by Rebecca York
She turned away from the table and saw that the message light on the phone was blinking. It was then that she remembered someone had called while she and Zach had been getting undressed.
She even remembered who it was. Beth. And her voice had sounded urgent.
Something was wrong, and now she should deal with it.
She had just reached for the machine when the door opened.
Her heart leaped, and she looked up eagerly. But it wasn’t Zach who walked inside. It was another man. A man whose face held a mixture of anger and triumph.
Instinctively she grabbed for the phone and started to dial 911. But she only got through the first two numbers before he knocked the receiver out of her hand. It clattered to the floor, sounding like thunder in the silence of the small room.
Amanda stood paralyzed by the end table, staring at the gun in the man’s hand.
“What do you want?”
Long seconds passed before he answered in a low, dangerous voice. “Don’t you know?”
Mutely, she shook her head.
He took a half step toward her. “Well, you’re going to find out. Come on.”
She didn’t move, couldn’t move.
He took another step closer, his eyes dark and menacing, the hand with the gun jerking as it pointed at her middle. “If you don’t want me to shoot you right now, turn around.”
She didn’t want her back to him, but she had no doubt that if she tried to make a run for it, he would do what he threatened. She turned. In the next moment, she gasped as she felt cold metal click over her wrists. Handcuffs.
He’d come prepared to restrain her.
When her hands were secured, he spun her around to face him.
“We’d better get going before lover boy comes back and I have to shoot him. You wouldn’t want to get him killed would you?”
Amanda’s gasp made the man grin. Then his fingers closed around her arm, and he was hurrying her out the door. Down the driveway she saw a white van.
Zach had told her a man with a white van had been hanging around her house. He’d broken in, but Zach had chased him away. Now he was back. Somehow he’d figured out where they were hiding.
She stumbled, thinking that if she fell to the ground, he’d have to carry her, and that might slow him down.
But he was apparently prepared for the maneuver.
“No you don’t,” he growled, jerking her up painfully by her arms and pulling her toward the vehicle. He was making no attempt to be gentle, and she knew that if she resisted, he’d likely yank her shoulder out of joint.
“No. Please. Let me go. What have I done to you?” she pleaded, hearing the terror in her own voice, and hating herself for being on the edge of hysteria.
“Not to me. To other people.”
‘What?”
“Shut up. Just shut up.”
There was a dangerous note in his voice that made her press her lips closed. This man was angry—and unbalanced. And she’d better go along with him quietly.
Yanking the side door of the van open, he pushed her roughly inside. She made a small sound of protest when she saw that a length of chain was dangling from the armrest of the seat closest to the door. Treating her like an object instead of a person, he used the chain to secure her handcuffs to the armrest, keeping her from leaning fully against the seat back. When he was satisfied that she was secure, he slammed the door closed and went around to the driver’s side.
Moments later, he was speeding down the driveway.
###
Just as he emerged from the woods, Zach saw a white van. It was heading away from the house, picking up speed as it went. But he could see Amanda’s blond head through one of the windows.
“God, no!’
With a curse of anger and fear, he ran to his own car, but he hadn’t been planning for a quick getaway when he’d pulled in. He’d thought they were safe in this house, and he was facing in the wrong direction.
By the time he backed down the drive, the van was nowhere in sight, and he had to choose which way to go when he reached the highway. A stream of traffic was coming from the left, in the direction of town. He went right—partly because it seemed logical that the guy wouldn’t be heading into the country. But although he floored the gas pedal, he didn’t catch up with the van, which probably meant he was going in the wrong direction.
Or was he? There was no way to tell when he was driving “blind.” He needed help.
Still, he sped on for another few miles, his curses filling the interior of his car.
The bastard had gotten to Amanda. And it was his own damn fault. Somehow the guy who’d been after her had figured out where they were staying. Then he had taken a chance on snatching her up when he’d known she was alone in the house.
Zach cursed again.
His own damn inadequacies had sent him slinking outside while Amanda was in the shower because he didn’t want to have a conversation about himself. But if he’d only had the guts to stick around to face her, she’d be safe.
Blind fear had sent him charging after her. Now he admitted he was wasting time driving around looking for her—when he’d obviously lost the van. Fighting the sick feeling rising in his throat, he pulled onto a side road, made a U-turn in a driveway, and went speeding back the way he’d come.
When he reached the house, he jumped out of the car and raced toward the door. It was open, and he leaped inside, then sped around the interior.
The phone receiver was lying on the floor, and he picked it up. And the message light was blinking. He remembered then that Amanda had gotten a call while they’d been in the bedroom.
He didn’t want to take the time to get the message. But his training told him it could be important. Pressing the button, he heard:
“Amanda? Amanda, pick up, damn you.”
He recognized Beth Cantro’s voice. She was the editor he’d interviewed in New York before coming down here.
