Axel was afraid he knew the answers to his questions. He just didn’t want to admit it to himself, because if he did, he would have to admit that he might have an adversary who was equal to, if not better than, him.
Abigail came up behind him and peered around his shoulder, trying to see down into the lane. He grabbed her arm and twisted her back, shoving her against the wall. To her credit, however, she didn’t make a single sound.
“Is he out there?” she asked in a whisper.
How was he going to save this woman when she didn’t even know how to be quiet?
Axel stood and drew her hard up against him, practically lifting her off her feet.
“He’s watching. Listening. You have to listen to everything I say, okay?”
She nodded almost eagerly.
“We’re going out the back. But getting out of here is only the first step. Do you understand?”
She nodded again.
“You have to be absolutely silent. And you have to follow me, do what I say. Got it?”
She nodded a third time. She was looking up at him, he could feel her gaze more than he could see it. He could imagine the expression on her face, could see her bright gold eyes filled with an eagerness to please. And he could see the slight upturn of her pretty lips, see how her lower lip puckered out just enough to make him ache to tug it between his teeth, to taste her like she was a steak dinner. He didn’t understand the effect this woman had on him. He’d protected women before, but this one . . . maybe it was the whole naked under the blankets thing. Or maybe it was just his stupidity in allowing himself to be distracted.
He should have understood what was happening here long ago. He should have gotten her out of here before he had a chance to reveal his game to her.
Axel lifted his hand and searched for her face in the absolute darkness back here, away from the glow coming through the window. He found her jaw, her cheek. Her face was moist, tears once again flowing. But her lips weren’t trembling when he kissed her.
It took a surge of will to move away from her, to remind himself what he had to do now. He grabbed her hand and tugged her close to his side as he began to make his way across the floor, his feet aching from the cold and the splinters that were eager to find a warmer home.
There was no glass in this back window, either, so they didn’t have to worry about the sound of breaking glass. Axel pushed Abigail toward the window, gesturing in the pale light shining through the tree branches for her to climb out. She looked at him, her eyes shining with unshed tears. But she didn’t hesitate.
His opinion of her suddenly soared.
Abigail sat on the ledge of the window and swung her legs out, holding fast the broken frame. Axel could only watch as her heavy boots reached for and found the nearest branch. She slid forward before he was ready for it, swinging herself onto the thick branch in the silence of the winter night. He bit his lip, convinced she’d make some sort of sound that would alert the killer, or that the branch would break under her and she’d plummet to her death. Either way, it would be a dark end for her, one he didn’t want to be a witness to.
He wanted to call out to her as she swung down to a lower branch and began her descent. She was surprisingly quiet, only the shaking of the tree branches making any noise at all. But that noise might be enough to alert the killer. In a bit of a panic, Axel crossed to the other side of the barn as she worked her way out of the tree, convinced the killer would be on the move. But, from what little he could see of him, he was still sitting under those other trees, still content to play whatever game it was he was playing.
Axel went back to the window and looked out to see Abigail was now standing on the ground. He slowly followed her path, moving with a little less grace than she had, but moving as stealthily as his bulk would allow. He climbed, branch by branch, moving carefully, trying not to rattle the branches too much. It was impossible to be completely silent, but he tried as best as he could.
He’d been worried about her making too much noise, but it turned out it was him making the racket. If the killer looked up just once . . .
He jumped to the ground, his feet screaming in pain as he did. He ignored it, grabbed her arm, and ran as fast as he could get her to go toward the neighbor’s house behind the barn. They needed the cover of the barn, needed to be as quiet and as quick as they could.
Axel allowed himself to believe they’d done it without alerting that game playing fool when the bark of a tree beside him suddenly exploded.
“Run!” he yelled almost gleefully behind them. “It only makes the game that much more interesting.”
Axel glanced over his shoulder and saw the killer standing at the edge of the barn, watching with what he could only term as a clown’s twisted grin. It was the smile of an insane man.
For the first time since this began, Axel found himself doubting their ability to survive.
Chapter 15
Outside Virden, Illinois
Abigail was beyond fright.
What was beyond fright? Could a person be scared to death? Would she drop dead right here? Her heart was pounding hard enough to make it possible.
Axel pulled her across Mrs. Philip’s backyard, his hand tightly wrapped around hers. She could hear the man behind them, laughing as he watched them run. He wasn’t going to let them go; she could feel it deep in her bones. He was going to let them have just enough of a leash, and then he was going to drag them back, choke them until they lost their will to run.
And then he’d kill them.
She wasn’t sure how she was still on her feet, how she was still running. Axel’s hand over hers was the only thing that was keeping her from losing it completely. His touch was reassuring. It reminded her that she was still alive, that someone was with her in all this. She wasn’t alone.
It would be awful to die alone.
Axel slowed his movements as they reached the back of Mrs. Philip’s house. He let Abigail go, and she nearly cried out in protest, rushing to the old Cadillac sitting in the carport, looking through the windows for keys. Abigail knew where Mrs. Philips kept the keys. She’d been here often enough to know where she kept most everything. They weren’t in the car.
