by Cherry Adair
"A mutual friend of your business partner, Rebecca Metzner, asked me to come and watch out for you. I work for a counterterrorist organization based here in Montana. T-FLAC's HQ is a helicopter ride away. I was there." In his bachelor quarters prior to the holidays, wishing to hell he had an op somewhere sunny and warm. "I volunteered. Here I am," Far from either sunny or warm. "The police will be on their way as soon as the roads are clear."
She narrowed her eyes. "I didn't hear a helicopter."
"Wind. Radio. Look out back. It's there."
"I will. But I'm not a terrorist." Folding her arms over her chest, she said flatly, "You wasted your time. What's his name?"
Following her train of thought was like watching a tennis match. He got it though. "Rick Green." The barrel of her gun still pointed unwaveringly at his balls. "He's out of the country, but he contacted me to ask - strongly- that I come here to protect you." He could practically hear the cogs of her mind sorting out who, what, where, and why.
She shot him a disbelieving look. "T-FLAC is a frying pan."
That's what she picked up on? His lips twitched, earning him a death-ray glare. "T-FLAC stands for Terrorist Force Logistical Command. I gotta tell you, getting my nads shot off isn’t part of the deal, so could you point that thing someplace else?"
A .22mm at this close range didn't need the shooter to be accurate.
She lowered the small barrel, slightly, and scooted back into the corner of the arm of the sofa. From her uneven breathing and the tension in every line of her body, she was either poised for flight, or about to pass out from lack of oxygen. Even her marmalade hair seemed to crackle and lift away from her shoulders, making a fiery nimbus around her head as she shifted.
Dragging in a ragged breath, she gave him a flat stare, chin tilted. Which exposed the raised red keloid tissue. "Protect me from what?"
Oh, shit. She didn't know about Treadwell's escape. Christ that scar was going to haunt him into his next lifetime. He felt too damn big. He’d been sent to guard her, and instead he’d scared the poor woman senseless.
She needed protection from her protector for God’s sake.
"Who," he corrected.
Her pretty lips, just now beginning to pink up again, went white as she mouthed, "Who?"
She knew who.
She didn't notice he'd slipped his restraint as he leaned over and gently took the wavering gun from her hand, and lay it on the coffee table, before she accidentally on purpose shot him. "Treadwell."
"No!" Her hand flew instinctively to her throat. In a small voice, she said, "He’s in Washington State Penitentiary."
Joe shook his head, hating to see the fighting spark go out of her eyes. "He escaped early this morning."
She wet her lower lip, clearly trying to marshal her emotions. "He's in Seattle." Pulling her bare feet up close to her body, she hugged her knees with her arms and gave him a look that sent shards of ice through Joe’s veins. A look that said she knew she wasn’t safe. Anywhere. "He wouldn't think to look for me in Montana."
She crossed one pale, slender foot over the other, curling her toes defensively. Joe frowned at how ridiculously. . . vulnerable her feet looked. He dragged his gaze back to her face.
Her large, now more-green-than-hazel eyes glittered. Not with tears, but with fury. "That psycho knows where I am, doesn’t he?"
Without a doubt. Joe practically heard shark music as the son of a bitch got closer. "The guards tossed his room after he escaped early this morning." He kept his voice calm and even. "They found a copy of the Seattle Post Intelligencer. One article had been torn out."
She blanched. "THE ONE WHO GOT AWAY. Local Event Planner Returns To Work fifteen months after harrowing ordeal with serial killer Doctor Death." She quoted as if reading the headline. "The paper published that last week in their society pages."
He nodded. "Yeah. The article was pretty detailed. He knows about Denise's party. And the location." Sheer, unadulterated terror showed in her expressive eyes.
Shit. Shit and double shit.
"H-he promised at his sentencing that he’d find a way to kill me." Kendall hugged her calves even tighter. From her tone and the haunted look in her eyes, Joe figured she’d replayed that ugly moment in her mind a million times.
