At least with his hands and feet secured, he wouldn’t be able to catch her by surprise.
That was her hope, at least.
It took forever to turn the vehicle on the narrow road. Taking her time, she backed toward the wall of trees, eased forward over fallen twigs and leaves, then reversed again inch by slippery inch. Even with every precaution, though, she skirted too close to the edge and the rear tires slid off the pavement, spun uselessly for a heart-stopping moment before once again finding purchase.
A groan from the backseat snapped her head around, and she switched on the interior light to check on her unwelcome passenger. He lay on his back, eyes closed, his face ghostlike in the harsh glare.
“You okay?”
Nothing. Not so much as an answering whimper.
“Hey, you.”
Still no answer.
“Who are you?” she wondered aloud.
And why am I doing this? Why, why, why?
The painstaking maneuvering had kept her on pins and needles, but once she had the vehicle turned and headed back toward town, she breathed a little easier. The sooner she could dump the stranger at the hospital where he’d receive proper medical attention, the better.
‘Dump’ might be a harsh word, but she had no intention of lingering any longer than was necessary. Ever since she’d arrived in Rapid City, Claudia had made a point of keeping a low profile, though she didn’t try to make herself invisible.
To the contrary, she drove into town every few days to shop, dine out and go to a movie. She didn’t want the locals to think of her as a recluse because that could also draw unwelcome attention and speculation. The trick was to seamlessly blend in, and up until tonight, she’d managed to do a pretty credible job. But the unconscious stranger in her backseat now threatened to throw a monkey wrench into her carefully scripted life.
Nothing she could do about that tonight. All she could do was get him to a doctor and hope for the best.
Fog crept over the windows, and Claudia switched the heater to defrost. Not that it would help much with the visibility. The rain was coming down so hard, she could barely make out the road in front of her and the lightning strikes were getting closer. A little too close, judging by the blast of thunder directly overhead and the static electricity that tingled her scalp.
As she rounded a curve, she caught a glimpse of something else in the road. Not a body this time, but a downed tree. Lightning had split a giant spruce endways, cleaving it cleanly in two so that one vast trunk came down across the road while the other side smashed back into the forest. Claudia braked and sat for a moment, gazing through the windshield at the tangled black mass of heavy limbs and leaves, still glittering and dripping with raindrops.
She had a rope in the back of the SUV, but the splintered trunk was so huge she wasn’t at all sure her engine had enough power to pull it out of the way. And that was assuming she could tie a knot tightly enough to hold. All she might succeed in doing was overheating the motor, and then they’d be stuck here indefinitely.
So what were her options?
The man stirred in the back seat and she glanced nervously over her shoulder. She still didn’t like this situation. Not one bit. Alone with a stranger was not how she’d planned to spend the rest of her evening. What if he was a killer?
The hair at the back of her neck rose, not from static electricity, but from pure, unadulterated fear. Her hand crept to the gun on the seat beside her. She knew how to use the weapon. She’d made certain of that. And since his wrists and ankles were bound, she definitely had the upper hand.
So why was she sitting there paralyzed by fear?
This was no good. She had to do something. She couldn’t stay out on the road all night. If she stalled the engine or ran out of gas, they’d both freeze to death. Not to mention be sitting ducks.
She drew a quick breath. Okay, focus. Make a decision and live with it.
But the dripping chaos in front of her had made the decision for her. With the road blocked, she couldn’t get the stranger to a hospital, and if she took him back and left him where she’d found him, he’d likely freeze to death. And that she couldn’t live with because he might be just some poor guy down on his luck.
And, too, Claudia couldn’t be absolutely certain the bumper had missed him. If her vehicle had struck him, she was somewhat responsible for his safety even though the idiot had been standing in the middle of the road.
Serve him right if I did kick him out.
But even as she grumbled to herself, she was already backing up and carefully turning the vehicle yet again on the slippery road.
“Do not make me regret this,” she muttered as she shot another anxious glance over her shoulder.
Chapter Three
Twenty minutes later they were home.
The electricity was off so Claudia had to get out in the storm and manually unlock and raise the garage door. Hurrying inside, she checked the phone for a dial tone, but just as she’d feared, the line was dead.
Dammit!
Nothing was going her way tonight. If she were the superstitious type, she might think there was a bit of divine intervention working against her, but she had enough real problems to worry about. Like having a cold-blooded killer on her trail. Like dealing with an unconscious stranger in her backseat. She didn’t exactly need to manufacture drama.
Going back out to the garage, Claudia positioned the flashlight to allow the beam to illuminate a trail back into the house. Then she wrestled the stranger out of the vehicle and onto the garage floor.
“Hey.” She knelt beside him and slapped his cheeks to try and bring him around. “Come on, wake up. I’m gonna need a little help here.”
His lids fluttered open and he looked up at her. Claudia wasn’t sure if it was the way the light hit his eyes or her own fanciful imagination, but his gaze seemed to have an unnatural glow. Otherworldly and completely devastating. She sat back on her heels, gob-smacked by the impact of that stare.
