Slowly, she nodded her head, then motioned to the bedroom window. She then pointed toward the back of the house. The duplex was a two-bedroom, and the back bedroom served as her anything and everything room. The room’s sole purpose these days was to house her various projects, some finished, many not. Unlike her bedroom, the spare room had two windows, one of which opened on her neighbor’s driveway.
He dropped his hands and she instantly mourned the loss of h t as he stepped around her. He snatched her bag from the bed, then motioned for her to follow.
Her heart raced. Whether from the intensity of the situation, or the way he’d gotten all up close and personal with her, she wasn’t about to hazard a guess. Or maybe she didn’t want to know because then she’d have to face what that said about her.
She crept behind him, wondering exactly when she’d turned into a cat in heat. Maybe it was lack of nooky causing her so much trouble. It had been a while since her last relationship, provided a few late-night booty calls with a friend with benefits even counted as a relationship. Why else would she be seriously lusting after a guy she hardly knew?
Correction—she really didn’t know him at all. And what she did know confused the hell out of her. If ever a man existed who was a contradiction in terms, it was Charles Rolston. He didn’t behave like a guy with a possible price on his head, all because he’d done the right thing. Sure, he was essentially a rat. Why else would a couple of big scary dudes be after him? But he’d probably saved lives. Thousands of lives. Maybe that explained the air of confidence he carried. He was totally in charge of the situation, and that was sexy as hell.
He paused in the hallway and motioned for her to wait. Crouching low, he rushed into the living room for his own bag. The one where he’d had a gun hidden, she thought, narrowing her eyes. What else did he have in his carry-on garment bag of tricks?
A brusque knock at the door made her flinch and forget about the contents of Chas’s garment bag. Her racing heart stuttered and she struggled to remain calm. Hard to do when the sound of her own heartbeat was nothing short of deafening.
Instead of returning to her, he crept to the front door. Dammit. What the hell did he think he was doing? They were supposed to be making their escape out the spare bedroom window, not playing peek-a-boo with the bad guys through the keyhole of her front door.
The doorbell pealed, the dull sound coming from the side kitchen door. Great. They had the place surrounded. She made a strangled sound when Chas looked in her direction. She frantically waved for him to join her, but he held up a finger, telling her to wait a minute. She gave serious consideration to showing him one of her fingers, too, but when he backed away from the door and crept over to her, she decided not to be rude.
“Same guys,” he whispered when he rejoined her.
Okay, so he’d been right about their tracking down her home address. Score one for the bean counter.
She heard the back screen door squeak and knew it was being opened. Good thing she hadn’t oiled the hinges, like she’d been meaning to do for weeks now.
“Did you lock the back door?” she asked him.
“No.”
Oh. My. God. They were coming into her house? Uninvited ? She nudged his shoulder, hard, and pointed toward the back bedroom again.
She was filled with such a deep sense of urgency, it was next to impossible for her not to run like the Devil himself were on her tail, but she stuck close to Chas as if she were glued to his back. Just as they cleared the threshold of the spare bedroom, a floorboard creaked, telling her the guy had to be in the small dining area just off the kitchen.
“Move,” she whispered as quietly as she could. She motioned toward the window. “He’s in the living room.”
She was so not cut out for this bodyguard business. She’d bet in all the years Craig ad Perry had been in business, they hadn’t had to sneak out of their own houses to avoid a pair of hired thugs with nefarious intentions.
Chas had the window open and the screen removed in record time. “Go. I’ll hand you the bags,” he whispered against her ear.
She shook her head and motioned for him to go first. Just who was the bodyguard, here?
His look was stern when he shook his head in opposition. To emphasize his point, he swept her into his arms and started her feet first through the window. With no choice but to comply, she perched her butt on the sill, then jumped to the ground. She landed with a loud slap on the concrete below, courtesy of her flip-flops.
He handed the bags through, then promptly followed—about a second too late. A muffled shot cracked the air, sounding more like the snap of a very large twig than a gun, until she realized the guy had a silencer.
Fear pounded through her. “Hurry,” she shouted.
Chas jumped to the ground and shoved her ahead of him, shielding her with his linebacker-wide body. She barely registered the scene, her mind focused on the fact that they’d just been shot at—by a very bad man.
Oh, God.
“Run,” Chas ordered roughly.
She didn’t argue. She flew up her neighbor’s driveway and skirted around a garage, then cleared a three-foot gate like a track star, only to come to a screeching halt in front of her neighbor’s elderly Newfoundland, Phoebe. Phoebe was a big, furry sweetheart of a dog, once she got a whiff of you. But with her eyesight not quite what it used to be, the old dog barked if a leaf fluttered in a tree two doors down, like she was doing now.
“Shhh,” she hushed when Phoebe wouldn’t stop barking.
“This way,” Chas called to her from the other side of the fence.
“No,” she called back. “I know this neighborhood. You don’t. And neither do they.”