Heart pounding, Kacey sat up straight. Where was she? Darkness showed her more darkness. Choking on fear, she flew off the mattress, getting tangled in sheets, and cowered at the side of the bed.
Bed?
She’d been in bed.
Her ankles burned like they were in flames. Her toes were cold. On...hard floor.
Her room was carpeted.
She wasn’t home. She’d been...
Icy calm settled over her. She welcomed it as the friend she knew it to be.
She was in Devon’s cabin. Had crawled in the bed herself.
Sliding her hands along her hips, she verified that she was still wearing the lightweight sweats she’d lain down in. Moved her hands up the oversized T-shirt.
She’d been going to put her bra back on, but the thing had been so caked in slime and dirt—had stunk—and once she’d seen how big the T-shirt was that Devon had brought to her, she’d opted to go naked underneath. It wasn’t like her small breasts were going to be bobbing along anywhere, drawing attention to themselves.
Clothes were as they should be.
On all fours, she crawled toward the end of the bed, seeing more and more shape in the shadows as her eyes adjusted to the dark.
She focused on the floor by the door. Saw the darkening, drew closer and reached out a hand to verify that the stack of books she’d placed haphazardly against the door—at angles, so they’d have to fall, not just be pushed if the door moved—were all just as she’d left them.
Which meant the only problem was the darkness.
Summer in the west, even in the wooded wilderness, didn’t see sunset until past eight. There’d been a sweet short window running along the top wall of her room. She’d been looking at it as she’d fallen asleep. Black showed there when she tried to find the glass again.
Had she really slept over eight hours?
Please, God, don’t let it have been longer than that. Like a day and eight hours.
She had to get moving. To determine her moves and make them. She couldn’t afford to waste hours or days or...
Standing at the door, she listened.
And froze as another thought struck. She’d eaten right before she lay down. Everything Devon had put in front of her.
Had he drugged her?
Had Kyle and his bad guys already finished whatever they’d started? Would there be more? No way men fought like that over a small, one-night thing. There’d been lives at stake. Her brother’s, for one. And the man whose throat she’d seen Kyle’s hands around.
The others, she didn’t know how many, hadn’t been able to get a definitive shadow count before they’d moved to the back of the house.
Had started to approach the back door before someone else had approached the whole group of them.
Those were the things she needed to remember.
To piece together. Find some kind of sense and then act upon it.
Those men had been going to enter the house...
Fear choked her again. She tried to draw air. Couldn’t and...
One step. Icy calm returned.
The step right in front of her. Leave the bedroom and find a way back to Bullhead City. Half an hour? Half a day, from there? Find out.
Leave bedroom. Determine current location. Then find way back to Bullhead City.
She’d known a plan would begin to form if she could just get some sleep.
The door opened without a sound. Her bare feet on the floor were like angel whispers. There, supportive, yet undetectable. Liking the analogy, she adopted it and tried to see the clock on the stove.
Was Devon there?
Had he left her at the cabin alone all day?
Was he in bed asleep?
Nine. It was only nine o’clock.
The day she’d been rescued? Or the next?
Eerie, how quiet the cabin was. Not even a breeze from outside, or the flow of water in the river. Were they on the river, still?
Things she should have wondered, and ascertained, before ever allowing herself to lose consciousness.
A flicker of light on the living room ceiling caught her attention. Pressed against the wall, moving slowly, silently, she rounded the corner into the living area, saw light coming from another space.
Another room?
Had she seen Devon enter it before?
Keeping her back to the plaster, she made it down the length of the living area, was close enough to see the doorway just ahead. Definite light flickers coming from the space.
A television?
With no sound?
Maybe he had an earbud, was trying not to disturb her sleep.
Shaking her head at the absurdity of that one, she reached the door. Pasted her body tight against the wall and, tilting only enough to allow her face to zip in and out of the opening, she took a quick look.
Plastered her face immediately to the wall again.
And felt her heart pounding in her chest.
The room appeared vacant of humanity, but the flickering was a screen all right. An entire wall of them. And even as a non-techie, first-grade teacher, Kacey knew she’d just discovered a very expensive surveillance system.
Question was, who or what was Devon watching?
Why?
Did it have something to do with her?
And where in the hell was the man?
Seeing his houseguest plastered against the living room wall when he came in from outside, Devon had his gun in hand, straight in front of him, ready to clear the room, before announcing himself. With nothing visibly out of place, he turned to the right, to the left, and then, keeping his back to the wall, ducked into the laundry and pantry closet because it was closest to Kacey, then one bedroom, the second, and the bath, before dropping his gun to his side.
The woman hadn’t moved from the wall outside the oversized closet, though she was leaning more than shoving herself against it.
“You okay?” he asked, turning on lights as he approached her. Looking for signs of sleepwalking or panic. She’d been out more than eight hours. He’d been standing guard outside her door for all but an hour of that time.
Right up until he’d glanced at the viewing screen on his phone and had seen two men on his property, thirtyish, white. Tuning the screen to the only cameras covering his cabin, he’d shot out of there with night goggles on. It hadn’t taken him long to catch up with the guys, but when they’d jumped in the river and he’d seen the rowboat heading away, he’d made the choice to let them go.
He wasn’t leaving an unprotected woman alone on his land.
Of course, all the way back to the cabin—watching the cameras almost constantly—he’d had to wonder if she’d known the men were coming.