With some effort, she rallied her composure. “Hey, can you hear me? We need to get you inside. I’m going to take the tape off your ankles so you can walk, okay? But I’m warning you…don’t try anything. I have a gun and I’m fully prepared to use it.”
She didn’t know if he’d heard her or not. He didn’t nod or express even the slightest bit of awareness. But when she removed the tape and tugged on his arm, he struggled to his feet and allowed her to help him inside.
“This is a good sign,” she told him as she guided him through the kitchen and into the living room. “Walking under your own steam like this. I’m thinking maybe you’re not hurt so badly after all.”
He said nothing.
Claudia maneuvered him into the bedroom and, against her better judgment, unwrapped the tape around his wrists so that she could help him out of his wet clothing. She did the latter in almost complete darkness, not because she was a prude or anything, but because she respected his privacy.
“If you turn out to be a killer, all bets are off,” she warned as she tugged off his jacket. He didn’t offer so much as a flicker of protest, even when she peeled away his soaked shirt.
“I’ll, uh, let you take care of the rest.”
He stripped without a word.
The first thing that struck Claudia about him—well, maybe the second—was his demeanor. Perhaps because he was barely conscious, but he seemed as docile as a child. He shrugged out of his drenched clothing without comment or protest, then climbed into bed and allowed her to re-tape his wrists and ankles. Curling himself into a ball, he drifted off.
The electricity couldn’t have been off that long, but it was already cold inside the cabin. Grabbing extra blankets from the closet, Claudia piled them on the bed, then stood for a moment gazing down at him.
Angling the flashlight beam over his face, she told herself she was checking for injuries, but truth be told, she wanted to get a better look at him. Carefully, she took stock: Dark hair, high cheekbones, a fi
rm jaw and chin. Full lips.
Very full lips.
He had what she and her high-school girlfriends used to call a kissable mouth. Her first crush had had a kissable mouth.
So did this guy. This naked stranger in her bed.
Naked. Stranger. In her bed.
If she were the swooning type, she might feel a little lightheaded at her current situation, but Claudia was no shrinking violet. She had a healthy respect for the human body and her own sexuality, but this little scenario pushed even her boundaries.
She reminded herself she was almost like a doctor here, and he, a patient in her care. She needed to make sure he wasn’t seriously injured.
Or packing a concealed weapon somewhere.
Speaking of which…
She turned and scooped up his dripping clothes and quickly searched through all the pockets. No ID, no money, no car keys. Nothing. So he wasn’t just an unlucky motorist then.
Unless, of course, he’d lost both his wallet and keys. Possible but not very likely.
“So who are you?” she murmured as she turned back to the bed.
“Cold…”
As she drew the down comforter up to his chin and tucked the spare blankets around him, her knuckles brushed against his cheek.
He stirred in his sleep. “Find her.”
“Find who?”
“Danger.”
Claudia swallowed. “Who’s in danger?”
Silence.
She put her hand on his shoulder and gently shook him. “Hey! Who were you looking for out there? Who’s in danger?” When he still didn’t answer, she said in frustration, “Who the hell are you? And what am I supposed to do with you?”
“…kill me…” he whispered.
“What?”
He sighed in his sleep and was silent.
Chapter Four
Claudia left the bedroom door open so that she could hear him if he roused. Then she lit some candles, started a fire and after changing out of her wet clothes into some sweats, headed into the kitchen to put on the teakettle.
Ah, the luxury of a gas stove, she thought. At least the power outage wouldn’t deprive her of a hot drink. Nothing like a nice cup of chamomile tea to warm chilled bones and relax taut nerves while waiting for the electricity to come back on.
The chamomile tea addiction was a by-product of her migration to the Black Hills. Back in Chicago, Claudia had preferred black coffee—gallons of it—to keep her alert during her long, tedious hours in the lab. Now she just needed to stay calm.
Her job as Dr. Lasher’s research assistant had been to painstakingly analyze the mountains of number graphs spit out daily by strategically placed REGs—Random Event Generators. It had been Dr. Lasher’s contention that each REG, which resembled a jetliner’s black box, held within it the power to change the world by predicting natural and manmade catastrophes before they happened. And his theory had seemingly been validated when just four short hours before the planes hit the World Trade towers on 9/11, unusual spikes had been observed in the number sequences generated by REGs placed all over the world. Anomalies had also occurred hours before the Asian Tsunami had struck.
Of course, it was one thing to predict a catastrophic event using fluctuations in the number sequences, quite another to determine when and where it would occur and how to stop it. To that end, Dr. Lasher had eventually teamed up with a mysterious colleague who had supplied him with a test subject exhibiting signs of extraordinary precognitive abilities. Their goal was to create a “psychic” machine that interfaced a human pre-cog with the REG in order to better pinpoint pending global disasters.
But Dr. Lasher had come to regret that collaboration, once his suspicions panned out about his colleague. Turned out, he was involved with a covert multinational organization with nefarious plans for the project.