“Amanda, I have some information for you. About Esther. The police found the car that hit her. It’s a long story. It belongs to a guy named Tony Anderson. When he didn’t answer his phone for over a week, his sister had the authorities investigate. There was a car locked in his garage—with blood on the bumper. The police did some checking, and they found that it was Esther’s blood. Amanda, he may be after you. Please give that information to Zachary. And please call me back as soon as you can. I’m worried.”
Jesus! Zach stood staring at the machine.
A guy named Tony Anderson was the one after Amanda. But what good was the information going to do him now.
His mind raced, sorting through facts, making connections as he raced down the hall toward his room. If it was the same man, he’d deliberately plowed down Esther in the street. But from the start, his goals had been different with Amanda. He’d been in a hurry to eliminate Esther from the planet. But he’d been stalking Amanda. He could have killed her days ago, if he’d wanted to. Which meant he was interested in her in a different way. He’d wanted to keep her alive. For a while. At least that’s what Zach hoped to hell was true.
###
Amanda huddled on the bench seat of the white van, shifting to get a little more comfortable. Was there some way to free herself? Working as quietly as she could, she tried to remove the metal chain from the armrest.
A voice cut through her concentration. “Don’t bother,” he said, sounding almost bored. “What do you think? That I’m stupid enough to let you get away now that I have you where I want you?”
“No,” she answered automatically.
He laughed. “Right. Try to give the man the correct answer. Well, the correct answer is that you need a hacksaw—or the key—to get out of that thing.”
She kept her head down, cringing away from the grating quality of his voice. She wanted to block him out, to disappear into her own mind. Or into a fantasy. She kept picturing Zachary pulling up beside the van, ramming it with his car, forcing the kidnapper to stop. Then he’d ge
t her out of here and take her in his arms, and everything would be all right again.
Zach. Oh Lord, Zach, she silently whispered. But as much as she wanted him to come charging to her rescue, she knew it wasn’t going to happen. He didn’t even realize she was missing; and if he did, he wouldn’t have a clue where she had gone—or why.
He’d stomped out of the house to go for a walk. He’d been angry. And probably he’d jump to the conclusion that she was angry, too—that she’d run out on him? Oh God, she didn’t want him to think that. Because she wasn’t going to let him go that easily. She would stay and fight for the two of them.
She smiled, feeling her own resolve building. She wanted to keep focusing on him. On their relationship. On what they could mean to each other if he’d only drop the iron barriers that he’d erected around his emotions. She would make him let her get close to him. Really close.
But she knew all that was just a comforting daydream. Thinking about Zachary Grant wasn’t going to do anything for her at the present moment. She was with another man, a man who was going to do something terrible to her—unless she could talk him out of it. Which she had a good chance of doing, she told herself. Because she understood people and their motivations.
The pep talk helped. Sitting up straighter, she looked toward the front of the van, then cleared her throat. “What do you want with me?” she asked.
He kept her waiting for several agonizing seconds before answering, “You’ll find out.”
“You were stalking me,” she heard herself say and instantly regretted the observation. What good did it do to point out the obvious? Maybe he’d resent having a label put on his behavior.
He answered in a casual voice. Too casual. “If that’s what you want to call it. To me, it was more like a stakeout. Like the police do when they’re after a criminal.”
A criminal? Was that how he saw her? Well, it fit with the way he’d hauled her off in handcuffs. He was going to punish her. But for what?
“You thought you were pretty tricky, hiding out in a different house. But all you had to do was go to the grocery store, with that stupid couples act, and I found you.”
She absorbed that piece of information like a blow to the chest. He’d followed them home from the grocery. That was her stupid fault. She should have listened to Zack and stayed home.
And she couldn’t say she wouldn’t make that mistake next time. There wasn’t going to be a next time. This was it.
He was speaking again, riveting her attention to him.”
“You had the arrogance to think you could pull that off. Just like you had the arrogance to step into Esther Knight’s shoes,” he spat out, and now she felt his anger building. “You’re going to be Esther Scott, and you deserve the same punishment that she got. More punishment, actually.”
Because she didn’t want him to focus on punishment, she changed the subject abruptly. “What did I do to you?”
“You think you have all the answers.”
“No. If I thought I had all the answers, I wouldn’t be asking questions.”
Ignoring her, he plowed on. “Yeah, you do. You’re like her. My girlfriend wrote Esther Knight a letter, and she answered her. And Vicki left me.”
“That’s not my fault,” she tried again.
He wasn’t listening to her. Instead he began to recite in a singsong voice, a letter he had obviously memorized:
“Dear Esther, I have a problem, and I need help. My boyfriend and I have been together for several months. At first he was really great. He worked really hard to get me to be his girlfriend. He was really attentive. He wrote me poetry. He bought me surprise little presents all the time.”
The man in the front seat turned and glared at Amanda before directing his attention back to the road.
“But now I’m starting to be afraid of him. He wants to control everything in my life. He made me quit my job, because he says he can take care of me. I have lots of time on my hands now. But he doesn’t let me go shopping, and he doesn’t let me see my friends. And we only see my parents when he’s with me. When we’re in bed together, he wants to tie me up and do stuff to me that I don’t like. Tell me how to get away from him. Signed, desperate in New York.”
