Bridal Reconnaissance (11 page)

“To Christopher. We have to get Christopher before he tries…”

Evan rounded the hood and slid behind the wheel. “He won’t. Our son is safe.”

Our son.

He’d said the words. He’d accepted that he was a father, accepted the child he never thought he’d have with Amanda.

To calm her fears about her son, Evan punched in Royce’s number.

“Everything okay?” the ex-agent said as he answered his phone.

Evan sighed into his cell. “What have you heard?”

“About Snake’s murder. Be careful, man. That’s one dangerous SOB.”

“I know. How’s the boy?”

“Good. He enjoyed our little adventure. I brought him home with me. He’s had fun playing with Jeremy, but now he’s tired. He wants his mom and he’s been asking about you.”

“Me?”

“I think he knows, Evan. You guys are going to have to tell him something.” Royce chuckled. “And here he is.”

Evan bit off a remark as the little boy came on the phone. “Hi,” said the high-pitched voice.

He hadn’t intended to speak to him and was totally unprepared for the wave of warmth that spread through his chest. “Hi, Christopher. Are you having fun?”

“Uh-huh. Is my mommy with you?” his son asked.

“Yes, she is.” He glanced to the passenger’s seat, relieved to see she had pulled herself together at the mention of her son’s name.

She reached for the phone, but before Evan could hand it over, the little boy asked one more question. “Are you my daddy?”

In the background Royce’s groan echoed the one Evan swallowed. But he could not lie, not to his son. “Yes, I am.”

“Okay. Can I talk to my mommy now?”

With nerveless fingers, Evan passed the phone to her. Then, with an urge to get back on the road, he
started the car and eased out of the station lot. He divided his time between watching for truck lights and watching Amanda.

Her face, animated as she told an obviously oft-repeated bedtime story to their son, had never been lovelier. Her full lips moved as she made silly noises and her eyes flashed with humor. But despite the show of bravado for Christopher, Evan sensed her fear. When she hung up after an emotional goodbye to their son, she confirmed his suspicion.

She blew out a ragged breath, her bangs dancing across her forehead. “You must think I’m such a coward, hiding like I was.”

Evan glanced from the winding Lake Michigan coastal road, his gaze skimming over her pale face. Long curly lashes fluttered over those wide green eyes fighting back tears. “You have a damn good reason to be afraid. In fact, you’d be a fool if you weren’t.”

“I’m afraid of you, too.”

That startled him. What did she know? “You are?”

“You told him.”

He sighed. “He’s a smart little kid. He asked and I couldn’t lie to him.”

“Why not?”

Good question.

Life would be much simpler if he had. But from the moment he’d met Amanda, life had been anything
but
simple for Evan. “I don’t lie.”

“So anything I ask you about the past, you’ll tell me the truth?”

No matter how painful…

If she asked him again why he had married her, he’d tell her the truth.

“Yes.”

“That scares me, too.”

To his relief she asked no questions, and a tense silence filled the Viper. When he glanced her way again and again, he noticed she kept her eyes closed. But he didn’t think she was asleep, for her hands were clenched so tightly in her lap that the tips of her nails had turned white while the beds were a deep red. Like blood.

Frustration had him pressing harder on the accelerator. He could do nothing to calm her fear of the dark—God knew she had a reason to be afraid—but he could get her to her son faster, could get her to the safety of his house in Winter Falls. Home.

“Amanda, it’s not much farther.”

“Good.”

“We’ll be there in less than an hour.” If he kept pushing the speed limit.

Lights appeared in his rearview, closer than the distance at which Murphy had been following. In fact, he had not noticed Murphy’s lights for some time now.

“Amanda, hand me the cell phone.” She’d kept it on her lap after talking to their son.

The lights kept coming, gaining on the Viper despite their speed. As he eased into a curve, Evan accelerated and downshifted, counting on the tires gripping the asphalt. Gravel from the shoulder spewed up behind them.

“What’s wrong?” Amanda asked as she held out the cell phone to him. With both hands locked on the steering wheel, he couldn’t reach for it. She sat it on
the console at his elbow. “Why are you going so fast now?”

