by Joanne Rock
“What are you doing?” She didn’t mind giving up the laptop, but he yanked the cord out of the back of it, turning the screen black. “That can’t be good for it.”
“He could have access to your computer.” Jake sat on the bed beside her, his bare chest temptingly close.
“Alec?” She stilled as her brain sifted through the implications. “What do you mean? That he could have grabbed it when I wasn’t looking? Or—”
“He’s got to be great with computers to have pulled off the embezzlement and to frame both you and Lianna.” He kept the laptop closed, his grip tight on the case. “So it’s very plausible he’d know how to set up remote access to your computer. In fact, he probably did it before the two of you even broke up so that he could keep tabs on you afterward. He certainly knew that you were headed to the Marquis fast enough, right?”
A chill shivered down her spine. Could Alec have been watching her this whole time?
“I let him use my computer on several occasions.” She’d never thought twice about it. “You think he…did something to it? Installed spyware?”
“My guess is he did much worse than that. Did you already contact your family tonight?”
“I had just sent an email when you unplugged it.”
“Did you tell them where you are right now?” He covered her hand with his, a gesture of comfort that didn’t soothe her in the least.
“Yes.” She’d written all of three lines, but she’d mentioned the All Tucked Inn by name. “I’ve traveled alone for my work for years and that’s a habit I got into long ago. I always let my family know where I’ll be and when to expect to hear from me again.”
She’d always thought the system helped protect her safety. But in this case, she had the feeling she’d endangered Jake, Rico and Lianna along with herself.
“We can’t stay here.” Standing, he shoved her laptop in the case he kept his in, then jammed his alongside it.
“But what about the snowstorm?” She didn’t look out the window since Jake had already briefed her earlier on the importance of not making herself a target to anyone watching the building from outside. But she didn’t need to look out to know the snow still fell with blizzard force. “We barely made it here and the GPS didn’t show another hotel for miles.”
The drawback of romantic, snowy mountain regions was that there wasn’t a hotel and a Starbucks on every corner. She wasn’t in Miami anymore.
“We don’t know what he’s capable of, Marnie.” Jake pulled on his pants over his boxers. “So I’d rather take my chances in the snowstorm than play sitting duck for this guy.”
Fear clogged her throat as she began to appreciate how serious this could be. Guilt compounded the sick feeling since it would be her fault if Alec found them.
“I’m sorry about this.” She hated that she still hadn’t learned enough caution, that Jake was forced to clean up her mistakes.
“I should have thought about the computer before.” He shook his head, and the dark expression on his face made it clear he blamed himself. “I’ll go next door and explain to Rico and Lianna that we need to leave. Don’t use the phone, okay?”
She nodded as she rose from the bed, grateful to him for taking care of her. For looking out for all of them. If not for Jake Brennan, she could easily be behind bars tonight instead of here, falling for a hardened P.I. who might never love her back.
“Thank you,” she blurted before he left. “For everything.”
Marnie got the full impact of his undivided attention for a long moment, his green eyes inscrutably dark in the firelight.
“I want to keep you safe.” He spoke the words like a declaration, with the kind of vehemence you’d expect for a more personal sentiment.
She had an odd, disheartening premonition that this might be as much of a commitment as she ever received from Jake Brennan. She thought about calling him back when he tugged a shirt on and headed for the door, but his name died on her lips when a woman’s scream pierced the night.
Jake sprinted through the dark hall of the bed and breakfast.
The scream had faded by the time he tried the handle on Rico and Lianna’s room.
Locked.
Pounding on the paneled door, he heard voices from inside. Behind him, he detected Marnie’s soft, fast footsteps running toward him in the corridor.
“Go back to the room,” he ordered, needing her out of the equation so he could focus on whatever was happening here. “Lock yourself in and don’t open it until you’re sure it’s me.”
A quick glance back revealed her worried face as she nodded and backed away. The rest of the floor remained quiet; it appeared they were the only ones renting rooms tonight.
He hated that this was scaring the hell out of her. He’d freaked her out before when he’d run around the blizzard with a weapon in hand, and again when he’d snatched her computer out of her hands. But at this point, it would be better if she was frightened and hiding out than around when trouble erupted.
“Rico, open up.” He kept pounding. “It’s Jake.”
The lock clicked and the door gave way. Rico stood inside with an ashen Lianna under his arm.
“We’re okay,” the other man assured him. “She saw a man’s shadow at the window, I guess.”
Jake did a visual sweep of the room, taking in the open suitcase and the still-made bed. Clothes were scattered around the living area. Parted curtains against one window looked out into a darkness lit only by a security light in the front yard, half obscured by the storm.
“We’re on the third floor.” He propped the door open so he could keep one ear trained for sounds in the hallway. “You sure you saw a person and not just swirling snow or something?”
“I know what I saw,” Lianna insisted, still pale, but her voice remained steady. “It was the outline of a man’s upper body—from the hips up—as he moved past the window.”
“There’s a catwalk outside that leads to a fire escape,” Rico explained, pointing toward the window in question. “I looked out, but I couldn’t see anyone.”
