Hunted, A Romantic Suspence Novel (5 page)

That answered that question.
Her monotone as she listed the statistics about her gun sounded like a kid reciting facts for a class, or a cadet in the military.

“Where did you learn about guns? Were you in the army?”

“You might say that.”

Okay. That subject is a dead end
.

“You can sit on the seat now. We’re far enough away from the hospital no one will notice you sitting in my truck.”

Careful not to take her aim off of him, she wiggled onto the seat. She glanced out the rear window, then the side window. “Where are we heading?”

“To Dublin.”

“Is that where you live?”

“No, it’s where I’m staying for a while. I’m house-sitting for some friends.”

That information seemed to relax her.

“Good.”

“Why is it good, Katie?”

“He won’t be able to trace us there.” She nibbled on her lower lip, a habit she seemed to have when she worried.

“Katie, don’t you think you should tell me who is trying to kill you?”

“The Devil.”

Matt watched Katie out of the corner of his eye as he made the last turn onto Craig’s street. For the last several minutes she’d fought sleep, the gun wavering back and forth a few times. At any point he could’ve swerved hard on a turn or forced the weapon out of her hands. Yet something in her face and voice when she’d ordered him to drive kept him from taking the advantage.

She didn’t trust him. Yes, she’d called him to get her, but he knew without a doubt if she’d had another option, she never would’ve dialed his number. Her comment about the devil trying to kill her still puzzled him. If he hadn’t seen her car in flames and found the shot out tire himself, he’d think she was paranoid.

Helping her would be easier if she’d tell him what was going on. Of course getting her to put the gun down was his first priority.

He glanced at her again. Convincing her to get some sleep wouldn’t hurt. The dark circles beneath her eyes and the compressed line of her lips spoke volumes of her exhaustion. He wondered when she last slept.

“How much longer?” She yawned and regained her grip on the weapon.

“This is it.” Matt pulled into the drive and opened the garage door.

Once the car stopped she wiggled out her side, grabbing both backpacks with one hand and leveling the gun at him once more with a steady hand.

“Why don’t you put that thing away?” Irritation radiated through him. Resentment welled inside him. Despite knowing she needed the gun right now to feel safe, he didn’t like it pointed at him. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“I think I’ll hold onto it a little longer.”

Muttering he headed into the house. The woman’s stubbornness pushed his patience to the limit. “I don’t like being forced to help people, Katie, and guns pointed at me make me nervous.”

Inside the kitchen he stopped to pet the three Boxers that met him with wagging tails. “Hello guys. Miss me?” He patted their heads and bent to grab their food bowls. “You know if you want my help you’re going to need to trust me, Katie.”

The only sound from behind him was six sets of excited paws padding on the tile floor.

“Katie?” He turned to see what had happened to her.

As still as a statue she stood frozen just inside the door, her back plastered to the wall. Her gaze remained fixed on the three dogs sniffing her feet and legs. All color had left her face. Her violet eyes were huge, and her chest movement so shallowly he wondered if she breathed at all. She clenched both her backpacks against her with one hand, the other still holding the gun.

“Katie? What’s wrong?” He approached her with slow careful steps.

“Dogs,” she whispered.

Understanding filtered through his concern. The lady was scared of dogs. No, correct that, she was petrified. For a moment he stared at the three Boxers. He had to admit, they gave a pretty mean first impression. Their looks were deceiving. They wouldn’t hurt her, but
she
didn’t know that.

“Stay where you are, Katie,” he ordered as if the dogs might attack if she moved. Then he walked to her side and carefully took the gun from her. He popped the Glock’s clip out, pocketed it and set the gun on the refrigerator, then he stepped to the kitchen’s far side. “Rocky, Sugar Ray, Ali, come.”

The dogs immediately sat at his feet. He patted them all on the head and rubbed their chests, his eyes never leaving the stark whiteness of Katie’s face. “You can come away from the door now.”

With a trembling hand, she pulled out a chair, and sat on it hard. With great gulps she took in several large breaths. “You...didn’t...tell me...there were...dogs here.”

“You didn’t ask.”

