She also didn’t want her attacker knowing her location.
A stitch formed in her side after a minute of running, causing her to lose her footing. She fell to the wet ground, wincing when the twigs and branches that had fallen from the trees cut into the palms of her hands. She forced herself up, finally glancing over her shoulder to see if he’d somehow caught up with her.
The clouds overhead chose that moment to cover the moon.
Though the trees had lost most their leaves, their dense population only made the night seem even darker. She still had every intention of running to the house that couldn’t be too far away now that she’d cut through the woods. Unfortunately, the pain in her side multiplied until she was forced to press the item in her hand just below her ribcage.
It was The Widow Taker’s mask.
A sob caught in the back of her throat at the realization that she’d been stabbed by a serial killer. Her attacker must have done it at the same time as when she’d plunged a knife in his leg. She pulled the mask away to see how bad her wound was, but it was too dark to tell how much blood flow was actually coming from the gash. It was only then that she realized the damage she’d done to her hands and feet.
She was completely exposed to the bitter cold elements that surrounded her.
She had no boots, no jacket, and no gloves to protect her from the gusting winds weaving their way through the trees. The snow that had managed to land on the ground was now causing her feet to go numb. She couldn’t hear anything over the blood rushing through her ears, so she forced herself to go still and exhale slowly through her trembling lips.
Silence.
How silence could be so loud was astonishing, but it seemed to surround her as she strained to hear the slightest noise.
She was unable to contain her gasp when she heard something rustling behind her. She spun around one more time. Luck was finally on her side when a moonbeam cut through the overcast sky and upper tree line. There was no one directly behind her, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that he was close by.
She had to keep moving for two reasons—another possible attack and the fact that she would bleed to death if she remained here. She cautiously backed up step after step, trying her best not to cry out in pain from the stab wound to her side.
Only when her desperation for safety became overwhelming did she turn around and run.
Chapter Two
Ridge Killian stoked the fire that he’d made in the woodburning hearth to keep the chill of the night at bay. The home that he’d purchased three months ago was more of a log cabin than the other New England style cottages in the area that had been on the market last October. It suited his personal style more, even though it had needed a bit of work after being lived in for many years by an elderly couple who’d ended up retiring somewhere in Florida. Like most elderly couples, they had lost the ability to keep up with the constant demands of maintaining a house of this kind.
Log cabins came with their own set of headaches.
He’d actually contemplated the Sunshine State after his honorable discharge from the Marine Corps, but he’d been in too many countries where the humidity had been either too high or so low it sucked the life right out of a person. That was not even mentioning the sand that got stuck in places it had no right to be. He’d never quite figured out how on earth those annoying sand particles could get inside a brand-new tube of toothpaste.
If Ridge were being truthful, he’d missed the change of seasons during his long deployments to places where there was never any green shortage of poppy plants growing in the fields of a local warlord.
It was also nice to be near family, though his parents were currently in Europe visiting his brother who was still in the Air Force. It had been Kyle and Ridge’s Christmas gift to them, and he’d dropped them off at the airport yesterday for a month-long stay.
These last few months had been an adjustment of sorts. Ridge was having trouble not constantly searching out danger in every recess of his surroundings, looking for dead animals on the roadsides which might hide IEDs. It was an everyday struggle unto its own not to continually evaluate his security posture, but he’d been managing to pass the time with the home projects that he’d initially chosen for the cabin. Not carrying a weapon everywhere that he went made him feel vulnerable and exposed, which most likely was why he felt somewhat better when there was no one around to witness his lack of ease.
His father had been helping him renovate the kitchen cabinets, which currently made it somewhat difficult to cook meals since some were already dismantled. Ridge had eaten at the pub earlier, though it was rare that he went to a public place like that alone. It was much too crowded for his comfort level, and he preferred to stay at home and grill a good steak, nuke a potato, and grab a handful of salad out of a premade bag.
Police cars had been pulling up in front of the pub as he’d been leaving, but he hadn’t stuck around to see who’d been lured into a bar fight because they couldn’t hold their liquor. He’d learned the hard way to stay out of someone else’s business, just as he expected others to steer clear of his.
The gusting winds battering against the side of the cabin were getting stronger as the evening wore on, but he’d secured all the loose items outside before winter had descended. He’d policed the grounds almost daily since he’d purchased the property. Nothing was in danger of being damaged by the gusting winds. Besides, only an inch or two more of snow had been predicted to fall by morning.
Still, he figured the meteorologist had gotten his report wrong on the evening news. The front would probably stall, in his opinion. Ridge’s shoulder had begun to ache the way it did right before a stormfront came through the area. He’d learned to gauge the weather by the depth of the pain.
He set the fire poker into its slot on the upright base off to the side of the hearth before standing, studying the firewood as the logs shifted, sending embers high up into the chimney flue. He’d checked the spark arrestor on the roof as part of his own home inspection. He was confident it would do its job.
