Bridal Reconnaissance

by Lisa Childs

  Frustration had him pressing harder on the accelerator. He could do nothing to calm her fear of the dark—God knew she had a reason to be afraid—but he could get her to her son faster, could get her to the safety of his house in Winter Falls. Home.

  “Amanda, it’s not much farther.”

  “Good.”

  “We’ll be there in less than an hour.” If he kept pushing the speed limit.

  Lights appeared in his rearview, closer than the distance at which Murphy had been following. In fact, he had not noticed Murphy’s lights for some time now.

  “Amanda, hand me the cell phone.” She’d kept it on her lap after talking to their son.

  The lights kept coming, gaining on the Viper despite their speed. As he eased into a curve, Evan accelerated and downshifted, counting on the tires gripping the asphalt. Gravel from the shoulder spewed up behind them.

  “What’s wrong?” Amanda asked as she held out the cell phone to him. With both hands locked on the steering wheel, he couldn’t reach for it. She sat it on the console at his elbow. “Why are you going so fast now?”

  Then she glanced back just as the vehicle, shining high beams into the Viper, edged closer. “Oh, my God, it’s him, isn’t it?”

  Evan rounded the next curve, tires squealing. “I don’t know.”

  But he wasn’t taking any chances. If he slowed up to let the driver pass, he might wind up pushed off the coastal road by the jacked-up truck if it was Weering. Evan wanted to know if it was. In the next open stretch of dark highway, he eased his foot up some on the pedal.

  Amanda’s fingers clutched at the sleeve of his overcoat. “Why are you slowing down? Don’t let him catch us!”

  Evan glanced over and noted the paleness of her face, white but for the glow of the amber dashboard lights reflecting off her translucent skin. “You’re safe, Amanda.”

  She shivered. “I thought you never lie.”

  “Amanda…”

  The squeal of tires behind him brought his attention to his sideview mirror since the high beams in the rearview would blind him. As the two vehicles edged single file around another sharp curve, he caught a glimpse of the side of the one behind them. A pickup truck.

  Amanda’s breath caught. “It is him.”

  “Yeah, I’d bet it is.”

  Playing with them.

  The truck jumped forward, front bumper nearly touching the rear one of the Viper. Such an action could force the sports car off the road. Evan couldn’t allow that to happen. He downshifted and pressed on the accelerator and the clutch. The powerful car shot ahead, fishtailing around the next corner.

  Evan gripped the wheel hard as the car lurched toward the gravel shoulder on the opposite side of the winding road. The shoulder gave way to steep rocky hillside, below which Lake Michigan glistened under a sprinkling of stars in the dark sky. Just as lights from an oncoming car appeared directly in front of him, he maneuvered the Viper back into the right lane.

  In his mirror he spied the truck, which didn’t steer as easily back to the right. Sparks flew into the night as the front fender of the pickup scraped the car going south. The screech of metal grinding against metal rose above the purr of the Viper’s engine.

  “Call 911!” he shouted as he witnessed the other car slide off the shoulder.

  With a shaking hand Amanda grabbed up the phone and punched in the number. “There’s been an acc—someone’s forced a car off the road—”

  “On old 131,” Evan supplied when she floundered, her voice quavering with fear. Would theirs be the next vehicle forced from the road? Not if Evan could control it. And there wasn’t much he didn’t at least try to control…including his own baser instincts.

  He downshifted and slammed on the brakes, forcing the Viper into a U-turn. “I have to make sure those people are all right, Amanda. The police might not get here in time.”

  In time for any of them.

  WHEN EVAN CUT THE ENGINE, silence reigned. No sound. Not even the chirp of a cricket broke the stillness of the night. Then a breath shuddered out of Amanda, as fear gripped her. “Evan…”

  “I have to check on those people, Amanda.” He reached for the handle of his door, but she caught his arm.

  “He’s out there!”

  Evan’s dark eyes shone in the dim lights from the dashboard. He’d left the key turned in the ignition, the headlamps burning holes in the darkness on the shoulder of the curving road. Would that feeble light be enough to find the wreckage? Amanda doubted it.

  “He might be. Or he might be long gone, Amanda. But I’m not taking that chance. You’re going with me.”

  Except for those circles of light, darkness engulfed the small car. She shivered. “I can’t…”

  But then the memory of being alone while he’d gone into the station flashed through her mind. An image of her cowering on the floorboards until he’d returned. Knowing that Weering could have taken her at any time…

  She reached for the handle. “Okay.”

  Beneath the swinging door, darkness and empty air reigned. Stones skittered down the steep hillside. “Evan—”

  But he’d already stepped out of the car. Then he was on her side, lifting her down from her seat, his arms strong and reassuring as he set her on her feet. He kept her sheltered against his side, his arm anchored tight around her, as they scrambled over rocks and scraggly bushes lining the hillside. Darkness hiding the sharp rocks and thorny bushes, as it probably hid other dangers.

  Weering.

  Where was he? Did he lurk in the darkness waiting for an opportunity to attack again?

