Cullen cringed at her use of the word we after referring to “one of the men.”
“When you say, ‘we,’ do you mean you and the man in the Washington Daily photo?”
Sabine blinked twice but didn’t lose her cool. “No,” she lied.
“Why did both the helicopter and the plane crash?”
“The plane didn’t really crash. It was more of a rough landing.”
“But what caused both the helicopter and the plane to go down?”
“The helicopter was shot down during the rescue.”
“And the plane?”
“I’m not sure, exactly.”
“Do you think it’s possible terrorists held you captive and tried to kill you when you escaped?”
“Yes, that’s possible.”
“Could it have been anyone else?”
A brief pause. “I don’t see how.” Cullen saw the doubt in her eyes and wondered if anyone else could. Her vague answers were enough to raise curiosity.
“It’s ironic that you were forced to land where you did. What was it like to find yourself in the middle of paradise after surviving such a terrible ordeal?”
Cullen felt like cursing loudly.
“We were very lucky to make it to an island. We could have crashed into the sea.”
“Very lucky, indeed.” The anchorwoman nodded, her accompanying smile knowing. She let a second or two pass. “We spoke with one of the villagers in Kárpathos, where the destroyed plane was discovered.” Cullen inwardly grimaced, knowing his predicament was about to get much, much worse. “A woman who recognized you from this photograph,” she held the cover of Washington Daily up into the camera’s view, “told us she saw a man carry you through the village to a local pension. She described you as newlyweds whose private plane had crashed on the island. She said you were alone with this man and didn’t leave your hotel room for two full days, and when you did finally leave it, the two of you walked down to a secluded beach, where you spent more time alone together. She invited you to her taverna, which she said you accepted and shared a romantic dinner. Octopus, I believe, is what she said you both ate that night.”
Sabine’s green eyes were wide with shock, and her face flushed a telling shade of red. She stared at the anchorwoman with her lips slightly parted, no doubt to accommodate for the rapid breaths he could see she was taking. She might as well admit defeat now. Every inch of her body communicated without words that everything the anchorwoman said was true. Damn her. Didn’t she know the media would focus on all the speculation surrounding the plane crash?
Cullen closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, wanting to groan.
There was a poignant silence on the television, and he was certain millions of Americans were riveted by this new turn of events.
“Was the man you were with one of your rescuers? The man in the Washington Daily photo?”
Cullen looked over his fingers at the television and Sabine’s flushed face.
“I can’t…comment on that.”
The anchorwoman smiled. “Did you have an affair with him?”
“I’m sorry, I—”
“Are you still?”
“No!”
Cullen ran his hand down his face with a rough sigh. She was killing him.
His uncle grunted a derisive laugh. “You might as well kiss that company of yours goodbye, son.”
Sabine parted a section of the wooden blinds on her living room window and saw the white minivan still parked down the street. It was after ten p.m. The throng of reporters that had swarmed her bookstore after her appearance on Current Events had dwindled to this single man. Minivan Man, she was going to start calling him. He was an annoying, persistent little fellow, waiting like a dog frothing at the mouth for a chance to catch her with her secret lover.
Disgusted, she let the blinds go and carried her glass of iced tea toward the stairs. After the Current Events broadcast, the news had buzzed with curiosity over Cullen’s identity and romanticized what had mushroomed into their torrid affair on a Greek island. The hype disturbed her, mostly because it made her think about Kárpathos—and Cullen—too much.
She stepped down the narrow stairway and emerged into the bookstore office. Flipping on lights as she went, she entered the main area of the bookstore. She passed a section of tall empty shelves where boxes of books were scattered and put her glass of iced tea on the checkout counter near the front of the store.
The books she’d ordered had arrived earlier that day but she’d waited for the cover of night to begin unpacking them. She’d dipped into her 401(k) to buy a collection of general fiction, literary fiction, nonfiction, children’s books and touristy books about the region to stock her shelves. The front corner of the bookstore was under renovation and would be a coffee counter with a few quaint round tables near the front windows. Maybe she’d plant flowers in pots on the sidewalk in front of the building this summer.
A noise in the back of the store made her go still. Holding three hardcover books in her hand, she looked toward her office. Rows of shelves formed a hallway that was slightly offset from the office entrance, so she couldn’t see it from where she was. Was someone in there?
Her heart started to beat faster. She put the books down and stood. Moving to the checkout counter, she pulled out the 9mm pistol she kept on the shelf under the register. Buddy from the liquor store had taught her how to use it after she’d come home from Afghanistan. Inserting a loaded clip, she moved out from behind the counter and headed for her office, holding the pistol with both hands and pointing it ahead of her. The hallway of shelves allowed her to keep out of view of the doorway leading to the office.
The sound of the back door opening made her jump into the space between the last two shelves near her office door. She closed her eyes and willed herself to have courage. Someone had broken into her bookstore. Blood drained from her head and she fought the rise of an all-too-familiar fear.
Footsteps shuffled. It sounded like more than one person. One grunt accompanied another. She leaned around the corner of the shelf. Two men crossed the doorway, locked in a fighting struggle. Both held a gun and both gripped the other’s arm to prevent either from taking aim. She recognized her bodyguard, the smaller of the two. The bigger man tripped him and he fell.
