Killer's Prey

by Rachel Lee

  It also began to compress his time scale.

  * * *

  Two weeks later, Nora was enjoying increasing health and increasing confidence. Jake had given her a half dozen lessons in self-defense, and while she wasn’t trying to hurt him, he was teaching her things that would hurt if she used full force. Ways of breaking a hold, ways of making a man much bigger at least temporarily helpless from pain.

  She especially liked the one about bending a finger or two back. She could do that, for sure.

  Jake began to let her exercise all the horses in the corral, although he still had Al handle the saddling beforehand. A good thing, too, she admitted, once she tried to lift a saddle. Maybe if the horses hadn’t been so tall, but she had struggled and been forced to admit she couldn’t yet do it.

  A small defeat, one she was determined to overcome.

  In fact, determination was filling her. Her nights became less troubled, although the fear that nagged at her hovered around the edges of every thought. That man would come. She knew it in her heart, and it kept her alert every single minute, even out on the ranch, where she should have felt safer because she was never alone and she’d be harder to find.

  But as her determination grew, so did her defiance. She went to town four days a week to work on the archives. She made herself leave the security of the library to walk to the diner for lunch.

  But she had almost given up looking for her own place. Jake had made it clear that he was going to create reasons for her not to do that at least until her attacker was caught.

  And there was the other thing, looming almost equally as large in her mind: her father. She didn’t want to see him. Not even for a moment on the street.

  Unfinished business, she thought one evening as she and Jake curled up near the woodstove in his living room, reading. Lots of unfinished business, especially with Fred Loftis. All that therapy, and being around him could still turn her into the frightened, diminished, ugly duckling he had raised.

  She didn’t need that right now, and she was so grateful to Jake for giving her haven.

  Then there was the unfinished business of Jake. He might have explained what had happened twelve years ago, but he had also said things had changed, they had changed and it was now firmly in the past.

  She wasn’t at all sure about that. While she had done a decent job of shedding the pain he had caused her and forgiving him, there wasn’t one damn thing she could do about the attraction she still felt for him.

  He had held her, surely to comfort her and for no other reason, but it remained that the feel of his naked chest against her cheek, the feel of his warm, smooth skin beneath her hands, had been branded in her mind and yes, dammit, in her groin. Trickles of desire plagued her every time she saw him, and she had to create swift diversions of some kind to distract herself.

  He didn’t want her. He’d said he had wanted her back then, but that was back then. How much clearer could he make it?

  The weather had turned colder, a dusting of snow remained on the ground outside, but inside near the stove it was plenty warm. Warmer, perhaps, because of the direction her thoughts kept taking.

  She couldn’t prevent herself from looking up over the top of the book she was reading to study him as he sat in his own chair a few feet away, scanning a book or a magazine.

  He kept up with a lot of stuff, from ranching to animal husbandry to policing. He seemed to have an endless thirst to know all he could, and only occasionally drifted into a novel or some other subject.

  He’d talk to her about it some when she could think of an intelligent question, but little by little she was coming to an appreciation of the odds he was fighting as a small-business owner. The world seemed to have little room for independent operations anymore.

  But he never complained. He just said he needed to work harder.

  Rosa interrupted her bouncing balls of thought by appearing with the nightly mugs of hot chocolate. Nora was certain they were slowly growing spicier with chili pepper, and she liked it. She never would have imagined combining chocolate and chili, but it worked.

  “I’ll say good night now,” Rosa said as she always did. “Al is waiting.”

  Al came every night to walk her back to their little bunkhouse.

  “Thank you,” Nora said. “Can I ask a favor?”

  Rosa lifted a brow. “Of course. But what could I do for you?”

  “You could find some ways for me to help around here tomorrow. I don’t have to work, and being a lady of leisure isn’t what I’m used to.”

  Rosa smiled, a wonderfully warm expression that Nora was coming to love, and laughed with the comfort of someone who felt everything was right in the world. “Of course! It’ll be fun to work together!”

  “Wow,” Jake said after Rosa departed.

  “Wow?”

  “She’s always seemed to get offended anytime I try to wash a dish or clean the shower after myself. It’s her job, she says.”

  “Well, it is. But maybe it’s different because I kind of told her it would help me.”

  He winked. “Next week I’ll have you pitching hay in the barn.”

  “Try me.”

  “I just might.” A smile creased the corners of his eyes, and she felt punched by attraction to him. “It’s good to see you regaining your strength so fast. When you first got here, I wondered if you ever would.”

  She lowered her book, thinking about it. “There was a lot more stress back in Minneapolis. A lot more. I was closer to the whole situation—there were the cops, the newspapers, losing my job, all of that. I don’t think it helped.”

  “But here you can relax?”

  “A whole lot more.” She didn’t mention the nagging terror she couldn’t quite forget. Sometimes she wondered if that terror would ever go away, even if they put that guy behind bars for life. And she still couldn’t bring herself to think his name, let alone say it.

  “I’m sorry,” he said suddenly. “I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories. I’m just glad to see how much stronger you’re getting. Even your hair is thickening.”