She walked up on the back deck and boldly approached the door. Her hand was reaching for the narrow handle of the sliding glass door when Axel was suddenly there, his hands gripping her upper arms and tugging her back against his chest.
“Don’t,” he hissed in her ear.
Even as he spoke the word, Abigail’s fuddled mind registered the wires that were sticking up above the handle. He hadn’t even tried to hide them.
Abigail shuddered, her whole body moving violently against Axel’s chest. He pulled her close for a moment, then dragged her off the porch. They were moving around the side of the house. Axel was practically carrying her as her feet refused to do much more than stumble. She glanced back as they reached the front yard and headed toward the road, and regretted it.
She could see Mrs. Philips, sitting at her kitchen table as she often did. The curtains were pulled open, the lights on behind her. Anyone passing by would have seen her, but this was a private road only a few used. He’d left her there for only one person to see. He wanted Abigail to see what he’d done, what he intended to do to her.
Mrs. Philips was dead, her head, her face, destroyed by a large caliber bullet. But she was still sitting up, her hands flat on the table. Obviously staged. He’d wanted them to see.
Abigail couldn’t let that go . . . what kind of sick mind got off playing with someone like this? What were they up against?
Axel must have seen it because he threw his arm around her shoulders and pulled her into his freezing side, pressing her face against his chest for a moment. But he never stopped moving.
They reached the road and Axel started down the wrong way. She stopped and pulled him back the other way, moving almost on autopilot now. They were just a few yards down the road when they heard another gunshot and the awful
sound of a horse screaming. It was a sound Abigail knew, a sound she’d heard on very rare occasions on the farm. It was the sound of a horse dying.
“Romance!”
She started to turn, but Axel grabbed her and forced her to continue running up the road.
Abigail followed by rote, her mind darkening as she reached the threshold of what she could handle. She knew they walked for a time, knew it because her feet and legs were later sorer than they’d been in a long time. She knew they must have walked more than a few miles in the bitter cold. She knew it began to snow because she could remember the feel of the flakes on her eyelashes. And she knew that they’d somehow found a place to rest, because they were there now, the cold pushed away by the heat of a small fire.
Axel knelt in front of a stone fireplace, pushing around the logs that were burning steadily inside. His skin was pale, uncovered save for the coveralls he still wore over his hips. He was shivering again, his teeth chattering enough that it finally registered in Abigail’s fogged brain.
He was freezing to death, and she was just sitting there, watching it happen.
That spurred her into action. She stood up, taking note of where they were. It was a small house, dark save for the light of the fire, very little furniture in this small sitting area. There were no windows in this room, but she could see snow falling through the small window over the kitchen sink. She went there, compelled to look out the window into the darkness. She expected to find him there, the man with the dark fringed eyes and the lunatic’s laugh. But there was nothing outside the window but the snow and a narrow road she recognized.
They were in Dan Tuxli’s house.
Abigail knew Dan. She also knew that he was often out of town on business. This must be one of those times.
She moved through the dark to the bedroom down the narrow hall beyond the kitchen. In the closet were dozens of moderately priced suits alongside a few pairs of jeans that looked like they might fit Axel. Abigail moved around the room, gathering the jeans, socks, a t-shirt, and an argyle sweater he’d probably hate, but it was large and heavy, good enough to warm him through. She was headed back to the closet when she happened to spy the bathroom, a narrow shower stall was the central feature.
Hot water was almost as good as skin to skin contact in warming someone up, right?
“Axel,” she said as she headed back across the kitchen, “come take a shower.”
He looked at her, his chattering teeth making his whole face appear to vibrate. He was pale, clearly not in good condition. She went to him, jerked him up to his feet. He nearly fell, but she managed to get under his arm to pull his weight down on her body. They struggled across the house. He had to stop a few times to lean against the wall, the shivering so intense that he couldn’t keep his legs steady underneath him. But she managed to get him into the bathroom and set him on the edge of the toilet without any major disasters.
It was good, taking care of him. It kept her mind off what was waiting for them outside.
The water heated quickly, filling the bathroom with steam. She tried not to allow it to get unbearably hot, afraid of burning his frozen skin. It wasn’t until she was helping him shed the inadequate coveralls that she saw how pale his feet were or the blood that he was leaving in small smears all over the floor.
“God, Axel!”
He was as out of it as she had been, moving only at her urging. She got him into the shower, got him under the hot water. He groaned as it hit his sore feet and his cut head. She watched the water turn red and then pink as it rolled off his body. But he started to come to life as he stood there, leaning forward, his body perfection despite the beating it had taken.
“Stay in there. I’ll find a towel or something.”
He grabbed her wrist and pulled her toward him, tugging her close enough that the water wet her face. He didn’t say anything, just pressed his lips to her forehead for a long moment. She touched his chest, memories of his touch earlier in the evening flooding her mind, creating this heaviness in her lower belly that she couldn’t ignore. She leaned into him, no longer concerned with the water falling all around them. If she was going to die, she wanted to experience all the pleasure this man had to offer her.
He slid his wet hand over her cheek.
“Go take off your clothes.”