The crackles and pops being emitted from the burning wood added a relaxing element to the evening. The smell of the dry wood was unmistakably seasoned oak. He planned on settling into his recliner, finishing up the latest Lee Child novel, and enjoying a hot cup of black English tea in the process.
Ridge hadn’t even made it to the kitchen when one of his motion alarms was set off near the west side of his property. He veered toward the office that had his security cameras set up to monitor every likely avenue of approach, which just so happened to be the majority of the property line. The layered perimeter security system was one of the first things he’d installed upon the purchase of the cabin, along with several secure gun safes. His parents had thought it was massive overkill, but he knew more than most of the dangers that hid in the dark.
He’d seen the beasts of war firsthand, and they all had that same look in their eyes.
He’d also been the one to take them out of this world and send them straight off to hell.
Ridge didn’t hasten his step, having come to accept that the wildlife living in the woods preferred to take their traditional game paths through his backyard. Just because he’d moved in didn’t automatically alter their patterns of behavior. There was one twelve-point buck who always led the way, cautious and aware in his own right for the health of his older doe and their offspring, of course. He would have sworn that the deer had actually stared directly at the networked trail camera that had been tucked securely in between two upended logs near the far corner.
Since it was so overcast tonight, the images on the monitor almost had a green hue to them after they’d shifted to night vision when the light had dimmed below a programmed level. Other than that, the picture was as clear as any television show that was aired in high definition. To his surprise, it wasn’t a deer that had emerged from the thick foliage.
It was a woman…a wounded one, from the look of her gait.
&nb
sp; He rested his palms on the edge of the credenza to study the screen a little closer.
A woman wearing nothing but a long-sleeved white shirt and what looked to be a pair of black workout pants had come full stop to stare at his back door. She was hunched over holding her right side and paused long enough to glance over her shoulder. She wasn’t wearing a jacket, had no shoes on her feet, and her body language screamed stark panic.
“Son of a bitch,” Ridge murmured, quickly pushing off the credenza and resting his right hand next to the fingerprint entry pad of his safe and pressing the initiate scan button.
In under a second, a scan of his index finger had commenced and unlocked the door that swiftly flipped down and revealed an Elite Model Sig Sauer p220 .45 ACP. It wasn’t his preferred weapon, but it would do the job under any circumstances.
As he hurried out of the office and through the living room, he unconsciously hit the light switch in the kitchen as he made his way to the back door. The dark interior would make it harder for an enemy to see their movements once he had her safely inside. He’d already determined that she probably wasn’t being chased by a bear or some other large predator from the way she was dressed.
She’d most likely come from inside a home.
Someone had obviously chased her out into the harsh elements unexpectedly, but not without injuring her first.
“Help me…please!”
The bite of the cold was hardly noticeable as he carefully took stock of his surroundings, the flurries falling from above too sparse to hinder his view. His security system was set with motion sensors in overlapping layers, which used audio tones inside his home to indicate if they’d been triggered. The camouflaged video surveillance cameras had battery backup and power-over IP connections buried eighteen inches underground. The cameras triggered separate, independent floodlights for different sectors of the property. The other parts of the acreage remained quite dark, telling him that no one had tried to breach those areas coming from those distinctive approaches.
That didn’t mean someone hadn’t been smart enough to stay outside the visual range of the sensors and within the shadows of the tree line.
Ridge wanted to clear the area before going to her aid. She’d already made it halfway between the tree line and the cabin, all the while attempting to look over her shoulder while holding her side. The light that was angled overhead was trained directly on her, which was how he could see just how profusely she was bleeding from her wound. He could also see the blood trail that she’d left in the snow and had already mentally estimated the severity of her wound.
The moment she reached him, he pushed her inside so he could begin to visually make a second sweep of the area. He completed a full one-hundred-and-eighty-degree scan with his weapon trained on the tree line, only then allowing himself to close the distance to her location just inside the door.
“Help me,” she called out again, staggering backward when she tried move in order to let him inside to secure the door. He reached out with his left hand and caught her before she could fall to the floor. He ensured his firearm was still at the ready as he glanced behind him. “He’s coming. He’s back there somewhere.”
Ridge did his best to listen for any sound coming from deep within the woods, but he couldn’t hear anything over her labored breathing. She was half-frozen and losing blood, and he recognized the signs—adrenaline was the only thing allowing her to stand.
He didn’t want to remain an open target in the doorway, so he had to practically hold the woman against the wall as he secured the back door. His security system would reset in seconds after they were out of visual, thus alerting him to anything or anyone else emerging from the shadows after they were safely tucked away inside the cabin.
