Douglas scoffs as I start my car. “Then why did she call the emergency line twice this morning?”
“I don’t know,” I say as I drive around the corner, then pull into the nearby park.
“Bullshit.”
I knew that answer wouldn’t be good enough for Douglas, and if I don’t come clean, he’ll call her, anyway.
I sigh as I walk across the open space until I have eyes on Vanessa’s place again. “Someone broke into her cottage yesterday. I don’t know who. He took nothing and left nothing behind.”
“C’mon. You fucking know who did this.”
I know who’s responsible. Bryan Russell is drug-distributing scum who’s been using his job as the hotel manager, along with his connections at other resorts around the country, to facilitate his illegal activities. “I don’t know exactly who Russell sent to do his dirty work. And I don’t know why he struck at Vanessa. Does he think she’s on to his ruse? Or is he trying to warn us away by silently threatening her?”
Either way, I won’t fucking have it.
“My questions, too. Is she okay? Afraid?”
“Fine. A little rattled, but—”
“Where are you?”
“At the park down the street from her place.”
“Watching her?”
As always. “Yes.”
“Have you laid eyes on her recently?”
Actually, I laid a whole lot more of me on her than that. But if I admit that to Douglas now, he’ll kill me the first chance he gets.
“Ten minutes ago.”
“Okay, here’s what I want you to do…”
Douglas Hartley outlines a strategy that’s impossible, given the fact Vanessa isn’t even speaking to me. I’m half listening when I see two men dressed in delivery uniforms, caps pulled low, approach Vanessa’s cottage on foot. One heads straight for the front door and rings the bell.
The other skirts the side of the house and disappears around the back.
“Fuck! I have to go.” I pull my gun free and check to make sure it’s loaded, cocked, and ready. “I’ll call you.”
“Why? What’s happening?” he demands.
“We’ve got company.”
I end the call and take off running. I’ve got to reach Vanessa before these two. I can’t let anything happen to her.
Vanessa
When the doorbell rings a few minutes later, I’m still half-dressed and fuming. If Rush thinks that all he has to do to win me back is come knocking with some charming, aw-shucks apology, I’ll show him otherwise.
With an angry purse of my lips, I stomp toward the front door and peek out the peephole. A delivery driver looking down at his clipboard. Not Rush.
I’m more than vaguely disappointed.
As I reach to unlock the front door, it occurs to me that I’m seeing a delivery man…but not a delivery truck.
Then I hear a horrible metallic clang from my bedroom that sends my heart into overdrive.
Someone is trying to get into my house.
Shit!
I back away from the door, my thoughts racing. If there’s a bad guy in front and another in back, I’m trapped.
Metal strikes metal again, this time louder. I hear a curse, then a squeak that tells me the curtain rod in the slider’s door track is bending under the intruder’s brute force.
I need to do something now. Every second could be the difference between life and death.
Why did I send Rush away?
I race back to my bedroom. Through the slit in the curtain, I see a large boot braced on my patio—and the door heaving on its frame as he tries to shove it open. I’m jittery. It’s hard to breathe. This can’t be happening.
But it is.
I find my phone discarded on the bed I was wrapped up in with Rush thirty short minutes ago, when life was so bright and full of hope. Then I dash around to my nightstand and withdraw my gun as the doorbell rings again. The supposed delivery driver adds an insistent rap, too.
I’m scared.
Phone in hand, I stare at my screen. Call Rush or 911? I know what Daddy would want me to do, but Rush is gone. I can’t throw him out and then call him back to rescue me. Well, I probably can but—
The thug at my back door gives another savage yank on the slider and pries it open enough to wedge his boot inside my bedroom. I’ve wondered squeamishly if I could shoot another human being.
Time to find out.
As he struggles to wedge his body through the narrow opening, the curtain rod groans under the pressure. I set my phone on the nightstand. Then I point my gun at his foot, wincing before I even pull the trigger, then shoot.
After a deafening bang, he howls and curses. His foot disappears from the opening, and I wrap trembling fingers around the handle, trying desperately to shut the door again.
Suddenly, I’m grabbed from behind viciously by a hand in my hair and a hiss in my ear. He strips the gun from my trembling fingers and tosses it across the floor. “You should not have done that.”