After his discovery, Dr. Lasher became tense and withdrawn, and when Claudia pressed him for more details, he’d mumble inane warnings that made little sense. But in combination with some unusual glitches in the REG graphs, his vague foreshadowing troubled her. She began to wonder if the disturbances in the number sequences were, in fact, indirect communications from the pre-cog. Maybe he was trying to warn her, too.
And then Dr. Lasher had been murdered, and that brief glimpse of the killer’s face had told Claudia everything she needed to know. If she stayed in Chicago, she would be next. The police couldn’t protect her. No one could.
Leaving the city by cover of darkness, she’d driven north by northwest for no particular reason that she could explain. The strange compulsion had eventually led her to Rapid City where she’d rented her little hideaway in the woods and begun a whole new life.
With her research days behind her, Claudia now made a modest living as a website designer, a career that perfectly suited someone who needed to fly underneath the radar. She called her business North by Northwest Designs, and even her most trusted clients were not privy to her real name.
She’d taken other precautions as well, and up until tonight, she’d almost begun to believe that she was safe there.
Now she wasn’t so sure. The stranger’s presence made her uneasy in a way she hadn’t been for a long, long time.
There was something about him that just didn’t seem right. The way he’d appeared so suddenly in front of her car…that unnatural glow in his eyes…
Her thoughts scattered as the high-pitched whistle of the kettle caused her to jump. Then she let out a shaky laugh as she hurried into the kitchen. Obviously, she needed her chamomile tea fix in the worst way.
Carrying the steaming brew into the living room, she grabbed her laptop and settled in before the fire. Luckily, her battery was fully charged and she also had a spare. Since she had no intention of closing her eyes while a strange man was in her bed, she might as well get a little work done. Come morning, when the road had been cleared, she’d take him into town, drop him at the hospital or the police station and wash her hands of the whole nerve-wracking affair.
As she scrolled through her stored images, searching for the right color combination for a collage header, she heard a sound from the bedroom. The incoherent mumble set Claudia’s blood tingling.
Who was he talking to?
Setting the laptop aside, she rose and grabbed the flashlight and pistol, then eased up to the door. Her gaze tracked the light beam from his form on the bed to every corner of the room. He was alone.
Just to be on the safe side, she crossed to the window and checked the lock.
The delirious rambling started up again, and as Claudia walked slowly toward the bed, she experienced an inexplicable feeling of familiarity. Not déjà vu exactly, but something close to it. Something that deepened the chill in her bones and caused her pulse to race. What on earth was going on here?
She was just a little jittery, she told herself. And rightfully so. Having a stranger in the house was enough to unsettle anyone, but given her particular circumstances, she had every right to be on edge.
And if her unease manifested itself in some peculiar sensations, well…that was probably to be expected. She was only human. A human with a terrifying past and a vivid imagination.
Taking a deep breath to steady herself, Claudia inched up to the bed. The stranger’s eyes were shut, but she could see the rapid movement beneath the lids as he continued to mutter. She couldn’t make out anything he said, and after a few moments, she adjusted the cover and moved away.
But at the door, she paused to glance back. A little shiver touched her spine, like the sweep of a moth, and she found herself glancing around the chilled room yet again. No one was there. She and the stranger were alone. And yet it was almost as if she could feel another presence, a quietly persistent manifestation that moved and faded with the shadows.
Help him.
“What?” Her gaze shot to the stranger but he hadn’t moved, and she was pretty sure he hadn’t spoken. No one had. And yet for a fleeting moment, the voice inside Claudia’s head wa
s all too real.
Help him.
A crawling sense of dread tightened her throat. “Who are you?” she whispered.
Help him. Please.
Almost against her will, her gaze went back to the bed. “It’s okay,” she said softly. “You’re safe here.”
The mumbling stopped. The voice inside her head faded, and the cabin in the aftermath was so hushed, Claudia could hear the soft expulsion of the stranger’s breath.
Then his voice rose and she started.
“Where are you? Where are you?” he asked desperately.
Apprehension prickled the back of her neck. “I’m right here.”
“Why can’t I see you?”
“I’m right here,” she soothed, even though her heart pounded like a racehorse’s hooves against her chest. She swallowed. “Everything’s fine.”
“She’s not there anymore,” he said in despair.
“Who’s not?”
“She’s gone. I can’t find her.”
“Find who?”
“…danger…”
“Who’s in danger?”
“The girl inside my head,” he murmured, and for the first time that night, Claudia had a feeling he was speaking directly to her.
The girl inside my head.
God help me, she thought as she backed away from the door. She really had brought a lunatic into her home.
A lunatic with an uncanny ability of making her care.
Chapter Five
It took a long time and a lot of patience, but he finally managed to rip off the tape around his wrists with his teeth, then freed his ankles and sat up in bed. Traces of the dream still swirled inside his head, and he pressed his fingers to his temples to sharpen the focus.
If he could just see those images a little more clearly, he might be able to make sense of them. He might actually be able to save her.
Because the one thing that was deadly apparent to him was the encroaching danger. They were coming. He didn’t know when or how, but they were coming. And they would kill her unless he could find a way to stop them.
Magnum Force Man Page 2