“Let’s get you some medical attention,” Ridge said quietly, retreating from the back door. He hoisted her onto one shoulder and carefully walked her over to one of the kitchen chairs before glancing back at the locked door. It was heavy oak that would require more than a bit of effort to force open. A quick glance out the window over the sink revealed nothing but the scattered flurries slowly drifting to the ground, giving the average citizen a false sense of security in thinking the danger had passed into the night. “Alright, why don’t we—”
Ridge turned back just in time to see the woman’s eyes flutter closed before she shifted sideways in the chair. He caught her right before she slid to the floor, letting out an expletive that echoed around the kitchen. Not willing to let go of his weapon, he managed to swing her up into his arms and take her into the living room, purposefully leaving the lights off in the kitchen.
He laid the woman down on the rug in front of the fireplace, hoping the heat of the flames would be enough to keep her warm until an ambulance could reach them. He quickly tucked his weapon inside the middle of the back waistband of his jeans before reaching for the afghan on the couch. He needed to know what he was dealing with first, so he moved her hands gently to the side that held some type of black material and lifted up her shirt.
The knife wound was evident, even with all the blood surrounding the gash.
Ridge hated to cause her more pain, but he needed to stem the bleeding as much as possible, which required pressure. What she had was too soaked to reuse, so he pressed the afghan tightly to her side, not surprised when she gasped in pain.
Upon closer inspection, he noted that she had multiple cuts and scratches mainly on her right cheek from what had to have been low branches smacking her in the face as she ran through the woods to make her escape. He could only imagine what the bottom of her feet were like after trekking through snow and debris of the uneven terrain.
“Y-you need to call the p-police,” she whispered as she fought the need to let the darkness take over. With as much blood as she’d lost, he was surprised she’d made it as far as she had in the freezing cold. The heat from the fire was causing her body to react with a steady shaking, and her teeth had begun chattering to help the warmth do its job. “H-he tried to kill me.”
“We need to get you to a hospital first,” Ridge explained, taking her blood-soaked hand and placing it over the afghan. “I want you to press this against your side as hard as you can. I need to call for an ambulance.”
“Call the p-police,” she reiterated adamantly, her brows frowning in what had to be a mixture of irritation and pain. “H-he could still be there.”
The woman rattled off her address, but he didn’t move until he was assured that she would continue to keep pressure on her wound. A few scenarios went through his mind, the foremost being that she’d been in a domestic dispute. What mattered now was getting her the help that she needed to survive the attack.
The police could deal with the aftermath later.
“I’ll take care of it,” Ridge promised her, purposefully pushing off the ground and retrieving his cell phone from the side table. He didn’t hesitate to call 911 as he walked toward his office. He was able to see from the monitors on the credenza that no one had attempted to approach the house from any angle. He knew better than to relax his stance, though. “Yes, my name is Ridge Killian. I live at…”
Ridge gave very specific details so that the dispatcher would understand the severity of the woman’s injuries, the caution the police should take when approaching her residence, and the fact that he was armed and ready to repel any further aggression. It wouldn’t do for a police officer to be caught by surprise in a dangerous situation like the one that presented itself this evening.
Ridge set his phone to the side after putting the call on speaker, so that he could quickly retrieve some dish towels in the kitchen. They would be easier to use, more absorbent, and simpler to maintain a hold of in order to prevent her from bleeding out. The wound was to her right side, so there was a good chance the blade had either nicked an artery or her liver.
It crossed his mind that he had some QuikClot in his field medical bag, but that was a treatment of last resort. It scarred an individual permanentl
y, though it would keep the patient from bleeding out. Surgeons hated the aftermath of using the substance, though. It literally burned the open wound, cauterized the blood flow, and basically ignited it by chemically reacting with the iron in the blood. He quickly decided against it, and instead grabbed one of the larger throw pillows before settling in beside her and propping up her feet.
“Nice job. Look at that, sweetheart,” Ridge praised, removing the bulky afghan from her hands and pressing one of the dishtowels against her wound. He could see that she was still bleeding, but he made sure that his facial expression was void of any concern. It wouldn’t do any good for her to think that she wouldn’t see the sunrise. “You’ve got the bleeding under control. You want to tell me your name?”
“Did you tell the p-police that—”
“The police are on their way, along with an ambulance,” Ridge assured her, pressing the dishtowel tighter to her side. She winced in pain, but she never once complained. She was a fighter, and she clearly wanted to see justice served on the prick who’d done this to her. “Tell me your name.”
The woman wrapped her cold fingers around his wrist as she sucked in a painful breath, but she didn’t try to remove his hand from her wound. Her teeth were still chattering every now and then, and she’d lost a lot of color in her cheeks. He’d seen his fair share of injuries in the field. The quick arrival of the ambulance would make all the different in this case.
It was imperative that he keep her awake and not allow her to fall into shock. It was the sole reason that he’d propped up her feet and not her head. He’d walked the 911 dispatcher through everything that he’d done so far while never taking his attention off the woman.
“I-I think it was The Widow Taker,” she whispered, still not revealing her identity. Her lashes fluttered against her cheek. “He…”
The Reclusive Widow (The Widow Taker Book 3) Page 2