Then she glanced back just as the vehicle, shining high beams into the Viper, edged closer. “Oh, my God, it’s him, isn’t it?”

Evan rounded the next curve, tires squealing. “I don’t know.”

But he wasn’t taking any chances. If he slowed up to let the driver pass, he might wind up pushed off the coastal road by the jacked-up truck if it was Weering. Evan wanted to know if it was. In the next open stretch of dark highway, he eased his foot up some on the pedal.

Amanda’s fingers clutched at the sleeve of his overcoat. “Why are you slowing down? Don’t let him catch us!”

Evan glanced over and noted the paleness of her face, white but for the glow of the amber dashboard lights reflecting off her translucent skin. “You’re safe, Amanda.”

She shivered. “I thought you never lie.”

“Amanda…”

The squeal of tires behind him brought his attention to his sideview mirror since the high beams in the rearview would blind him. As the two vehicles edged single file around another sharp curve, he caught a glimpse of the side of the one behind them. A pickup truck.

Amanda’s breath caught. “It is him.”

“Yeah, I’d bet it is.”

Playing with them.

The truck jumped forward, front bumper nearly touching the rear one of the Viper. Such an action
could force the sports car off the road. Evan couldn’t allow that to happen. He downshifted and pressed on the accelerator and the clutch. The powerful car shot ahead, fishtailing around the next corner.

Evan gripped the wheel hard as the car lurched toward the gravel shoulder on the opposite side of the winding road. The shoulder gave way to steep rocky hillside, below which Lake Michigan glistened under a sprinkling of stars in the dark sky. Just as lights from an oncoming car appeared directly in front of him, he maneuvered the Viper back into the right lane.

In his mirror he spied the truck, which didn’t steer as easily back to the right. Sparks flew into the night as the front fender of the pickup scraped the car going south. The screech of metal grinding against metal rose above the purr of the Viper’s engine.

“Call 911!” he shouted as he witnessed the other car slide off the shoulder.

With a shaking hand Amanda grabbed up the phone and punched in the number. “There’s been an acc—someone’s forced a car off the road—”

“On old 131,” Evan supplied when she floundered, her voice quavering with fear. Would theirs be the next vehicle forced from the road? Not if Evan could control it. And there wasn’t much he didn’t at least try to control…including his own baser instincts.

He downshifted and slammed on the brakes, forcing the Viper into a U-turn. “I have to make sure those people are all right, Amanda. The police might not get here in time.”

In time for any of them.

W
HEN
E
VAN CUT THE ENGINE
, silence reigned. No sound. Not even the chirp of a cricket broke the stillness of the night. Then a breath shuddered out of Amanda, as fear gripped her. “Evan…”

“I have to check on those people, Amanda.” He reached for the handle of his door, but she caught his arm.

“He’s out there!”

Evan’s dark eyes shone in the dim lights from the dashboard. He’d left the key turned in the ignition, the headlamps burning holes in the darkness on the shoulder of the curving road. Would that feeble light be enough to find the wreckage? Amanda doubted it.

“He might be. Or he might be long gone, Amanda. But I’m not taking that chance. You’re going with me.”

Except for those circles of light, darkness engulfed the small car. She shivered. “I can’t…”

But then the memory of being alone while he’d gone into the station flashed through her mind. An image of her cowering on the floorboards until he’d returned. Knowing that Weering could have taken her at any time…

She reached for the handle. “Okay.”

Beneath the swinging door, darkness and empty air reigned. Stones skittered down the steep hillside. “Evan—”

But he’d already stepped out of the car. Then he was on her side, lifting her down from her seat, his arms strong and reassuring as he set her on her feet. He kept her sheltered against his side, his arm anchored tight around her, as they scrambled over rocks and scraggly bushes lining the hillside. Darkness hid
ing the sharp rocks and thorny bushes, as it probably hid other dangers.

Weering.

Where was he? Did he lurk in the darkness waiting for an opportunity to attack again?

Amanda shivered even though Evan shielded her from the cold night wind whipping off the lake. Waves crashed beneath them, frothing on the shore. But before the water, suspended upside down, was the wreckage of the car. Its smashed lights bored into the ground beneath it, glancing off stones and weeds and broken glass from the shattered windshield.

