Stranger In His Arms Page 9

  “Then why not ask Dylan for help?”

  Jennifer shrugged. “It’s too complicated to explain.”

  “What about Miss Bessie?”

  “She can’t see well enough to drive. I left her a note at the guest house saying I was called away suddenly on a family emergency.”

  Raylene grimaced. “Honey, you don’t have any family. You told me so yourself.”

  Jennifer forced an apologetic smile. “I told you it’s complicated. But I have to leave town. It could be a matter of life and death.”

  Raylene’s kindly face twisted into a frown. “With the festival in full swing, I don’t know anybody who can drive you to the airport today.”

  “Is there a limo I could call?”

  Raylene nodded. “Sure, but don’t you think the guy who’s looking for you will check out a limo headed for the airport?”

  Thinking hard, Jennifer buried her head in her hands. When an idea struck her, she lifted her hopeful gaze to Raylene. “Is there any way out of the cove that doesn’t go past Bottleneck Curve?”

  “Not by road. There’s lots of footpaths over the mountains, but—” Raylene stopped short and snapped her fingers. Her aging eyes brightened. “I have an idea.”

  Jennifer’s dashed hopes soared. “A way out?”

  “Not exactly, but it might work. Give me your breakfast order so Grover can get started on it. You’re going to need all the energy you can get.”

  HOURS LATER, Jennifer kicked her way through drifts of fallen leaves that clogged the forest trail and crested the top of a ridge. Winded from the steep climb, she settled on a large boulder to rest her aching feet and catch her breath. Over three miles below, Casey’s Cove nestled like a miniature village at the lake’s edge. Mountains stretched around her in every direction. On a peak across the valley, Miss Bessie’s Victorian mansion glowed white in the sunlight.

  Glancing up the spine of the ridge about a hundred yards ahead, Jennifer spotted Raylene’s family’s hunting cabin among a stand of evergreens, just where the kind-hearted waitress had told her it would be.

  After her breathing had eased, Jennifer climbed toward the rustic log cabin, accessible only by the winding, rugged foot trail that began at the back of Raylene’s café. The waitress had suggested Jennifer remain in the cabin until her stalker quit town. Meanwhile, Raylene would spread the word that Jennifer had left for the airport that morning. Once the stranger had disappeared and the festival ended, Raylene promised to drive Jennifer to the Asheville airport herself.

  Jennifer had begged Raylene not to tell Miss Bessie, Dylan or anyone else where she was hiding. She would be safer from the stalker if everyone assumed she’d left town.

  She mounted the steps of the porch, fumbled with the key Raylene had given her and opened the door. Sunlight streamed through the windows, catching hundreds of dust motes dancing in the air. The one-room building was primitive. No electricity, no running water, but there were lanterns, an outhouse and a nearby spring. She would look on her crude accommodations as an adventure.

  Jennifer slung her backpack on the table and unpacked the lunch Grover had prepared for her. The long hike up the mountain had made her ravenous, but the café cook’s hearty sandwich stuck in her throat, blocked by the lump that held back her tears. She was tired of running, tired of looking over her shoulder, tired of being afraid for her life, but she didn’t know any way she could change things.

  If she stopped running, she’d die.

  She gave up trying to eat and removed a blanket from the cedar chest at the foot of the bed. She hadn’t slept at all the night before, and now she curled on top of the bare mattress, willed her aching muscles to relax, shut her eyes to the demons that pursued her and went to sleep.

  Shivering in the cold, she awoke hours later at dusk. After gathering wood from the supply piled beneath the shelter of the porch roof, she built a fire in the stone fireplace and picked at the provisions Raylene had provided. At the rate she wasn’t eating, her supplies would last a week.

  The sun sank quickly behind the western ridges, leaving bone-chilling cold and inky darkness in its wake. The quiet and isolation made Jennifer jumpy. She secured the cabin door and windows, pulled the dusty curtains and settled on the musty, overstuffed sofa to wait for dawn. After her long afternoon nap, she doubted she could sleep anymore and wished she’d brought a book to keep her company.