The man turned again, his angry gaze drilling into her. “What do you think of that?”
“I. . .” she said but couldn’t get any farther.
“Speak up,” he snapped. “I want to hear what you have to say about it.”
This guy was angry. Out of control. And she recognized that whatever she said was going to be wrong.
She sat there paralyzed as he went on, her world contracted to the interior of this van.
“I’ll tell you the crappy advice Esther gave Vicki: Dear desperate, you have to get away from this man. He sounds dangerous. There are shelters for abused women. The next time you are alone in the house, walk away. If there’s no time to pack, leave your clothing and everything else. Go to a relative or friend you trust. Don’t let this man destroy your life,” he ended with a sound that was a cross between a growl and a curse.
“And she did just what Esther told her. She left all her stuff and ran away. But she left the magazine open on the kitchen table, letting me see where she’d gotten the nerve to go against me. Would you believe she left me a note saying she was sorry? She said she was going to some shelter where I couldn’t find her. She must have started planning it in secret. Then she waited for her chance and left. Do you know how mad that made me?” he snarled.
“Yes,” she answered because she heard the fury in his voice. And she shuddered, because she knew that the only one he could take it out on was her. His girlfriend was gone. Esther was gone. Now there was only Amanda O’Neal to stand in for both of them and take the heat.
He was on a roll now, speaking as if he didn’t care who was listening, because he just wanted to get the story out. It had been bottled up inside of him for months, and he’d had no one he could tell. Now he literally had a captive audience.
“Vicki thought she could get away from me, Tony Anderson. I looked all over for her, you know. I’m still looking for her. She may be hidden now. But she’s going to mess up. And when I find her, I’m going to make her sorry she left. I haven’t given up.
“But meanwhile, I figured out how to find that bitch, Esther Knight. It was supposed to be a secret who she was, but I got a line on her through the magazine. See, the letters come to them, and they send them on to Esther.” He laughed. “Simple, if you know how to figure things out.”
When he looked at her in the rearview mirror again, his eyes had narrowed to slits. “I thought it was all over when I killed her. I felt really happy. I thought she wouldn’t ruin anyone else’s life. But the columns were still being printed, and I realized that they’d been written a couple months in advance. I kept checking the mail room again, just to make sure it was all over. But it wasn’t. The letters kept coming, and I found out there was a new person writing the Esther Knight column. You,” he said, the sentence ending in a snarl.
“I’ve watched you reading letters. I’ve watched you sitting at your laptop—making up nasty answers. But your column’s never going to be finished, and it’s never going to be printed. If some fool is arrogant enough to take it over, then I’ll do to her what I’m going to do to you. And if your dear friend Beth doesn’t get the picture, then I’ll have to take care of her, too.”
Amanda sat there with her heart pounding. Unable to look at the man behind the wheel, she stared at the scenery flying past. Houses. Trees. Billboards.
She could follow the route because he wasn’t making any attempt to hide where they were going.
Either he’d made some terrible mistakes, or he didn’t expect her to lead anyone to the place where he’d taken her—because she’d be dead when their time together was finished.
A surge of black fear threatened to sweep her under, like a merciless riptide. She didn’t want to know what he had planned for her, but she suspected
she was going to find out soon enough.
Chapter Fourteen
Zachary stood in the middle of the empty bedroom. Not the one where he and Amanda had made love. The other bedroom—where he’d planned to sleep.
He barely saw the room. He felt like he was in the middle of a forest fire. At least he felt like his head was filling up with smoke, and every breath seared his lungs.
It had been a long time since he had asked for divine help. Now he said a silent prayer.
“Please God, let me find Amanda. If something happens to her because I ran out on her, I’ll never forgive myself.”
His jaw clenched when he realized what he’d just said. Starting again, he said, “Please God, let me find Amanda. She’s a good woman. Caring. Loving. She can help so many people. If you just let me save her.”
That was the best he could do in the prayer department, he thought as his surroundings blinked back into focus. Turning toward the dresser, he picked up the tracker he’d set on top. Then he turned a switch to “on,” his whole body vibrating with tension as the small display screen lit up.
He breathed out a sigh of relief when he saw the bullseye in the center. A light was blinking on the screen, and he watched it move toward the ten o’clock position.
Close to the edge. He’d better hurry if he was going to keep up with the damn thing.
Yesterday, when he’d been out, he’d invested in this electronic surveillance system, thinking that he was taking the precaution “just in case” the worst happened.
While Amanda had been in the shower, he’d attached a transponder to her watch without telling her what he was doing, because he hadn’t wanted to worry her.
He’d thought he was being overcautious. Now he was damn glad that he’d had the foresight to tag her. Because it meant he could find her.
After snapping a clip into his gun and stowing a spare in his pocket, he picked up the signal box and left the house.
Slipping behind the wheel of his car, he set the box on the seat beside him, then roared out of the driveway. He’d never needed to use an electronic tracking system before, and it took him a little time to get used to it.