Jake crossed the room to check, lifting the shade carefully so as not to give away his position. The light was dim behind him, the glow from the fireplace the only illumination in the room, just like it had been back in the suite he shared with Marnie.
Marnie.
Damn, but this was when not being with a cop sucked. There wasn’t a chance in hell he’d be able to obtain police protection for her, especially when they had piss-poor little to go on other than a few strange coincidences. But he felt in his gut that Marnie’s former boyfriend wasn’t going to just take his money and run. The fact that he’d been angling to meet with Lianna—to spy on Marnie through her—told Jake the guy wasn’t done making trouble. Although what exactly he wanted and why remained a mystery.
“I don’t see anyone.” Peering through the casement, Jake sought signs of movement at the edge of the woods nearby, the backyard lit by a couple of security lights around the perimeter and the glow of red and green decor along the roofline. “But I think that snow on the catwalk might have been disturbed.”
Tough to tell with the snow falling thick and heavy. The walkway was a wrought-iron construction with lots of open grates so the snow didn’t gather there much.
The phone rang while Jake wedged open the window for a better look out into the frigid night.
“Hello?” Lianna answered while Rico opened another window a few feet away from him, the second cold blast pushing back the flames in the fireplace.
Jake kept one ear tuned into the conversation while he searched the iron path for signs of a footprint. Lianna must have been speaking with the owner of the bed-and-breakfast because she was explaining that she’d seen someone’s face at the window and went on to ask if anyone would be working outside their room at this hour.
“Jake, check this out.” Rico called to him from the other window, his face barely visible through the falling blanket of white.
Closing
his window, Jake moved to the next one where Rico looked out into the night.
And there, he could see the framework for the fire escape extended beyond the window, around the corner of the building. Leading anyone right to Jake and Marnie’s room.
Shit.
Marnie.
Jake pushed away from the sill and plowed over a duffel bag to get out the door. Back to his room.
His feet jackhammered down the hall as hard and loud as his heart, dread pumping through him. He didn’t bother knocking, instead using his key card to open the door. When the slide bolt caught—proof she’d double-locked it from the inside—he kicked the thing down. It cracked easily, since the old home didn’t contain the steel doors used in big hotels.
“Marnie,” he shouted, not seeing her right away. He called again, louder, as he burst into the bathroom.
There, cold wind blew across the empty claw-foot tub. An open window had curtains whipping in the breeze as snow gathered and melted in a pool on the tile floor.
She was gone.
13
“BE VERY, VERY QUIET.”
Alec Mason’s voice whispered against Marnie’s hair as he hauled her across the side lawn of the inn through the blinding snow. The pistol barrel wedged under her jaw and the duct tape strapped across her mouth were far more persuasive than his lowly growled words, however.
She hadn’t found one chance to tip off Jake about Alec’s return. She’d been so worried about Lianna after the scream that she’d sealed her ear to the exterior door to hear what went on in the room down the hall; Marnie had never heard her ex-boyfriend steal in through the window and right into the suite. God, she hated that she’d let him take her so easily after all the warnings Jake had issued about being vigilant. To think she’d double-locked the door—but who would ever expect someone to climb in a third-story window?
Now, after wrestling her down the narrow fire escape and out into the bitter cold, Alec led her through knee-high snow to the woods. Her slippers had rubber soles, but didn’t begin to keep the chill at bay. She shivered in a pink sleep shirt and pajama pants. Behind them, she thought she heard Jake and Rico at the windows, but that might have been wishful thinking. Her heart beat so loudly in her ears she could hear little else.
“Here we go.” Alec spoke softly as they arrived at his transportation, his voice puffing clouds in the air. His wiry frame was surprisingly strong, his expensive cologne pungent in her nose. How could she have ever thought for one moment this man was date material?
She stumbled, her slippers not gaining much traction in the snow, and the gun barrel nudged scarily deep. As he yanked her to her feet, she saw where they were headed.
There in the woods, behind a potting shed, sat the horse-drawn sleigh from the Marquis. She recognized the elaborately scrolled tack and the stacks of furs. Except the driver wasn’t an inn employee with a sprig of holly in his top hat. It was one of the guys who’d grabbed her and forced her into the tiny hidden room back at the resort. Alec wasn’t some lone bad guy. He had backup. An operation.
Marnie had the swelling sense that she was in far deeper than she’d ever imagined. With his knack for adopting aliases, Alec had probably committed more crimes than they’d begun to ferret out.
“Up we go.” Alec continued to give her directions as if he were her date instead of her abductor. Still, his ironclad hold on her never wavered while he handed her up into the sleigh.
As soon as he had her inside, lying sideways on the pile of furs and blankets, he kicked the back of the driver’s seat. Fur tickled her nose, but at least the heavy weight of the blankets cut the wind. The creep with the reins in his hand urged the horses forward. As they moved into the forest, they made very little noise, especially with the fresh snow muffling all sound, and there were no lights on the conveyance. Maybe a horse-drawn sleigh wasn’t such a crazy choice for a getaway vehicle in a blizzard.
How would Jake ever follow her?
Alec removed the gun from under her chin, but he looped a rope of some kind around her leg, tying her securely to the sleigh with a painful cinch of the cord. Where was he taking her?