She looked up at him, saw that hunger in his eyes that had been there before. It sent a shiver of pleasure through her, from her toes all the way to her scalp. She drew her bottom lip between her teeth and bit down, the pain only adding to the pleasure. Abigail touched him, pressed her fingers to his lips, and smiled almost shyly.
“There’ll be time enough for that later. We’re about to be snowed in.”
He tilted his head. “Why wait?”
She slipped her fingertips up over the edge of his ear. “We need to take care of your injuries first.”
He groaned. “I’m fine. I’ve been injured worse.”
“I’m sure you have. But indulge me anyway.”
Axel kissed her, tugging her hand down to show her how aroused he was just being that close to her. This funny quiver burst through her chest as she felt him, as she tasted his kiss and felt the urgency behind it. There was nothing better to help her forget what was going on around them. And she wanted to forget. Desperately. But she also needed him to be healthy enough to get her through this.
Abigail pushed him back under the hot water. “Warm yourself. I’ll go find some bandages.”
He watched her back away, this expression on his face that was a mixture of admiration and disappointment. It made her feel beautiful and sexy and a million things she’d never felt she was. No one had ever looked at her like that.
Abigail’s hands shook as she dug through drawers and shelves, gathering the supplies she’d need to treat his wounds. In a drawer in the kitchen, she found a spool of thread and a needle, but the idea of using it on human flesh physically sickened her. She shoved it back where she found it and, instead, turned her attention to the food in the cabinets. They needed some sustenance in their bellies.
She fried some bacon and scrambled a few eggs in the time it took Axel to come out of the bedroom dressed in the clothes she’d gathered for him. He’d chosen not to wear the sweater, but the t-shirt looked amazing the way it fit incredibly snug against his chest. And the jeans looked as though they were made just for him.
He looked just as hot with his clothes on as he looked with them off.
Axel had found a razor somewhere and shaved away the hair around his head wound. The edges looked raw, the cut itself not nearly as deep as she’d imagined, but shallow and weeping.
“You didn’t happen to find some alcohol and thread, did you?”
“Isn’t it too late to try to sew it?”
“Chances of infection go up after a few hours, but it still needs to be closed.” He held up a bottle of pills. “Penicillin. Already took three.”
“You can’t just take someone else’s pills! What if you’re allergic or something?”
“I’m not. And the prescription is five months old. The guy won’t miss them.”
He came up behind her and took a couple of bites of the eggs she was still stirring in the pan. Then he kissed the side of her neck and began searching through the drawers. He found the thread where she’d seen it and grabbed some bandages off the table where she’d left them. He disappeared again, without saying a word.
Abigail finished making their meal and set it on the table, laying out a full arrangement of silverware, adding a carafe of orange juice to the mix. Then she went in search of him, her stomach clenching when she walked into the bathroom and found him sewing his own wound like it was nothing.
“Doesn’t it hurt?”
He met her gaze in the mirror. “Pain is a relative thing.”
“Are you trying to be manly or are you serious?”
He smiled even as he drove the needle into his scalp again. “I tore several ligaments in my knee while I was in
Afghanistan. I had to have five surgeries, each more painful than the one before. I learned how to deal with the pain rather than become one of those guys who grows so dependent on his pain meds that he has to keep taking them months and years after the pain is gone.”
She touched the small of his back, not sure if she was impressed or just wanting to be impressed. It was almost fascinating now that the initial shock and disgust had passed. He was methodical in the way he sewed the wound, stitching it almost like her grandmother had once stitched her grandfather’s work clothes. When he was done, he tied a strong knot and trimmed it, leaving a neat line of dark thread just above his ear.
“Sit,” she instructed as he turned to go, gesturing for him to settle on the edge of the vanity. She lifted his leg and looked at his feet, relieved that it wasn’t nearly as bad as she had imagined. There were some raw spots caused by small cuts he’d gotten while walking from Mrs. Philip’s property to this place. But that was all. And his toes were a healthy color now that he was in a warm, dry place. She cleaned them with alcohol and placed Band-Aids on the worst of the cuts even though she knew they wouldn’t stay. Then she covered them in heavy socks.
“My personal Florence Nightingale.”
He drew her to him and kissed her like they’d been lovers for years. Abigail liked his kisses, liked the way it felt when he held her this way. She melted against him and opened herself up to his touch like she’d never done before. Her previous lover—her only lover—hadn’t been big on intimacy, hadn’t wanted to sit still and kiss for hours on end like the boys in high school had. He didn’t want to touch her, didn’t want to admire her soft skin or get to know the curves of her body. All he’d wanted was the result, the release that she’d come to think was all men’s only goal. She was glad to learn that wasn’t the whole truth.
Axel’s hands slipped under her shirt, touching the small of her back, his fingertips exploring that tender place just under the waist of her jeans. His other hand pressed itself into her tangled, knotted hair, twisting her head the way he wanted it, the way that best suited his needs. She liked how he took possession of her, liked when he made it clear that this was what he wanted. Abigail always thought she’d hate to be with a possessive man, but it wasn’t what she thought it would be.
Mastiff Security: The Complete 5 Books Series Page 8