She ran faster.
Old adobe buildings, constructed at the turn of the century, flew past in a blur of burnt umber. Names once as familiar to her as her own faded on wooden placards or blinked out neon signs. When the corpulent pink pig of Lorraine’s Bar-B-Q winked its false lashes at her, Mara knew she was close to her destination.
The grand problem lay in getting there. She sprinted around the corner of the restaurant, riffling through her mental map. It had been more than a decade since her last visit, but certain places were destined to remain the same. Like Kiev, Texas. Some called the changeless, eternal nature of aging western towns like Kiev charming. She called it hell. But even hell would be better than what chased her.
The Franklin Pharmacy sat squat on the lot it had occupied since the first Mrs. Franklin opened it in the late 1800s. A hurried glance showed that the latest owners had recently spruced up the whitewash. The layout of downtown flashed in her mind’s eye. Franklin’s then the Shop-N-Save and then salvation. One hundred yards, she thought. A hundred yards between her and salvation. If karma didn’t catch up with her first.
As quickly as the bleak thought surfaced, Mara forced it back down with a silent oath. Kiev was a way station on the road to a fortune. Pop in and out was the plan. Find the map Bailey mentioned in his diary, check on her grandmother, and keep moving.
The thought of visiting the woman she’d abandoned brought a lump to her throat and a hitch to her stride. But now was not the time to consider whether wounds stayed fresh past a reasonable expiration date. And twelve years was a long damned time. Heaven only knew what mess she’d left behind and whether her grandmother cared enough to forgive. She’d spent Rabbe’s $50,000 on atonement, but that may not have evened the score.
Of course, in her world there never was such a time to contemplate the consequences of a decision made. Or unmade. Think. Act. Deal. That was her mantra. No recriminations allowed. As a corollary, Mara had a strict rule against looking too far into the future. You might see something you don’t like and never take a chance. Or see something even better and stay put just to have it. She ignored the punch of sorrow at the traitorous thought, as she always did.
An engine revved behind her, and she could hear the hiss of a power window sliding down its pane of glass. With instinct born of experience, she dodged between two buildings as the pop of a silencer registered its fury. Glass shattered and sprayed the ground, shards tinkling in the quiet morning. A second shot was fired, and she could feel the bullet pierce skin, singe flesh.
Mara stumbled, her knees nearly giving way. The bullet had torn through her left arm. An anguished cry escaped her, and she felt the warm rush of blood along the aching limb. Her blurred glance told her that the fragment of metal had nicked the back of her arm and ripped skin and tissue on its way past. It hurt like hell on fire, but she’d survive. She stumbled forward, forced herself to breathe in short, shallow bursts, and picked up speed again.
Behind her, the vehicle veered closer, but the narrow trail between buildings was too small for the SUV. The passage, however, was wide enough for someone to take careful aim and hunt her from the passenger seat. In confirmation, she heard the next shot strike a Dumpster just ahead of her. That gave her an idea through the hazy fog of pained panic. Struggling, she jogged behind the heavy green container and shoved the metal bin on its casters to block the path. The movement stretched her wounded arm and hot crimson trickled onto her hand.
“I’m gonna kill you, bitch! Just wait till I get you in one of these alleys!” The furious threat followed her down the alleyway and out the other side onto Cooley Avenue. She heard the slam of a door and the sudden sprint of tires, and realized they had decided to split up. It made good sense, if you were tracking prey. Send one down the alley to catch her and bring the SUV around to trap her on the other end. But if your prey was smarter, she’d do something altogether different.
Grinning despite the wicked throbbing of her arm, Mara considered her options. Instead of emerging onto Custer, she angled down the short back driveway of the clothing store, coming out on a half street that abutted the main thoroughfare in Kiev.
How had they caught up so quickly? she wondered as she continued to run toward her only hope of refuge. Just yesterday she’d had a safe two-maybe three-day lead. When she slipped out of the bar in Alston, tipped to their pursuit by a nice young man with perfect teeth, she figured she had enough time to make it to Kiev before they found her trail. But as it had been for the past three weeks, they were right behind her, tracking every move, every decision.
