Borrowed Angel

by Heather Graham

  “He’ll be sorry if he interferes,” Harrison muttered.

  Ashley smiled at Norm and waved, assuring him that she was all right. She could handle Harrison herself. He was just an obnoxious braggart. Harrison wrenched her wrist again, pulling her barefoot into the swamp.

  “I hope a rattler gets you, Harrison,” she said sweetly.

  “The coral snakes are the deadly ones, I hear,” he replied. He glanced back at her and smiled, showing gleaming white teeth. “They’re small snakes and bite between the fingers—or the toes of barefoot people.”

  “I think that the snake might well worry about chomping into you,” she said pleasantly. She was starting to tremble. She should have let Norm help her, and let Rafe help Norm.

  They were moving deeper into the savage swamp. Trees and roots grew thicker, with vines tangled in the branches. Muck and mud were beginning to show in potholes. An occasional wild orchid dangled from the treetops. The earth seemed dangerously silent as the sky turned black overhead.

  Harrison stopped very suddenly and Ashley crashed into his back. He swung around, taking her into his arms, bringing his lips down hard upon hers. She struggled against him and found he was surprisingly strong for his lean appearance. His hands might have belonged to an octopus; they were everywhere. He was tugging at her bikini top, and she was afraid that she was going to lose it at any second.

  She managed to jerk her head aside. “Harrison, stop it!”

  “Quit playing hard to get. I saw you looking at me when you were whispering. I saw your eyes. You want it, Ashley, and I’m going to see that you get it.”

  “You’re sick.”

  “I can’t stand it any more. I can’t leave you again.”

  “Let me go, and I mean it.”

  He just wasn’t listening. His arms held her tighter, bringing her flat against his health-spa toned chest. She gritted her teeth and looked up. “Let me go.”

  “Feel it, Ashley. Feel the storm in the air, feel the storm inside me. Feel the pagan earth beneath our feet. We were meant to be. We were meant to be—right now.”

  “We’ve been through this before! Now let me go!”

  He didn’t let her go. He tried to drag her down.

  Ashley was growing desperate. She kicked him as hard as she could.

  He groaned. His hold on her slackened, and she shoved him with all her might. He staggered, bending over, still moaning. Then suddenly he reached into his pocket and pulled out a pocketknife. He flicked it open and pointed the blade at her.

  “Don’t be a fool!” Ashley gasped, feeling stunned. Don’t panic, she warned herself. She’d been in tough situations before. She’d been kidnapped and held at gunpoint once, when Tine Elliott had used her as a bargaining point to get his hands on Tara and Rafe. She hadn’t panicked then and had come out of it okay.

  “Harrison, if you stop this right now, I won’t say anything, and nothing bad will happen. If you come near me one more time, I will accuse you of battery and rape. Do you understand me?”

  “Get over here, Ashley.” He was straightening up, his teeth clenched against the pain.

  She felt the hair rise at her nape and goose pimples appear on her arms. “Harrison—”

  “I can do things for you that you wouldn’t begin to believe.”

  “Harrison—”

  He took a step toward her. She didn’t give a damn about being barefoot. She spun around fast.

  But not fast enough. He caught her arm, wrenching her around. He forced her back against a tree, placing the blade on her throat, then lowering it to the valley between her breasts. He made a quick movement, slashing the bikini top. It fell to the ground. She kept staring at him, hating him. “I will prosecute you to the full extent of the law, Harrison Mosby.”

  “You do what you think you can. Not a man alive who saw you on that rock would call another guilty on a sexual charge.”

  “Rafe Tyler—”

  “To hell with Rafe Tyler. Toss his name up to me again and you’ll really be sorry.”

  He pressed the cool blade against her left breast and smiled. “Now, come on, Ashley, cool down. I know that you liked me when we met. I’ve thought of no one else since. You’re a tigress, honey.”

  “Let me go.”

  “Not on your life.”

  “Someone will come looking for us soon.”