  She passed the time contemplating possible hiding places and where she might run once the weekend had ended.

  The sudden snap of a twig on the path outside brought her to her feet. Peering between the curtains, she spotted a dark silhouette approaching the cabin on the trail that climbed the ridgeline.

  It was a man.

  A big man.

  Terrified that the stalker had somehow discovered her location, she searched the cabin frantically for a weapon. The only protection she found was a large iron skillet, so heavy she had to heft it with two hands.

  “Hello! Anybody there?” His cry broke the stillness.

  Not recognizing the deep voice, Jennifer didn’t answer. She sat absolutely still, listening to the too-loud sound of her own breathing and praying he would think the cabin deserted and go away. With a glance at the glow of the fire and the realization the stranger could see smoke curling from the chimney, her hopes vanished.

  “Hello?” the raspy voice called again.

  Jennifer crouched beside the front door, the cabin’s only entrance or exit and hefted the frying pan.

  Footsteps sounded on the front porch, and the man’s tread shook the floorboards beneath her feet. Her breath caught in her throat. Unless she took him by surprise, she didn’t have a chance. Even if he didn’t have a gun, he more than outweighed her in a hand-to-hand fight.

  Silently, she cursed the fact that she’d never learned karate.

  The doorknob rattled.

  The door shook, but it didn’t open.

  She waited, hoping for the sound of retreating footsteps, praying the man would believe her gone and go away.

  With a suddenness that made her jump, the door’s locking mechanism rattled and clicked. Her heartbeats thundered in her ears, and she bit back a moan of dismay.

  He was picking the lock.

  Struggling against the impulse to faint, she lifted the iron skillet high over her head and waited as the door swung open.

  Chapter Six

  Jennifer held her breath and gripped the handle of the skillet until her joints ached and her knuckles whitened. The enormous man stepped across the threshold into the dim light of the room, and she brought the pan down hard.

  With the lightning reflexes of a cat, he ducked and rolled. The descending skillet encountered only air, jerking her off balance and dragging her almost to the floor. She staggered and barely managed to remain upright.

  The intruder landed on his feet in front of the fire-place, turned and faced her.

  With a startled cry, she dropped the skillet on her foot.

  He wasn’t Raylene’s mysterious stranger.

  He was Dylan Blackburn.

  “At least my reaction time has improved since our first meeting.” His expression was somber, and he rubbed the bridge of his nose, as if remembering that encounter.

  “You scared the living daylights out of me!”

  Angry now that her fear had fled, she hobbled to the sofa and plopped onto the cushions, raising a small cloud of dust when her behind hit the seat.

  He was unrepentant. “I called out. You didn’t answer.”

  “I didn’t recognize your voice,” she said accusingly. “You sound different.”

  “Allergies. I had to tromp through acres of goldenrod and ragweed to reach you.” He pulled a large handkerchief from his pocket, buried his face in it and sneezed.

  “How did you know I was here?” She yanked off her sneaker and sock and rubbed gingerly at the expanding black-and-blue mark where the skillet had bounced off her foot.

  “Raylene told me.”
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  Jennifer tasted the bitterness of betrayal. “She promised she wouldn’t.”

  His face settled into hard lines, as formidable and unmoving as the ancient mountain beneath them. “Raylene knows better than to lie to me.”

  She sensed the challenge in his statement and became immediately defensive. “What are you saying?”

  Shrugging out of his down-filled parka, he settled on the sofa beside her. Before she could protest, he reached for her bare foot and gently kneaded it with his large, gentle hands. If she hadn’t felt so wary, she might have moaned with pleasure.

  “You should be more careful,” he lectured.

  “And you should have identified yourself,” she snapped, glad the subject had changed.

  Without ceasing his massage, he scrutinized her face. “Have you lied to me?”

  She turned to stare at the flickering flames in the stone fireplace to avoid his penetrating look. Struggling to think of an answer that wouldn’t dig her into deeper trouble, she countered with a question of her own. “What did Raylene tell you?”