Part of her wanted to stop running. To turn around, surrender, and face what came next. Yet, in sharp flashes, Mara remembered the sleek barrel of the .22 tucked into her pursuer’s waistband and the cruel edge of his partner’s razor blade. Given their last encounter, she had no doubt that both would be used to exact their revenge.
So they would have to catch her first.
Instinct screamed for her to check her trail, but she dismissed the shrill command. Rule number three in the world of Mara Reed was to never look back. Not at your questionable decisions, not at your mangled life, not at the angry, pistol-wielding lunatic who just wanted to get close enough to actually shoot you in the heart and spit in your eye at the same time.
She nearly smiled then, despite the thud of thick-soled boots that sounded frighteningly close and the hitch that signaled she was running out of air. Somehow, they’d realized she’d gone sideways instead of forward, which meant she had only seconds on them. But she pushed on, swinging into another alleyway that would cut the hundred yards down to fifty.
When she cleared a stack of discarded paper boxes that leaned drunkenly against the Catacomb Bar and Grill, she could feel the tension ease a notch. She’d make it, she thought. One more alleyway and two streets and she’d be home free.
For the time being.
Mara didn’t delude herself. Rabbe wouldn’t take too kindly to having his prey elude him for a third time. He’d chased her from Detroit to Nashville to Baton Rouge and now to an eminently forgettable town on the outskirts of East Texas. In all likelihood he would eventually catch up to her and she would rue the day she met him and stole from him. But that day would wait. Because she knew the sleepy border town he was chasing her through, and he didn’t have a clue.
She was sure that neither Rabbe nor his new barrel-necked partner, Guffin, had ever been to Kiev, Texas, before. They hadn’t spent long, humid weekends running breakneck through its unpaved streets, leaping over bramble bushes that had been replaced in recent years with corrugated steel pipes to carry the dregs of oil that had been discovered there.
Arthur Rabbe, the product of a misbegotten conception somewhere north of Atlanta, had no doubt never careened along Route 7 in a stolen car, blasting the radio loud enough to drown out tomorrow. And she had it on good authority that Seth Guffin believed the world began and ended just south of the Bronx.
Mara was certainly partial to Manhattan, where a night’s work had once netted her enough for a scenic vacation to sunny Puerto Rico. But Puerto Rico and Manhattan were the past. The present was closing in with a vengeance, loudly huffing its imprecations at her disappearing back. If she survived long enough, the future might be worth something, but she had to get there first.
With a confident though painful leap, she sailed over a couple of overturned trash barrels in a hurdle worthy of Olympic fame. However, when she heard Rabbe curse as he smashed into the same barrels, she churned her legs harder.
“Stop, bitch!” he gasped, not more than thirty feet behind her. “When I get my hands on you, I’m going to rip your worthless heart out through your—”
The rest of his threat was lost in the sudden blast of an angry car horn as she shot across two lanes of moving traffic to the other side of the main thoroughfare in Kiev. Though it was just past dawn, truckers on their way to Oklahoma would be winding through town to reach the interstate. Those trucks had blocked Guffin and ruined Rabbe�
��s plan to box her in. Curses and shouts from Guffin echoed Rabbe’s threats, and Mara lifted her hand in a nasty middle-fingered reply.
Close, she thought, so damned close. According to memory, salvation lay one block away. Once inside, Rabbe could scream and threaten all he liked, but he wouldn’t be able to touch her.
Mara rounded the corner, skidded down the final alleyway, and stopped dead in her tracks.
The shortcut across Shahar to Gaul used to be a narrow strip of land wide enough for two skinny teenagers sneaking back home after curfew. Now, a brick wall rose out of the ground, cutting off her only exit. More blaring horns signaled Rabbe and Guffin’s imminent arrival. She had ten, maybe fifteen seconds at most.
Adrenaline mixed with slippery terror as she spun around wildly, looking for escape. All that greeted her was more of the smooth-surfaced concrete, a metal door that seemed to open from the inside, and the devastating realization that she would finally do what she’d spent the past twelve godforsaken years avoiding by breaking every rule, law, and commandment known to man.
