What Doesn't Kill Her (Cape Charade #2)(65)

“You were fragile. I was afraid at any moment you were going to break and run.”

“I did break and run.”

“Why didn’t you talk to me?” he muttered.

He sounded so wretched she was at last able to say, “I panicked when I realized you snooped into my papers.”

“Was that so awful?” Immediately, he answered his own question. “Okay, yes, I know it was. You had vigilantly not said your real name or confided your past. I had no right. I told myself it would help our relationship if I knew. I lied to myself. I apologize.”

Nothing about this was easy. Everything was guilt and confusion. “I was a coward, and I guess I got what I deserved.”

“You made a mistake. No one deserves to spend a year in a coma for a mistake.” Max knew what he thought, what he believed. He slipped from the bed to a place on the floor. He knelt before her, naked and on one knee. “Kellen Adams, will you marry me?”

She stared in horror at him.

He said, “You just turned pale. You look like you’re going to throw up. You’re upset because there’s no ring? No flowers?”

She shook her head. She couldn’t speak.

Max had proposed to Kellen Adams.

My name is Kellen Adams—and that’s only half the truth.

But that was the real problem. She could confess who she was, and Max would understand her evasions. Might understand. She hoped. But that revelation was only the beginning. “I can’t. Max, I can’t.”

“There’s no reason to be frightened.” Slowly, he reached for her fingers. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“I know that. I would never think that you...” He was right. She felt queasy and sweaty. “I trust you,” she said, but she pulled her hand from his grasp.

“Can you tell me why you won’t marry me?” he asked.

“I can’t.” Not without telling you all my secrets.

I’ve got the scar of a gunshot on my forehead.



35


He limped down the mountain to the lot where he’d parked his Lexus NX Hybrid.

He had disposed of the firearms. In a wretched, rugged, ridiculous wilderness like this, that was easier than he could have hoped.

But he’d had enough of hiking and tracking and waiting for these supposed professionals to do their jobs. He would make one more attempt to handle matters using the help, and if that didn’t do it, he’d take over. He would get the job done, clean up the loose ends and be gone.

How hard could it be to kill one lone woman and her brat?



36


Three days later, late in the afternoon, the message from Zone arrived at Horizon Lookout.

I’m on the way back. Get out.
“Mr. Rogers he’s not,” Kellen observed as she helped Max pack his backpack full of whatever foodstuffs they were able to scrounge from Zone’s pantry. It wasn’t much; they had to get down the mountain quickly or they’d starve.

Max took one last look at the screen that scanned the area for life. “Nobody out there,” he said. There had been no signs of humans since Zone had disappeared off the screen.

“That’s good,” she said.

“Sure is,” he agreed.

They were both spooked.

And she was uncomfortable.

Max had proposed, naked and exposed.

She had rejected him and refused to tell him why.

He’d been mild, calm, conciliatory. For days. Hands off. A caretaker.

She was still waiting for the other shoe to fall. Because she’d come to know Max well, and the man wasn’t mild and conciliatory. He had an agenda and he worked it until he got his way.

But she had too much at stake to abandon her stance.

I’ve got the scar of a gunshot on my forehead.

Max shouldered the backpack, stepped onto the deck, performed a visual survey of the Horizon Lookout surroundings and lowered the stairs. “If you feel weak or need help, you tell me, but the sooner we’re off the mountain, the better.”

She followed Max down the steps and into the canyon. “You don’t believe we’re safe.”

“Do you?”

No. Of course she didn’t. Someone had murdered those men, those thieves and assassins, and that person was still out there somewhere. Their days in Horizon Lookout had given them a respite, but whoever it was, he was still out there, waiting and watching.

She was not completely recovered; the stitches in her arm itched, her hip ached, she slept hard and ate with appetite. Having abandoned her backpack on the trek here, she now walked unencumbered, carrying her weapon in her holster and a sleeping bag strapped to her shoulder. Going downhill would be easy...until they passed through the canyon and into the site of the battle for the Triple Goddess head.

Everything about this place was haunted: the bloodstains, the ashes caused by the burning tablet, the few human remains that lingered after three days of predation... Kellen had visited and revisited battlefields, but this was different. In this one, she had feared not for herself, but for her daughter, and as she stood here and remembered, her heart pumped fear and desperation through her veins.

Max took her arm. “We can’t linger.”

“I don’t even want to. Though somehow I think—”

“You could find a clue about the man who hired the hunters?”