“Did you get my messages?” Blake asked, his mouth close to her ear.
Her mind cleared. He was responsible for the bomb threat, she understood suddenly. For scaring the crap out of all those people just so he could get her alone. Cait hadn’t known it was possible to be so angry she literally saw red.
He was grinning at her, cocky, pleased with his tactics. He even removed his hand from her mouth.
She slammed her knee upward into his balls. When he screamed and crumpled, Cait backed up just far enough for her leg to reach full extension; then she kicked him in the face on his way down. There was a distinct and satisfying crunch, and blood spurted from his nose.
Curled into a fetal position on the floor, he was making awful sounds. She stared down at him in contempt and that same, bloodred rage.
“I am sick to death of you! Do you hear me?” When he didn’t answer, she prodded him, not so gently, with the pointed toe of the shoes she hadn’t yet taken off.
He gurgled some kind of acknowledgment.
“I’m calling my brother,” she said in a voice so hard it couldn’t be hers. “When you get out of jail—if you ever get out of jail—I never want to see you again. Is that clear?”
He lifted a wild stare to her. “Jail? What are you talking about?”
“Attempted murder? You…you creep.”
Creep? That was the best she could do? She wanted to kick him again, but he looked so pathetic.
“I wouldn’t hurt you,” he wailed.
“Really? You’re such a good shot you missed on purpose?”
Shock froze his expression and all she could think was, Oh, no.
“What are you talking about?” He pressed his hand to his nose in an attempt to stem the flow of blood. “I hate guns! You know that.”
It wasn’t him. The thought brought her world to a momentary stop. She felt as if she were hanging over space. It wasn’t him.
Someone else wanted her dead.
Still clutching his genitals, he rolled and started to struggle to his feet. That brought Cait back to the moment. She planted her foot on him and pushed him over.
“Do not move,” she ordered. How quick could she grab her phone? Maybe not quick enough. “Did you call in the bomb threat?”
“I just wanted to get you alone,” he mumbled. “And you…you hurt me.”
“Now you know what it feels like.” Her vision was still strange, sharpened and almost but not quite distorted at the edges. “Is there a bomb?”
“No! I wouldn’t do that.”
“But you made the call.”
He made a blubbery noise of acquiescence, blood and snot pooling beneath his face. Ick, she thought dispassionately; he was making a mess on the shiny wood floor.
She turned and walked away, going into her bedroom for her phone, left in her messenger bag. She had it in her hand when she heard the click of the front door closing. Cait went back to the living room and looked out to see him scuttling across the yard, bent over.
She almost stepped out on the porch to remind him that she’d better never see him again, but really, why bother?
The sense of release made her light-headed until a sick rolling in her stomach wiped out any triumph.
Someone else is trying to kill me.
Blake, she thought, had been all about threats and impulse and temper. Whoever had pulled the trigger out on Bond Road that day had been entirely cool—and therefore far more dangerous.
She scrolled for Colin’s last message and touched Send.
“Cait?” he answered. There were urgent male voices in the background.
“There’s no bomb,” she told him.
* * *
SHE’D TAKEN CARE of him? What did that mean?
Noah drove with his grip so tight on the steering wheel, his knuckles ached.
He had barely arrived at the library, already in the midst of an orderly evacuation made disturbing by the frightened faces and the children with their piercing voices saying things like, “Mommy? You said we could check out books. Why can’t we stay? Why are the policemen here?”
He’d gotten out of his SUV and was staring, thinking, My town is going to hell in a handbasket, and I don’t even know why. And then he saw McAllister, who had also obviously just arrived. As he got out of his SUV, he was talking on his phone; then he put it away and spoke intensely to his officers. From halfway across the parking lot, he spotted Noah. Leaving off whatever he was saying, he strode toward Noah. The people he’d been talking to all gaped at his back, as if he’d walked away midspeech.