With a growl, he started walking through the woods.
7:37 P.M.
Sydney woke feeling not only well rested but also warm and safe and secure.
It took her a moment to realize why.
It was because she had fallen asleep in Dante’s arms.
She might have only known him for a few hours, but he made her believe that everything would be okay. And not just that everything would be okay here, that the two of them would survive, but that everything in her life would be all right. She had been wanting to move on, and Dante was the first man she could see herself doing that with.
The more she woke up, the more she realized that although she liked Dante, and although the feel of him kissing her still lingered on her lips, their situation was pretty dire. It wouldn’t matter that she thought that Dante could be someone she could share her life with if they didn’t make it out of here alive.
Sydney lifted her head off Dante’s shoulder but didn’t move out from under his arm. The weight of it resting on her shoulders was comforting and reassuring and she wasn’t ready to let go of that feeling just yet.
“You’re awake,” Dante said, turning his head to look down at her.
“Yep.” She stifled a yawn. She might have slept, but she still felt exhausted. These few hours were the first sleep she’d had since James brought her here, and that wasn’t enough to erase the fear and terror she’d been living with, or the shock of finding out what really happened to her husband.
“How’s your arm?”
It hurt.
A lot.
And she didn’t do well with the sight of blood, but there was no point in complaining about it. They were stuck here for the time being and when James came back things were only going to get worse.
“It’s fine,” she answered.
Dante cocked a brow at her, indicating he knew she was lying. “Let me see it.”
She didn’t protest when he gently sat her up and lifted her arm, unwinding his shirt which he had wrapped around it. Sydney looked away so she didn’t have to see the bloody gash, but Dante’s tight intake of air clearly communicated the state of her injury.
“Is it infected?” she asked. She knew how dangerous an infection could be. Shortly before they got engaged, Mitch had gotten a simple splinter that they’d pulled out—at least they’d thought they had—but a little piece had been left behind. The wound had become infected, and he had ended up in the hospital for a week so sick she had been afraid she would lose him.
“It is,” Dante acknowledged. “I wish we had some water to clean it out with, but we don’t.”
As Dante wrapped his shirt back around her arm all she could think about now was how thirsty she was. According to her watch it was after seven-thirty, which meant she had been here for almost twenty-four hours. The last time she’d had anything to drink was lunch yesterday. Dehydration was already affecting her, making her feel sluggish and sleepy, and combined with the infection in her arm, was soon going to knock her on her bottom.
“Do you have a plan?” she asked him. He was a cop. He should know a way to get them out of here. If he didn’t, then they’d just have to sit here and wait for James to come back and kill them. She was never going to be able to abide by whatever rules he wanted her to because whenever she looked at him all she would see was the man who had killed the love of her life.
That meant he would kill her.
“I was thinking while you were sleeping.” Dante stood and held out a hand to take hers and pull her up. “That there’s no way we’re going to be able to dig around the metal bars to dislodge them. He’s concreted them in. If we had something to use, we might be able break away some of the rock at the side of the cave and get out that way, but I couldn’t see anything in here that would be useable.”
“So, you don’t have a plan,” she said, defeated.
“I didn’t say that.” He was still holding her hand and he led her to the door James had built in his little cave cell. “I know how to pick locks.”
“Then why aren’t we out of here already?” she asked, energy flooding through her as her adrenalin spiked.
“Because the space between the bars is too small; I can’t fit my arms through.”
“Oh.” Defeat quickly doused the adrenalin.
“Your arms will fit though,” Dante said.
“But I don’t know how to pick locks,” she reminded him.
“You can learn. I’ll teach you.”
She wanted to argue with him, she could never learn how to pick a lock fast enough to get them out of here before James came back but arguing was only wasting time. “Okay, tell me what to do.”
“Do you have any pins in your hair?”
“No.”
“Underwire bra?”
“Yeah.”
“Take it off.”
Again, she could have argued, but what would be the point? She didn’t even turn around, just pulled her sweater off, unclipped her bra, and handed it to Dante. She should be embarrassed having him see her topless but their situation kind of put things in perspective. While Dante ripped the wire out of her bra, she put her sweater back on.
“Come here,” Dante said, coming to stand behind her. His arms on either side of her, he took hold of her hands. “You hold the wire like this, and you twist like this.”
He kept hold of her hands and demonstrated a few times before letting her try on her own. Her movements weren’t as smooth as Dante’s, but she tried to mimic what he had done and after a few goes of practicing in the air she thought she was ready to give it a try for real.
“You can do this,” Dante told her as she stepped up to the gate.
His faith in her helped her confidence and she wriggled one hand through the bars. It was tight, but she was able to get it through.
Now she had to get her bad arm through.
There was no way she could do it with the shirt wrapped around it so she took it off and couldn’t help but get a look at the jagged wound.
It momentarily threw her off, but Dante put a hand on her shoulder and his touch grounded her. Gritting her teeth—she knew this was going to hurt—she forced her swollen arm between the bars.