  “Only that you were staying up here for the weekend. I checked with her after Miss Bessie called to say you’d left. Not only is Miss Bessie genuinely worried about you, she’d been counting on you to help with the festival.” Disapproval edged his voice and etched a frown on his face.

  Fighting off spasms of guilty conscience, Jennifer sank deeper into the sofa. She focused on her foot, dwarfed by his hands, unable to face him, not knowing what to say.

  “I hope,” he said in a challenging tone, “you wouldn’t disappoint Miss Bessie without a damn good reason. Want to tell me what it is?”

  Jennifer withdrew her foot from his grasp and curled into the farthest corner of the sofa. “I don’t know where to start.”

  He rose, placed a log on the fire, and stirred life into the flames. “Why did you leave Casey’s Cove?”

  Lifting her head, she glared at him, standing with his back to the fire, his face deep in shadow, his eyes shuttered by half-closed lids. “Someone’s trying to kill me.”

  She waited for him to laugh and make light of her plight, but he only nodded. “Go on.”

  She gulped a deep breath and plunged ahead. “A few days after I arrived, a stranger approached Raylene. He had a picture she said looked like me. He said I was a long-lost relative he was trying to locate. Raylene was suspicious. She didn’t like his looks, so she told him she hadn’t seen me.”

  “What makes you believe he meant to harm you?”

  She wished Dylan would stop being the consummate lawman and return to being her friend. A friend would be much easier to talk to than the austere man before her. “He was driving a black sport utility vehicle.”

  Dylan settled onto the other end of the sofa. “Like the one that forced you off the mountain last weekend.”

  It wasn’t a question. He’d made the connection immediately.

  She nodded. “Raylene said he showed up again this morning at Bottleneck Curve, watching everyone who comes and goes from the cove.”

  “Any idea who he is?”

  “No, but I know who sent him.”

  He waited, obviously well-trained in interview techniques. Under different circumstances, she would have counted on his friendship and leaned on him for support. And she would have welcomed his professional assistance. But she had offended him as both a friend and a professional with her lies, lies he was yet unaware of.

  “It’s a long story.” She stalled, hoping to delay her confession as long as possible. Until this minute, she hadn’t realized how much she valued Dylan’s opinion of her, an opinion that would plummet like a brick in a pond once he knew the whole truth.

  “We’ve got all night. I’m not going anywhere.” His deep, rich voice, husky with allergies, resounded through the confines of the small room.

  He shoved to his feet, crossed to a set of cabinets on the opposite wall and removed a coffeepot and tin of coffee. He filled the pot from a bucket she’d brought from the spring behind the cabin, added grounds, and hung it by its wire handle from a hook above the fire.

  “You’ve been here before,” she observed.

  “Raylene’s family has let me use this place since I was a kid.”

  “For hunting?”

  “Most of my hunting I did with a camera. I don’t like killing.”

  She shivered at his expression. He didn’t like killing. Or liars or cheats or lawbreakers. He wasn’t going to like her very much either when he had all the facts.

  He gathered mugs, powdered creamer and sugar from the cabinet and arranged them on the low table in front of the fire. “Have you eaten?”

  “Raylene packed sandwiches for me. Want one?” She started to rise.

  He pushed her back with a firm but gentle hand. “Stay off that foot. I’ll find them.”

  He located the food, selected a sandwich and sat cross-legged on the floor before the low table. She watched him eat, fascinated by the paradox of his rugged appetite and good manners. The coffee perked above the fire, filling the room with its aroma. He handed her half a sandwich, and she nibbled it, surprised to discover she was hungry after all.

  Had the occasion been different, she would have found the atmosphere romantic: a handsome man, the rugged planes of his face softly lit by the glow of the fire, his proximity both stimulating and comforting; the wind howling eerily around the log corners of the cabin while they sat snugly inside, shielded from the bleak darkness of the chilly night; an intimate meal, shared by two people obviously attracted to one another.

  But Officer Dylan Blackburn was all business, determined to discover why she’d deserted Miss Bessie and fled town, and the atmosphere was tense.

