Close To Danger (Westen #4)(67)
Her family completely gone. She was all alone.
Anger surged through her.
It was all Strong’s fault. He had to pay.
When she finally located the bastard hiding out in this small Ohio town, her plan had been a simple one. Come to town, sneak into his house in the dead of night, kill him, slip out of town before anyone knew she’d been there. But he didn’t have a place in town. She’d needed to stay in the town and be inconspicuous as possible until she’d found his lair out in the woods. So, just like with hunting, she blended into her surroundings, taking a job at the café and studying her target.
That’s when her plans changed. The moment she’d seen the deputy with the sheriff’s soon-to-be sister-in-law, she’d known he was interested in her. They couldn’t keep their eyes off each other. After the wedding, she’d seen him whisk her up to his cabin and followed them there. Whatever was going on between them had him charging like a bull after a cow in heat down to Cincinnati with a storm blowing in.
Slashing her tires while they were in the chili joint had been a spur-of-the-moment inspiration. His reaction confirmed what Hannah had been thinking. The dark-haired woman meant something important to Strong.
Well, too damn bad. He’d taken her last living family from her. The last person on this earth that she cared about. Turn-about was fair play. She wanted to make him suffer. Make him feel the helplessness she did. The abject emptiness. The terrifying loneliness.
Pulling her scarf up to cover her mouth and nose from the biting cold, she cut the engine, grabbed the rifle bag and climbed out of the truck. No need to lock it. No one would come up this way in this weather today and she didn’t want to fumble with keys and locks on her return after she completed her mission.
Moving through the brush and deep snow, she went hunting her prey.
Come hell or highwater, before he died today, Wes Strong was losing someone.
*
The soft snoring in the other room stopped.
Bulldog glanced at the hotel standard digital clock on the bedside table. Six-twenty in the morning. The sun wasn’t up yet, but apparently the doc was.
He sat on the side of the bed and stretched, listening to her head into the suite’s bathroom. The woman was pretty amazing. Given she was on duty for forty-eight hours straight, found her sister’s condo trashed, learned the same sister had a stalker, then waited for the cops to arrive and finally finishing with them about two in the morning, a lesser soul would be dead to the world until at least noon.
Not the doc.
He’d heard her tell Chloe she was calling the other sister first thing this morning. First thing to the doc was seven sharp, shift change at the hospital. Probably shift change at the small town’s sheriff’s office, too.
The shower started running. He pulled on his jeans, and tugged a clean sweatshirt out of his bag and over his head. Best to have coffee brewing when she got out of the shower. Looked like it was going to be a long day.
Ten minutes later, Dylan came out of the bedroom, dressed in her jeans and sweater from the day before, toweling out her long dark blonde hair. Beautiful, sexy, smart and with a surgical talent like he’d never seen. If he weren’t gay he’d be in big trouble with this one.
“Cream and sugar, Doc?” he asked, pouring her a mug of the coffee.
“Yes to both,” she said, snagging some of the raspberry coffee cake he’d bought two days before and sliding onto one of the barstools.
He set the cream and sugar on the counter in front of her, along with the mug of coffee. “Doctor it up the way you want.”
She dumped a ton of both the creamer and sugar into her mug.
He arched a brow at her. “Gonna have a little coffee with your cream and sugar?”
She laughed. “I hated this stuff growing up, but found I needed some caffeine to get through med school, then this past year as an intern. Still don’t like the taste.”
“There’s other kinds of caffeine, you know. Tea. Soda. You could even do the five-hour thing.” He cut himself half of what was left of the coffee cake and took a bite.
She shook her head. “Can’t do the energy drinks. They tend to spike then crash my blood sugar. Grew up drinking sodas and tea. They’re okay. But I need a jolt that coffee gives me, especially if I’m on call and someone wakes me up out of a sound sleep.” She held up her hand when he started to comment. “Yeah, I know. When does an intern get to sleep, let alone a deep sleep. It happens, occasionally. Very, very, very occasionally.”
“Why I never went to med school,” he said, watching her take a long drink of the coffee then make a face, with her nose all scrunched up. He wanted to laugh, but he’d seen the woman wield a scalpel like a street thug with a switchblade. Wasn’t getting on her bad side anytime soon.
“Because of the coffee?” she asked.
“No, the long hours on call. Even when you finish your residency, you’re gonna be on-call to patients and hospitals. Whereas nurses and techs come in work their shifts and go home. Except in blizzards.”
“Except in blizzards and when they’re on super-secret guard duty,” she said, but softened her words with a wink.
He held up his hands, palms out in surrender. “The Chief just wanted to be sure you weren’t in any danger.”
She huffed out a frustrated sigh. “I know. It’s just I hate having to call Bobby today. She’ll go from one side of worrying to another.”