Consumed by Fire (14 page)

“I don’t believe you. Boy Scouts don’t seduce and rob helpless women, they don’t kidnap them . . .”

“You’re hardly a helpless woman. If it had been your choice, you would have still been scrubbing my brains off the dinette.”

She shuddered, trying not to show it. He was okay with her reaction—violence was difficult to process, especially if you weren’t used to it. He still knew she wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger again if she felt threatened.

He pushed away from the stove and leaned over the bed platform, resting his arm against the overhead framing, staring down at her. Deliberately intimidating. “I’ve got one question.”

“Why should I answer yours? You don’t answer mine.”

“You get one, I get one. Go ahead.” He was being stupid. His question was so reasonable and so important he shouldn’t waste time with her. But he couldn’t resist.

“Okay.” She glared up at him, not hesitating. “Exactly who are you? Because even though you bear a resemblance to the man I met in Italy, you aren’t the same man.”

“That one’s too easy, Angel.” He loved watching her stiffen every time he called her his pet name for her, the name he’d only spoken on rumpled sheets smelling of sex. “My real name is James Bishop, and I’m your husband.”

“Liar.”

“It’s not my problem if you don’t believe me,” he pointed out. “Now for my question, and it’s important. Did you tell anyone at the border crossing where you were headed?”

She looked up at him, her delectable mouth stubborn, and for a moment he was distracted, remembering the feel of her mouth on his skin. Ignoring it, he leaned over her, all menace. “I’m going to need an answer, and I don’t mind what I have to do to get it. The truth would be a good idea as well, considering your life is at stake as well as mine.”

She looked startled. She still hadn’t figured out what kind of world she’d suddenly stepped into, just as she hadn’t known in Italy. He couldn’t protect her completely this time, though, and trying to might mean the difference between life and death. She had to know he wasn’t playing games.

“Yes. I told the asshole who was giving me such a hard time. I bet he was one of your friends, holding me up so you could sneak into the camper.”

He pulled back. “Shit,” he said in a low voice. “We’re getting the hell out of here.”

“Not a friend, then?” she said. “So unfasten me and we can go.”

He shook his head. “I think you’re better off right where you are. It’s a bouncy ride but you’ll survive.” That way if Clement caught up with them she wouldn’t be a visual target. And she wouldn’t see him kill the man.

“I don’t want to stay here!”

“Yeah, well things are tough all over,” he said heartlessly, reaching for duct tape. “Maybe next time you’ll keep your mouth shut. Or lie.”

“I’m not a good liar.” She was eyeing the duct tape warily.

He gave her his most affable smile. “I’m an excellent liar, as you well know. I’ll teach you. In the meantime I’m strapping you in so you don’t fall around inside the camper. I’m going to be driving fast and I don’t want you hurt.”

Her eyes widened in alarm. “You’re going to what?”

“You heard me.” He ran the duct tape across the bed, row after row, trapping her. He’d survived any number of stormy seas using the same principle, lashed to his bunk. She’d be fine. “Do I have to gag you?”

“No.” There was just a note of breathless panic in her voice. Even if she had agreed, he wouldn’t have gagged her. People could choke to death on fear, and he couldn’t quite calculate how frightened she was. She was determined not to show him.

He leaned over and brushed her hair out of her eyes. “I’ll keep you safe,” he said. “I promise.”

He pulled back before he could say anything more, do anything more. She was his personal Kryptonite, and he had to remember that.

“Merlin, heel,” he said. The dog had been curled up on the floor by her bed, and he rose obediently, whining softly as he looked back at her. “With me, Merlin,” he said.

He locked the door from the outside.

Evangeline heard the sound of the lock, and for a moment absolute panic raced through her body. She was trapped in here, and even if she managed to get free from this ridiculous spider’s web of duct tape, she’d have a hard time getting out. There was an escape window, but it was dark, and she didn’t remember the instructions. She had a flashlight somewhere . . . no, it was in the cab of the truck, so no help there. She squirmed, trying to free herself, but she could barely move.

A moment later she was just as glad. She heard the roar of the truck engine, and then they shot forward with a jerk. The camper bumped and bounced over the rough terrain, and Evangeline lay very still. Poor Annabelle—her trailer wasn’t used to such rough treatment, and suddenly she remembered tearing up and down mountain roads beside the man calling himself James Bishop, a name she didn’t believe for one moment, any more than she believed in this specious marriage. Annabelle couldn’t withstand such treatment . . .

The camper jerked and swung hard to the left, and Evangeline let out a grinding moan. At least they were on a paved road now, though it wasn’t in the best shape. Bishop—she couldn’t think of anything else to call him and
that asshole
got tiresome—was driving like a bat out of hell. She had no idea her elderly truck was capable of such speeds, particularly when pulling her ancient camper.

It was pitch dark in her bunk. They didn’t pass any streetlights, or other cars for the matter, and the darkness was a cocoon, exacerbated by the bonds. She could hear things crash in the cabin as he went over bumps, took corners too fast, and she closed her eyes, praying the trailer wouldn’t whiplash and come loose, sending her over some cliff.

She took a deep breath, and then another, trying to center herself. She’d learned proper breathing as well as yoga after she’d left Pete. It had taken her too damned long to figure out that she couldn’t change anyone else, couldn’t change men. She could only change herself and her reaction to things.