By the time she managed to wiggle it through, she was panting from pain and exhaustion. It might not seem like much, but she hadn’t eaten or had anything to drink in thirty-six hours, and this high-pressure situation was draining.
“You got this,” Dante told her.
Hoping he was right, she ignored the pain pulsing through her arm and put the two ends of the wire into the lock on the door. It took her several tries but eventually she felt a click.
“I did it,” she squealed excitedly.
“Told you.”
“Yeah, you did,” she said with a smile.
Now she had to get her arms back through the bars so they could open the door. Her good arm was easy, but her bad one had swollen further from the pressure of squeezing between the metal.
“I don’t think I can do it,” she whimpered. Her arm hurt so bad and now she had a headache forming from dehydration. She just wanted out of here. This place was making her claustrophobic, and she didn’t even suffer from the phobia.
“Yes, you can,” Dante said firmly. “Just relax.” He moved behind her again and took hold of her elbow. Sydney closed her eyes and leaned back against his chest, letting him take some of her weight as she focused on not passing out as he somehow managed to free her arm again.
Her relief at being free lasted only a moment, because they weren’t free. They still had to get out of this cave, and they both knew that James could return at any second.
Dante didn’t hesitate. He grabbed the hand on her good side and started to run, pulling her along with him. Willing her legs to function, Sydney ran alongside of him, not quite ready to believe that they might make it out of this alive.
Her pessimism proved to be well founded.
7:59 P.M.
Dante couldn’t believe t
hat they’d done it.
He and Sydney had gotten out of the cage, and now all they had to do was get out of this cave. Once he knew that Sydney was safe, he would find and arrest James and make sure the man rotted in prison.
They worked well together, he and Sydney. If he’d been on his own, he never would have gotten out. There was no way his arms would fit between the bars. But Sydney was much smaller than him, and even though he knew she was in pain, she had sucked it up and done what she needed to do to get them out.
He was proud of her.
She was really something else—beautiful, quirky, sweet, caring, and tough. What a combination, no wonder he couldn’t stop thinking about her.
They were just ten feet from the entrance to the cave when a figure suddenly appeared.
It was James.
The man was naked, and with his long hair and beard blowing in the breeze, and the claws on his hands that glittered as they caught the moonlight, he did look like a beast.
Dante knew there would be no reasoning with this man. There would be no talking him down, no convincing him that the sensible thing to do would be to not resist arrest and let himself be taken down to the station.
Letting go of Sydney’s hand, he shoved her in the direction of the cave entrance. “Run, hide, get as far away from here as you can,” he hissed.
He didn’t stop to see if she listened, he just charged.
For once, he didn’t try to contain the darkness that lived inside him; he let it fly loose. James was right. They were both beasts, and they both hunted prey. They just went about it in a different way.
His body connected with James, and his fists slammed into the other man. With each hit, he released a piece of the anger that had built up inside him ever since he lost his family.
Blow after blow, he rained down on James.
The other man rained down his own bevy of blows, but Dante didn’t even feel them. He was past feeling pain. He was past feeling anything but peace from getting rid of the aggression he kept tightly under control every single day.
He didn’t know how long they fought, but slowly, inch by inch, James began to get the upper hand. He only had his fists, but James had the claws, and from the sharp sting on his arm, he knew that he’d been cut at least once.
“You think you can stop me from getting her?” James growled. “You think you can protect her? You think you can stop me? No one can stop me.”
James raised a hand, the claws were poised above his neck, and Dante thought at least having his neck slashed would be a quick and painless death.
Sydney was safe, and that was all that really mattered.
Just as James started to move his hand, he heard a crack, and James promptly dropped.
There stood Sydney, a rock in her hand staring at James’s limp body.
She was breathing hard. He could see her chest heaving, and in the thin moonlight, he could see her eyes were wild.
Before he could launch to his feet and stop her, she had dropped to her knees and was slamming the rock into James’s head over and over again. Dante wasn’t sure she really knew what she was doing, but it looked like he wasn’t the only one with pent up anger that needed an outlet.
Standing behind her, he grabbed her arm, stopping it before she could smash the rock into James again. With his other arm, he pulled her up and pinned her against his chest. She struggled. She was sobbing, her breathing was erratic, and she fought so hard to get free that he struggled to contain her.
Eventually she stopped fighting.
When he was sure that she wasn’t going to try to go back to breaking James’s skull, he reached over and pried the rock from her white-knuckled grip and dropped it on the ground. Then he turned her around and held her while she wept.
Her tears drenched his bare skin, and in the cold night, they felt like little tiny ice cubes. But he was glad she was letting her grief out; she needed to. He might not be the warmest or cuddliest of guys, but he wasn’t so cold that he couldn’t smooth her tangled blonde hair, and whisper soothingly in her ear.