Damn it all to hell, she thought grimly. She was about to die in Texas.
Chapter 2
With a sudden creak of metal the knobless door swung open and hard hands jerked Mara inside. Before she could emit even a yelp, the heavy sheet of solid steel slammed into its frame. A minute later—maybe less, maybe more—in the corridor, she could hear the report of bullets as they hit the concrete wall. More bullets careened into the metal door and fell useless to the ground. Muffled shouts from Rabbe and Guffin were punctuated by more random shots.
Through the panels she could hear them arguing about where she could have gone. Guffin, always the rocket scientist, suggested that she had somehow scaled the concrete wall. To his credit, Rabbe thought about the metal door, but he couldn’t find an opening. Finally, Rabbe commanded Guffin to check the other alleys, since they’d obviously chosen the wrong one.
Her pulse pounding in her throat, Mara turned in the darkness to thank her savior. But the words stalled in her head, and her hands, lifted in gratitude, froze at her waist. A twist of emotion, fierce and plaintive, ripped at a heart she imagined numbed to feeling. In that instant she wished with all her might that Rabbe and Guffin had accomplished their mission.
“You never learn, do you, Mara?”
The subtle Texas drawl had once been as familiar to her as her own voice. But the cadence had deepened, the tone had roughened. Like the man himself. Ethan Stuart had been a beautiful, gangly boy when she’d last seen him. Time had filled out the once shyly hunched shoulders that now ranged broad and straight. Muscle had been layered over his naturally lean frame, resulting in a wide chest, corded thighs, and sculpted biceps.
But it was the face that told the full story. The long-lidded eyes that had always reminded her of the darkest, most bitter chocolate were now shadowed. Thick ebony lashes fanned down to shade their expression and drew attention to the fine lines etched along the corners. His fancy, full-lipped mouth had grown more sensual with age, but with a harder edge than she remembered. The aristocratic nose had been broken at least once since they’d last spoken, and high cheekbones were stretched tight with burnished copper skin that held no expression.
Mara looked her fill, trying to reconcile the nineteen-year-old orphan to the impassive, powerful man who stared down at her. Silently, she ran her hungry eyes over him again, this time taking in other details. Like the white T-shirt that bore a University of Texas logo and indeterminate stains. Like the faded blue jeans that were zipped but not buttoned. Like the stained scalpel that he gripped in his hand as it flashed in the half-light. And what lay behind him in the darkness.
“Crapadapolus,” she muttered, edging back to the door. “Am I dead?”
“Not yet.” Ethan stepped closer, crowding her against the cold metal, taunting her. “Where are you going? Out to the men trying to kill you? But I have my own reasons to hate you, don’t I?”
Guilt, its smear terribly familiar, coated her gut. “I’m sorry. So sorry.”
“Too late, Mara. Too goddamned late.”
Again the scalpel flashed in the tepid light that seeped from the opposite side of the vast warehouse. Again her eyes were drawn to the specter that stretched along the wall at the far end of the space. Shrouds seemed to drift in the white light, covering rows of bodies. Human bodies. And Ethan loomed out of the shadows wielding a tool of death.
“Did you kill them?” Mara panted out the question, fighting off the panic that threatened to wring the last of the air from her lungs. She had nowhere to run. Rabbe and Guffin were idiots, but they would eventually return to find her. Her arm was numb from the gunshot and her leg burned from the scrape at the car lot. Yet if she remained inside, the man with every reason to despise her might do to her what he’d done to the sheet-draped bodies behind him. Either way, she was about to die. The question was how soon.
Adrenaline shot through her. Behind her, her slick hands scrambled for the door handle. She found the bar to release the latch, but a silent, deadly Ethan reached out a long arm to stop her. His hand closed around her left shoulder and squeezed, and the agony was too much. Mara collapsed to the floor, the moan of terror shifting into a cry of anguish.
Ethan quickly dropped to his knees beside her, cupping her arms to lift her to face him. “Mara? What the hell is wrong with you?” When his hand slipped lower, he lifted it and saw the stain of blood on his palm. His eyes shot back to her, limp in his grasp. “My God. You’ve been shot?”