  Amanda shivered even though Evan shielded her from the cold night wind whipping off the lake. Waves crashed beneath them, frothing on the shore. But before the water, suspended upside down, was the wreckage of the car. Its smashed lights bored into the ground beneath it, glancing off stones and weeds and broken glass from the shattered windshield.

  And more than those crashing waves broke the stillness of the night. Screams.

  Shame over her selfishness lowered Amanda’s head. She hadn’t wanted to stop. She had been too scared of what might happen to her. But these people…they had done nothing to deserve this pain. All they had done was travel the same road where a madman stalked his victim. Her.

  “Oh, my God.” And she prayed for them. “You have to help them!”

  She never doubted that Evan could.

  His deep voice rumbled out of the darkness. “Stay here.”

  “But—” Again selfish fear paralyzed her. She didn’t want to be left alone, didn’t want him to leave her, even though she knew those people were in more immediate danger than she was.

  Clinging heavy to the mist off the lake was the odor of gasoline as it wafted from the wreckage. “You can’t get any closer,” Evan warned her, his dark gaze glittering in the night sky as he leaned close.

  Then his head lifted and he tensed. Noises drifted down from above. The grind of a motor but no sirens, nothing to indicate it was the help she’d called. Then a dark shadow scrambled down the hill toward them.

  Amanda shuddered and drew closer to Evan. “Murphy?” he called out.

  “Yeah,” a female voice grunted, and when the woman neared, Amanda recognized her.

  “I saw you today. At the pawnshop…” And outside the D.A.’s office. She turned back to Evan. “You’ve had someone following me.”

  “And doing a bad job of it,” the woman admitted. “I’m sorry he got past me. You’re okay?” She peered around them to the wreckage. “Oh, my God!”

  “I’m going to see what I can do to help,” Evan said. “We’ve called the police. They should be on their way. Watch her.”

  Because he might still be out there. Somewhere in the darkness she feared so much. Waiting for her.

  AMANDA BREATHED a sigh of relief a couple of hours later when they reached Evan’s home in Winter Falls. Although Evan had shut the front door and reengaged his security system, she didn’t consider those measures enoug
h to protect her. She didn’t think anything could protect her, but this one man who she couldn’t remember seemed to be her best hope.

  A muscle twitched in his clenched jaw and his dark eyes swirled with anger. Not at her. She knew where it was directed—at Weering.

  She followed his long strides down a wide hallway to where the house opened up. Through skylights in the ceiling of the two-story great room, stars twinkled. And the rear wall of glass reflected those same stars off the surface of Lake Michigan far below the cliff into which the house was built.

  A fortress. Impenetrable. And with slate floors, stainless-steel stairwell and stark white walls, cold.

  Some might say the house reflected the man, but she wouldn’t. She had no memory of him on which to base her opinion, but that fire, that anger, burned deep in his eyes, in his soul.

  “You hired someone to follow me,” Amanda stated. A woman who could go everywhere she went without raising suspicion. Bathrooms. Changing rooms. Evan Quade was the kind of man who left nothing to chance.

  “She’s from a security firm—they’re supposed to be the best.”

  She shivered. Maybe the best wasn’t enough, not against a madman. “He forced her off the road so he could pass and get to us. She’s lucky she wasn’t hurt.”

  “And those people in the other car are going to be all right,” she said, not knowing if he needed reassurance, but knowing that she did. “You got to them in time.”

  But their frightened screams from the wreckage still echoed in her head.

  Evan offered her no reassurance now. After that one time in the car outside the gas station, he had never again promised that she was safe. While William Weering roamed free, she would find no security.

  “He knocked them off the road and just drove off,” she said, the horror washing over her again as it had when she’d seen that car, headlights boring into the ground as the crumpled vehicle lay upside down on the rocky hillside leading down to the water.

  Despite the strong gasoline fumes, Evan had scrambled in the dark, over the rocks, down to the car. He had never let Amanda close enough to the accident, though, to see what he saw. What had made him so grim. He had performed first aid until the fire-rescue crew, ambulance and police had arrived.

  “What did you expect him to do?” he asked, pushing a hand through his already tousled black hair as he stood near that wall of glass, staring at the water below.

  “Come back and kill us.” Every minute on that hillside had been pure agony for her despite the presence of her armed bodyguard.

  He’d been there. Watching. She knew it.

  Evan sighed. “Too easy. Too damn easy.”

  She shuddered. “What are you saying?”

  When he turned back toward her, the anger burned brighter in his dark eyes. “He’s playing with you, Amanda. Taunting you.”

  “He wants me to suffer.” She wrapped her arms tight around herself, holding in the tremors of fear. “If he wants to hurt me the most, he’ll hurt my child. That’s why we need to get Christopher tonight.”

  “It’s too late. You know he’s sleeping. And if Weering is following you, he’s safe where he’s at.”

  Safer away from her than with her. That’s what Evan was saying. The truth of that shattered her more than any of the madman’s threats. Her very presence endangered her child. “I can’t abandon my child. I’m the only parent he knows,” she argued desperately.

  Evan winced. “I don’t expect you to abandon him, Amanda. Just let him sleep tonight.” The unspoken at Royce’s, away from you, hung between them.

