“I’ve seen enough therapists to talk like one, but I’ve also seen Ariel’s crystalline aura, and Loretta has seen her huge soul. Your sister is as tough as you are. Her brain is simply wired weird, like mine. I don’t know how she’ll deal with Roark.” Evie glanced up at her much taller, darker cousin emerging from the cottage. “Are you sure we can’t move him?”
Iddy shrugged. “He’s been through a lot. I think he passed out, then just fell asleep. I’d let him keep sleeping. His feet are badly blistered. I suspect he’s been doing a lot of walking to reach here.”
“Where he feels safe.” Evie turned to Jax. “Your friend. Your sister. Your call.”
Knowing Roark’s penchant for trouble, Jax grimaced. He’d have to trust Evie. “I don’t like it. Ariel won’t like it. But he’s a good man, and I have a feeling we’d better hear his story before we take him anywhere he might be in danger.”
Reuben emerged from the van. “Eh, boss, I got a few leads. Should I send them to Ariel as warning?”
Jax rubbed his head. “Do I want to hear this?”
His phone beeped. So did Evie’s. While Iddy shrugged and headed for her car, Evie and Jax checked their messages. Reuben’s text included a newspaper link.
Explosion rocks small town in rural Louisiana.
Oh yeah, that was Roark, all right.
Four
Roark’sempty belly roused him. He was used to that. Sleep helped. But an oddly sweet fragrance forced his senses to saynot right.Waking more, he noted the texture of fluffiness.Fluffy?
Figuring a bear would have suffocated him by now, he wasn’t too worried, just curious. He lay still, tuning into sounds. Water dripped. A computer beeped. That blamed critter down by the pond croaked. But he didn’t hear people. Where the hell was he? He peeked at whatever was covering his bare chest. A pink fluffy blanket?Pink.
He didn’t generally wake disoriented or hallucinating. He closed his eyes and scrolled back his memories...Ariel. She’d shot him.
He wasn’t dead. He rubbed his hand over his chest. His filthy shirt was gone. Had she removed it? Roark didn’t think that possible. Ariel didn’t touch people, and she was half his weight. She couldn’t have moved him... Where the frigging hell was he?
Sharp hearing had allowed him to survive Afghanistan and his childhood. He froze and tuned his senses wider. Still not sensing anyone nearby. How the hell could the woman not breathe?
Moving nothing more than his eyelids, he scanned the dimly lit room. Light filtered through onepink-curtained window. Shelves of plants surrounded it. Bookshelves lined the longer wall in front of him. He sat in a recliner tilted to make a bed. Behind him appeared to be more shelves.
It wasn’t a prison box.
Relieved, he found a way to raise the chair upright. From this position, he could see his duffle. Discarding the pink bunny fluff, he got up—and realized he wasn’t wearing jeans. His bandage had been changed. What the...
No way had Jax’s prissy sister done that. He dug out a tank top and khakis. Then, considering the woman who’d smothered him in pink fluff, he added a denim work shirt. The cottage was air-conditioned. His travels hadn’t been. He needed a shower.
He needed food. That had been his earlier objective, when the damned fool woman had shot him. With what? A stun gun?
Cautiously opening his door, he peered into the dimly lit hall. The door across from this one was closed. He’d spent a lot of time guarding Jax’s fragile kid sister to make sure she’d adapted to her new abode. He knew Ariel routinely rose at two in the afternoon. Gauging by the sun, it had to be after noon. His opportunity to escape unseen was limited.
The cool wood floor felt better on his battered feet than his worn army boots. He still winced as he crept to the kitchen. Opening the refrigerator, he discovered all the makings for sandwiches on a shelf, waiting for him. Ariel wasn’t that domesticated. Someone else knew he was here. That could not be good.
He dug into the cold bean soup, not wanting to make noise with a microwave. He slapped ham between bread and tore at it while quietly navigating the small kitchen to the front room—Ariel’s giant play area. She’d been busy adding to her equipment since she moved in.
All the screens were dark, but a light gleamed on the laptop when he opened it. He hit a key and a selection ofguestorownerpopped up. He clicked guest and the window opened... to show images of the explosion in Whitesville.
He mentally cursed in three languages.She knew. Ariel already knew.
That’s when he glanced at the clock on the computer screen. Four o’clock. The damned woman was awake and lurking. How much had she told the others?
Judging by the food in the refrigerator—Evie. And by the duffel and the chair—Jax and Reuben.
Game over. He needed to claim his van and get out of here.
He didn’t want his friends involved. This was on his head alone. But how could he make them back off while he figured out what to do? He slugged from the bottle of water he’d found in the refrigerator and pondered his options. He didn’t want to drag innocents into this.
He picked up a cell phone lying beside the laptop. It didn’t have a password and opened to pictures of him sneaking up to the back door. The freaking, scary female had added her own cameras to the security system he’d installed. She was flaunting it by leaving the phone where he’d find it.