Cade finally had hit on the one word that would buy him time before Jonas punched him. But the conversation didn’t make any sense.
Jonas called for her. When he didn’t get an answer on the first try, he yelled again.
“I’m telling you she’s not here,” Cade said.
Jonas shoved Cade against the door hard enough to make the man’s head bounce. “You’ll tell me where she is and I’ll only break your legs.”
“Not me. I didn’t do it.”
“You say that a lot. You’re not the type to take responsibility for anything, are you?”
“Listen to me.”
Jonas squeezed his hands closer together, ready to choke off Cade’s air if that’s what it took to get an honest answer. “I won’t be dumb enough to fall for your line a second time.”
Cade grabbed for Jonas’s hands and tried to pull them off his neck. The gun waved close to Jonas’s cheek, and he slapped it away.
“Cade. Now.”
“She opened the front door and ran—”
Anger exploded in a fireworks display of red behind Jonas’s eyes. “You’re still watching the house?”
“I’ve been watching her for years. It’s a hard habit to break.”
“I warned you.”
“And if someone is really hunting her, and it sounded like there was, I wanted to know who because that could give me the answers I need about my dad.”
Jonas leaned in close enough to see the fear skip across Cade’s mouth. “Last time, Willis. Where is she?”
“I don’t know. I saw her leave and followed. When she ducked around corners, I figured she could be in trouble and came here to get you. I didn’t think she’d welcome a rescue from me.” Cade got a better grip on Jonas’s hands but still couldn’t break the hold. “We have to go before we lose her trail.”
Jonas pushed Cade against the door one last time then let go. “You think you’re coming with me?”
“No matter what else you think, I am trained for this sort of thing. I can help you find her and keep her out of trouble. And I’m telling you that your lady was headed straight into trouble.”
Jonas pointed at the dead center of the man’s chest. “If she’s hurt, if anything has happened to her, I’m going to kill you. I won’t wait to gather evidence. You will die.”
“You’re threatening a federal officer.”
“I’m making you a promise.” Jonas looked around for his new phone.
He still hadn’t found the old one and had grabbed this one from work. Good thing he’d punched in the numbers he needed. He’d call Rich on the way for backup he could trust.
He thought he left it in the kitchen but saw it on the dining-room table and jogged over to get it. He’d taken two steps before he realized it felt wrong in his hand. Bigger. He brought up the screen and touched the display.
Get to the bookstore now.
He glanced up at Cade. “Did she go left or right on the sidewalk?”
“Right.”
“She left me a message.” Jonas turned the phone around for Cade to see.
The facts didn’t make any sense. They were sitting there a second ago, him plotting the fastest way to get her into bed. Now she was on the run. He thought they’d gotten past all that. And then this message and her leaving her phone behind. None of it made sense.
“Check through her call history. She left that message for a reason, and her incoming log might tell you why.”
Jonas scrolled through the texts and saw Ellie’s warnings. Jonas immediately knew the truth. Someone lured Courtney to the bookstore. And she went. Her recklessness made his knees buckle.
He slipped the phone in his pocket and headed for the door. “Between here and the bookstore, you might want to do some praying.”
“Why?”
“Because if we don’t find her and fast, I’m blaming the first person I see. That will be you.”
* * *
COURTNEY WALKED up to the front door of the bookstore and hesitated. She’d spent most of the past few days bugging Jonas about using backup, and here she was walking into what she knew was a trap. Still, her friend was in danger, and Courtney could not handle one more injury suffered on her behalf.
And Jonas would be here soon.
He’d come out of the kitchen, see the message and get over here fast. Hopefully with a platoon of police cars and lots of men with guns.
Oh, how priorities changed when everything fell apart. She’d spent her life blaming the police, and now she was desperate for their assistance.
She pulled the door open and grabbed the bells over the door so they wouldn’t chime. Stepping inside, she closed the door without so much as a click.
A steady rock beat thumped. She couldn’t hear the lyrics, but she guessed Ellie had the radio on in the back as usual. The one thing missing was Ellie. She didn’t sit on her usual stool by the counter. She had the front door open and didn’t pop out with a greeting.
Definitely a trap.
With soft steps, Courtney walked through the aisles, looking around each corner and scanning the back wall as she went. The temptation to call out for Ellie swamped her, but Courtney beat it back. Announcing her presence could spell trouble for both of them.
The fact Ellie wasn’t waiting at the door told Courtney what she needed to know. Confirmed her fears and sent her heart speeding into danger territory.
She stopped when the tile floor creaked. The sound didn’t come from her. She whipped around, looking for any sign that she wasn’t alone. Only high shelves greeted her. The books Ellie loved so much closed in on her, as if moving in the space without any help from anyone, and blocked Courtney’s view of the front door.
When she turned back around, she heard the crackle of a radio. She recognized the sound, a police radio. It went off every few seconds in Jonas’s house. He turned it down while they ate, but the information came in fast and steady on police frequencies. Calls from Aberdeen, from Bartholomew County and from the surrounding areas.
But that didn’t make sense. The noise didn’t fit the setting.