  He shook his head. “No, they won’t. I told Gracie that you and I were going to dinner. No one will come, and no one will wait. And honey, if you want to get away from the snakes and other creepy things, you’ll just have to lean on me.”

  “You’re the creepiest living thing in this swamp, Harrison, and I’d walk the entire distance out of here on my own.”

  He was going to touch her, and she didn’t think that she could bear it. She couldn’t believe that she had sent Rafe and Tara away, and that this was happening to her. She had managed to survive in New York, and thus she had gained a false confidence. But now she was in a swamp with a treacherous storm brewing overhead.

  “Ashley…”

  His free hand closed over her bare midriff and inched toward her breast. There was a knife against her flesh, but she lost all sense of reason. She brought her hands up against his chest, shoving him and screaming.

  He fell backward, flat upon his rear.

  He stared at her with pure, murderous rage. Ashley didn’t take long to think about it. She turned to run as fast as she could. Thunder cracked in the air and the clouds roiled dark and threatening.

  “Ashley!” Harrison screamed.

  She needed to get back to the clearing, to the crew. She had to reach them before they left her here with a storm and Harrison Mosby.

  Suddenly the rain was falling. It didn’t begin gently, with a soft pattering. It poured with a driving, blinding force.

  Ashley tried to trace her footsteps back to the clearing. She pushed past trees and when something brushed against her, she shrieked, certain that a snake had found her.

  She must have taken a wrong turn; she couldn’t find the clearing.

  She heard a loud sound. A loud snorting sound. Her heart thundered in a sudden panic. She knew the sound. It was the sound Henry had made.

  There were alligators nearby.

  She paused, fighting for reason. She pushed the wet hair from her face and blinked against the onslaught of rain. Blackness had descended. She could barely make out the trees before her.

  “Help me!” she screamed.

  Had the makeup and camera crews managed to pack up so quickly?

  No. She could see people up ahead in the darkness. She heard a heavy splashing sound.

  “Help me!”

  She staggered forward. She wrapped her arms around her naked breasts and fell against a tree. She saw that there were three people in rain slickers standing near one of the deep canals. She couldn’t tell if they were men or women.

  She opened her mouth to call out again, but no sound came out.

  One of the figures reached for another, dragged it to its chest, and produced a huge knife. She could see the blade through the darkness and the rain. But she couldn’t see faces—their backs were to her. She just saw the slicker-clad forms and the blade.

  One figure drew the blade against the other’s throat. The body collapsed, just like a deflated blow-up doll. And the murderer very calmly tossed the body into the water of the canal.

  A scream tore from her.

  Suddenly the two remaining figures turned her way and stared straight at her.

  The cold of the rain sliced through to Ashley’s bones. Then thoughts rushed in her mind. She had just witnessed a murder. She could recognize none of the persons, but they could see her standing there, bedraggled and dressed only in the tiger-striped bikini bottoms and her Tyler jewels. She was nearly naked and dripping with emeralds. They would know her….

  One of them took a step toward her.

  She roused from her shock and spun around. Gasping for breath, she turned to run again
. The rain was beating on her so mercilessly.

  She hated the swamp. And now she was racing through it, in a blind panic. She couldn’t find her way. Her feet were sinking deeper and deeper into the mud, and the foliage seemed to reach out and grab her, trying to trap her. Sobs tore from her throat. She was growing hysterical.

  She had to calm down. She had to think and reason, find the clearing, then the road leading away from the snakes and the alligators and the storm—and murderers who stalked their victims in the mud.

  She fell against a tree, bowing her head against the rain, gasping for breath. She heard a snap behind her and pushed away from the tree. She started to run.

  She suddenly found a trail beneath a row of pines. She tore down it, slipping, falling, rolling through the mud. She rose and ran again, keeping her eyes straight ahead.

  But then she slipped again, crying out as she fell into the mud. She came up on her knees.

  Then she saw the boots.

  Someone was standing before her—someone wearing black, knee-high boots.

