Survival Instinct

by Doranna Durgin

Dave didn’t even have to be touching Ellen to feel her irritation. He had the uneasy feeling she’d turn out to be right after all—this visit had everything to do with his own arrival.

  The second man immediately confirmed his guess. “Who cares why she’s here? We’re supposed to find her, and we have. Too bad we didn’t beat Hunter to town, but we shouldn’t have any trouble.”

  Ellen stiffened. She turned to Dave with a glare that should have cut him in half; it struck unexpectedly deep. He shook his head slightly, just enough to tell her he had no idea who they were.

  Though he was getting one.

  The first man gave a little snort. “No, she shouldn’t be any trouble. That was the whole point of dating her, he said.”

  Ellen looked up at the porch with brows drawn, that wide mouth set in a hint of scowl. Dave leaned down, just enough to reach her ear, just enough to brush her hair. She’d been working that morning, all right; the salty scent of her skin tickled his nose just as her hair tickled his face. He murmured, “Do you know him?”

  She drew back from him, gave him a look he couldn’t decipher and finally shook her head. “Can’t remember,” she said, barely voicing the words at all. Just a hint of whiskey alto on the air.

  The men argued for a few moments. Ellen abruptly pushed away from the wall, moving silently through the basement. “What’re you—”

  “I’ve heard enough.” She picked a few gardening hand tools off the workbench—gloves, a trowel and a clawlike cultivator. “They’ll be back if they don’t talk to me now. At least this way I get to choose the moment.”

  “And you want me to just—”

  “Watch my back.” She raised an eyebrow. Expressive. “You can handle that, right?”

  “Yeah, and I can also go out there and ask—”

  She gave a sharp shake of her head. “I want answers, not confrontation.”

  He thought of how badly he needed his own answers. “I can—”

  Apparently she wasn’t in the habit of letting people finish what she thought would be stupid sentences. “Look, this isn’t your choice. You may have brought these two down on me, but I’ll decide how I deal with it.”

  Dave closed his eyes. He’d been in dim basements—some of them ominous, some of them stinking of the very person he’d hoped to find alive. And he’d dealt with irate witnesses. But not once had he envisioned himself lurking in a basement while the irate witness went out to play some sort of game with the questionable gentlemen who’d come to find her.

  But she was right. It was her home…her choice. And maybe, just maybe, she’d get answers that they wouldn’t give him. Watch it, Hunter. Don’t put her at risk for those answers. That wasn’t how he worked. He opened his eyes to find her impatient and somehow even less like the Ellen he remembered.

  “I’ll let you know if I want a hand,” she told him. Still softly, as had been all their conversation. Still very aware of the men on the porch—who now banged on the mudroom door hard enough to make their true intentions clear. Ellen told the dog to wait and then told Dave, “Just be ready.”

  And with that she marched to the nearest door, leaving him with a plethora of unanswered questions, a definite sense of skewed reality, his hands wishing for the weight of the Ruger he’d left in the car. Ready for what?

  To judge by the purpose in her stride, he was about to find out.

  Chapter 3

  Karin paused at the basement’s side door, hefting the hand cultivator. She stuffed the worn leather gloves in her front jeans pocket and the trowel into her back pocket, and she glanced back at Dave Hunter. Assessing him.

  She needed him to wait, but she also wanted the backup if things went badly. She wasn’t sure if he’d do either.

  He stood in the filtered light, the posture of a man who was fit, who knew himself and knew what he could do. But she didn’t need him barging into the discussion, not when she still might chase these fellows off without too much fuss.

  Not a very big chance. But still a chance.

  He shifted his weight back. He’d wait, then. And in the end, he’d do what everyone did—serve their own best interests. She turned away, hesitating just long enough to swipe her fingers along the dirty windowsill and smear the dirt across her cheek, tugging a few strands of hair loose from her low ponytail.

  When she walked out the door, she put on an air of distraction. A woman at work, thinking about frost dates and soil preparation and just how many zucchini would that one plant produce, anyway? She walked uphill toward the porch steps, for the moment still hidden from the men—but only for a moment. They moved heavily down those concrete porch steps; they had none of Dave Hunter’s lightness of foot.

