by Unknown
One half-drunk, neurotic woman wouldn’t offer much resistance.
No. No, it wouldn’t end like this. Not for her.
She was a survivor. She’d face whoever it was out there, face them…and face her fears. She wouldn’t die hiding in some dark corner like a rodent. Her body vibrated with the need to do…something. And for once that something was not to reach for her car keys. Praying it was a true dose of courage and not the booze talking, she struggled to her feet, and eased closer to the door, straining to hear sounds of movement.
Nothing.
Closing her eyes for a split second, she plucked up her courage, and placed her hand on the doorknob, turning it slowly. Cracking the door open, she peered out into the hallway. Her gun was in the nightstand upstairs. With that goal in mind, she crept from the closet and tiptoed up the steps.
Feeling slightly better now she had a gun in her hand, she skulked through the house like a burglar, checking beneath every bed, behind every door, inside every closet. By the time she’d reached the kitchen pantry, she was feeling very foolish.
Relieved, she headed back to her bedroom. She just needed a good night sleep. All the windows and doors were locked…she’d checked and double-191
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checked. She was alone in the house. And she had a gun. She was safe.
All the same, when she climbed into bed in the wee hours of the morning, the lock on her bedroom door was firmly in place, her gun tucked safely beneath her pillow.
****
JJ woke up cold, chilled to the marrow of her bones. Her first instinct was to burrow farther under the pile of blankets. Why was it so cold in here?
Shuddering, she peeped from beneath the soft edge of her comforter. A flutter of movement in the darkened room sent chills of a new kind racing down her spine.
Her heart leaped to her throat. She bolted upright in bed. Her hand shot beneath the pillow, searching for her gun. JJ’s frightened gaze locked on the whisper of movement, and she stilled, gun clutched in her white-knuckled fist. Near the bed, just on the other side of the nightstand, the sheer curtains swayed softly in the chilly breeze. Pale moonlight illuminated a patch of hardwood floor beside the bed. Her brow puckered. She hadn’t left the window open before she’d gone to sleep.
Had she?
No. Impossible. Even on the second floor, an open window would have posed a security issue.
Slipping from the bed, shivering when her bare toes connected with freezing hardwood flooring, she darted to the window. It was wide open…had been opened from inside the room. Slamming the window shut, she whirled to face the open door, gun aimed and ready.
She’d closed that door tight before she’d gone to sleep.
Closed it…and locked it.
JJ’s heart threatened to hammer a hole clean through her chest. The hall light was on. Edging 192
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forward, she ducked her head into the hallway, scanning for intruders. Padding silently on feet as cold as her icy heart, she checked every room on the second floor. Every light was on. Every window, every door was wide open. A hasty glance down the stairwell confirmed the lights appeared to be on down there as well. The front door banged gently against the wall with every caress of the night breeze.
Tears streamed down her face. Dashing back to her room, she slammed the door, forced the lock to engage, and raced to the nightstand, snatching up her phone. Without hesitation, JJ speed-dialed the number Cam had programmed into her phone. Her fearful gaze darted around the room as she waited for the call to connect, flickering over and then locking on the large mirror above the dresser in astonishment.
Garish red lipstick scrawled the word Beware across the antique mirror.
“JJ?” Cam’s curious deep voice cut through the haze of fear clouding her thoughts. “JJ, is that you?
Honey, are you all right?”
She couldn’t make her voice work. Her lips were moving, why wouldn’t any sound come out?
“Damn it, JJ, talk to me,” he barked, anger and fear lanced through the phone line. “Honey, are you there? Hello?”
“Cam,” she finally croaked.
“JJ! You sound scared out of your mind. What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”
“No, Cam. Someone’s here…or they were here.
Inside…the windows,” she broke off on a stifled sob.
“Oh, God, they opened all the windows.”
“Shit! I’m on my way. Stay on the line, okay.” The roar of an engine growled through the phone.
“Stay with me, honey.”