  She reached up self-consciously and touched it. “I don’t know why it seemed so stringy before. And it can’t have grown that fast.”

  He shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe when you’re not well it just shows everywhere.”

  “Maybe.”

  Then out of the blue he said, “You know, you were pretty in high school, but you’ve grown into a really beautiful woman.”

  Her mouth opened in astonishment and disbelief exploded in her brain, yet at the same time she felt her cheeks grow hot as fire, as if his compliment had embarrassed her beyond belief. All she could respond with was a weak protest. “Jake!”

  “It’s true.” His smiled widened a bit. “I just thought you should know. The ugly duckling you probably felt like has turned into a swan that would attract every guy with eyes to see.”

  Maybe, she thought almost desperately, guys with eyes to see were in some special class.

  “Didn’t mean to embarrass you,” he said after a moment. “Someday I just hope you can see yourself through a pair of eyes other than your father’s.”

  What a sweet thing to say, she thought as her eyes stung with emotion. What a very sweet thing to say. She didn’t believe it for one minute, though. Maybe she had a pretty enough face now that she was filling out again, maybe her hair looked better, but she didn’t even have to close her eyes to remember the angry red scars on her body. They’d repulse anyone, and it might be years before they faded to silvery, puckered lines.

  “Thank you,” she said finally.

  “You don’t have to thank me for the truth.” He shifted, placing one ankle on his other knee. Then he put his magazine aside and reached for his cocoa. He looked so relaxed, so masculine in the way he sat, in his jeans and flannel shirt, that her heart skipped a crazy beat.

  Oh, hell, she couldn’t stop herself from reacting. All she could do was keep it to herself so she didn’t suffer anoth
er massive humiliation.

  Like the one this man had delivered twelve years ago. She might have forgiven him, might even believe the explanation he had recently given her, but the wound remained, a reminder of just how badly she could be hurt in ways beyond the physical.

  And now her body was covered with other wounds, as well.

  Hell, she thought again. Hell. Life could be such a bitch sometimes.

  “I have to work tomorrow,” he said. “Are you going to be okay out here with Rosa and Al? Or would you feel better in town with me?”

  She’d always feel better around him, she realized uncomfortably. He seemed like a bulwark lately, but it would be foolhardy to rely on him. He was just being nice. Helpful. Maybe making up for his past sins, for all she knew.

  Yes, she’d feel better at the library with Emma, but Emma wouldn’t be there tomorrow and it wasn’t exactly a busy place. Hiding out in the back office there archiving might be okay, might be out of sight enough, but...

  She caught herself. Hadn’t she been learning self-defense from Jake so she didn’t have to live in constant terror? At some point she needed to stop letting other people and her fears dictate every moment of her existence. At some point she needed to take control again the way she had when she had left for college.

  She had done it once. She could do it again.

  “I’ll be fine,” she said.

  But she didn’t quite believe it. Almost as if there was some kind of timer or countdown clock inside her head, almost as if the very universe was conveying some kind of pressure, she could have sworn she felt that man drawing closer. As if she were a fly caught in a spiderweb and could feel the web tremble as the spider crawled toward her.

  God! She put down her book and jumped up, overwhelmed by a sudden urge to flee, although there was nowhere to run to. What was she supposed to do? Get a car and drive endlessly around the country until they caught the guy? Her savings wouldn’t last very long that way. This wasn’t the only way to end this problem.

  But sitting here waiting for something she was convinced was inevitable was like being constantly stretched to breaking on an invisible rack of terror. She might repress the feelings for a while, but they always returned, reminding her that she never, ever fully relaxed.

  She couldn’t. She even had to force herself to resume her seat.

  So was she sitting here in some web? Unable to tear away in time? He would come. She knew deep inside that he would come for her unless they caught him first, and with each passing day hope that they’d find him was vanishing.

  “Nora?”

  She realized that panic must have blinded her, because all of a sudden she found Jake squatting in front of her, reaching for her hands to squeeze them firmly.

  “Nora?” he said again.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Damn, I wish you’d stop apologizing. It’s your first response to nearly everything. You’re scared, aren’t you?”

  She managed a jerky nod. “Sometimes it swamps me,” she whispered.

  “I’d be surprised if it didn’t.”

  He rose, then bent over her, scooping her up in his powerful arms as if she weighed nothing at all. Compared to one of those big bales of hay, she thought almost wildly, she probably didn’t.

  He pivoted, then sat with her in his lap sideways. One arm wrapped her shoulders, the other her hips. For a long time he just held her, as if willing his strength to fill her. Or as if his arms were a defense against the big, terrifying world beyond them. If only.

  Once she had dreamed of him holding her this way, the innocent wish of a young girl. Now it was happening and she couldn’t even enjoy it. Fear had once again pierced her too deeply.

  “I wish I could make promises,” he said, as her head rested on his shoulder. “I wish I could promise that he’ll be caught before he gets within a hundred miles of you. I wish I could promise I’d find him before you ever set eyes on him. I wish I could promise you’d be safe forever.”

  “I wouldn’t believe you,” she whispered.

  “Nor should you. I’m just wishing. If I had the power, I’d erase this whole thing from your life.”