It wasn’t until her tears finally stopped flowing that he realized that she hadn’t left like he’d told her to.
“What were you thinking?” he demanded, fear over what could have happened to her made his voice come out angrier than he intended.
“You needed help,” she whispered against his chest.
He wasn’t letting her hide like that. Grabbing hold of her biceps, he pulled her back so that he could see her face. “I told you to get out of here, to get someplace safe, why didn’t you do that?”
A little of the fire returned to those gorgeous blue eyes. “One, because you’re not the boss of me, so I don’t have to do what you say. Two, because this was my problem; you were only here because James wanted to kill me. And three, because you needed me. If I had run away like you wanted me to, then James would have killed you. I would have thought you’d be a little more grateful that I was here.”
Dante couldn’t help but smile at her outburst. It reassured him that she was holding it together after everything she’d been through—an abduction, being hurt, learning the truth about her husband’s death, killing a man. Most people would be falling apart right about now.
But not Sydney.
She was too tough.
She tried to pull away from him, but he kept his grip on her. “I never said I wasn’t grateful that you were here. I was. I am. You saved my life. But the thought of him hurting you …” he trailed off.
“What?” she asked, quirking up one side of her mouth. “The thought of him hurting me what?”
“You know what,” he huffed.
“No, I don’t,” she said, all innocent.
“You’re going to make me say it, aren’t you?” he asked wryly.
“Yep,” she agreed cheerfully, obviously enjoying seeing him squirm.
“The thought of that man hurting you makes me want to rip off my own arm rather than see that happen.”
“That’s sweet … I think.” Sydney laughed a sweet, melodic laugh that sounded like music. “Are you going to kiss me now?”
“Oh, yeah.”
This kiss was sweeter than the one they’d shared in the cave. It held more emotion as well. It wasn’t just lust, and it wasn’t just a heat-of-the-moment thing.
This kiss was one that held hope for the future.
6
April 20th
6:31 A.M.
It was too early to go to her house.
Was it even a good idea to go to there?
Dante had been having this same debate ever since he’d arrived home late last night.
After Sydney had killed James, they’d had to hike through the woods for close to an hour before they found a road and were able to flag someone down. He’d called Milla who had called in backup, crime scene, and an ambulance for Sydney.
He’d had to snap back into cop mode once everyone showed up, but while they waited, they’d settled at the side of the road and she had snuggled close at his side. She’d started to crash as the adrenalin that had kept her going started to leave her system, and by the time the ambulance had arrived, she was pretty much out of it. He’d said goodbye and they hadn’t spoken since.
Once he’d taken care of paperwork and gotten the obligatory medical checkup—the dozens of wounds James had inflicted that he hadn’t really noticed until a doctor started tending to them had all been cleaned and bandaged, a couple had been deep enough to require stitches—he received an update on Sydney, learned her family had met her at the hospital and taken her home. He had her address. He could always have gone over there. In fact, he’d driven halfway there before chickening out and turning his car around and going home.
Now, he had to decide.
Was he going to chicken out again or was he going to do something about it?
Last night he had dreamed of Rachel.
The beautiful woman he’d never even got a chance to make his wife had been very different
from Sydney. Rachel had liked fancy dinners and romantic getaways and going to see shows. She was stunning but a little insecure about her looks. She didn’t talk a lot, but the two of them were comfortable around each other so it didn’t matter. Rachel hadn’t had Sydney’s confidence, and he couldn’t have imagined her holding up as well as Sydney had yesterday.
None of that meant he didn’t still love Rachel.
He did.
She was always going to be a part of him. He didn’t want to forget about her, and letting her go, felt like she wouldn’t exist anymore.
Dante knew he was going to have to find a way to balance the love that he would always have for Rachel with his growing feelings for Sydney.
And he did have feelings for Sydney.
Feelings that were growing the more he thought about it.
Which made his decision.
Throwing on the first clothes he could find—jeans and a gray shirt—he grabbed his keys and left. He didn’t think dinner at a fancy restaurant was what Sydney would pick as a first date, but he could guess what she would like.
Making one stop along the way, he drove to Sydney’s house. He was pretty sure that given how they’d left things yesterday that she would be happy to see him. But he’d kind of left her hanging last night, so Dante couldn’t deny he was a little nervous to see her again.
Maybe now that they weren’t fighting for their lives, the attraction between them might have fizzled out. He didn’t think that was the case, but how could he know for sure?
He wasn’t used to these feelings of doubt and uncertainty. He had basically shut down six years ago when he’d lost his family, and it was an odd sensation—all of those feelings coming back. It was kind of like pins and needles. He felt like he was tingling inside as he slowly opened up again.
As much as he hated to admit it, he was scared. Losing Rachel and his family had been the worst time in his life, and it was so much easier to put all his time and energy into his work and not have to worry about the possibility of getting hurt again. If it wasn’t for this feeling of Rachel telling him to go for it, then he definitely wouldn’t be here.
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