The color slowly returned to her lips, then her cheeks. She blinked a few times, her eyes filling with tears.

Guilt washed over him. He shouldn’t have let her think the dogs would attack. “The dogs belong to my friend. I’m taking care of them, and watching his house. By the way, they wouldn’t have bothered you. Craig jokes that if a burglar broke in they’d probably just lick them to death.”

She glanced at them.

Rocky, the smallest, wagged his tail and whined at her.

“They’re not trained to attack?”

“A few squirrels and birds might argue with me, but no, they’re just family pets.”

“Pets.” The word seemed to sound foreign to her. She continued to study the three brown and white dogs.

Matt laughed at her confusion. “You know, people actually have dogs as pets.”

“We didn’t.”

“You didn’t have dogs when you were growing up?”

Katie shook her head. “No, we had dogs. They weren’t pets, though.”

“What were they then?” Matt asked, not liking the odd sound of her voice.

“Guard dogs. Pitbulls. My stepfather kept them for...protection.” She closed her eyes for a moment as if she relived something out of her past. From clear across the table Matt watched a shudder run through her.

“Do you want to tell me why you didn’t want to go to the police and fire officials at the hospital to report it was your car that caught fire?”

“Blew up.”

“Pardon me?”

She opened her eyes to stare at him. Fear, pain, and the truth were all present in that clear gaze of hers. “My car didn’t catch fire. They blew it up.”

Frustration built inside him. He wanted to shake the information out of her. Instead he leaned back in his chair, idly scratching behind one of the boxers’ ears. “Who are they, and why did they blow up your car?”

Tucking a thick strand of rich black hair behind her ear, she hesitated so long he wasn’t sure she’d answer him. Then she blinked. “The Family. They did it to warn me.”

“Warn you?”

“They want me to know they’ve found me and that there will be no place safe enough for me, anymore.” She unzipped her coat, took it off, then stood. “May I use the bathroom?”

“Of course, you’re not a prisoner here. It’s down the hall to the left.”

The cold impersonal voice in which she matter-of-factly announced her own family was trying to kill her so shocked Matt all he could do was nod, and point in the direction she needed to go.

What kind of a family set out to murder one of their own? And she still hadn’t answered his question. If someone was trying to kill her, why wouldn’t she want to report it to the authorities?

Katie bent over the bathroom sink and splashed cold water on her face, then closed the toilet seat and sat. Her hands began to tremble, followed by her arms, and then her body. Desperate to stop the shakes, she gulped in air as quietly as possible, wrapped her arms around herself and rocked back and forth. Tears generated by fear and delayed shock coursed down her face.

Over the years she’d found ways to control her emotions in front of others. Love, fear, happiness could all be used against you. Tears were weapons for your enemies. She’d learned that the day her mother died. It was the last day she’d shed tears in front of another human being.

Her panic started to subside. What did she do now?

Without Matt’s help, she’d still be at the hospital, or even worse, back in the Marshals’ custody. What had once been a source of safety now meant an easy conduit to the Family. Who in the Marshals had betrayed her? And why?

Nowhere on this earth will provide safe haven for the traitor among us.

Those words had haunted her since the trial. Over time, and especially for the past year or so, they’d faded into her subconscious, visiting her only in the depths of her nightmares.

A vision of a white-haired man, eyes so dark you could see hell reflected in them, swam before her. He lifted his arm to strike. Flames flared before her eyes.

She clenched her eyes shut, pounding her fist on the sink.

“No, no, no, no...” she repeated her mantra with each blow to the porcelain.

“Katie?” A male voice filtered through the door, followed by a dog’s whining.

She froze, her fist suspended in the air.

Where was she? Had he finally found her?

“Katie, are you okay?”

Coming out of her nightmarish past, she blinked hard. She wasn’t at the bunker fearing the next lesson from her stepfather. This was the house where Matt had brought her, the present, not the past.

Dashing her hands across her eyes to wipe away the evidence of her tears, she stood and straightened her scrub shirt and pants. “I’m fine.”

“You sure?”

She tried to ignore the concern in the tall lawman’s voice. It would be too easy to give in to the desire to hand herself into his custody and let him turn her over to the authorities.

