“I mean the whole thing. Is this my punishment for not trusting you and running off because I thought…well, that you meant me harm when I overheard your part of the conversation with Daddy?”
“I would never harm you.”
“I know that now. That doesn’t mean you wouldn’t torture me.”
“Trust me, this is not torture.”
He knew something about torture, and not just from his time in Afghanistan. He might not have experienced it there, but he’d seen the results on several of the men they’d rescued. His own torture had started long before that, in his vulnerable teenage years. Being the prey of a sadist who fostered desperate young boys had been more than he’d been able to bear.
“I’m trying to keep you safe. That’s it. Trust me.”
“Trust? Right.” She headed for the door. “I’m going to find the outhouse, if that’s okay with you.”
“No problem. There’s nowhere you can get to from here on foot.”
She gave him a piercing look. “And yet I’m tempted to try.”
Which made him leave the cabin a few steps behind her to make sure she didn’t make a break for it.
—
Katelyn wasn’t certain which chafed more—being away from her business or being so very close to Thorne Hudson. What an enigma he’d proven to be. He’d saved her life and now he was all that stood between her and whoever wanted her dead.
And still, she couldn’t trust him.
That was the reason she avoided getting too close, starting with spending the afternoon outside. She sat under a big tree with plenty of fallen leaves around the trunk. At least her butt was comfy, if not her back. But it was better than being trapped in that cabin with him.
Not that he stayed there. He’d chosen a tree with a direct line of sight to her. Which meant she couldn’t avoid looking at him. Thinking about him. About the way he’d made her respond to him, both physically and emotionally. Thankfully, he was far enough away that she had some respite from the physical attraction that wouldn’t quit every time she was near him.
He was checking his burner cell again.
“What are you going to do when you run out of battery?” she asked.
“I won’t. I have several portable power packs, all charged.” He tapped the cell a couple of times. “I can even call my own cell to check on any messages.” He listened for a moment, then shook his head. “Nope. No calls.”
“Weaver or Cole would probably call me. Lend me the phone and I’ll call myself.”
Tossing her the burner, he said, “I was hoping for something from Justus Nance about the parents of the victims.”
As was she. To her further disappointment when she called herself, there was nothing from either Weaver or Cole.
She tossed the phone back, saying, “So, you have everything figured out.”
“Not everything.”
“What’s missing?”
“You,” he said. “Considering the situation, I haven’t quite figured out why you can’t be reasonable.”
“Oh, I’m being reasonable. Trust me, you would know if I chose not to cooperate.”
“I wasn’t thinking about your cooperating.”
“What then?” she asked.
“I was thinking of your holding everything I had to do to keep you safe against me.”
“You didn’t have to lie.”
For some reason, he appeared vulnerable—or was that a lie, too?
“If I had told you that your father hired me and I was taking you to his associate’s place in Prairie Springs because I thought you might be in danger, would you have come willingly?”
“Probably not. I’m not talking about the big picture, Thorne. You lied about so much more—”
“Everything else I told you was true.”
Though she could hear the plea in his voice, she asked, “How do I know that? I mean, really? How can I possibly believe anything you say, since you’ve been deceiving me from the moment we met?”
Her words struck him hard. His expression closing him off from her, he said, “Sometimes it’s better to judge a person by his actions rather than his words.”
Better for whom? she wondered.
As the afternoon wore thin and the sun shifted in the sky, throwing large shadows over the land, the problem of having only one bed loomed larger in her mind. It wasn’t a particularly sizable bed. Not even a queen. She thought about sleeping on the floor just to make a point. Only, the hard wood didn’t look like it had been cleaned in years, giving that idea even less appeal than sleeping next to Thorne. If she could sleep at all, she would probably wake up stiff in every joint.
What to do?
“I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry,” Thorne said, getting to his feet.
“I could eat.”
He was suddenly standing over her, offering a hand up. Without thinking that doing so might not be wise, she took it. He tugged and easily pulled her to her feet. Finding herself nearly pressed against him, she froze there long enough to thaw from the inside out. The longer she was around him, the more her body awoke to the fact that it would soon be too close to his for the whole night.
When he dipped his head closer, she went wide-eyed and openmouthed. And he took direct advantage.
His kiss was as sweet as any she’d experienced. He wasn’t aiming for seduction. He wanted something else from her.
Though his lips barely brushed hers, they made her chest tighten….
Made her eyes sting….
Made her long for him to her very soul….
She took a big step back, putting an invisible do-not-cross line between them. “I think I’ll sleep out here tonight.”
“Outside.” He cleared his throat. “Bobcat? Wolf? Bear?”
“I haven’t seen anything around here other than a few birds and a rabbit.”
“That doesn’t mean bigger dangers aren’t lurking in the shadows.”
“Now you’re trying to frighten me?” She couldn’t say the effort was without merit. He’d set her nerves tingling.
“Just trying to be realistic.” He sighed. “If you really want to sleep out here, then I’ll be right at your side.”
Which would defeat the whole purpose, of course.
It was going to be a long, miserable night.
—
Fully clothed, Katelyn lay exhausted at the very edge of the bed. Squirming to get comfortable without touching Thorne was hard enough work that it kept her from drifting off.