She had to do something. Gun raised, she emerged from the row of shelves and hurried to the office door. Peering around the frame, she saw the bigger man standing over her bodyguard, aiming his weapon. A file cabinet blocked most of his body from her. He was going to shoot the man on the floor.
“No!” Sabine shouted and fired her pistol.
But the big man fired, too, one silenced shot that hit her bodyguard. She could tell because he groaned and rolled onto his side. She saw only his chest and head, but it was enough to know he struggled to reach his gun, which was too far away.
Sabine didn’t have time to help him. The big man—tall, lean, with dark hair and eyes—swung his weapon toward her. She pivoted and ran from the office, ducking behind the first row of empty shelves, hearing a bullet hit wood. She fired her gun through the space of a shelf, forcing the man to stay behind the wall of the office. Her gun wasn’t muffled and the explosions rang her ears. She ran to the end of the row and moved up the next one, crouching low, trying to see through the mesh of shelving.
Hearing the sound of slow footfalls on her wood floor, fear cauterized her. That awful fear. She moved along the shelf. The man appeared around the edge of the row. She fired again. He jumped behind the shelf. She turned to run, heard him chase her. Before she made it to the end of the row, he tripped her from behind. She went down on her hands and knees, the gun skittering from her grasp and bouncing off the wall just ahead of her. Rolling to her rear, she kicked her leg up and connected with the big man’s hand. His gun went sailing over the top of the shelf to her left and fell to the floor on the other side.
The man unbuckled his belt and whipped it free of his black jeans. Sabine rolle
d back onto her hands and knees and scrambled toward her gun. She would not fall prey to anyone ever again. She’d kill this man without a second thought!
The tether of her hair stopped her. The man yanked her back toward him. Her scalp stung where he pulled. He looped the belt around her neck and released her hair. Sabine clawed at the belt as it tightened on her throat, furious with herself for allowing this to happen.
Choking for air, and getting little, she reached for something, anything that would provide her a weapon. Her pistol still lay a few feet away, too far for her to reach. A box she’d opened but hadn’t begun to empty yet was right next to her. She reached inside for a hardback Webster’s dictionary and aimed the corner at her assailant’s head. With a hard wallop, she hit something that made him grunt and loosen his hold. She yanked the belt from her throat, gagging and gasping as she crawled for her gun. She stretched her arm. Her fingers curled around the handle. Rolling onto her back, she started firing.
The man scrambled to escape the explosion of bullets. She emptied her gun.
He ran into her office. She followed but only when she heard her bodyguard fire his gun. A shout and the big man’s stumble told her he was hit, but he managed to run out the back door before her bodyguard could finish him off.
Reclining on a hammock in his uncle’s backyard, Cullen rested his head on one folded arm, his other hand on his stomach. He chewed on a straw left over from the chocolate milk Penny had given him while he occupied himself watching white puffy clouds pass over the branches of a cottonwood tree. All this peace and quiet gave him entirely too much time to think. And all he thought about was Sabine.
Maybe he should take a trip somewhere. An exotic beach resort or something similar. The only thing stopping him was his fear that he’d be recognized. He could just go home, too, but what was there that wasn’t here? A big city, for one, and he didn’t think that was a good place to lay low. A suburb of Washington, D.C., was nothing like the wide open spaces of Montana.
On the patio, Luc sat on his lawn chair watching a fishing show. Cullen liked fishing but enough was enough. Once a year was enough. Every day was nauseating.
As though hearing his thoughts, Luc turned the channel. Cullen felt bad for thinking bad of his uncle’s favorite pastime. Luc was getting older and couldn’t keep up the pace he’d once kept in the military.
Luc stopped surfing at a news program.
“Authorities are speculating whether the man who attacked O’Clery in her Roaring Creek bookstore was responding to her recent interview on Current Events.”
Cullen lifted his head, instantly focused on the television. His stomach muscles tightened as he rose halfway between sitting and reclining. A picture of Sabine disappeared from the screen, and the news program went to commercial.
Cullen swung his feet over the hammock and stood, shards of fear shooting through him. “What happened?” He stepped onto the patio, where his uncle had a television mounted below the eave of his house. “What happened to her?” He knew he sounded frantic. He felt frantic. And he was not accustomed to that.
Luc glanced up at him, then quickly surfed until he found another news channel. A video of Sabine being helped out of a storefront ripped through him. That haunted look was back in her eyes. She held a hand to her throat, but it didn’t hide the red and chafed skin there. Something dark and uncontrollable expanded in him. He tried to steady his breathing.
“Sabine O’Clery, the woman rescued more than a month ago from Afghanistan, narrowly escaped with her life late last night after two men broke into her Roaring Creek bookstore. One man, who reportedly tried to help her, was shot and taken to a nearby hospital. Doctors say he’ll recover, and guards posted at his room are refusing to let anyone but police question him. O’Clery said she and the injured man fired at her assailant, but he managed to get away. Local authorities are searching for the suspect and aren’t releasing the identity of the man hospitalized during the attack.”