  She allowed her gaze to rise to the thighs encased in tight denim, to the lean hips and a drenched colorful cotton shirt stretched across a broad chest. She looked up higher and brought her hand to her mouth, holding back a scream.

  His hair was as dark as the night that had come with the storm. His features were hard, his jaw was set, but his mouth was full and sensual. He was a striking, powerful-looking man.

  A man with piercing light eyes that stared down at her, offering no mercy. She stared back at him. She couldn’t help but do so for his eyes held hers—and fascinated and haunted her. He was the most potentially dangerous man she had ever seen.

  A murderer?

  He reached down to her.

  “No,” she whispered. “Please!”

  The rain fell on her, running over the curves of her bare breasts and down the line of her spine. The mud was rinsed off, and all that remained was a beauty. Like a supplicant, she remained kneeling before the tall dark man towering over her.

  “No, please,” she gasped.

  Strong, dark arms closed around her bare flesh, lifting her from the mud. She wanted to scream, but her scream froze in her throat when she met his eyes. They were like the sea, startlingly alive during a tempest.

  She started to struggle and realized she hadn’t the strength.

  “Stop!” he warned her.

  She went still, aware that she could never break the steely band of his arms. She looked into his eyes, aware of their color, feeling the world swim around her.

  “Don’t…don’t hurt me,” she whispered.

  “Hurt you? My God, woman, I’m trying to bring you in from the rain,” he said irritably.

  It was too much. Her eyes closed. The blackness of the storm consumed her, and she saw no more.

  CHAPTER 2

  Ashley felt as if she had come out of a thick fog only to be cast into a field whipped by wind and rain. She was running again, running for her life, down paths with tangled vines and roots. She tripped and fell and ran again. It didn’t matter which path she chose; she always stumbled upon the same thing. Three figures, silent in the storm. And one figure produced a knife that flashed and glittered, and plunged it into the heart of another.

  She ran….

  But she couldn’t escape the vision.

  Then she jerked up, a scream forming on her lips. She held it back just in time, realizing that she had awakened. There were no roots, no tangled vines around her, only muted shadows and darkness. The swamp was not real; she was dry, warm and wrapped in a cocoon of softness. Only the wind and rain were real, sounding as if all the demons of hell had been let loose.

  The murderers were not real, not anymore….

  Ashley shuddered violently, then looked down. The softness she sat on was a queen-size bed covered with a luxurious deep-blue comforter and crisp white sheets. She was wearing a man’s tailored shirt and underneath that…

  Nothing, she discovered. Her sodden bikini bottoms were gone. The Tyler emerald pendant lay cold in the valley of her breasts, and she still wore the ring. But the bracelet and earrings were gone.

  She turned, and in the dim light of the room, she saw the missing jewels. They flashed from a bedside table.

  She swung her feet over the side of the bed and stood, glad to see that the tailored shirt fell well down her thighs. She looked around the room. There was a tall pine armoire and a handsome matching dresser with a brush, after-shave and other toiletries on it. Masculine toiletries.

  Ashley drew in a sharp breath, remembering the man who had accosted her in the swamp. Accosted? No. He had helped her, hadn’t he? He had brought her here, out of the swamp, out of the rain. A peculiar warmth snaked along her spine. This was his room, whoever he was.

  She started to shiver. She’d never seen anyone like him, not with such ebony hair and striking green eyes. She’d never seen features like his—hard, proud, rigid, ruggedly masculine. They were also cold, betraying no emotion.

  Were they the features of a killer?

  “Oh,” she murmured, shivering again. Where was he? Her tongue went dry. She had to get out of there, back to the city.

  What light there was in the room filtered in through a partially opened door. There was another door, partially opened, too. Ashley tiptoed to the first doorway and saw that it led out to a hall—and to the rest of the house, Ashley imagined. He would probably be out that way. Perhaps the second door led to a back exit?

