Keeping Watch: Heart of the Night\Accidental Bodyguard (35 page)

She prayed that her uncle and grandmother were all right, that they hadn’t been here when the place had been searched. Where would the killer go next? Where else would he strike? What part of her life had he yet to touch and destroy?

For a moment, Faith was too frightened, too utterly alone to string together a coherent thought. She fingered the disk in her pocket. NT-6. A sentence of death and terror to anyone who knew her. Why? Dr. Rutherford. Danny. Liza. Wes and Gran?

“Why?”

There was no answer. Only a single word playing over and over inside her head.

Run.

Faith heeded the only idea that made any sense. She had to get away from everyone she knew, from every place she loved. She climbed back into Liza’s car, ignored the map and drove away. She was too numb with shock and confusion to do anything more.

Day faded into night. Night became a blanket of stars. Moonlight gave way to a shadowy darkness.

And still she drove.

She covered the flatlands of Nebraska and wound her way steadily westward toward the craggy elevations of the Rocky Mountains. The last road sign she read was Elk Point, Wyoming. A tiny town of two thousand nestled at the base of the Grand Tetons.

Now, in that creeping darkness before dawn, it started to rain. A few noisy splotches on her windshield quickly became a downpour.

“Why not?” She tapped her foot on the brake. Her hoarse whisper encroached the powers that be. “It fits. Let the heavens open up. You’ve dumped everything else on me.”

She was beyond tired, surviving on adrenaline and caffeine, mindlessly putting as much distance between her and hell as she could. She slowed the car as it wound back and forth across the rutted asphalt road she hoped would take her over the mountain. But even with the windshield wipers on max she couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of her. She gripped the wheel in weary fists and squinted the fatigue from her eyes.

Leaning forward to judge the next curve, she focused on the curtain of rain and darkness. Lightning flashed, illuminating every tree and leaf and pothole for a split second. Faith jumped in her skin, but managed not to jerk the wheel. She stomped on the brakes to slow her speed to a blind crawl as she was swallowed up in the darkness that followed. Just as she remembered to exhale the fearful breath she held, thunder crashed down around her. This high in the mountains, it was a giant concussion of sound that shook the car and reverberated through her entire body.

This time, she did jerk. The car swerved toward the ditch, but she quickly steered it back into the center of the lane. “Bring it on, Mother Nature!”

She was laughing now, a crazy, taunting laugh that echoed through the car. “What else you got?” she foolishly challenged a world that had been less than kind in the past twenty-four hours.

In answer to her dare, the engine sputtered and a yellow light blinked on in the dashboard. “No.” She slammed her fist against the wheel. “No!”

Her crazy laughter gave way to tears as the engine died. She let the car roll off onto the shoulder of the road and parked it. Out of gas. The stupid, stupid thing was out of gas.

So was she.

With nothing left in her, Faith folded her arms across the top of the steering wheel, laid her face in her hands and wept.

Time lost all meaning in her world of death and darkness and pouring rain. It might have been an hour, or only a few minutes before she became aware of the bright spotlight shining in through the back window of the car.

By the time she realized a car with spinning blue lights had pulled up behind her, someone rapped at her window. Faith’s heart leaped into her throat. She clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle her startled yelp at the sight of the shapeless creature outside her window. She slid toward the passenger seat when he bent down and shined a flashlight in on her.

But someone stood at the other door, too. She was trapped.

“Oh, God, please help me,” she whispered, truly fearing that divine intervention would be the only way she could be saved now.

“Ma’am?” A man’s voice shouted through the glass. He knocked on the window again. “Ma’am, I’m the sheriff of this county. Are you all right?”

Sheriff? Rational thought pinged through her brain like the targets of a pinball machine, trying to make sense of where she was and whom she was with.

“Hey, lady,” the voice from the passenger side shouted. “Are you hurt?”

Would these two men know who she was? Had the make and plates on Liza’s car been broadcast across some sort of national wire?

Faith cracked her window, turning her face away from the rain that splashed against her cheek. “I need to see your badge,” she ordered. She pointed to the other man. “And I need him to move to your side of the car.”