“Yes,” she breathed, forcing herself to stay calm.
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Give him the facts. Don’t let him rush in here blind.
“The front door’s wide open. I locked it before I went to bed. I think all the lights are on, too. He was in my bedroom…while I was sleeping…he was in here.” The breeze stirred, more forcefully now, coursing a fresh wave of goose bumps over her flesh. She shivered, whether from the frigid night air, or from the fear, she wasn’t altogether certain. “It’s so cold…all the windows are open. I closed them. I know I did. I always close them, and I locked the door. The bedroom door, not just the front door. Oh, but I locked the front door too, and the back. Who would have done this?”
She was rambling. She couldn’t stop herself.
“Honey, I’m almost there. Where are you? Right now, where are you? Do you have your gun?”
“Upstairs,” she mumbled into the phone, only now realizing what she’d done. She was hiding again, cowering behind the bed in fear.
So close to reaching for her car keys.
Something inside her snapped. Maybe it was her fear. Maybe it was common sense. She didn’t know…and right now she didn’t care. This was not happening again. No more. She was taking control, once and for all.
She would not run.
“I’m going downstairs. He’s not going to get away with this.”
“What?” Cam bellowed. “No…baby, don’t do—” She snapped the phone closed, possessed, brimming with the fire of indignation. Firming her grip on the gun, she dropped the phone onto the mattress and stalked to the door. Whoever the hell thought he was going to get his jollies by frightening her had another thing coming. She liked it here. She was making friends…at last. By all that was holy she wouldn’t run, not again.
Storming from the room, she pounded down the 194
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stairs, with a cold, single-minded sense of purpose.
She wasn’t a victim, not anymore. Suddenly, inexplicably empowered, she tossed her wild hair over her shoulder and began combing the house for intruders. Heaven help the fool if he’d decided to hang around. She’d shoot him just on principal now.
Before she could complete her search of the main floor, the snarl of an approaching vehicle warned her Cam had arrived. A car door slammed in the night. Boots pounded across the porch, followed by a loud crack and a louder curse.
“JJ,” Cam yelled.
Another crack echoed in the darkness outside the house a bare moment before Cam bound inside the hallway, gun palmed, eyes alert, chest heaving, scowling with frightening menace. The moment his gaze connected with her, a shaky breath escaped him. He lowered his gun and loped forward.
She offered him a thin, apologetic smile. “I didn’t find—”
He thrust his gun into his holster, clutched her by the shoulders, and gave her a rough shake, looking far more dangerous than he had the moment he’d burst through the door. “Don’t you ever do that to me again, do you hear me?”
Speechless, JJ stared up at him, her own gun hung in a limp hand at her side. The lines of his face were harsh, the muscle in his jaw twitched. His eyes shot green fire. He was beyond furious, and he wasn’t making the least little effort to hide it.
“Look, I’m sorry I called—”
“You little idiot—”
“Idiot! Where do you get off—”
&nbs
p; “Idiot! Never again will you do something so dangerous,” he snarled, shaking a tiny, bewildered nod from her. “What if he’d still been here? What if he’d attacked you before I got here? My God, JJ, he could have—”
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The look in his eyes went wild as his gaze swept over her from tousled hair to bare toes. His words broke off on a furious growl, and he jerked her into his arms, crushing her to him with a vicious curse.
His erratic heartbeat pounded against her cheek like a jackhammer. Cam’s breathing was ragged, harsh against the top of her head. His wide, uniform-covered chest smothered her. His long arms were bands of unforgiving steel. If it weren’t for the fact she couldn’t breathe, she’d have happily stayed in the circle of his warm, protective embrace for the rest of eternity.
Her head began to swim. Struggling, she wrested a slip of air between them. Tipping her head back until she could peer up into his face, she opened her mouth to demand her release. His lips sealed over hers. His tongue filled her mouth. She drowned in the rage of his passions.