Just seeing the photographs from Treadwell’s crime scenes were enough to turn Joe’s stomach. She was lucky, damn lucky to be alive.
He was here to make sure she stayed that way.
"I built the house before Denise and I got married," he told her, trying not to inhale the heady fragrance of pear intensified by her fear. Of him.
He had no damned right to be this turned on by a woman he'd just scared to death. Not to mention a woman afraid for her life.
He kept his voice even and low. His job here was to keep her safe, and unafraid, not want to jump her bones, or scare her half to death. Fuck. Talk about inappropriate. "Working for T-FLAC, I knew she'd be alone a lot."
She frowned at the non sequitur. "Is that why you got divorced?"
"One of many reasons. I'm gone a lot. The point I'm trying to make is, being in the business I'm in, this house is fortified. Steel encased doors, bulletproof windows, weapons galore and vantage points. One of two safe rooms is through the pantry next to the kitchen. It should still be filled with weapons."
"And?"
"I’m just here as a precaution. Think about it. Treadwell is on the run with no money, no nothing. He’ll be recaptured soon but until then, I’m here to stand between you and that fucker if he does show up."
#
"I appreciate the sentiment, but seventy-two-hours, a lifetime in Kendall Marie Metcalf years, being taunted by that lunatic before he slashed my throat taught me there’s no such thing as safe."
Her mind shied away from the memory of that hellish eternity spent with Treadwell. Without conscious thought, she lay her hand protectively against the base of her throat as she scanned the great room with a professional eye. Suddenly, coming back to work only fifteen months after her kidnapping and attack, seemed way too soon.
Not enough therapy. Not enough physical healing. Not enough time.
She wasn't freaking ready to face Treadwell again. Not. Ever.
Mentally she started making a list of what had to be done before she could leave. A coping mechanism she’d perfected in the last few months. She’d discovered that if she kept her body and mind busy enough, she could keep the horrific memories at bay. Almost.
That's what she had to focus on now so she didn’t lapse into a full-blown panic attack.
She’d been so tired. So terrifyingly debilitated by her terror for those hours with Treadwell, that she’d almost pleaded with him to end it.
"Beg me."
"Go to hell."
He positioned the scalpel over her left breast and applied just enough pressure for the tip to pierce her skin.
Her own shrieks echoed and re-echoed in her head, but she was incapable of sound now.
He did it again and again, decorating her torso with a neat pattern of dots. Each dot burned like fire.
"Beg me now, pretty girl," he whispered, leaning close to her ear. His moist, fetid breath brushed her cheek.
"F-fuck you." Stop. Stop. Stop!
"He won't get through me," Joe's eyes were a hard, flat blue, his tone resolute. "And the local authorities are aware and will be here as soon as they can get through."
Her mind skittered from fear to who is this guy? And then to something she was in control of. The tree.
The almost decorated thirty-foot Douglas fir she'd been working on just before her coffee break almost touched the soaring wood-timbered vaulted ceiling and still had to be finished. Three hours. Tops. The bedrooms were ready for the onslaught of guests, the mantles- oh blast it- except for the one in the small downstairs office, were done. That one would take at least an hour.
Good God! What the hell was she thinking? She jumped to her feet. Ready for action when there was no action to be ta
ken. "We have to tell the Camerons to cancel the party."
Kendall didn't want the party cancelled. This was one of Fait Accompli's biggest events, and a feather in their cap. She and her partner Becky had been thrilled with the article in the local paper. Great P.R. and the chance to attract more high-end clients.
The awesome article had attracted the attention of Treadwell.
"With this storm I'm sure they've already done so," he told her. "Nothing's moving out there. No signal." He held up his phone, looking no more pleased than she felt.
"The helicopter," she asked desperately, heart pounding so hard she felt each throb jarring her very bones. Even though she stood still, Kendall's insides ran, trying to escape.
He shook his head. "I barely made it here. The rotors started freezing over ten miles out. The snow's already ten feet deep and getting deeper. I've never experienced a winter as bad as this, and I've lived in Montana most of my life. Took me a good ten minutes to walk from the back to the front of the house," he told her.
