After dinner with the show’s two movers and shakers—and they’d certainly shaken him up tonight—Quinn walked through the Ramble, missing Alex, wishing he was with her on the path they’d hiked yesterday. Strolling lovers or couples necking on park benches made him miss her even more. For sure, he told himself, he’d stop doing the show when his contract was up next year if he couldn’t have her in his life because of it. He’d produce and finance the show himself, or get new sponsors—something.
That is, if things between them worked out. If...if.
He stared across a stretch of water, wishing he was home, then walked east toward Fifth Avenue. Streetlights and lit-from-within window displays made the area look like day. He leaned against a store wall and punched in Alex’s cell number. It rang...rang. He’d told her he’d call her about now, but maybe the distant time zone had mixed her up.
Her voice came on, asking him to leave a message. “It’s me,” he said. “I’ll call back later. Just wanted you to know I’m heading to look in the windows or a jewelry store I just might visit tomorrow. Hope you’d be as excited with that as I am.”
He called his mother and filled her in on the murder, made sure she remembered he’d be on Gab Fest tomorrow. Then he explained he was in love, would bring Alex to see her as soon as he could—and admitted he was hoping to buy an engagement ring.
“But you haven’t known her long, my dear.”
“Long enough. Are you going to lecture me, too?”
“Too? You must tell others it’s not their business, unless you mean Alex herself.”
“My producer and his lawyer.”
“Well, no lecture from me! I knew that your father was the man for me about an hour after we met, so I’m not one to scold, at least on this. I can’t wait to meet her. You can probably only imagine a mother’s wish for her son to find ‘the one,’ and I have visions of grandchildren dancing in my head. Now tell me more about her...”
And he did.
Her pulse pounded so hard she heard it thudding in her ears. The words barely came out.
“L-Lyle. How did you find me?”
“Did you doubt I would? I’ve been watching you for a couple of hours, hoping you’d wander somewhere out here instead of the shop where others could see you from the lodge. I saw one of your female friends out here earlier, and she left this place open. Ah—fate that you joined me, but we need to get going now.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Remember the ‘or the end’ part of my promise?” he asked, and lifted a gun she hadn’t seen to point it at her.
She sucked in a breath. Nightmare. Not happening. The hole in the barrel seemed huge...dark. And then she saw the gun had a large handle, which he was gripping so hard the weapon wavered.
“A few days ago, did you hit a woman on a rocky ledge looking down at a stream?” she asked, her voice not her own.
“Are you crazy? I just got here, though I saw that in the Anchorage paper. But hell, no. I’m after you, and you’re going with me right now, quietly, willingly, or else. Move. Out into the forest for a little chat, maybe more or—I repeat—the end.”
Maybe, she thought, someone would see her from the inn and get help. If she went missing—even if it took a while for people to learn that—surely Meg or Suze would call for help. But the one who could track her was far away.
Pieces of panicked thoughts bombarded her. Lyle had never had guns, had he? What if he didn’t control that one well? She had the blackest feeling she could not just talk him out of it—this abduction, maybe a shooting. Surely she knew this area better than him and could shove him somehow, get away. And that futile thought reminded her again of how very far away Quinn was.
Then she made a very calculated decision. If she left here with Lyle, she was doomed, gone, the end indeed. She had to make a stand here, close to the lodge, her family, civilization.
She stepped back but another carton was in the way. Lyle leaped at her, seized her, clamped a big hand over her mouth when she opened it to scream. He gripped her face so hard her teeth ground against the soft inside of her mouth.
She yanked one hand free and lunged for the plastic tape hung on the wall, hoping to use it for a weapon. But he threw her down, his hand still clamped over her mouth. He grabbed the tape. She tried to kick at him, knee him, but she knew he was strong. He’d pinned her down in better times and was enraged now, his face distorted in an expression she’d never seen.
He ripped off a jagged piece of tape to wrap around her mouth—no, he pried her mouth open and, when she tried to scream, jammed some of its stiffness in her mouth. She gagged, gasping for air. The tape blocked her airway so she started to suck in air through her nose. Did he mean to kill her right here?
Out of breath—still struggling. He ripped off more tape—and wound it around her wrists. Getting dizzy, hurting. Was this a nightmare or real?
If she could only get to her box cutter for a weapon, but it was out of reach. Despite her bound wrists, she tried to claw him. Out of air, out of sanity. She tried to protest through the plastic gag, but he ignored her. He dragged her to a sitting position, hefted her up over his shoulder and carried her out, closing the shed door behind them before he strode for the nearest forest path, the one she and Quinn had walked just yesterday, the one that led to the stream.
The remnants of her breath bounced out as his shoulder banged into her stomach. She almost threw up.
However he had found her, he was here. He must mean to kill her. This was real—the end.
It seemed he carried her forever. Maybe she was unconscious, but no, she knew where she was, who held her captive. How did he know his way here? Who had told him where she was, not only in Falls Lake but at the inn? He seemed to know the lay of the land.
And Quinn—more than half a continent away. He was supposed to call her about now. She’d just been going to get her phone. What she wouldn’t give for a phone. The only good thing was that Spenser had not been with her, for Lyle would have hurt or killed him to keep him quiet.
Quinn, Quinn. She tried to send a message to him all those miles away. I love you, need you.
For a moment, she’d thought she heard footsteps on the path behind them, but no one was there.
Lyle carried her a good ways, crossed the stream, ignoring its stepping stones and just plunging in. He sloshed cold water as he went, even up into her face and on her back. He was furious, kicking his way across. For a moment she thought he might be taking her clear back to Quinn’s property. Surely he wasn’t going to take her all the way to Falls Lake and drown her, make it look like an accident or suicide. But Meg and Suze would know better.
She managed to cough the wadded plastic toward the front of her mouth, push it out with her tongue, though it would do her no good to scream now. But if someone noticed she was gone, maybe finding that chewed yellow plastic would tell them which way they’d gone—if they didn’t just think it was forest litter from any passerby.
He sat her down on a rock across the stream from where she and Quinn had stopped. Was that only this morning? Did she and Quinn have only the past together?
He did not loosen her wrists. “Don’t bother screaming, because no one is going to hear you this deep in the woods.”
She gasped for breath. “Why don’t you just go on with your life—leave me alone. Find someone else?”
“Oh, I will, but you’ve publicly shamed me, and you don’t do that to someone you claimed—and vowed—to love and marry. You are a very sick woman.”
“Look, Lyle, there’s been a murder near here and the Alaska state troopers are still patrolling this area.”
“I hear the authorities have done their thing and left the scene. And have a suspect in mind.”
Her head snapped up. Had he been talking to someone local or had he read a newspaper? But still, how did he find her?
At least it was getting easier to breathe. Although he had put the gun in the large black leather bag he wore over one shoulder, she made the decision she was going to have to calm and coerce him, not fight him. She would have to lie, not tell him how much she detested him, but she had to know more about something he’d just said.
In as calm a voice as she could manage, she asked, “So you’ve heard about the murder here and the authorities’ investigation and the aftermath? From whom? It was so clever of you to locate me, but how did you do it?”
“A little bird—actually, a big one,” he said, and dared to laugh as if he enjoyed tormenting her, which he no doubt did. Why hadn’t she seen through his controlled facade? Could you ever really know someone you were intimate with and thought you were close to?
“Now let’s talk,” he went on, perching on a rock higher than the one he’d put her on. “Let’s just see if you’re willing to cooperate with me, apologize and see the light—or it’s lights out, pretty baby. Lights out.”
Lights out, but not, she vowed, life out!