  He removed the pot from its hook, filled the mugs and handed her one. Instead of returning to the floor or the opposite end of the sofa, he pulled an overstuffed chair beside her, sat facing her and sipped his coffee. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  Delaying, she emptied half her mug before she finally spoke. “I didn’t exactly lie to you.”

  His generous mouth quirked in an ironic half grin. “A half truth is still a lie. It’s kind of like being a little pregnant.”

  Chastised, she nodded. He obviously wasn’t going to make this easy for her. “I omitted a previous employment from my job resumé.”

  More disapproval flitted through the depths of his eyes, glittering golden brown in the firelight. “Before or after Nashville?”

  “Before. I worked six months as a legal secretary for an attorney in Atlanta until the end of May.”

  The intriguing lines of his face settled deeper into a frown, and she suppressed the desire to lean forward and erase it with the tips of her fingers. She sighed. His censure would grow as her story unfolded.

  “You said you had no skills or training,” he said flatly.

  Another lie she’d told him, but on the Richter scale of her many falsehoods, less than a one-point-zero. “I took a few courses at night.”

  “Go on.”

  He seemed cold, professional, totally objective. Realizing he’d never hold her or trust her again broke her heart, but she continued. She owed him an explanation. At least as much as she could safely give him.

  “The attorney I worked for, Larry Crutchfield, has his office in the Buckhead district of Atlanta. He moves in the upper echelons of Atlanta society—patron of the symphony, officer in the Chamber of Commerce, and he’s also on the hospital board.”

  If Dylan was impressed, he didn’t show it. “I assume you’re going somewhere with this story?”

  She nodded, swallowed more coffee to wet her dry mouth, and continued. “I liked my job, but Crutchfield was a real pain. He has an overinflated opinion of himself.”

  “Is that why you quit?”

  She shook her head. “One Friday night in May, I realized I’d left my wallet in my desk at the office and went back to retrieve it. I let myself in with my key and was opening my desk drawer when I heard angry voices coming fr
om Crutchfield’s office. I recognized my boss’s voice. It took a few seconds, but I identified the other man. It was Max Thorne, the firm’s biggest corporate client.”

  Inundated by dark memories of that calamitous evening, she began to shake. Dylan leaned forward and clasped her hands. “You okay?”

  She nodded, but gripped his fingers hard, grateful for his warmth and the security of his presence. “Before I could sneak out, I heard two loud bangs that sounded as if they’d come from Crutchfield’s private office. Then everything went quiet. I grabbed my wallet and left.”

  Embarrassed by her show of fear, she released his hands and leaned back into the corner of the sofa. “By the time I arrived home, I had convinced myself the sharp reports I’d heard had been the backfire of cars in traffic on the avenue.”

  Dylan kept his eyes riveted on her face. If she lied even so much as a smidgen, he’d know it, so she kept strictly to the truth.

  “I had a habit of arriving at work a half hour early so I could read the morning paper and have coffee at my desk. The next Monday, I followed my same routine, but when I opened the front section of the paper, a headline jumped out at me. Max Thorne had been found murdered the day before.”

  “Where?”

  “Outside Atlanta. Buried beneath a mountain of debris in a landfill, he was discovered by kids treasure-hunting among the trash. He’d been shot. Twice.”

  “Did you go to the police?”

  In retrospect, what she should have done seemed so simple, but she hadn’t been thinking clearly at the time. “I told the other secretary in the office I wasn’t feeling well and was going home. Before I left, I took the mail into Crutchfield’s office to leave on his desk. I noticed immediately that his carpeting had been replaced over the weekend. I was positive then he had killed Max Thorne.”

  “Circumstantial,” Dylan muttered.

  She nodded in agreement. “That’s one reason I didn’t go to the cops. The other was the power of Crutchfield’s reputation and his army of influential friends. Who would believe me over a pillar of the Atlanta community?”

  She could almost see the wheels working in Dylan’s mind. “The police could have searched for his old carpet,” he said, “and sprayed his car with Luminol for traces of blood, checked for gun ownership—”