  Too much bulky muscle.

  She took a deep breath. God, they were big. And though she knew how to take care of herself, she was no wonder woman. She talked and flirted her way out of trouble. And even if she’d done fine when she’d had to get physical, she’d always known Rumsey was there.

  If nothing else, Rumsey had known how to protect an investment.

  And there. Now they’d spotted her. They stopped at the bottom of the steps and she slipped into her role. She started, raising a hand to the base of her throat as Ellen had often done when confounded. “I didn’t know—” She pressed her lips together as Ellen might have done, too. “Can I help you?”

  The two exchanged glances. At eye level, they turned out to be a Frick and Frack pairing—one swarthy, wavy black hair slicked back in…jeez, was that some updated version of a mullet? The gangster mullet. Great. The other fellow had the look of an ex-boxer, nose and ears damaged, his hair in a dull brown crew cut. It made his head look like a pasty football.

  Do not underestimate the pasty football.

  They made their tacit decision—yes, she was the right one—and the mullet-haired one said, “Barret wants to talk to you.”

  “I’m sorry…I don’t think I know—”

  The ex-boxer snorted. “He said you wouldn’t want to come.”

  “Look,” she said carefully. “I was in an accident. There’s a lot I don’t remember. I don’t know who Barret is.” And dammit, she didn’t.

  Although whoever Barret was, Ellen had come to his attention because of Dave Hunter.

  “Doesn’t matter,” said the ex-boxer, both to his partner and to Karin. “Barret wants to talk to you. So let’s go. He said you could pack a bag.” He looked her up and down, gaze hesitating at her artful smudge of dirt and then again where the breeze caressed her exposed stomach, and his lip lifted slightly.

  She couldn’t even begin to pretend that the rising goose bumps were a byproduct of that breeze. These men weren’t here to talk. They were here to fetch her to Barret, and they were already bored. Still, she got the distinct impression that they’d been given a hands-off directive. The ex-boxer had sneered at her appearance…but not leered.

  “I can’t go,” she said, hunting for strategy, finding nothing. Damn, these guys looked bigger every moment. And Barret, whoever he was, sounded like a man used to getting what he wanted.

  “I can’t go,” she repeated, a little louder. Just to make sure Dave Hunter knew exactly what was going on here. Just be ready, she’d told him. If Ellen’s memories really mattered to him, he’d try to protect them—and, by default, her. She gestured with the cultivator. “I can’t miss the planting season.” She cocked her head, pretending she didn’t see the impending escalation of the situation. Saint Arthelais, this potential kidnap victim could use a little help here. Thanks to Rumsey’s habit of creating absurd saints for his own purposes, she’d made a study of the real ones. She knew just who to invoke, if perhaps not as reverently as she might. “Can’t he just call me?”

  The ex-boxer rolled his eyes. “Not gonna happen.”

  Oh, Ellen, why didn’t you warn me?

  As if she’d had the time.

  Karin struggled to contain her resentment, channeling it into Ellen’s wary fear. “I’m sorry,” she said, lifting her c
hin slightly, a gesture opposite to her own habit of looking up from beneath her brow. “I don’t know you and I don’t know your boss and I want you to leave now.” If Dave Hunter didn’t take this hint, he was deaf and dumb—most particularly, dumb.

  “Let’s go,” the ex-boxer said, but he spoke to his companion, jerking his head toward their car. “We’re wasting time. She can pick up some things when she gets there.”

  Run, Karin, run. Surely they wouldn’t have her stamina. And they’d never find her once she hit the woods—

  Karin blinked down at her biceps, suddenly engulfed in the ex-boxer’s grip. Not so slow after all. And it hurt, dammit.

  Karin snarled—her own voice, her own words. “I said no!” She tightened her fingers around the cultivator as she jerked against his grip, feinting toward the obvious target with her knee. He looked smug as he straightened his arm, pushing her out of reach and leaning forward a little to do it.