  She tiptoed toward it, pushed it open, and discovered a modern bathroom. It was so dark that she could see little, but she could make out a huge whirlpool tub in front of a glass window. Some sort of shutters had been pulled down over the window outside. She moved closer, trying to see if there was any opening. She bumped her head on a towel rack and swore softly. This was not a way out.

  Her heart started to hammer hard as she wondered anew about the figures in the swamp. She tried to assure herself that the man who had picked her up could not be one of them. Why carry her here? It would have been easier to murder her on the spot. Slit her throat clean through—

  “Stop that!” she whispered to herself. She needed to slip out of the room, find a phone and call a cab. Or she could call the police. Maybe she could sneak by him. Maybe he wasn’t even here. Maybe—

  Stop with the maybes! she chastised herself firmly. She turned around, on her tiptoes again, and came out of the bathroom. She started across the room for the other door, then stopped, a scream in her throat.

  He was there—leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest, watching her. He had been there for some time, she decided. She hadn’t heard him at all.

  She tried to swallow her scream, but it came out anyway—as a little squeak.

  In the dim light, she thought that she saw him smile. He was dry now, too, in jeans and a long-sleeved denim shirt. His dark hair fell in layers that just brushed over his collar.

  “How—how long have I been out?” Ashley asked.

  “A while.”

  “Where…am I?”

  “My house. Were you looking for something special?” he inquired politely. His eyes didn’t leave hers. They didn’t flicker over the length of her once. She had the feeling that he didn’t need to look at her—he already had. And he hadn’t been very impressed with what he had seen.

  “A—a phone,” she said.

  “In the bathroom?”

  “Er, lots of people have phones in their bathrooms,” she said defensively.

  He shrugged. Dark lashes fell over his flashing eyes. “Not in these parts, they don’t, Miss…?”

  “Dane. Ashley Dane.” She gave him her name hurriedly, then she quickly fell silent. What if he was the murderer? What if he just wanted her name so that he could go out and kill all of her friends, too?

  That was insane! she told herself. She was letting her imagination run rampant, and if she wasn’t careful, her imagination would be her downfall now.

&nbs
p; “It doesn’t matter,” he said softly. “The phones are out.”

  “Out?” she repeated. She could be locked in with a murderer, and she couldn’t even call for help.

  “Out,” he said, watching her curiously. His face was enigmatic. He was perfectly polite; his voice was low-key. She sensed that he didn’t think very highly of her. “There’s a storm out there, Miss Dane. A bad one. You shouldn’t have been running around in it. Phones, electricity—everything goes off at a time like this.”

  With that he turned around and left her, walking down the hall. For several seconds she just stood there, frightened and confused. She shouldn’t have been running around! Well, she hadn’t been running around on purpose, what did he think? He hadn’t even asked her what had happened! Could she have told him? He might very well be the murderer.

  No. She determined that he couldn’t be since he hadn’t killed her, and he’d had ample opportunity. She ran after him, passing a few more doors along the hallway and then coming to a large room with stone walls, a fireplace, comfortable earth-colored sofas and carved wood side tables. A counter separated the huge living and dining area from the kitchen. Ashley knew that he had walked into the kitchen but she paused anyway, looking around.

  Candles covered the tables and the counter, giving off a warm glow. She could hear the vicious cry of the wind and the slash of the rain. But here inside, she was safe. And the room, for all its size, was an inviting place. It was curiously decorated, however. There were western landscapes on the wall, and two striking sculptures made of etched buffalo skulls and feathers flanked the doorway. Little straw dolls adorned some of the tables, and a Navajo rug covered much of the hardwood floor. She turned around and nearly jumped, having discovered that he was leaning casually against the counter, and was watching her with his eerie silence once again.

  She gasped, looking from the hard contours of his face to the decoration of the room. “You’re an Indian!” she said, and then she wanted to bite her tongue because the words had sounded so bad when she hadn’t meant them that way at all.

  He didn’t move, not really, but everything about him tightened—his jaw, especially—and his eyes seemed to take on an especially cold glitter. “Yes. How very observant you are, Miss Dane.”