While the man on the passenger side cursed and mumbled something about pouring rain, the man at the driver’s window pulled up his yellow rain slicker and let her read the badge and ID hanging from the chest pocket of his brown uniform shirt. “That’s smart to be safe, ma’am. My name’s Hamilton Prince.” Now both men were standing at her window. “If there’s something wrong with your car, we can drive you into town for the night and get it fixed in the morning.”

Get in a car with two men she didn’t know? A paunchy sheriff and… “Who’s he?” she asked, nodding toward the grumbling man.

“Mel Prescott. Part-time deputy. He owns some land up this way.”

Mr. Prescott apparently had had enough of doing the neighborly thing. “C’mon, Ham. If she doesn’t want our help, let’s get moving. I’m late enough getting home as it is.”

“Cool your jets, Mel.” Sheriff Prince’s poncho caught on the polished brown handle of his gun. Faith’s eyes widened, suddenly thrown back to yesterday morning at her home, when Detective Collier had let her get a good look at his weapon as a subtle means of intimidation. But maybe her tired brain was imagining it. The sheriff bent down far enough so she could see his face through the window. “Could I see your license and registration, ma’am?”

Faith tensed. “What for?”

He smiled. It was a gesture meant to be charming, but its overt friendliness alarmed her even more. Danny Novotny and Jermaine Collier had been friendly and polite moments before talking to her as if she were a criminal. “Standard procedure. I like to know who’s in my county. And you still haven’t told me your name.”

Give him the opportunity to find out she was wanted for questioning regarding a string of murders? No way. “I’m okay, Sheriff. Honestly.” She managed to dredge up a false smile of her own. “It was hard to see and I got tired, so I pulled off the side of the road to take a nap.”

“You look like you’ve been crying.”

Faith’s fingers flew to her face. She did feel hot. And that puffy swelling around her eyes wasn’t entirely due to fatigue. “I’m fine,” she repeated.

“Ma’am, you don’t want to be alone up here at night. Not on this part of the mountain.”

“You think he knows we’re here?” asked Mel, shifting nervously on his feet. Making Faith nervous.
He
who?

Sheriff Prince hooked his thumbs into his belt and straightened beyond her sight. “I’m sure that son of a gun knew we were here the moment we stopped. That freak’s got cat eyes in his head. He’s probably watching us right now.”

Mel swore and stomped back toward the sheriff’s car, kicking up mud and water with each step. “Then I’m out of here. If she doesn’t want our help, let’s go.”

“Dammit, Mel.” The sheriff followed his buddy back to the car. “I’ve got a job—”

“Hey, Ham, there’s something on the scanner.”

Feedback? Information on her?

Faith saw her chance. She had no intention of letting the sheriff run any kind of check on her until she knew it was safe to contact law enforcement. For all she knew, he’d already run the license plate and was reading that the car belonged to a dead woman. The scanner might list the car stolen. She had to get away. And since the car was temporarily out of commission…

With surprising coordination for a woman who’d been sitting for nearly twenty hours, she grabbed her purse and opened the door. The force of the rain soaked through to the skin almost immediately. She slipped on the slick asphalt, but scrambled to her feet and ducked around the front of the car to disappear into the shadows.

“Ham!”

“She’s running!”

“Lady! Ah, nuts.” A slew of swear words dogged her as she stumbled into the ditch, landing ankle-deep in a puddle of water.

“Stay away from me!” she yelled, climbing up the opposite side and plunging into the line of trees. Lightning charged the air again, skidding in an ionized shock wave across her cold, wet skin, showing her a glimpse of a path before throwing her into the darkness of the mountain storm once more.

As she tore through the thick stand of pines and aspen, she could hear footsteps following her. Two heavy-footed men in hot pursuit. The light from their flashlights danced across the trunks of the trees, playing tag with her, trying to catch her. Why chase after her if they meant her no harm?

Run.

“Dammit, lady!” Mel sounded totally pissed and almost—panicked. “Don’t go up there. It isn’t safe.”

“Ma’am—please.” The sheriff sounded more rational.

But Faith didn’t stop. She ran. Uphill. Grabbing handholds on trees, blinking the water from her eyes. Breathing so deep and fast her lungs burned with the altitude. Thunder banged in the air, jerking her like a gunshot. She stumbled a step, but refused to fall. Refused to slow down. Refused to give up her freedom until she felt safe.