Moonlight spattering the room with a soft glow gave her a very different picture of Thorne. Apparently he was having no trouble sleeping, sprawled as he was over two-thirds of the bed. He’d fallen asleep nearly instantly and was now serenading her with grumbled words that made no sense interspersed with soft snores.
Trying her best to ignore him, Katelyn shifted her bottom once more, closed her eyes, and imagined floating to a less stressful place.
But suddenly he started thrashing, and his next words cut through her.
“—your fucking hands off me—”
Heart thudding, she rose up to her hip, whispering, “I’m not touching you!”
But he wasn’t talking to her.
He wasn’t awake.
He was struggling, continuing to thrash as if fighting off demons.
“—hit me again—go ahead—”
“Thorne,” she whispered, putting a hand on his shoulder. Her mind sped back to when he’d told her that if he hadn’t run, he would have killed the bastard who’d called himself a foster father. “It’s all right. He’s not here.” His shoulder settled, but beneath her fingers, she could feel his pulse racing as fast as if he were running. “It’s just you and me. He’s not here.”
When she’d learned he’d lied to her, however, she’d questioned whether anything he’d told her had been true.
“—I’ll make you sorry—” he growled.
“Shh, you’re safe.” She dared to lightly stroke his forehead. Seeing the pain he was
in, caught in the nightmare of his past, she wouldn’t question the veracity of this again. “No one here to hurt you now. You can sleep easy.” Her eyes stung with tears as she whispered, “Rest. You’re safe….”
Her soft words and touch seemed to penetrate his nightmare. His pulse slowed. His muscles softened. Within seconds, he was comfortably snoring again.
And she was wide awake.
Slipping out of bed, she paced the room. Would he remember anything in the morning? Should she tell him what had gone on? No, not unless he asked. Whatever it was that had happened to him half a lifetime ago still haunted him. If she had the power to take the memory away, she would.
Startled by how much this was choking her up, how much she cared, Katelyn closed her eyes and forgot to breathe for a few seconds. Thorne’s pain was tearing her up inside. She had to distance herself from him in order to protect herself, and she had to do it now. Not that she meant to run away again. But she’d thought about sleeping outside earlier. Maybe not such a bad idea, after all. It was warm enough, even at night. Since she needed to use the outhouse anyway, she could test the waters, so to speak, and make up her mind then.
A cloud covered the moon when she opened the door and let herself out. Luckily, she’d attached a small flashlight to her key ring. Just enough illumination to get around back without tripping and breaking her neck.
After using the outhouse, she went to the pump and washed up. When she shook the water from her hands, she was sure she heard something move in the nearby brush. Neither a scurry nor a hop—she swore it sounded more like a human footfall.
“Thorne?” She froze with her hand on the pump handle. No answer. She tried again. “Thorne, is that you?”
Nothing.
Okay, this wasn’t good. Or maybe she’d just imagined the sound. Or imagined it to be made by a person when indeed there was a bobcat or wolf or bear waiting to pounce on her.
As silently as possible, her ears attuned to every noise, she moved away from the pump and back toward the cabin—until a twig snapping from the direction of the cabin stopped her in her tracks. She backed up slowly, angling toward the woods. Pulling the flashlight from her pocket, she was tempted to shine it in the direction of the sound. But what if that drew in whatever was out there?
She kept the flashlight in her hand turned off as she gingerly moved away from the cabin, using only the dim light from the mostly obscured moon. But now she heard whatever it was moving with her. Not paws padding over the ground; definitely feet scrabbling as the distance between them closed.
Hard to breathe…
Trying to decide…
Need to run…
That fast, she took off, running blind, arms outstretched to protect her head from tree branches, but still hitting one so hard it nearly spun her around. Recovering fast, she zigged and zagged through twenty yards of brush until she zeroed in on another stand of trees. Who was after her? Gerard Eklund? Under the canopy, her footfalls softened. She slowed and moved carefully through the maze.
A thud behind her told her the other person had run into something, and then they slowed down a bit. She ran faster. Carefully, but faster. Flicking on her flashlight for a few seconds, she could see her surroundings. The trail she was on sloped away from the cabin toward a section of forest razed by fire.
The sound of a sharp ping nearby nearly stopped her heart and made her click off the flashlight.
Another ping!
Those were shots!
Her attacker had a gun!
Katelyn slid off the trail and descended the slope into the burn area. Maybe he wouldn’t follow her down there. Even so, eyes adjusting to the dark, she looked for a place to hide. What remained of the vegetation were skeletal shapes and ash that her passage kicked up and threatened to choke her. But at the far perimeter of the burn, the ash was sparser and the dead trees retained more of their bulk.
Finding a fallen trunk of a decades-old tree blackened but mostly whole, she found a hollow spot, climbed inside, and prayed that whoever was chasing her wouldn’t think to look for her in there.
Curled in a ball, knees to her chest, Katelyn eased her ragged breathing so she could hear the noises around her. By listening for the faintest of sounds, she kept aware of the attacker’s movements.
Circling.
Scattered.
Unfocused.