  Not so smug as she whipped the cultivator up and buried it into the side of his face. Oh God. Blood spurted from somewhere near his eye. As he screamed, high and thin and disbelieving, he wheeled away from her and jerked the cultivator out of her hand.

  In his eye. Into his cheek, into the side of his nose—

  Oh God.

  His buddy leaped to reclaim her, his fist raised for a blow—and then hesitated. Karin had only an instant to register the blur of white and red fur before Ellen’s dog—her dog now—launched himself at the man’s forearm.

  Not a trained attack dog, no. But a dog who knew how to do battle, who regularly brought her groundhog and possum, undeterred by his own battle scars. The man scrabbled away as the ex-boxer hit his knees, his hands over his face to pluck at the cultivator with horror, still screaming. “My eye! My fucking eye!”

  Somewhere inside her own horror, Karin realized the second man was hunting for a gun, hampered by the twist of his ugly sport coat as Dewey hung from his arm. She snatched the trowel from her back pocket and threw herself at him, slamming the dull blade viciously into his arm. It bounced right off the rock-hard muscle, but it must have hurt wickedly all the same because he roared and shook them both off. He took assessment of his partner and of Dewey crouched ready to spring again, his lips pulled back in a horrible snarl—and he pinned Karin with a furious gaze. Then he dragged his partner to his feet.

  The ease with which he did it sent fear spearing through Karin’s chest. He could have smashed her down and carried her one-handed to the car…and she’d gone for him. Oh God.

  He hauled the ex-boxer back to the car, shoved him into the passenger seat and threw himself behind the wheel, backing up with such angry haste that the wheels spit gravel the whole way.

  They’d be back. She might not know who Barret was or why the hell Ellen had been acquainted with him; she might not know any of the things Dave Hunter wished she did…but she knew these men would be back.

  Well. At least one of them would be back. The other…

  Karin looked down at her hands, found blood. And down at the cultivator, lying where the ex-boxer had dropped it…more blood. Back at her hands, to discover them shaking. Of course they’re shaking. She’d never attacked anyone before. A slap, a shove, some bluster to establish she wasn’t to be trifled with. Rumsey had wanted people’s money? Fine. She’d done what she had to, what she’d thought she had to. She’d even learned to enjoy being good at it, and to ride the jazz of a good scam coming together. She sure hadn’t hesitated to steal from Rumsey, to take her sister’s name, to lie her way through life while she decided what next.

  But she’d never hurt anyone before. Not truly. Not violently, with spattered blood and screams.

  She had to get her rifle and get it loaded. She had to double-check her escape stash in the trunk, make sure that she could run at any moment if she had to, even if she didn’t plan on it. This was her home, now—a life Ellen had given her, and which Karin didn’t intend to waste. Still, she’d be ready.

  But first she had to get this damned blood off her hands.

  She crouched on jellied knees, wiping her hands on the lawn. Scrubbing them. Dewey came to her, uncertain; he ducked his nose under her forearm and flipped up, his not-so-subtle request for reassurance. Blood smeared his muzzle.

  Crap.

  When Karin stood, her knees steadier but a cold sick spot at her stomach and her thoughts still tumbling around from one extreme to another, she finally spotted Dave Hunter.

  Over by his car.

  Well, crap. She’d thought better of him than that.

  He turned away from the road, heading for her with long strides—any faster and he’d have broken into a jog. “Gone for now,” he said. “I thought for a moment there he was going to come back and ram my car, but…hey, are you okay?”

  She didn’t have any warning. It just happened. As soon as he pulled up in front of her, her bloodstained, grass stained, dirt stained hand whipped out and slapped him. Hard.

  Unlike her actions of a moment earlier, it felt right.

  He stared at her, stunned. Hurt, even, in those ice blue eyes. “What the hell—?”

  “What part of ‘just be ready’ didn’t you understand? What part of ‘just be ready’ sounded like ‘run away’?”

  “Hey,” he said, and the hurt had sparked to anger, “if you’d let me in on your plans before you went charging out, I would have told you my gun was in the car.”