She reached the cash register and saw Ellie’s book open on the desk. Glancing into the doorway beyond, Courtney saw only an empty office. Fighting back the fear streaming through her blood, she stepped inside. Her foot hit against something. Someone. A hand from where Rich sprawled on the floor.
“No.” She dropped to her knees and searched for a pulse. A steady beat pounded under her fingers.
A shuffling in the hall grabbed her attention. Leaning forward, she spotted a woman’s bare foot and men’s black dress shoes. Someone stood just out of sight and held Ellie.
Courtney opened her mouth as her fingers pressed against Rich’s side searching for a weapon.
“Courtney!”
Jonas’s shout had her jumping off the floor, cracking her knee against the tile. A woman’s scream—Ellie—and the bang of the back door followed. Courtney didn’t know where to look. When she spun around to the back again, Ellie lay slumped against the hallway wall and the man’s shoes were gone.
Courtney’s head spun. “Jonas, back here.”
Footsteps thudded. He burst into the room with his gun raised. Then he glanced down, took in the bodies and swore. He dropped down beside her and ran his hands over Rich.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking for broken bones.” Anger vibrated off of Jonas as he spoke.
“I think he got hit in the head.” She held out her palms and showed Jonas the blood. “It’s his.”
Jonas glanced over to his left. “What about her?”
She scrambled on her hands and knees to her friend. Ellie’s chest lifted and fell, and Courtney almost collapsed in relief. She looked Ellie over for blood and didn’t see anything. “I think the guy knocked her out before he ran.”
“What?” Jonas’s laserlike stare came back to Courtney. All that intensity focused solely on her. “He was still here when you came in?”
Seeing the fury darken his eyes, she almost hated to tell him the truth. She knew what came next. The big chase. The part where he got hurt.
But the only way to end this was with more death or a capture. She prayed for the latter. “He just took off out the back door.”
Jonas frowned at her as he stood up. “Who?”
“I didn’t see him.”
Rich moaned and Jonas nodded in his direction. “Take care of him. We’ll discuss your decision to come here without me later.”
“I knew you’d—”
His jaw clenched. “Not now. I can’t do it now and concentrate.”
Now she knew. He was furious at the situation…and with her. She’d worry about that later. Now she needed Jonas here with her and not chasing down a killer on his own. “We need an ambulance.”
“Hold right here.” Jonas slipped out of the room.
Courtney didn’t wait. She reached up to Ellie’s desk and fumbled for the phone. Her hand hit it and she tugged, bringing it crashing down to the floor.
She called the emergency number and gave the information. She heard sirens seconds later.
With the initial chaos over, she slumped back against the wall and cradled Rich’s head on her lap. From the look of the two victims she knew he was worse off. The blood finally turned to a trickle after she pressed the end of her shirt to it.
The attacker could circle around and come back, but she doubted it. She had all the time in the world to panic about Jonas as she waited. Her heart slowed until she thought she’d pass out. The idea of him being hurt, of her being without him, made her gag.
In just a few days, she’d fallen for him. She’d picked the guy who rushed in when everyone else rushed out. The one type of guy she’d vowed never to love.
She thought about a world without him in it, and everything inside her went dark and cold.
At the sound of footsteps, her heart leaped and her fingers tingled. She turned her head ready with a smile and saw Cade step into the back hallway. Relief gave way to panic. The trembling started low in her belly and spread from there.
Then another emotion took over.
Rage filled her until a swath of red zoomed in front of her eyes. “You!”
“What happened in here?” He looked around, oblivious to her anger, and crouched in front of Ellie.
“Do not touch her.”
His shocked gaze flew to Courtney’s face at her scream. He held out his hands in that calming gesture all law- enforcement professionals seemed to use. The same one that drove her nuts.
“I’m here to help,” he said.
Liar. This time she knew. The moment of her dropping her guard and believing had passed. “You could have killed them with those blows.”
Jonas walked in while issuing orders into his radio. He lowered it to do a visual tour of the room. “I missed him.”
She pointed at Cade. “He is right in front of you! Arrest him!”
Cade and Jonas stared at each other, then at her.
Jonas stepped over Cade and walked over to her. Balancing on the balls of his feet, he met her at eye level. “I can’t do that.”
The room started to spin again. The air shifted and whatever was inside her head moved a second behind when she turned. “Why not?”
“Cade didn’t do it.”
She’d created this mess. She’s convinced Jonas that Cade deserved a second chance. Now he was scamming them all. “You think he just happened to be here? Notice how people get hurt and he’s always looming nearby. That’s not a coincidence. My initial worries about him were right. Take him in before he hurts someone else.”
Jonas put a hand over hers. “I know he’s not the attacker because he came with me.”
“What?”
“He’s the reason I got to you in time.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The police crawled all over the bookstore. The emergency care workers checked on Ellie and had Rich strapped to a stretcher, over his profanity-filled objections. The deafening rumble of chatter and clicking of first-responder radios blocked out the music on Ellie’s radio.
Jonas took a few minutes to watch it all unfold. Doing anything else would invite a whole lot of yelling. By him.
