on your house are flimsy. The windows are single pane. It’s not safe.”

      “It always has been before.”

      “It wasn’t safe this morning.”

      He had a point. With Eileen’s health failing and the juvenile pranks escalating, maybe security was something Catherine needed to look into.

      “I’ll have a security company come out and install a system.”

      “I can help you with that. I work for one of the largest security contractors in the country.”

      “I’m not sure—”

      “Tell you what. I’ll have someone go out and assess things. He’ll have an estimate for you when we get back. You don’t have to commit to anything.”

      “Thanks, but—”

      “Is there some reason why you don’t want my help?”

      “I don’t want anyone’s help. My grandmother and I have been doing fine on our own for a long time, and we’re going to keep doing fine,” she said. It was the truth, but there was a deeper truth. She didn’t want help from a guy who looked tough as nails but who had gentleness in

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