  “And there’s a handy two-by-four next to the basement door, so don’t aim those baby blues at me. You didn’t have to leave me hanging, especially since you brought them to this party.” Okay, maybe she wasn’t being quite fair. She was the one who’d come outside alone, preferring to handle things her way. But the feel of the cultivator sinking into flesh made her scrub that hand against her jeans again, and he had brought them here.

  Even if you could never really call those eyes “baby” anything.

  He looked at her, his face going still as he processed the moment—her anger, and the turmoil beneath. His shoulders relaxed slightly. “I saw the size of those guys. I think the two-by-four would have lost. Besides, I wanted to get between them and their car in case they dragged you off.” He tipped his head, not so much in inquiry as in observation. Maybe even dry humor. “You took care of them well enough.”

  She hadn’t wanted to take care of them at all. Not like that.

  “Dewey took care of them,” she said shortly, bending to give the dog another tight hug. His tail thumped. “And they’ll be back. So if you’ll excuse me, I need to go think about that.”

  “You’re kidding,” he said, blunt in his surprise. “You can’t stay here and wait for them.”

  But she had nowhere else to go, not unless she abandoned what Ellen had died to give her. Rumsey would still have all his feelers out for her, for years he’d have his feelers out for her. Let him figure out that she lived, and he’d rat her out in an instant.

  And that meant she couldn’t simply leave. In fact, she couldn’t do anything out of the ordinary for Ellen.

  Dave shifted his weight, hip-shot and out of place on her lawn. He looked like a model who’d been torn from a catalog, not someone who should be in her life. Not before her escape from Rumsey, not after. “Look,” he said. “You’re right. I brought them. I’m here to save a child, and I’ll never be sorry for that. But I’m sorry they followed. I can find you a safe house until this is over.”

  She’d had a safe house until he’d gotten here. “You don’t get it,” she told him, only then realizing that she’d totally lost her Ellen-ness. Too late to go back now; maybe he’d rightly chalk the change up to the shock of it all. But it rattled her; she couldn’t remember losing character before. “This is over. I can’t help you. I don’t have the memories you need.” Literally.

  “You haven’t even tried.”

  She stood, letting her hand trail off the dog’s ear. She couldn’t help but sound tired. It was a chance to ease back into character. “It’s been a year. What I’ve
lost…I’ve lost.”

  Too true. Just not in the way he thought.

  In fact, his expression glinted with stubborn refusal to believe her. She forestalled the impending argument. “Who is this guy, anyway? Barret? What’s he got to do with me?” And then as something changed in his face, she added, “Or maybe I don’t want to know.”

  But she did.

  His face still stung from her slap. He relaxed only with effort, with his body still pounding at him to finish a fight he’d never really started. She was right enough; he’d left her to it. Not by design, but it hardly mattered. The most he’d done was release the dog. Also not really by design; he’d been headed for his car. So she’d been left alone, and first she’d softened into the woman he’d met a year before, and then she’d—

  Wow. Boy, had she.

  Ellen Sommers. Who’d have thought it?

  They said sometimes head injuries caused a change in personality.

  She dropped her chin, looking at him from beneath those expressive brows in a way that deepened the gray of her eyes. He recognized an ultimatum when he saw it. “Barret Longsford,” he said, “is the son of a senior senator, being groomed to take his mother’s place. He’s also a player. He likes money, he likes power…he likes to get his own way.”

  “And he likes little boys? I dated a man who likes little boys?”

  “Likes them and hates them,” Dave said, unable to help a flinch—there, at the corner of his eye where it always seemed to come out—at the thought of Terry Williams. He did his damnedest to make sure his cases didn’t end like that. “The FBI profiler thinks the perp is killing himself.”

  She looked a little baffled, and the ultimatum turned to a faint knitting between her brows. “That just doesn’t seem—I mean, I just can’t imagine myself dating a man like that.”

  Dave shook his head. “He’s fooling a lot of people, and he’s doing it every day.”

  “And you’re sure I—?”

  “I’m sorry. Yes.”

  “Doesn’t sound like my type,” she muttered, and gave him a deliberate glance. An up-and-down glance.