His mouth was fierce. Demanding and possessive. Inescapable. His body was rock hard…and growing harder against her by the second. One large, unyielding hand settled on her backside, hoisting her against him until her toes barely grazed the floor. His other hand fisted in her hair, tugging her head back as he deepened the kiss.
A low, dark sound rumbled deep in his chest as he thrust his thigh between hers.
Raw need swam through her veins. Her gun clattered to the floor at their feet, and JJ wrapped her arms around his neck, surrendering with a whimper. Without warming, he growled again and pushed her from him. Gaping at him, bewildered, she braced herself against the back of the sofa. Her knees wobbled beneath her.
Scooping her gun from the floor, he tucked it back in her palm, and, steering her by the shoulders, he guided her around the sofa until she plopped down onto the rocking chair. “Stay here.” His voice 196
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was a hoarse, pained rasp. “I’m going to check the house over. Don’t shoot me when I come back.” Then he was gone.
And, doing exactly as he’d warned her not to do—shooting him—began to hold a great deal of appeal. How dare he kiss her senseless, and then just walk away…unaffected?
Cam prowled the main floor, flickering in and out of her line of sight, securing each room he passed through, turning lights off as he went. The ceiling creaked above her as he moved through the second floor. Windows banged closed, then his boots thumped up the second flight of stairs to the attic. In short order, he thumped back down both flights of stairs and crouched in front of her. With gentle hands, he extricated the XD Subcompact from her trembling fingers, gingerly depositing it on the small, piecrust end table. Drawing her icy hands onto her lap, he chafed warmth back into them before enveloping them in his large palms.
His touch was so tender, so comforting.
“Whoever it was is long gone. I could try dusting for prints, but I doubt I’ll find anything. JJ, promise me you will never risk your safety like that again. When we were on the phone…and you said you…damn it, woman, you scared ten years off my life.”
“I’m sorry.”
She hadn’t thought about it from his perspective. She’d been so consumed with taking back control she’d lost sight of the fact there was a fine line between bravery and stupidity. Clearly, tonight she’d danced on the edge. She was lucky she hadn’t tumbled over on the wrong side.
“I didn’t mean to frighten you, I just…I had to…” She trailed away, unable to express what had motivated her to descend those stairs and hunt danger down. Gritting her teeth, she started over.
“He was in my house, Cam. He forced his way into 197
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my home. He came into my bedroom while I slept.
He wrote on my mirror.”
Now Cam was the one gritting his teeth. “I saw,” he bit out.
“You don’t understand…”
She made to stand up, but he held her firm, his eyes imploring. “Then tell me.” She stared down into eyes the color of a warm spring day. He was so serious, so intent on her, she felt like she was the center of his universe in that moment. “I’ve run for too long, Cam. I’ve tried to hide.” She shook her head, forcing a swallow.
“Running doesn’t help. Hiding doesn’t work.” His eyes flashed. His grip tightened. Did he know then? Did he have any inkling of her past? He remained silent, and she could only speculate.
“It’s not safe for you out here, isolated like this, honey.”
His endearment thawed a layer of fear, melting it away like welcome spring sunshine on a winter lake. Squaring her shoulders, she lifted her chin.
“He’s not scaring me off. I’m not going anywhere.” Her voice dropped, whisper thin but laced with steel.
“Not this time.”
Some of the tension eased from the lines on his face, and a long, slow sigh eased from his lips. She frowned at him, but before she could question his abrupt shift in mood, he stood, tugging her to her feet. His eyes swept down the length of her, before locking onto her face. “Much as I hate to say this, you’d better go put some clothes on. I’ll take you down to the station. You’ll be safe there until I can figure out what to do.”
“Until you figure…” She couldn’t believe she’d heard him correctly. Shaking her head, she untangled her hands from his. One winsome smile, one staggering kiss and how quickly she forgot his tendency to control things. “I told you, this is my 198
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home, and I’m not going anywhere.”