Mara didn’t answer, concentrating solely on staying awake. Blackness summoned her, begging her to rest. The ache in her leg throbbed mercilessly, in counterpoint to the burning waves cascading along her arm. She wanted to run, to hide from Ethan’s eyes and Rabbe’s gun and Guffin’s razor.
She wanted to escape from haunting memories and lost paradise and a future that seemed bleaker than she could imagine. She wanted more than she ever deserved, and the futility of wishing sliced through her like the scalpel she’d seen in the beloved hands that used to hold her close.
That held her now.
Through the mists clouding her brain, Mara felt herself being lifted and carried. With remarkable ease Ethan cradled her body to him, tucking her head into his shoulder. Wordlessly, he climbed a set of metal stairs and nudged open a door that led to a room filled with light.
“Ethan, love?” She mumbled the phrase, forgetting and remembering who they were to each other. “Don’t let them get me.”
“Who could get close enough?” came his whispered reply.
Gently, Ethan laid Mara’s exhausted, slack body on a futon in the far corner of the improvised studio apartment. With quick, unsteady motions he dragged the tangled blue sheets crumpled at her feet up and over the body he once knew as well as his own.
Mara Reed.
The love of his life and his most devastating mistake.
Ethan moved to the kitchenette to fill a bowl with warm water, then he gathered up the first aid kit he kept below the sink. He moved confidently, quickly gathering supplies. Grimly, he recalled his stint as a paramedic during college. Too may GSW patients changed his mind about medical school.
Still, he knew what had to be done. The bullet wound was a through and through, ripping through flesh but missing bone, arteries, and nerves. Nasty and painful, but nothing that required hospitalization. Besides, he doubted Mara would appreciate a trip to the emergency room. He figured the hole in her arm was the least of her troubles.
He returned to her side to treat the obscene injury, taking a second to switch on the swing-armed lamp plugged in near the bed. The sight of the wound, framed by the lamplight, clutched his gut. Against Mara’s caramel skin, the blood was a discolored streak that ran down the sleekly muscled arm to the curled palm resting on the sheets.
It struck him then how she might have died, so close to him but without either of them knowing. A part of him had always expected it to be so, had mourned for her thinking it was
already true.
Yet Fate had intervened once again. It was batting two for two.
The studio had two massive bay windows that overlooked the northeastern vista of Kiev. Ethan relied on the streams of natural light to wake him, and this morning had been no exception. The only difference was that while he stood at the treated glass, sipping the coffee that would rush needed caffeine to his sluggish brain, he saw a young woman darting across traffic and between buildings. Kiev was not a town for joggers, and in his month-long stay in the warehouse, he hadn’t seen the runner before.
Curiosity and an uncanny sense of recognition had compelled him to follow her flight. There was something memorable in the loping gait, the determined speed. As the figure had drawn closer, he noticed the black Expedition trailing behind her, steadily closing in on its prey. It wasn’t until the window slid down and a gloved hand aimed a gun at the fleeing body that he reached two conclusions.
The familiar form chased down Kiev’s deserted streets was that of the woman who’d snuck out of his bed and his life more than a decade ago. She drew nearer to his street and he recognized the tight curls that framed a gamine face, screwed fierce with determination. Memory slammed into him as he noticed how the long, lovely limbs, once wrapped around him in ecstasy, now churned with a feral speed. He watched in horror as the SUV chased her down an alley, hiding her from his view, and silently cheered when she emerged onto the main street, running even faster, if more unsteadily.
He realized then where she was headed. Inside her mind, he could see her sifting through options, reading a map of town. He knew instantly that she would aim for Shahar Avenue as a way over to Gaul and the one place she’d ever truly called home.
Yes, he’d thought, her natural choice would be the path they’d taken more than once as young lovers who stayed out past the town’s curfew. What she didn’t know, couldn’t know, was that the new owners of the row of warehouses and office towers had built a solid, unscalable wall to block cut-throughs. In seconds Mara would be trapped in a passage with no way out.
Hidden Sins Page 3