by Cari Quinn
He didn’t have a damn house in Hawaii, but it was a good cover story. There were a hundred islands there, making it almost impossible for anyone to find them. With the wind whipping his SUV all over the road, he wished for a few Hawaiian tropical breezes about now.
Isabella stomped on her side of the floorboard for the fourth time. Her fingers were vised around the Holy Shit handle.
“Babe, you do not have a brake pedal over there.”
“Good thing for you.” She tensed as they fishtailed before he corrected them.
“Good thing for us. You’d have us in a ditch or doing a one-eighty.”
“Just watch the road, Ace.”
He grinned into the rapidly advancing night. Their visibility was for shit, but at least he had something to concentrate on. Instead of wondering what kind of information Bishop had found with DeSalvo.
If anything at all.
Logan knew he was loathe to discuss his own relationship with Aimee, so he couldn’t imagine that a kid from her past would be any different. But in his gut, he knew something was there.
He was the only one, of all the men she’d been involved with, that had disappeared for a length of time. The rest had been taken care of quietly. Probably paid off to look the other way.
He just couldn’t figure out how no one had come forward about the way she got obsessive. Was it just like him? A guy didn’t want to own up to a stalker?
Or did she only go over the edge with certain people?
“Oh, finally.”
The trio of boulders that made up the fork in the road up to their cabin came into view. It was a snowy set of boulders, but he knew that formation as well as the view from their wraparound porch.
Their tires spun a little as he downshifted for traction against the snow. If they stayed up at the cabin any longer, he was going to have to get chains on the tires to get through all the ruts and the snow.
For now, he finally got to the semi-flat gravel driveway at the edge of the cabin. He reached into the backseat for the two of the bags of groceries and Izzy took the other. They trudged up the incline to the front door, six inches of snow already piling up on the porch stairs.
Izzy’s winter hat was covered in white crystals just two minutes out of the truck. The stomped inside and he flipped back the hood of his parka.
“Fiona?” Izzy called out. “That’s weird. She usually comes out as soon as we drive up.”
Logan’s spine tingled. The room was shrouded in shadow. The sun had gone down as they were traversing up the twisty roads to the cabin. A sharp bark had him hold his arm out against Izzy entering the house.
“Wait.”
“What?” She clutched his arm, her voice instantly going tight. “Logan?”
He took a step back and flicked on the light.
Every single surface in the room had a crystal vase with blood red dahlias and white roses bundled with a gold card holder with a photo.
The kitchen counter, the dining room table, the end tables—even the small stand in the entryway. Izzy’s fingers dug through the down of his coat with a bruising force.
“Fiona?”
“Wait.”
She pushed past him and followed the sound of the barking.
“Dammit, Iz.” He chased after her. In the hallway to the bathroom, there were more flowers. Christ, they were everywhere.
He was moving too fast to look at the photographs, but they looked like them. His fingers were locked into fists, his belly cramping. Izzy opened the door and Fiona came racing out, circling her.
She was stressed from being locked up, but didn’t seem to have a mark on her.
Fiona barked like crazy when a stranger even came near the house until Isabella told her they were a friend. How the hell had someone gotten into the house?
Bad enough, they’d gotten in and convinced the dog to follow them.
What in the fuck?
He grabbed Izzy by the hood of her coat and back down the hallway. Were they still there? “Out, now.”
“No. What’s going on?”
“Someone’s been in the house. I don’t know if they’re still here. Get the fuck out of the house.”
“And go where? It’s storming out there.” She tore one of the photos off the flower arrangements. Her fingers shook as she got a good look at the shot. Her jaw clenched. “I’m going to fucking kill her.”
Logan took the shot. It was of him running in the woods. From two weeks ago at least. The paths had been too icy for him to run.
He rushed through the house, plucking pictures off the little tridents spiked into each arrangement. Him in the house shaving. Her making dinner. Her on the dock—alone. Izzy with Fiona in the clearing, playing ball. Her doing yoga like she did every morning in the living room. Him chopping wood that day in the clearing.
His lungs were on fire as he twirled around to each plant and found another one. The house was filled with the too sweet scent of the roses and out-of-season blooms. The freaking flowers were in crystal vases. All of them.
“Pack a bag.”
She didn’t even question him. She didn’t even take her coat off, simply raced up the stairs. He heard the shatter of glass and raced up after her. A huge arrangement sat on its side, water racing across the pine floor.
Photos covered their bed. All of them were intimate. Them making love, them in the shower, the two of them kissing. Even some of Izzy’s private moments. Like crying alone on the docks, or the ultimate indignity of her scars on display.
As Izzy stared at what had been left for them to find, her eyes were huge and lost.
He dumped out the paper bag of recycled newspapers that they had in their room and stuffed every photo inside. This was beyond stalking laws. This was a complete invasion of privacy.
“Isabella. Bag now.”
He knew he sounded harsh, but it was the only way to get her moving. She nodded and tore open suitcases, tossing their clothes inside. Her fingers brushed another photo in front of the closet. Before he could stop her, she’d torn it apart.