The screen showed a picture of Noah in one corner. “Noah Page, O’Clery’s estranged father, is founder and CEO of the private military company rumored to have arranged her rescue from Afghanistan, where she was held prisoner for more than two weeks. Page denies any ties to the man hospitalized during the latest attempt on her life. Roaring Creek authorities aren’t commenting whether the attempt on O’Clery’s life is related to her kidnapping in Afghanistan….”
Cullen let go of a vicious curse.
“Some quack tried to off her?” Luc asked, incredulous.
Someone had nearly succeeded in killing Sabine. Noah had told him about her visit to Samuel’s wife and the photos she’d found. He’d worried about Aden showing up at her bookstore, too. Now there was no doubt; Aden knew about the photos. But was Sabine’s finding them enough reason to kill her? He and Noah were missing something. What did Aden have to hide, and who were the men in those photos?
Cullen stormed through the house and went to the guest room, where he found his cell phone. Punching numbers with trembling fingers, he waited until Noah answered.
“What happened?” he said flatly.
“Cullen?”
“Someone tried to kill Sabine.”
“I know. I’ve been trying to reach you but your phone was off. Cullen—”
He couldn’t get a grip on the feelings swarming him. It was such a foreign sensation. “What have you learned about the chopper that fired at us? Has Odie been in touch with you?”
“Your resources are helping, Cullen. It’s just going to take some time.”
Cullen dug his fingers through his hair and stopped trying to hide his unease. He swore and it came from the depths of his soul. He was sick with worry.
“Don’t do anything rash,” Noah warned.
Cullen pinched the bridge of his nose, fighting a too-powerful urge to go to Sabine. To see for himself that she was all right and to keep her that way. All the years he’d worked to get where he was, and he was willing to throw it all away for a woman? He didn’t understand what was happening to him.
“I’ll send more men,” Noah said. “I’ll send twenty if I have to. Cullen, you aren’t responsible for this. Stay away from her.”
Cullen moved across the guest room and didn’t reply for several seconds. When he spoke, he feared it was from his heart and nothing else.
“Don’t send anyone, do you understand? I’ll be there by tomorrow night.”
He disconnected the call and stood staring out the window of the guest room. What was he thinking? If the media was thick around Sabine before, they’d be like ticks on a dog’s ass by now.
He paced the room. Ran his fingers through his hair once again. Sighed hard. Going to Sabine right now was suicide for his career, both with the reserves and his company.
He leaned with his hands against the wall beside the window and shut his eyes, breathing faster than normal. How could he ignore the attempt on her life? How could he go on as though he’d never gone to Afghanistan to free her? As though he’d never made love to her? He couldn’t, that’s how.
No matter what it cost him in the end, no matter how he felt about this unreasonable drive to risk everything for her, he couldn’t stand by and watch the news to find out what happened next.
He had to do something.
Three days after her attack, Sabine folded a towel and stacked it with the rest on the kitchen table. It was late for doing laundry, but she’d had the dream again and had given up on getting any more sleep for the night.
What sounded like floorboards creaking downstairs made her go still. She listened for a while. The washer had finished its cycle but she hadn’t loaded the drier yet, so the apartment was quiet. Another creak sent her pulse leaping. Someone was in her bookstore. Again.
Turning, she lifted the handset of the telephone in her kitchen. No dial tone. Her breathing quickened and she fought that too-familiar fear. Yesterday, she’d practiced for several hours with Buddy, shooting her pistol. If the man who’d attacked her
had returned, this time she wouldn’t miss.
Putting the phone down, she went to her bedroom for the gun, stepping lightly. She slid in a clip and made sure the gun was ready to fire. With a deep breath to bolster her nerve, she left her room and moved carefully to the door leading to the lower level. The hardwood floor was cold on her feet. Pausing at the door, she heard only silence on the lower level, which only made her more nervous. Silence could be more terrifying than any sound. She didn’t like the memory of that.
Turning off the kitchen light, she slowly turned the doorknob. Opening the door a crack, she looked down the narrow stairs. No one was there. She opened the door a fraction wider, not making a sound, aiming the pistol down the stairs.
Assured she was alone and out of sight for now, Sabine stepped down the stairs on tiptoe, avoiding the areas she knew would creak. At the bottom, she stopped to listen. No sound. Not one.
Around the wall, in the moonlight, she spotted a man standing near the back door of her bookstore. He was dressed all in black, and it frightened her to see he also wore a black mask over his head. He was taller than the man who’d attacked her. Bigger, too. At the moment he was pointing a big gun with a silencer through a narrow opening of the door, his back to her as he appeared to be watching for something outside.
She stepped softly toward him. Holding her pistol with both hands, she stopped and aimed for his head. At this distance, she wouldn’t miss if she fired.
He seemed to sense her presence then. His head turned slightly and he went very still.
“Don’t shoot,” he said without looking at her.
His voice flustered her. There was something familiar about it. He raised his hands and slowly turned.
All she saw of him beneath his cover of black was the glitter of his eyes. They were light in color but she couldn’t tell what shade. He was very tall. As tall as…
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