“Honey, I need to know you’re safe. You can’t—”
“The hell I can’t. I’m staying, Cam.” His jaw clenched, the muscles in his cheek leaped and bunched. She could see the battle in his eyes. His hands fisted at his sides before he shoved those fists deep in his pockets.
“I can’t believe I’d even consider asking this,” he muttered, clearly to himself. Then, louder, he addressed her, “Is there somewhere you can go, somewhere away from Sutter Hollow that you could stay…just until I catch this guy?” He was tense again, his body rigid. It was a small wonder he had any teeth left in his head for as tightly as he seemed to be gritting them right now.
His request had been reasonable enough, given the circumstances, and she wouldn’t take offense over his preference that she run away but, having asked it of her, he looked as if he was, even now, kicking himself for making the suggestion.
“There’s nowhere else for me to go. I won’t be run off.”
“It’s not safe for you here right now, JJ. I’m trying to be rational here. Isn’t there a relative or a friend you could stay with?”
Even when he’d come roaring out of the shed after her shirt ripped, demanding to know who’d hurt her, he’d never looked so…so…good heavens she didn’t even have a word in her vocabulary for how he looked at the moment. It was almost as if the mere thought of her leaving town disturbed him beyond words. But that was just ridiculous. Wasn’t it? “What about your parents?”
“No.” The word came out much harsher than she’d intended. Relenting, she explained, “Last I heard, dad was somewhere in the Bahamas…or maybe it was Spain.” She tossed a shoulder. “It 199
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doesn’t matter, we haven’t spoken in years.”
“What about your mother?”
How did one explain Gloria?
She rolled that one around in her mind for a few minutes. He moved aside, grudgingly, and she paced her way across the room and back. “I think I’d rather take my chances here than go stay with her in LA.”
“JJ, come on. It couldn’t be that bad. At least you’d be safe.”
“I’d end up behind bars, Cam. One of us would kill the other for sure.” JJ snagged a straggling lock of hair and ruthlessly jammed it behind her ear.
“Cam…you’d have to meet Gloria to understand.
Right now, she’s estra
nged with husband number five, probably already hunting for victim number six.
But that’s Gloria for you, eyes on the prize…always looking for the next bigger thing.” She rubbed her hands briskly up and down her arms. “You see, I was a mistake of the unsuccessful union with number three, Sarah was the product of union number two.
We’re both little more than distasteful reminders of unpleasant periods in Gloria’s life. Reminders, I might add, she’d like nothing more than to forget.” Agitated, she paced away again, well aware his discerning eyes were following every step she took.
Chilled to the bone, she chafed her hands harder against her bare arms as another flash of memory sucked her where she hadn’t gone in years. Though not as debilitating as her flashes of Jerry’s attack, this one was just as powerful. Gloria may have never raised her hand to her children, but JJ had learned the hard way that words left bruises just as easily as a fist.
Two little girls, their dresses damp and pretty hair bows askew, cowering beside a piano and a broken vase, water and lilies pooled on the floor.
Gloria’s stern face, filled with disgust and contempt, glaring at them.
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“Why can’t you two behave yourselves for a little while? Why must you always ruin everything? I swear, you two live to torment me. You are my own version of perdition. What did I ever do that was so terrible to deserve such little monsters?”
“It was my fault, Gloria,” Sarah whispered, stepping forward, placing herself squarely between the livid woman and the whimpering child. “Jillian didn’t do anything.”
“Jillian doesn’t ever do anything, does she? She’s just a worthless, whiny brat. Well, she hides behind you well enough. You both are a sorry disappointment to me. Just…just go away. I don’t want to see either of you for the rest of the day.” Gloria stormed away, and Sarah’s comforting arm slipped around her slim shoulders.
“She didn’t mean it, Jilly. She was just mad about the vase. Come on, let’s clean this up and then we’ll go talk Flora out of some ice cream.” Sarah had always been her buffer, and she’d failed Sarah so badly.