So she lay in her bunk and breathed calm, steady breaths; slowly her body relaxed, sinking into the plush mattress she’d treated herself to when she’d bought Annabelle. She visualized the breath flowing through her body, she visualized every joint, every muscle, every inch of her body relaxed and at peace. She pictured James Bishop tied to a tree so she could have target practice. And then, unbelievably, she slept.

She woke slowly, her eyes fluttering open. Some time in the night they’d stopped moving, and if she could judge by the light filtering in through the curtain, it was early morning, just a little past dawn. She tried to sit up, forgetting she was trapped in her bunk, and she fell back in frustration. Her entire body hurt, but most of the pain was focused in her shoulders, and she bit back a cry of pain. As she began to see more clearly, she realized Bishop had converted the dinette into a bunk, and was asleep there, with Merlin lying on the mattress beside him.

That put her over the edge. “Hey, Bishop, or whatever your real name is,” she called out.

He didn’t move. He would have been exhausted after driving through the night, and she didn’t give a damn. “Bishop!” she said again.

He remained motionless, though Merlin had lifted his head, alert.

“I heard you.” His voice came from the bed. He didn’t sound particularly tired, just long-suffering, and she wanted to snarl. If anyone was suffering, it was her. “I was hoping you’d take pity on me and let me sleep.”

“Pity isn’t in my vocabulary.”

“And you’re a college professor!” he mocked, turning over.

She ground her teeth. “What the fuck are you doing with my dog?”

Merlin jumped down, pacing the small length of the camper to press his cold nose up against her face, whining.

“He didn’t like the duct tape. Neither did I.”

“You could have cut me free.” Too late did she realize what she’d said, and she scrambled. “So Merlin could join me, not you.”

He sat up, his lean body silhouetted in the early-morning light, and she watched as he rose and worked the kinks from his body. The convertible dinette made a cramped bed, and he was a tall man. At least there was some justice in this world.

He paused by her bed, looking down at her. “Do you have to pee?”

Jesus, what a question!
“No,” she snapped.

“You always did a have a bladder like a camel’s,” he said affably. “We’re about two hundred miles from Bear’s Claw, and this isn’t a formal campground, which means the wood’s our toilet and the river’s our bathtub. Since you’re in no particular hurry, I’m going to clean up. You got towels?”

“Not for you.”

He shrugged. “Suit yourself. I have no problem with nudity if you don’t.” He was out the door before she could protest, but Merlin stayed where he was, sitting on his haunches in the guard position she was used to.

“Great good that is,” she said to him, her voice full of affection. “He’s the one you’re supposed to be protecting me from.”

Merlin gave her that look. It was one uniquely his, one she’d never seen on another dog, a canine expression that roughly translated to “you’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I don’t suppose I could talk you into chewing through the duct tape?” she said.

Merlin’s whine could have been expressing his regret. She sighed. He’d simply met another alpha dog—it wasn’t his fault. “Give me a kiss, baby,” she said, and Merlin licked her nose with his long tongue, snuffling at her with sympathy.

She needed the sympathy. In her annoyance she hadn’t realized just how much she had to use the facilities, or lack thereof. Bishop would take his own sweet time, and in the meantime all she could do was lie there and try to figure out what the hell was going on.

She had very little to work with. Her thieving gigolo of a phony husband had popped up out of nowhere, in the middle of the wilderness, with a gun and a ruthlessness that was a far cry from the slow-burning sexuality that had once kept her in such a haze of desire that the rest of her brain had stopped working. He’d given her some cock-and-bull story about keeping her safe and matters of life and death, and she wondered if he was batshit insane. Why the hell had he shown up now? Could she believe a damned thing he said?

She already knew the answer to that. He was made of lies, and there was no way she could ever trust him. She couldn’t outthink him—he was too flat-out ruthless. She wouldn’t put anything past him, including using that gun on her.

She flinched at the horrible memory of pulling the trigger. It had been a moment of sheer rage, all the hurt and betrayal and misplaced love exploding in one violent moment. What if the gun had been loaded?

He’d called it. She’d be cleaning his brains off the dinette. She hadn’t been able to think of any way to threaten him, any leverage. So she’d pulled the trigger—he’d known perfectly well how horrified she’d been at her own action. He knew she wouldn’t carry through with it again, not unless her life was in danger.

Oddly enough, she didn’t think she was in any danger from Bishop. Sane or not, lying or truthful, he wasn’t going to hurt her. Physically, that was. He’d already hurt her so much in every other way that there was nothing else he could do to her.

She also wasn’t going to play along with whatever fantasies or lies he was spinning. Since she couldn’t fight him, and she didn’t even consider the option of asking, of begging him to go away and leave her alone, then her only choice was to run. She could make it in the woods on her own for a good long time; she could walk to civilization no matter how long it took her. Anything that awaited her in the woods was less threatening than the return of James Bishop.

“So what are you going to do, baby?” she said to Merlin. “Are you coming with me, or staying with that slimy bastard? And if you stay, are you going to rat me out?”

Merlin looked at her out of those wise black eyes, but his answer was anyone’s guess. She suspected he’d come with her—he was still in his protective mode, even though he seemed have a case of love at first sight with Bishop. She couldn’t blame him there—the same disease had hit her long ago in Italy, much to her shame.

Bishop took too damned long doing whatever he was doing, and she was ready to scream in rage when he finally opened the door and climbed in. She’d been sure he’d be naked, but he was fully dressed in clean clothes, similar to the ones he’d been wearing. His blond hair was wet, but he hadn’t bothered to shave, and his stubble looked good on . . . what the fuck was she thinking?