He stood with his arm resting on the cash register and struggled to cool his temper before he talked with Courtney in private. She hovered over Ellie, getting in the way of the ambulance crew and apologizing to her friend with every other word.
Courtney’s position put her on the exact opposite side of the store from Cade. He hung around, watching and waiting, taking it all in without saying a word.
Jonas knew he owed Cade on this one. Threatening to kill him probably ranked as one of those things Jonas needed to apologize for. And he would, but later. Right now his attention was on Courtney and the way she studiously avoided him.
She hadn’t rushed over or looked at him since the initial skirmish when the police piled through the doors ready to shoot. Her usual ignore-the-instructions personality dimmed. She was in scurry-around mode. She likely feared if she stopped moving he would catch her. And he would.
As she bounced around, his gaze wandered over her. She had her hair piled high on her head in a ponytail. Blood caked on the bottom of her T-shirt. Rich’s blood.
The bright stain set off a new round of pounding in Jonas’s head. He stalked over to her, counting to ten and then starting over in the hope of wrestling his anger under control. He tried to keep his mind open and his jaw unlocked.
By the time he touched her arm, a lecture hours long filled his brain. “Enough avoiding the topic. Care to tell me?”
That was all he said. She didn’t pretend to misunderstand, which likely saved them from a full-on fight. “I had to go when I saw the text.”
Not good enough. “I was right there. You could have told me and let me handle it. We could have called in Rich and possibly prevented him being hurt in the first place.” Jonas knew that last part wasn’t fair, and the way she winced, he knew he hit his target, but he needed her to understand the gravity of the situation.
A killer roamed the area and she ran around as if no one could touch her. Even though it all related back to her.
“I didn’t want you hurt,” she said, pleading as she spoke.
“Excuse me?”
She rested a hand against his stomach, right at the top of his belt. “You’re not the only one who can protect, you know.”
The touching threw him off for a second. Being this close, smelling the shampoo in her hair, made his brain stutter. He stepped back to keep from wrapping her in his arms. This was the wrong place and definitely the wrong time for that.
Enough with the fighting and with all those other emotions that battered him whenever he saw her. It was time to make a drastic move. “I have to get you out of here.”
“The bookstore?”
“Out of Aberdeen and all of the danger surrounding you.”
“Absolutely not!” she shouted. Several people glanced in their direction.
He dragged her with him behind the counter. With all the people buzzing around, privacy wasn’t possible. Crowding in tight qualified as the closest he could get to her.
And he had to make her understand. He’d use any tool at his disposal at this point—guilt, anger or whatever else it took. If he had to tie her up and rush her to safety, he would. He’d rather apologize later than see her in danger now.
“This person who is after you, whoever it is, is using and attacking people you care about. There are no boundaries for this guy. Everyone is a potential victim.” He stared at her, willing her to understand. “And we can’t blame Cade for this round. It’s someone else, which is even scarier because I don’t have a lead.”
“How did he end up with you?”
“Instead of questioning him, you should thank him. He’s the one who told me you were missing.” After a lifetime of hating each other, Cade may have saved her. The sharp change in the course of their lives wasn�
��t lost on Jonas.
“No, that’s not right.”
He refused to spend another minute arguing about this and hoped to shut it down with a firm response. “Yes.”
She grabbed onto his forearms. “You were supposed to read the text and come get me. How did Cade get involved?”
“He knocked on the door. And it’s a good thing he did because if I waited to find the phone it might have been too late. Remember that for next time you want to sneak off.”
Her shoulders fell. “I’m kind of hoping there won’t be a next time.”
“Me, too, but I know better.”
She nibbled on her bottom lip as she looked around the room. The place resembled military triage. Jonas counted heads and calculated that every officer in Aberdeen was in the room. More than a few of Walt’s sheriffs also wandered around.
Jonas hoped there wouldn’t be any crime in the county today.
“Where would I go?” She asked the question in a put-upon voice.
“With Walt.”
Her gaze shot to where the older man stood at the bookstore’s front door then back to Jonas again. “How am I safer with him? The guy hates me.”
“He’s the sheriff.”
“And?”
Jonas wasn’t in the mood to take on her police phobia, so he let the comment drop. “You’ll be out of Aberdeen and only Rich, Walt and I will know where you are.”
Jonas wanted to kick himself for not making this move sooner. Walt had offered, but he’d couched the suggestion in comments about Jonas’s private life and Jonas had gotten defensive. Everything got tangled up and confused. He’d let his ego get in the way and pushed off Walt’s concerns. Now Jonas knew that had been a mistake.
“And where will you be?” she asked.
“Getting information from Ellie and trying to track this attacker down. The town isn’t that big. Someone must have seen him. I just need a decent description. Once I have a sketch, I’ll send it to Walt for you to review.” That all required Jonas to not have Courtney by his side.
Whether he liked the outcome or not—and he didn’t—he needed his full concentration on this. Worrying about her sucked up most of his energy. While he’d be edgy with her at Walt’s place, at least Jonas could put every minute of every hour into ending this thing.
When She Wasn't Looking Page 16