If she’d somehow alerted them—though he couldn’t come up with a way she’d have been able to do that, or a reason why she’d run from them and then call them to her—it was much more likely that they’d somehow tracked her. Her clothes had been burned, but it was possible they’d injected her with some kind of homing device.
Possible, too, that someone had seen him loading her into his truck. His truck’s license plate had been visible to anyone watching.
Kacey no last name had gone mute again.
He didn’t have time for cat-and-mouse games. Not with someone breaching his space. Related to her?
Or not?
Had his cover been blown?
He had to know.
“Two men were on my property.” He approached her with his phone, screen filled with the best image he had of the men. “You know them?”
Pulling back, her head touching the wall again, she glanced from his phone screen to his face.
“Who are you?”
“I told you who I am. Who are these men?” There was no kindness in him at the moment. She would not blow his nearly year-long cover, and let children continue to die from the drugs being brought up the river.
“Why do you have surveillance screens set up in there?” She moved her head slightly along the wall toward his laundry closet.
“Because I’m paranoid as hell.” He told her the truth. “I have every inch of my property covered. Now you. Who are these men?”
She glanced again. Reached for his phone, which he grudgingly let go of, and enlarged the image with two slender fingers.
Shook her head. Looked him right in the eye and said, “I honestly have no idea. I don’t think I’ve ever seen either one of them before in my life.”
Didn’t mean they weren’t associated with her. She hadn’t known her abductors.
“Did you get a good look at whoever took you?”
Another shake of her head disappointed him, frustrated him, but relieved him a bit, too. Assuming she wasn’t lying.
“I was approached from behind, something hard and cold was put at my back and I was told to walk or someone I loved would die. I walked. Was told to climb in the side door of a van being held open for me, and I did. From there, something dark and mildew smelling was thrown over my head, my hands and feet were tied, as the van was driving off.”
“So there were at least two of them.”
“I’m pretty sure there were at least three,” she said, surprising him by her openness. A trap? He had to consider all possibilities.
“Why is that?”
“There were two right feet walking me to the van. I didn’t see much, but when we stopped, just before I was told to get in, I could see two right feet. One on the right side of my right foot and one on the left, keeping my feet apart.”
Detail. Either rehearsed, or truth.
“What kind of shoes?”
“Tennis. One white with fluorescent green stripes. The other just...dirty. White, I think.”
Standing there trying to decide whether or not to holster his gun, Devon was leaning more toward believing she was telling the truth.
She handed back his phone before he had to ask for it. Or force the issue.
“Maybe one of the shoes was the driver, while the other tied you up in back,” he said then, but she was already shaking her head before he’d finished.
“Maybe, probably, but someone was already in the van. I saw a hand, as though to help me step up, but my wrist was grabbed instead, from behind the captain’s chair in the second row and my arm was pulled practically out of my socket. The black bag thing went over my head before I could see anyone.”
He’d interviewed a lot of victims over the years. She’d noticed more than most. But then, if her story was true—and he couldn’t find any obvious inconsistencies or reasons to believe it wasn’t—she’d acted differently than most people by risking her own safety, which presumably hadn’t already been at risk, to turn in a bloody knife.
The woman had gumption.
If he believed her story.
For the moment he was inclined to do so.
Right up until she said, “I’m rested now. I’d like to leave.”
And his cop instincts went back on red alert. What woman would just walk out into the wilderness in the dark, most particularly after having been abducted and knowing that said land had just had shady trespassers breaching the property?
“You want me to take you to the police station?” The locals didn’t know about his cover. Less than half a dozen people in the world knew.
He’d told her he didn’t trust the cops. She’d claimed she’d been abducted outside the police station. Could be true. Might not be.
“No.”
“Where then?” He hadn’t yet decided if he’d comply or not. He needed to know her plan.
“Where are we?”
Was she playing him? Pretending she didn’t know? She’d had up to an hour alone in the cabin while he’d been out. Didn’t mean she’d been awake that long.
“You ever hear of Quartzite, Arizona?”
She nodded, with a frown forming slowly on her face.
How well did she know Quartzite? With a population less than three thousand, the small Arizona town didn’t even have a full grocery store.
“It’s about forty-five minutes from here. And the closest town,” he told her, letting her know just how remote they were.
“Are we still on the river?”
The great Colorado. “Yes.”
“California or Arizona side?”
She apparently knew the river well. Because she’d traveled it? He watched her as closely as she was watching him. Prey at a standoff.
“Arizona.”
With a nod, but seeming less pleased, she clammed up again. Wrapped her arms around herself. Looking upward toward the windows high in the wall in the living room.
Just stood there against his wall as though prepared to remain frozen in place until he vacated.
He wasn’t going anywhere. The place was his—giving him the upper hand in that particular head-to-head. Devon didn’t say so.
There was no need to rub in the obvious.
Instead, he turned on some lights against the darkness that had fallen while he’d been out running two male strangers off his land and set about making stir-fry for dinner.
Letting the woman stand against his wall for as long as she liked.
She could have some dinner. She could go to bed hungry. She could walk out the door into the night.
That choice was hers.
And while he hoped she opted to stay, at least for the night—mostly because he didn’t want to have to leave again to follow her—he was up for what came, either way.
It was all part of the assignment.
Undercover, he was on the job twenty-four seven. He knew what he’d signed up for. And would do what it took to get the job done. He was his father’s legacy, and his family name was going to shine again.