  “I’d still be in Minneapolis,” she murmured. For once, that didn’t seem like such a good thing. As he held her, she knew that being here, just as she was, appealed to her more than recovering her old life. As if she could. Those days would never come back.

  “I know. And I’d have been very sorry to have missed this chance to get to know you again. If none of those bad things had happened, I would have missed this.”

  At first the words struck her poorly, but then she realized what he was saying. He wouldn’t have missed her if she’d stayed away, but now that she was back, he felt he would have missed something but for her return.

  A little kernel of warmth sprouted in her heart, easing the icy world she had entered the night of the attack. “Thank you. I’m glad to be getting to know you, too. We’ve changed a lot.”

  “For some of that I say, thank God.” His tone sounded faintly humorous. “Looking back at my teen years seldom makes me proud. Amazing how egocentric we are at that age.”

  “It’s normal.”

  “I’m sure it is. But it’s still amazing in retrospect. In some ways we were so full of ourselves, so sure we were going to do better than our parents, create a better world, solve all its problems. I doubt you were part of some those conversations, but a gang of us would sit up late into the night, busy talking about how things should be. I don’t rightly notice that many of us changed a damn thing when push came to shove.”

  “We’re still young,” she remarked.

  “Yeah, but still. You at least helped little kids.”

  “And you keep us safe from drunk drivers.”

  “That doesn’t quite measure up to creating world peace,” he said ironically.

  She tipped her head back a little but could only see his chin. Stubble had begun to sprout there, indicating that he had a heavy beard, one he seemed remarkably good at shaving away every morning. “We each do our little part,” she said.

  “I guess. And small enough it seems sometimes. But man, we used to dream big. Now I’d settle for just being able to keep one woman safe.”

  She turned her face into his shoulder and sighed, letting go of a piece of the perpetual tension. “You make me feel safer,” she admitted quietly.

  “I’m glad. I just wish I could guarantee it.”

  There was no answer to that. Not a one. She was still trapped in the web, and she could still feel it vibrating with threat.

  “I feel,” she admitted reluctantly, “as if he’s getting closer. I know that sounds crazy....” She trailed off. It did sound crazy.

  “I don’t know,” he said after a few seconds. “He might be smart enough to get the hell out of the country, but from what you said...”

  She bit her lip, turning her head so her cheek once again rested against his shoulder. “I studied serial-killer psychology in college.”

  “My God, why?”

  “Part of studying deviant psychology. We had to know at least some of it in order to recognize warning signs. Anyway, we got into it some. They’re compelled, Jake. They’re not in control of themselves all the time. The need comes over them like an altered state of consciousness, and starts driving them. How long they have before they act can vary, but once that need takes over, they’ll act eventually. Some killers pick their victims at random, strangers off a street, by the way they look, or move, whatever. But they start hunting as the need grows.”

  “You think this guy is hunting you?”

  “I don’t know that he’s a serial killer. I don’t know that his psychology deviates that way. But I know how he responded to defiance or any sign of resistance. My survival was defiant. That’s how he’ll see it. I’m sure of it. So yes, I think he’s hunting me. I don’t think he’s going to leave the country until he’s done teaching me his lesson.”

  Jake swore. “Okay, I’m g
oing to tell Gage we need to get on even higher alert somehow.”

  “How can you? There are just so many cops and deputies around here, and a lot of wide-open space. This place is more porous than a sieve. You don’t need me to tell you that.”

  For a long time he didn’t say anything. “Then I’ll keep you with me every damn moment.”

  “That’s impossible and you know it. You have a job. Two, actually. But I can’t ride patrol with you all the time. I have a job. I need that job. I’ve got bills, like everyone else. I need a car. I’ve got to work—my savings won’t last forever.”

  Again he fell silent, his arms holding her a little closer as if his embrace could somehow solve the problem. “I’m definitely talking to Gage in the morning,” he said. “He knows people. All kinds of people. I’m sure there’s something we can ramp up.”

  “Or I could be wrong, and he could be smart enough to run.”

  She felt him shake his head. “You’re the psychologist. I’m betting on your instincts, not some pie-in-the-sky hope. Better to spend the resources and not need them than not have them and need them.”

  That seemed to close the subject. He was determined to do anything he could, and at some level that helped. Just knowing somebody gave that much of a damn helped. She wasn’t alone.

  It had been a long, long time since she had felt that way.

  He surprised her by reaching up to tip her chin toward him with his fingertips. Then he utterly astonished her by kissing her, just a gentle, brief touch of his warm lips against hers.

  Instantly every other concern flew from her head. That a kiss could have the power to fill her with heat, to expand the nagging need deep inside her into an aching pool of fire, amazed her. Every cell in her body suddenly seemed to want to reach out to him.

  “You’re not alone,” he said, as if he’d read her mind. “And as long as I breathe, you won’t be until this is over for good. I mean that.”

  It was a vow. She wasn’t sure how he could keep it, but it felt good, settling into her like a warm, cuddly blanket.

  Amazing to realize that never in her life had she felt as cherished as she did right then. Not her parents, not a boyfriend, not any friend, had given her the feeling that promise did.