“Baby.”
“No. No. Not here.” She dashed away angry tears. “This place was safe. They didn’t even know our name here. We haven’t talked to anyone. We use cash for everything. There’s no way she should know we’re here.”
“I know.”
Logan’s chest tightened. It meant someone couldn’t be trusted in their circle. Someone on Marcus’s end had to have been bought off. That’s all he could figure out. There was no other way.
He pushed the pictures into the bottom of his suitcase and covered them with his clothes. There was no way he was letting anyone see them, nor would he risk losing them. He was not going to have the proof stolen again.
“We’re going to be smart about this. All of it goes to Marcus.”
“What if he’s the one that did this? What if she paid him off? What if there’s nowhere that we can go to that she can’t get to us? Get to you.”
“Izzy, no.”
She bent at the waist, her breathing suddenly a gasp.
He crouched in front of her. “I won’t let her get to you, I promise. I swear it.”
She wrapped shaking fingers around his wrist. “Not me. She’ll go for you. Look at those pictures. I’m in a lot of them, but they’re all of you. Every one of them has you in it somewhere—even if the picture focuses on me.”
He stood up and dug the bag out of his suitcase. He spread all the pictures around and sure enough she was right. Almost all of them had him in the picture, even peripherally. There were a handful that were just Izzy, but mostly he was there in the frame somewhere.
He scrubbed his hands over his face. None of this made sense. But the mere fact that someone had been in their place, had walked through the entire cabin and set these out—it was just too much.
And they were the only tennants on the property now. It was well after the season and Richard’s cabin was too far away.
Hell, when they pulled up, it had
been too snowy to tell if anyone had been there or when. It had taken them well over three hours to do their shopping because of the travel time and how busy the store had been.
Had they waited until they left, knowing they had time? Even here in the middle of nowhere, they’d fallen into a pattern. Everything that Marcus and Sarah had taught them about varying their patterns and schedules had fallen away because they thought they’d been hidden.
So fucking stupid.
Logan shoved the pictures back into the bag and into the suitcase. “I don’t know what any of this means, but it’s not safe here. Not anymore.”
She nodded and rushed to the closet once more. Ten minutes later, the Escalade was packed and they were making their way back down the trails. Anything they’d missed could be shipped. And he’d call Richard once they were far enough away from cabin and whatever prying eyes had been watching them.
For goddamn weeks.
Since almost the start.
A few of the pictures had been when Izzy had been skinnier and paler from the accident. You could practically watch her progression in the shots.
He curled his fingers around the steering wheel. The snow had gotten progressively worse, and visibility was nonexistent. Did their spy wait for them to come home so they could follow them?
He didn’t know what to do, so he focused on the one thing he could accomplish. Get down the mountain and into an area where he could call for help.
“Should we go to the police?”
Those were the first words she’d spoken since they’d packed up. Fiona was finally asleep in the back of the truck. She’d whined for the first hour. She was so in tune with Izzy that any changes in her mood seemed to affect the dog as well.
And Izzy had gone radio silent.
Trying to navigate the roads took all his concentration, so he couldn’t exactly drag her into a conversation. Not to mention his brain was a jumble of emotions that he couldn’t begin to untangle right now.
So they’d been silent, with the emergency travel channel alerting them to any problems and the GPS working overtime to connect with the satellites and get them off the river road and into a town with a cell tower.
Why hadn’t he gotten them lost in a big city? At least a city had a means of protection for her.
Not this.
This no man’s land that was inviting trouble as much as it shielded from it.
The whir of the traction controls sounded like a scream in the silence of the car. He wrestled with the wheel and the slide of the tires on the turn. “Fuck. Hold on.”
The SUV went into a drift as they slowly slid through an s-curve decline. The ass of the truck bumped into a guard and they fishtailed into another turn. Thank God there hadn’t been another car on the road because they’d gone right into the next lane.
A full turn then another half had them pointing the wrong way on the mountain when they finally shuddered to a halt. Izzy’s hands were flat on the dash and Fiona tumbled from one side of the car to the other.
“Are you all right?”
She dragged in a breath and nodded. Fiona shoved her big head between their seats and whined until Isabella rubbed her ears and buried her face in her neck. She clutched his leg as he put the car in gear.
“Hang on, we have to turn around.”
A pair of headlights made him gun it where he would have slowly eased into the turn. He slid toward the shoulder and slowed to a stop well out of the line of traffic. She leaned across the console and he gathered her close. Fiona pushed between them and one hundred and twenty pounds of dog shuddered in their arms as she tried to crawl up front.
“No, Fi. It’s okay.” Izzy stroked her big head and pushed her back into the bench seat. She reclined her seat. “I’m going to crawl back there. I don’t want her to do something stupid because she’s scared.”
“Buckle up.”
She nodded and crawled into the back. Fiona practically crawled into her lap, the windows fogging up with her panting.
