Mean Streak(32)

“You’re in it. National forest. Knight and I are rolling.”

Grange was nearly out the door before Jeff processed all that and reacted. He jogged to catch up and followed the deputy. No sooner had he cleared the exit than Sam Knight pulled a tricked-out SUV to the curb. Grange opened the passenger door and climbed in. “Stay put. We’ll be in touch.”

With that, he closed the door and the SUV sped away, leaving Jeff staring after it through the snow.

*





It didn’t take long for Emory to deduce why he’d taken her shoes. She couldn’t leave in stocking feet. He’d guaranteed that she would remain trapped here until he returned. But she’d be damned before she became part of the spoils claimed by the redneck duo if they, not he, came back.

He’d moved the sofa with ease. It took more effort for her, and it was even harder to pry up the section of flooring, but she managed with the help of a screwdriver she found in the drawer where he kept the smaller one with which he’d repaired the toaster.

She chose a pistol at random and set it on the end table with care.

Soon after they’d married, Jeff had introduced her to a small handgun he owned and had given her a rudimentary lesson on how to fire it. But she never had. It had been a revolver. This one had a cartridge. Recognizing the difference was almost the sum total of what she knew about firearms. But having one in reach was good for her peace of mind.

She also felt more secure once she was fully clothed. As soon as her running clothes were completely dry, she changed into them.

Left with nothing else to do, she restlessly prowled the cabin. She pawed through the contents of drawers she hadn’t explored before, but found nothing that gave away anything about her host—no journal, correspondence, receipts, not a single scrap of paper with enlightening information on it.

That itself was a reveal. He was scrupulously careful. He kept nothing that could identify him.

Going over to the shelves, she ran her index finger along the book spines, noting that the titles had been alphabetized. She thumbed through several of them, looking for loose sheets or notations handwritten in the margins. After a time, she concluded that the shelves he’d installed himself held nothing except books.

In desperation, she held her hands palms-down on the cover of the laptop, mentally willing it to give up its secret password like a Ouija board. It didn’t.

She added logs to the fire when it burned down. She paced, frequently looking out the window, hoping to see the approach of the pickup. As aggravating as it was to admit, she was worried about him. The two men had looked disreputable enough to kill him for his boots, much less for his truck. Perhaps the “kid sister” had been a lure. Maybe they had deliberately crashed their dilapidated pickup into the tree as part of an elaborate scheme to rob him.

He’d told her he hadn’t met the brothers until today, but he had admitted that he knew who they were. He knew that slitting his throat wasn’t their style. What was that about? Her imagination expanded on several themes, all of them catastrophic, all ending badly not only for him but also for her.

It was an appalling thought, one she hadn’t allowed herself to contemplate before now: She might never get home.

By now Jeff would have notified the police, but would he know where to tell them to start searching? She’d talked about her destination, but had he paid close attention or retained a thing she’d said? Even she couldn’t remember how specific she’d been when she’d shown him the map of the national forest on which she’d marked her trail. But even with only a general idea of where she had set out that morning, a search would be under way.

She would get home. Of course she would. And then—

What?

The crystal ball was as murky on her future from that point as it was on her immediate situation.

When she and Jeff reunited, they would be glad and relieved to see each other. But their quarrel would only have been suspended, not settled. The wedges between them would still be firmly lodged. Assuming he was having an affair, upon her safe return, would he end it strictly out of a sense of obligation? That would serve no purpose other than to keep everyone unhappy.

In fairness, how could she blame Jeff for having a lover when a stranger’s embrace and near kiss had made her burn hot?

Yes. There was that.

Her attempt to be a femme fatale had ended on an ironic twist: it was she who’d been seduced. She had put on that mortifying display, but when he began caressing her, she stopped playacting. He’d pulled her to him, and she’d felt him hard and insistent against her, and the truth had been undeniable. She’d wanted him.

Every feminine urge had sprung to life, and it wasn’t just the long dormancy that had made her sexual desire so acute. It was him. She wanted to experience him, every rough surface, every gruff word, his outdoorsy scent, the whiskey taste of his breath, the arrogant jut of his penis. She had wanted the totality of him with a reckless disregard for what was right and proper for Dr. Emory Charbonneau.

If he hadn’t ended it in that insulting manner, she would have made a further fool of herself.

Thinking about it agitated her and increased her anxiety, so that when she heard the pickup pulling into the yard, she retrieved the pistol, cradled it between her hands, and aimed it at the door.

He stamped in, looking more forbidding than she’d ever seen him. The pistol didn’t disconcert him in the slightest. He took one derisive look at it, then tossed the pillowcase containing her shoes over to her. It landed on the floor at her feet.