No, she’d learned a long time ago she couldn’t trust anyone.

“Yes. I’ll be out in a minute.” She listened for his retreating footsteps outside the door. Leaning her head against the wall, she inhaled, then forced the air out, then opened the door and froze. The smallest dog sat outside the door intently watching her with huge brown eyes.

She almost slammed the door shut. She didn’t have the option of hiding in the bathroom forever and she wasn’t about to call Matt for help, again. She needed to face these animals on her own.

“Shoo,” she whispered.

The dog didn’t move. Neither did it attack.

Okay, I’ll take that as a good sign.

Ignoring the flutter in her chest as her pulse quickened, Katie plastered her back up against the wall, her eyes watching the dog. “Stay.”

She inched to the left.

The dog stood.

She froze. Her heartbeat pounding in her ear.

The dog did the opposite of what it was ordered, but it made no attempt to get closer. She wiped her sweaty palms on her thighs once more and took another slow step to the left. The dog moved in the same direction, the nub of its tail wagging slightly.

Katie concentrated on moving slowly as she continued to slide along the hallway wall toward the kitchen. The dog moved parallel with her, never closing the distance, never baring his teeth, not even a growl. If it made one move toward her, she was out of here, no matter what.

A shadow appeared in her peripheral vision. Katie froze again, her eyes never leaving the dog.

“You can keep coming,” Matt encouraged her from where he stood watching the odd ballet between woman and animal.

“I don’t want to move too fast,” she whispered.

She spoke as if she expected the dog to jump on her if she made a wrong move. Despite his reassurance that the animal wouldn’t harm her, she didn’t trust the dog, or it would seem, him, either. Yet she wasn’t backing away.

“Come into the family room when you two finish getting acquainted.” He walked away, leaving her to work past her fear.

Picking up the remote for the television, he sat on the oversized sectional, sipped his mug of hot chocolate, and tried to find a late local newscast. If she wouldn’t give him the details of the car fire, maybe he could get it from the news.

He clicked past the reruns of local choirs singing carols. Katie’s whispered conversation with Rocky and her wishes he would go away, drifted closer and closer. Finally, she stood in the doorway.

“You could have called him.” Irritation laced her words.

“Did he attack you?”

“No,” she mumbled as she eased past the dog in question to sit on the couch’s other end.

“Did he do anything more than follow you?”

“No. He very politely stayed on the hall’s other side all the way here.” A surprised squeak escaped her. She drew her feet on the couch as the Boxer curled up on the floor right beneath her.

Matt shook his head. If her fear weren’t so palpable, it would be funny. “If I had called the dog, you still wouldn’t believe he wouldn’t hurt you. Right?”

“Yes, but…” she started to argue, but he held up one hand to still her words.

“You’re stuck with the dogs and me. At some point you’re going to have to learn to trust us.” He stared intently at her, trying to convince her of his sincerity. “The sooner you do, the sooner I can help you.”

Their gazes held. Heat sizzled between them. For a moment she seemed to want to tell all her secrets, then the wariness and fear returned. She broke the connection, turning onto her side and curling into a ball. Hugging a pillow to her, she focused on the television, blocking him out. For now.

The lady wants to continue her silence. Fine.

Matt muttered a few curses. He preferred things up front. Straight shooting. But he also loved a good puzzle, a mystery. He had a feeling solving the enigma of Katie Myers and her problems would be worth the effort.

Glancing at the silent woman on the couch as he flipped to the all-night news channel, he watched for some sign of recognition in her as the reporters told their stories.

News about a homicide flooded the screen. She continued to watch. The weather came on, and Matt flipped to the next station.

The picture of a white-haired man in an orange jump suit and shackles came on the screen.

On the other end of the sofa, Katie tensed. Her eyes widened and she sucked in a deep breath.

“Nearly a decade ago, convicted of the Philadelphia Federal Building bombing, militant militia leader, Jacob Strict, known to his followers as The Prophet, was sentenced to die by lethal injection,” the reporter stated. “After years of appeals, the date of his execution has finally been set for December thirty-first.”