Run.

“Lady!” Mel swore.

“Watch yourself!”

Faith burst into a clearing. Her soggy shoes shifted around her feet as they hit gravel. A driveway. Lightning flashed. She looked up. A cabin. Shelter. A door to lock behind her.

Someone who
wasn’t
the law inside.

She bolted up the steps to the long front porch. She pounded on the door with the flat of her hand. “Help! Help me!”

She glanced over her shoulder.

The men with the badges and flashlights and guns were coming. “Oh, God.” She whirled around, her fist raised to pound again. “Help—”

The door swung open. Lightning splintered the sky, giving her one swift, shocking look at the Goliath who filled the doorway.

He towered over her, all muscle and bulk and golden skin above the unsnapped waist of his jeans. She tilted her head back, processing the afterimage of sharp, shadowed features. His unnerving, icy blue eyes seemed to hold and reflect the light. And a slash of scar across one eyebrow made the man look like the very devil himself.

Faith screamed.

Chapter Two

The woman at his door retreated. Fast. She’d roused him from a decent sleep, begged for help and now she was running away.

Typical.

Friendly first impressions had never been his strong suit. He didn’t care. Let her leave.

But when she missed the top step in her rush to get away from him and plummeted toward the ground, Jonas Beck reached out. In one easy stride, he snatched her near the top of each flailing arm, picked her up and set her squarely down in the middle of his porch.

The instant she began to struggle he released her and backed off. He was years beyond feeling the sting of her repulsion. But he’d never outgrow the habit of learning all he could about the people around him. Whether she’d prove to be the enemy or not, it was the first rule of self-defense.

He could guess the woman wasn’t a threat. With her wet clothes clinging to her like a second skin, there wasn’t much about her he couldn’t assess. She wasn’t armed or wired. She didn’t clutch her purse as if it held anything valuable or useful as a means of self-defense.

Her height hit him about midchest, putting her at five-five or so. And he’d held on long enough to learn that she had a healthy layer of meat on her bones. If she was lost, she hadn’t been away from food and civilization for long. And she didn’t know him, not even by reputation, or else she would have known what to expect when she knocked on his door. She wasn’t dressed for trekking through the wilderness. She was too young to have ever been a part of his old life, and she wasn’t local.

Or else she’d have chosen the thunderstorm and the mountain over seeking shelter with him.

Let her go,
he reasoned. Let her disappear back into the trees and the night from whence she came. The only reason he reached out to steady her now as she dashed down the rain-slick stairs was that he didn’t want to mess with a lawsuit if she hurt herself while she was on his property.

“Don’t touch me!” She swatted at his big hand like a pesky fly getting back at the horse. Jonas almost laughed. Almost. Genuine laughter hurt in ways he couldn’t begin to describe.

He raised both hands in mock surrender and watched her tight, curvy butt as she ran across his driveway. Good riddance. People were nothing but trouble. And he’d had enough of that in his life.

Jonas heard the crack of wood and sensed the danger before the woman skidded to a halt halfway between him and the line of trees and brush. Two men dressed in wide-brimmed hats and yellow ponchos broke through the natural barrier. He recognized them as the sheriff and one of his fake deputies.

Like the beastly guard dog he’d once been trained to be, Jonas’s hackles rose. As the chilling rain beat down on his naked shoulders and torso, a fever erupted inside him, shooting fiery trails of adrenaline to every defensive muscle and filling his senses with a hyperawareness that let him instantly assess their intent and the woman’s charged reaction to them.

“Oh, God.” Her cry was half confusion, half terror.

“Lady, get away from there.” The sheriff’s buddy and bootlicker, Mel Prescott, had his gun pulled from his holster. He used it instead of his finger to point at the woman and urge her to move. Jackass. “You come with me now.”

Instinctively, Jonas patted his hip. He didn’t waste the time or energy swearing at the discovery that he’d left his hunting knife strapped to his belt beside his bed. When he’d first sensed the disturbance outside, he’d simply swung out of bed and pulled on his jeans. He’d taken out armed men with his bare hands before, though. Mel Prescott wasn’t a threat to him. But the woman…