And more than those crashing waves broke the stillness of the night. Screams.

Shame over her selfishness lowered Amanda’s head. She hadn’t wanted to stop. She had been too scared of what might happen to her. But these people…they had done nothing to deserve this pain. All they had done was travel the same road where a madman stalked his victim. Her.

“Oh, my God.” And she prayed for them. “You have to help them!”

She never doubted that Evan could.

His deep voice rumbled out of the darkness. “Stay here.”

“But—” Again selfish fear paralyzed her. She didn’t want to be left alone, didn’t want him to leave her, even though she knew those people were in more immediate danger than she was.

Clinging heavy to the mist off the lake was the odor of gasoline as it wafted from the wreckage. “You can’t get any closer,” Evan warned her, his dark gaze glittering in the night sky as he leaned close.

Then his head lifted and he tensed. Noises drifted down from above. The grind of a motor but no sirens, nothing to indicate it was the help she’d called. Then a dark shadow scrambled down the hill toward them.

Amanda shuddered and drew closer to Evan. “Murphy?” he called out.

“Yeah,” a female voice grunted, and when the woman neared, Amanda recognized her.

“I saw you today. At the pawnshop…” And outside the D.A.’s office. She turned back to Evan. “You’ve had someone following me.”

“And doing a bad job of it,” the woman admitted. “I’m sorry he got past me. You’re okay?” She peered around them to the wreckage. “Oh, my God!”

“I’m going to see what I can do to help,” Evan said. “We’ve called the police. They should be on their way. Watch her.”

Because
he
might still be out there. Somewhere in the darkness she feared so much. Waiting for her.

A
MANDA BREATHED
a sigh of relief a couple of hours later when they reached Evan’s home in Winter Falls. Although Evan had shut the front door and reengaged his security system, she didn’t consider those measures enough to protect her. She didn’t think anything could protect her, but this one man who she couldn’t remember seemed to be her best hope.

A muscle twitched in his clenched jaw and his dark eyes swirled with anger. Not at her. She knew where it was directed—at Weering.

She followed his long strides down a wide hallway to where the house opened up. Through skylights in the ceiling of the two-story great room, stars twinkled.
And the rear wall of glass reflected those same stars off the surface of Lake Michigan far below the cliff into which the house was built.

A fortress. Impenetrable. And with slate floors, stainless-steel stairwell and stark white walls, cold.

Some might say the house reflected the man, but she wouldn’t. She had no memory of him on which to base her opinion, but that fire, that anger, burned deep in his eyes, in his soul.

“You hired someone to follow me,” Amanda stated. A woman who could go everywhere she went without raising suspicion. Bathrooms. Changing rooms. Evan Quade was the kind of man who left nothing to chance.

“She’s from a security firm—they’re supposed to be the best.”

She shivered. Maybe the best wasn’t enough, not against a madman. “He forced her off the road so he could pass and get to us. She’s lucky she wasn’t hurt.”

“And those people in the other car are going to be all right,” she said, not knowing if he needed reassurance, but knowing that
she
did. “You got to them in time.”

But their frightened screams from the wreckage still echoed in her head.

Evan offered her no reassurance now. After that one time in the car outside the gas station, he had never again promised that she was safe. While William Weering roamed free, she would find no security.

“He knocked them off the road and just drove off,” she said, the horror washing over her again as
it had when she’d seen that car, headlights boring into the ground as the crumpled vehicle lay upside down on the rocky hillside leading down to the water.

Despite the strong gasoline fumes, Evan had scrambled in the dark, over the rocks, down to the car. He had never let Amanda close enough to the accident, though, to see what he saw. What had made him so grim. He had performed first aid until the fire-rescue crew, ambulance and police had arrived.

“What did you expect him to do?” he asked, pushing a hand through his already tousled black hair as he stood near that wall of glass, staring at the water below.

“Come back and kill us.” Every minute on that hillside had been pure agony for her despite the presence of her armed bodyguard.

He’d been there. Watching. She knew it.

Evan sighed. “Too easy. Too damn easy.”