For a moment, he stopped dead in his tracks—either that or she just couldn’t hear him, which worried her more. What if he was sneaking up on her?
Just thinking about it made acid from her stomach shoot into the back of her throat.
The tree trunk might be a fine hiding place, but if he discovered it, she was a sitting target. If only she had something, anything, she could use to protect herself.
If only she had Thorne’s handgun. Or better yet, the man himself.
Chapter 14
Thorne swore gunfire had awakened him. It must have been a nightmare. His head was still thick with it.
Had the attack on his convoy come back to haunt him again? He didn’t remember seeing uniforms or weapons or hearing the blast. Confused, he pushed himself up on his hip and tried to sort it all out. He’d sworn the nightmare had gone further back in time than Afghanistan.
Centering himself inwardly, he immediately saw that bastard’s face, and his fists, in his mind’s eye.
And then he realized he was alone in the bed and shouldn’t be.
“Katelyn?”
Looking frantically around the darkened room, he didn’t even sense her presence. Where the hell could she have gone? Outside these four walls, obviously, when he’d strictly forbidden her to leave without telling him.
Had the gunfire been real?
In seconds, he retrieved his gun from under his side of the bed and was out of the cabin, off the stoop, and onto the walkway, focusing on the sounds around him.
The chirping of insects.
Paws hitting the earth.
An engine coming to life.
That froze him in place. He caught a glimpse of the vehicle’s lights as it moved away, a dark sedan disappearing quickly between the stands of trees lining the road that led out of the woods.
“Katelyn!”
Hearing a soft cry, he ran toward the sound of distress and almost tumbled down an incline. The smell of burned wood filled his nose. He was in an area that had been destroyed by fire.
“Thorne?”
“I’m coming for you.” Barely able to see where he was going, he kept moving toward the sound. “Talk to me so I can find you.”
“I’m over here.”
Her voice was louder now, and moonlight lit the area in a soft blue glow. Cutting through a small clearing, he saw a large felled tree scarred by the fire, but mostly intact. An arm wiggled out and upward from the trunk, followed by a head and shoulders. As she freed herself, he got to Katelyn and tucked his gun into his belt in the middle of his back. Fearing she was hurt, he gently moved his hands up her arms to check for himself.
She shook her head. “I’m okay. I’m okay.”
Hands now on her shoulders, he really wanted to pull her to him, to hold her tight. “What the hell, Katelyn?” Only hard-won restraint kept him from doing so. “What happened?”
“I, um, used the outhouse. Unfortunately, company must have arrived while I was in there.”
Or the company had already arrived and had eyes on the property. The bastard had probably seen her leave the cabin alone.
He said, “Gunfire woke me.”
“He took a couple of shots in the dark, but didn’t get anywhere near me.”
“Thank God.”
Unable to resist any longer, he pulled her to him and held her against his chest, wrapped within the shelter of his arms. He couldn’t lose Katelyn, not like this. And not on his watch. He’d never belonged to anyone before. Not his parents, not foster parents, not a woman. Katelyn had his heart. Whether or not she wanted him, he belonged to her. After having learned the truth about h
im, was there any way she would have him now?
Her tensing and pushing herself away from him gave Thorne the answer he’d feared.
“Did you see him?” she asked. “Was it Gerard Eklund?”
He shrugged. “I only saw the vehicle pull away. A dark sedan.”
“Eklund was driving a dark sedan when he gave me that ride from Prairie Springs.” Her voice rose with her certainty. “It has to be him. But how did he find us?”
“I don’t have a clue.” Avoiding touching her again, he started back uphill toward the cabin. “I would have sworn no one followed us. I thought maybe we had a tail leaving Lake Geneva. That was a dark sedan also,” he remembered, “but we lost him fast enough.”
“What, then? Is Eklund psychic or something?”
“Or something.”
Stopping alongside his truck, he opened the back gate, grabbed a Maglite, and flipped it on. Then he dropped to the ground on his side and ran the powerful beam under the bumper.
“What are you looking for?”
“Something high-tech rather than woo-woo.”
Nothing there, though. He got to his feet and went to the rear wheel well on the driver’s side and repeated the process.
“What kind of high tech?” she asked.
“Like spy gear.” Not there, either. He switched to the passenger side. This time, it only took a second. “Found it.” Pulling the magnetized device free from the metal, he rolled to his feet and showed it to her. “This is a real-time digital GPS tracker. He could have gotten our location data at any moment from any Internet-enabled device. He was probably just using his smartphone.”
“So what do we do with it?”
“This.” Throwing it to the ground, he stomped on it hard, but the thing seemed to be made of some kind of super-strong metal. It wouldn’t give.
“Wait!” she said before he could try again. “Wouldn’t that have Eklund’s fingerprints? Proof that he tried to kill me?”
“Maybe—if he didn’t clean it and wear gloves when he attached it.” He fetched the tracker from the pavement. “But as far as I can tell, it’s still working. If we take it with us to hand it over to the cops, Eklund will be trying to party with us before we get there.” He threw it into the woods. “If we need to, we can find it again, but right now we have to get our bags and get out of here. Fast.”
His Deception Page 19