  “I’m sorry.” She sighed, frustration, fear and exhaustion fraying her nerves. “You really didn’t know that I—that I was pregnant before I…”

  “Left me?” He turned away from her again, shrugging out of his overcoat, stained now with the blood of the accident victims.

  Along with not remembering the past, she couldn’t imagine being with this man, let alone leaving him. Except for that flicker of recognition with his kiss and the ensuing conflagration of passion.

  She licked dry lips, lips that still bore the slight flavor of his rich kiss. “I don’t know…”

  He chuckled, but no laugh lines wrinkled in his face. Was he a man without humor in his life? From the starkness of his house, one might conclude that he had nothing in his life.

  Since she left? A small part of her rejoiced in that thought, selfish as it was. Another mourned.

  “You don’t believe it. You still don’t accept that you are my wife,” he said.

  If he refused to lie, so would she. “No, I don’t completely accept it. I know you probably have proof, but I can’t remember. I can’t believe it unless I can remember.”

  He dragged in a quick breath. “I dumped our coffee earlier. Do you still want some?”

  She nodded, knowing that with or without the influence of caffeine, sleep would prove unattainable for her. “Yes.”

  “The pot’s on the counter, beans and grinder in the drawer below it.” He gestured toward the kitchen, which was in a corner of the great room, separated from it only by a long granite island.

  She stiffened over his lack of manners to a guest. But then, was she a guest? If she could believe him, she was his wife. So even though she had never lived here, didn’t that make this house as much hers as his? She glanced around the deep gray slate floors and unadorned walls and shuddered. This house would never be hers.

  “Fine, I’ll make the coffee,” she said after a moment.

  He hadn’t waited for her acquiescence though as he’d already stridden back down the hall to the French doors that opened off of it and into a den.

  Business.

  Why did she assume that? And why did the thought fill her with resentment?

  Dizzy, she swayed on her feet, gripping at the granite counter to avoid crumpling to the hard floor. Tired. That was all. Fatigue and stress inevitably brought on the headaches and the episodes of dizziness.

  Maybe coffee would help. Forcing her hands to steady, she measured out beans into the grinder, breathing in the rich aroma. In minutes she had set the pot to brew, and the scent increased. Seductively rich. Like Evan.

  And she was alone with him. And despite the starkness of their surroundings, this was even more intimate than the close confines of his sports car. This was his home.

  Would she ever be able to return to hers? To the little house partially paid for by the watch found on her battered body after the attack. But that tiny bungalow had never felt like home.

  No more than this place.

  “Did I ever live here?” she asked, sensing his presence by the enticing scent of his cologne and the power of his personality. She glanced over her shoulder to where he leaned against the granite island across from her.

  “No. I told you before that you never really had a home.”

  “Where’d I grow up?”

  “London, Paris, Rome, Milan…in some of the finest hotel suites in those magnificent cities—that’s what you told me. Never seemed to bother you.”

  “What did bother me back then?”

  “Maybe me. I don’t know.”

  “So that’s why I left. Not because I didn’t want a child.” That reason still gnawed at her. She couldn’t imagine not wanting Christopher.

  His gaze hardened.

  She dragged in a quick breath, not wanting to travel down a painful road again tonight. He had told her already that it was because he’d wanted children and she hadn’t. What kind of woman had she been?

  “So where are my parents now?”

  “Probably in one of those cities. And they’ve moved into the double digits on marriages now.”

  “Combined?”

  “Each.”

  She shivered, not able to accept that she came from people like the ones he described. “Do they…have they…”

  “Searched for you?”

  She nodded.

  He shrugged, but his dark eyes softened with sympathy. “You a
nd your father had a fight before you left. You quit working for him. He’s a fashion designer. He was furious and disowned you.”

  And being a man who could cut off his association with wife after wife, he’d had no problem cutting off contact with a daughter. Had he not loved her at all? Had he only loved what she’d done for his business? Emptiness yawned within Amanda until an image of Christopher racing off the school bus and into her arms flashed through her mind.

  “And my mother?” Wasn’t the bond between a mother and child unbreakable, like hers with Christopher?

  He chuckled. “Mother? You’ve never been able to call her that. When you were young, nannies raised you. She had little contact with you, ever. But you went to her after you left me, or you went to her estate outside Chicago anyway. That’s where you were last seen.”

  And sometime after that she’d fallen into the clutches of a madman. She couldn’t think about that, not now, not when night wrapped around the house.

  “You’re not painting a very pretty picture of the past.” My past. But she couldn’t claim it, not when she couldn’t remember it.

  “I don’t think you thought that back then. It was all you knew.”

  And now that she was a mother, she knew differently. She knew the unsurpassed joy of the first time Christopher had called her mama. She couldn’t imagine never wanting that. She couldn’t imagine any of the past. And did she even want to try? Was there anything worth remembering?

  Besides him.

  Evan would be worth it. Or would he? Would the memories only bring more pain?

  Her headache hammered at her, and she winced under the pressure.

  “Do you want to remember, Amanda?” His dark eyes stared at her, maybe into her, since his question was so perceptive.

  “I don’t know.” She turned back to the pot mounted under the white cabinet. “Coffee’s done.”