"It's gotten considerably worse since then. Blizzard conditions, and dangerously high wind advisories. They're instructing everyone to stay indoors for at least the next eight to twelve hours. And even then, the roads are impassable and will need to be plowed before anyone can travel any distance. Right now, the weather is our friend."
Kendall used a finger to separate a space in the white linen drapes so she could see outside. The snow-covered trees and shrubs in the front yard were mere clumps of white, illuminated by the dancing Christmas lights she'd had four handymen string all over the exterior of the house last week. So much for that. As the high winds continued, they were already being ripped from the eves. The slanted and thickly falling snow was a white veil drawn across a black world.
Was Treadwell even now watching her? Her mouth went dry, her body cold. She snugged the drapes closed, then walked back to sit on the arm of an adjacent sofa, a good twenty feet away from Joe.
"We could go to one of the outlying guest cottages," she suggested hopefully. "He wouldn't look for me there."
"First, you couldn't be any safer than you are here, in this house, with me. And we wouldn't make fifty yards out there in this weather."
Kendall jumped to her feet again and started to pace out the excess energy caused by the fear jangling her nerves. It was a nice big room, and she lengthened her stride, mind racing as she took a turn around the stepladder and walked around stacks of plastic containers filled with Christmas decorations.
"Thank God the storm prevented any of the houseguests from arriving early."
Had she taken all the flower arrangements from the mud-room to the bedrooms? She’d better check.
Who the hell cared? No one was coming. She didn't have to complete the tree or put fresh flowers in the guest rooms. She didn't have to do anything because not even the host and hostess would be here on Saturday.
Joe rose, withdrawing a large, nasty looking black gun from the waistband at the small of his back. It looked mean, and powerful, and as if it meant business. Very much like the man carrying it.
Even with Joe and his big gun here with her, her body was taut with fear. Memories of Treadwell and what he’d done to her were as much a part of her now as her distinctive red hair.
She counted her own heartbeats as Joe stood in front of her.
"Come with me." Picking up her small gun from the coffee table, he handed it to her. He waited while she tucked it into the elastic waist of her leggings, then started walking, clearly expecting her to follow.
He picked up one of the half-dozen oil lamps she’d set out while she was going up and down the stepladder. "We'll check all the windows and doors, and I'll show you where more weapons can be found. Denise got rid of most of them because of the kids, but there are still plenty around. "
"I'm right behind you." She wasn’t much of a follower, but where Joe and that cannon went, so goeth Kendall Metcalf. They went to the kitchen first. The smell of cookies was so normal, so everyday, the radio was softly playing; Grandma got run over by reindeer.
Kendall turned it off to save the batteries. "I already did all that," she told Joe as he fiddled with the latches on the bay window overlooking the snow blanketed front yard.
"And I'm double checking."
"Fair enough."
Dwight exchanged the small paring for a bigger knife, pausing only long enough to wipe the flecks of dried blood from his previous toy on her bare leg. She screamed in earnest when he started taking shallow slashes at her skin as he connected dots in an obscene, scarlet geometric pattern.
She’d blacked out.
Filled with dread and foreboding, Kendall froze beside the center island. "Oh, God," it was almost impossible to push the words from her frozen lips. "He’s here."
"Not possible," Joe assured her. "Go and turn-
"The outside lights off." She was already striding toward the pantry where that control panel was located. She turned to look at Joe. He’d stopped dead in the middle of the kitchen. "Coming?"
"Yeah." His eyes looked a little glazed, his voice sounded hoarse.
Kendall shot him a worried glance. "You’re not sick, are you?"
He swiped a large hand across his jaw. "I’m fine. Hit those lights, I want to get cracking and check upstairs."
He sounded as if he were coming down with a cold. Which was unfortunate. Because just looking at him made her feel hot all over despite her fear. Clearly she’d lost her ever-loving freaking mind.