New fear set in faster than the cold. What could he possibly gain by hurting her? Then again, what else could he want from a woman he’d set up to take the blame for a felony? His plan for her to be in jail had failed, so maybe he wanted to ensure she never implicated him.
For once, she needed to think like Jake and see all the possible ways this could end badly. Maybe that would help save her somehow.
Beside her, Alec moved up into the bench seat while keeping an eye on her on the floor. Snowflakes gathered on her face, but he covered the rest of her with the excess furs. Her foot remained tied to the sleigh, and her toes were numb through her slippers from the walk through the snow. As her body warmed, her skin burned with the ache of nearly frostbitten skin returning to life.
With the gun resting on his knee, Alec’s guard was a bit more relaxed now that they’d put some distance between them and the inn. Her captor pulled out a cell phone and started tapping keys, the electronic glow illuminating his unshaven face. And as she lay there staring up at this man who’d deceived her in more ways than she could count, she tried to imagine what Jake would suggest she do in this situation.
Buy time.
The answer was there so quickly and with such certainty, she would swear she caught the message on a wave of ESP direct from the source. Jake would come for her—she knew that. But she needed to make sure she remained in one piece long enough for him to catch up.
“Mmpf.” She braved a small noise behind the duct tape now that his firearm wasn’t jammed against an artery.
Alec looked down at her almost as if he’d forgotten she was there, his watery blue eyes visible until he snapped his cell phone shut and cast them in total darkness again.
“Mmpf!” she tried again, pointing to the duct tape and hoping she wasn’t pissing him off by reminding him of her existence. But maybe if she could talk to him, she could find out his plans and delay him somehow.
“The lady wishes to speak,” he mused, cocking his head sideways so he could look at her more directly in her awkward position on the floor. “I hope if I allow you the freedom of speech you will be kind. You look like a Christmas angel there, wrapped in your furs with that lovely skin. And I hate to lose that image of you with ugly words.”
The odd comment made her wonder if Alec might be losing some of his grip on reality. He’d always been charming, but his attempt at gallantry now seemed downright ludicrous.
He must have decided to risk the outburst as he gave a brief nod, indicating she was free to speak.
Gently, she pried up the edges of the tape with one hand, carefully removing the restraint.
“Thank you.” Her skin burned from the sticky glue and she didn’t feel one bit grateful, but she tried to stay calm so as not to rile him. “Alec, I’m frightened. Where are you taking me?”
She hoped to appeal to his human nature, assuming he still had one underneath his mask of clean-cut, all-American good-guy looks. With his J. Crew clothes and trimmed dark blond hair, he appeared boy-next-door trustworthy when everything about him was a lie.
“We’re making a brief stop at the Marquis to change vehicles, then we’re lifting off at dawn by plane.” He smiled as he spoke, a lock of dark blond hair slipping loose from the navy-blue wool cap on his head. “I know how you like to know your travel particulars. I’ve missed you, Marnie.”
The handgun to her throat was a funny way of showing it. But she tried to keep the conversation more focused on relevant information and less focused on his personal delusions.
She closed her eyes and conjured up a vision of Jake’s face. He would find her before Alec did anything crazy. She trusted in that and as far as she was concerned, that wasn’t optimistic thinking. That was a logical fact based on everything she knew about Jake Brennan. He’d promised to keep her safe and he would do anything and everything in his power to d
o so.
She was lucky that he was so committed to his work. Lucky that he didn’t just clear her off his suspect list, but also make sure she didn’t get framed for someone else’s bad deeds. She loved that he put so much of himself and his honorable nature into his work. Hell, she just flat out loved him.
She loved him.
That knowledge was there as sure as her faith in him and the realization of that love gave her the courage to maintain her cool with a desperate criminal.
“You’ve missed me?” She tried to sound only slightly surprised and not at all accusatory. Finding the right tone, in fact, required one hell of an acting job. “But you broke up with me.”
On Facebook, no less. But Christmas angels didn’t remind crazy men of things like that when their lives were on the line.
She twisted away from a bough full of snow that dropped suddenly into the sleigh and noticed a little give in the rope around her ankle. Under the cover of her fur blanket, she hitched at the rope with her other foot.
“I needed to distract attention from me for a while until I could hide the movement of the money.” He shook his head while he brushed some of the fallen snow from his lap. “It was like a shell game trying to hopscotch the money from one account to the next, creating diversions and dead ends all the time. You know I’m not as organized as you, so it wasn’t easy to keep track of it all in my head.”
That was why normal people took jobs to make money instead of stealing it! But she stifled that thought, too, and strained for any sign of other sounds in the night besides the dull clop of hooves through the soft snow and the swish of the sleigh runners.
Would Jake return to the Marquis? Or would he try to follow their path through the woods?
She wished she could communicate with him now, to warn him that Alec seemed to have grown a little mad and that a calm, quiet approach might work better so as not to startle him into violence. The thought of anything happening to Jake sent a dark, panicky chill through her, jabbing at a heart still tender from the newfound realization of how much he meant to her. How much she’d lose by never seeing his face again, never feeling his strong, muscled arms around her.