Logan turned up the defrosters and rubbed at the windows with his sleeve. “We have to get off this thing.”
“I agree.”
“Do you have a signal on your phone?”
She dug it out of her jacket and peered around Fiona’s head. “Yeah. Finally.”
“Good. Call Marcus and let him know what’s going on. See what we should do.”
Thirty
Bella’s thumb shook as she depressed her emergency contact for Marcus. It rang three times before a deep voice answered.
“Isabella?”
“Hey, Marcus.” She swallowed down the adrenaline shakes from their near collision. “Something happened.”
“Okay. Calm down.”
“I’m trying.”
“What happened?”
“She found us. She always finds us,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Explain. Take a breath then explain.”
Marcus was always calm. It was one of the reasons she probably hadn’t lost her mind completely in all of this. Instinctively, she calmed just because of his well-modulated voice.
“Turner—”
“We don’t say that kind of thing over the phone.”
“It doesn’t matter now. She already found us.” For God’s sake, she didn’t call the cabin anything other than “the cabin” since they’d gotten there. She barely associated herself with her own name after all the weeks in their hideaway.
“Where are you?”
She forced herself to lower her voice at Logan’s sharp look. “On the road. I don’t know where the hell we are. We’re in the middle of a damn blizzard.”
“But you’re not there? You’re safe?”
“Depends on what you consider safe.” She peered out the window at the mounting snow.
“Turn on your finder app on your phone.”
She did then put it back up to her ear. “All right.”
She heard the clack of fingers on keys and then him moving around. “I’ll get to you by morning. I just have to figure out logistics with the storm. I need you to find the shittiest hotel and hole up for the night. Wait out the storm.”
She nodded. “Okay.”
“What happened?”
“We left the cabin for a few hours—not even three. Groceries and all that for the storm.”
“Right.”
Bella smoothed her hand over Fiona’s angular head until it eased her as well. The warmth and solidity of her dog went a long way in centering her. “We came back to flowers.”
“Flowers?”
“I know, it sounds ridiculous, but the entire cabin was full of arrangements.”
“The same ones, like the others that have come?”
She pressed her forehead to the car window and watched the scattershot of flakes in the dark sky. So many flakes. “Yeah. Dahlias and roses. At least a dozen different arrangements in the house. There were pictures, Marcus.” Her voice broke and she sucked down the tears that kept threatening to take over. “Tons of them. Of us. Someone’s been watching us almost the entire time.”
Her stomach clenched. Any sense of safety she’d had for the last few months had vanished. As usual, it was just another game for Aimee. They’d thought they were safe, and Aimee had to show them just how wrong they were.
“I’ve had her under surveillance since we relocated you.” Marcus’s voice was sharp and laced with anger. The fact that he was showing any emotion put Bella on edge.
“Yeah well, she’s talking to someone.” Suspicion clouded her voice. “Someone could be listening now.” Could they track them using the same technology that Marcus used?
There was an app for every-damn-thing these days. Hell, she just turned one on herself. She pulled her phone away and pulled up the app.
“Isabella? Isabella, calm down.” Marcus’s voice was tinny in the phone’s ear speaker.
She lifted it back to her ear. “We have to go.”
“No, wait—”
Isabella
stared at her phone for a few seconds before turning it completely off.
“What did he say?”
She looked up at Logan’s face in the rearview mirror. “What if he’s been compromised? How far is Aimee’s reach? Does she have someone on his payroll? Should we even tell him where we are?”
Logan’s eyes were hard—the implacable green was steady and just a little terrifying. That was the Logan she’d seen every single time this woman did something to them. The rage banked under a shield she could never get around.
She never wanted to see that again.
They’d moved and left their life behind just to get that out of his eyes.
And now it was back.
“I don’t know. But I’m tired of running. We’re going home.”
“What?” She sat forward. “What do you mean home?”
“We’re going back to Winchester Falls. This ends now. I won’t have her terrorizing us for the rest of our lives.”
She snaked her arm between the seats to touch his arm. It was stony with tension. Every muscle in his body was locked.
“Marcus said to stop at the nearest dive motel and wait out the storm. He’d get to us in the morning.”
“No, we’re not holing up like a pair of criminals. She hasn’t played by the rules since day one. It’s time we stopped doing it, too.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we won’t be afraid again.” He looked into the mirror at her. “I won’t lose you, Izzy. Not for anything. And definitely not for Aimee Collen.”
The SUV surged forward into the endless flakes that danced in the sky. Beautiful and deadly and mounting.
Thirty-One
She didn’t remember falling asleep. Logan didn’t seem inclined to talk and the endless sea of flakes had been mesmerizing. Bella wasn’t sure what was going on in his head, but worry had knotted her up the closer they’d gotten to New York.
The wash of early morning light drifted over the highway. The pale lemon had a different flavor than the silvery gray of Maine. Sparse oak trees were peppered with evergreens and pines. This part of the Adirondacks hadn’t completely lost their leaves yet, but it was close.