She’d felt zero sexual desire in over a year. Not a flicker. Not even a nanosecond of thought. Yet here was this giant of a man, with his dangerous eyes, and his sexy mouth and all she could think of was wanting to climb his body and kiss him.
Treadwell was on his way. Nothing would stop him. If he wasn't nearby now, he would be soon. All that stood between her and a serial killer, was Joe.
She shook her head. She was really losing it if she was this tempted to jump the bones of a man she’d just met. She hadn’t had any intimate relationships since. . .Then. But prior to her kidnapping, she'd had two fairly long-term relationships in the prior ten years. But she’d dated Greg for a year, and Mark for more than six months, before sleeping with either of them.
She just wasn’t that spontaneous. She liked to think things through. Weigh the pros and cons. Deliberate her options. Kendall bit her lip as she pondered this weird anomaly brought on by Joe Zorn.
Part of it, she admitted was the latent strength and power exuding from him like heat from the sun. It wasn't just that now he'd explained who and what he was, she did feel safe. He’d pushed her previously invincible self from out of the shadows into startling daylight.
That in itself was a big turn on to a woman who’d begun to believe her fear was part and parcel of who she’d become. A big turn on that grabbed her sexual desire and shook it the hell awake. But she didn't trust easily, and doing so now was a monumental risk. One that she had to take.
The scars Dwight Treadwell had inflicted on her weren’t all on the outside.
“The Christmas lights are on a different, dedicated generator.” Joe followed her to the door of the walk-in-pantry and waited in the doorway while she dealt with all the plugs and switches for the outside Christmas lights.
He didn't offer to help her, and she was grateful. She needed to keep busy.
"Move over to the shelves.” He entered the small room, and she backed up. He seemed to suck up all the oxygen.
“This is one of two panic rooms,” he told her, seemingly unaware that she was having difficulty breathing. “The other’s on the second floor through the master bedroom closet."
Better to look around than at him. Kendall bet he wasn’t aware of how that slight wave in his dark hair softened his features and made him look like not such a hard ass.
Better not think about his ass.
The pantry didn't look like a safe room. But then she had no idea what a safe room was supposed to look like. But certainly not as thoug
h the owner had just done an annual Costco run stocking up on basics. Ceiling to floor shelves on two sides, an electrical panel that had seemed insanely large when Kendall had first seen it, and a giant French door freezer which shared a wall with the door.
The room shrank dramatically in size when Joe shut the door behind him. He stayed near the door, gaze steady. "Reach under the right-hand side of that shelf with the paper towels. Feel a button?"
Kendall nodded when she touched a cool, smooth, round button about three inches across.
"Press it."
She did so. A four-foot-wide by eight-foot high section of the shelves slid backward, then soundlessly to the side, and out of sight.
"Wow." The exposed room was shallow- maybe three feet deep, but the top portion was filled with an astonishing array of guns, rifles, and assorted things Kendall couldn't identify, neatly hung on hooks on the pegboard. The bottom half held an impressive selection of wines.
"Good," Joe crossed the pantry, not commenting when Kendall moved well out of his way. "Almost as I left things. "
"Wine and weapons. Healthy combo," she said, her tone dry. "You expected a war?"
"I always expect a war and am rarely disappointed. Plenty of MRE’s in that box on the floor, as well as basic first aid supplies, should the need arise. Both safe rooms are indestructible. The wine cellar component was Denise's AD addition."
"AD?"
"After divorce."
"I'm surprised they left any of these guns here with kids in the house."
"They don't need all the safety features I left behind. I get it. They don't have terrorists hunting them."
“But you do?” Kendall shook her head when he shrugged. "You live a terrifying life."
"As I said, I always look at the worst-case scenarios. That way, I'm never caught unaware. You only have five rounds. I presume you know how to use it and load it?"
She always considered worst case scenarios, too, in that regard they were very similar. God, she was so freaking sick of living this way. "I do."
"Do you want to exchange it for something with more firepower?"
Looking at the neatly stored weapons was mind-boggling. There must be thirty guns concealed behind the canned and paper goods.
