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Torn, shredded, broken. Opened up and strewn all around. The room was trashed in a frantic search for what he’d never find.
“This time he’s gone too far,” he growled. “This is bloody war!” He grabbed what he needed, threw some notes from his wallet on the bedside table and bolted for the pickup.
An odd noise when he opened the driver’s door—a burned-out sizzle—gave him two seconds’ warning. “Run!” he screamed at passers-by, diving headlong on the road.
The truck exploded with a roar of fire.
His body lifted and flew with the force of the blast, landing with a sickening whump on the street. Smashing glass and shrill screams filled his ears as he rolled over and over on the gritty road like a flicked cigarette butt, the untarred mix of earth and gravel ripping his clothes and skin apart. He was almost relieved when he collided with something cold and solid—the makeshift red soil gutter on the other side. He slammed into the dirt wall and fell on his back, trying to catch his breath.
When the screams died down, a crowd gathered around him. “Call the police! This man’s been injured!”
“No cops!” His voice croaked so bad no one heard. A kid went running to the tiny police station at the other end of town.
The game of hiding in the shadows was up. He lurched to his feet and staggered away, his left boot peeling beneath his foot, the afternoon wind stinging his cuts and burns.
“You can’t go now, mister! You need help. The police and ambulance are on their way,” a woman called. “You need a doctor. You have to give a statement. Someone bombed your car!”
“No duh, lady,” he muttered and lurched ahead, bolting on unsteady feet to the dubious protection of the fields outside town. He had to get away. If the cops so much as asked him his name he was a goner, no matter what he answered.
There was only one way he could get out of here now—and she’d damn well better co-operate.
Could the whole world change in a single half hour?
Tessa walked home on automatic pilot. She didn’t even notice she’d reached the faded gray weatherboard of Mrs. Savage’s boardinghouse until she turned the knob to let herself in.
She looked at her hand in blinking confusion. Then she walked inside and wandered to the stairs, looking around her. The polished mellowness of the homey old place, the faded violet wallpaper, the scent of lavender suited the musty, old-fashioned loveliness of the latest Outback town she’d called home. She’d been happy at Lynch Hill…almost at peace. For a little while.
What am I doing? I have to get out of here. Now!
Time to go. Leave the money on the dresser and disappear. The same way she’d left the other four country towns in the past two and a half years, from Queensland to the Victorian border.
“Miss Honeycutt. Oh, Miss Honeycutt!”
She turned to her breathless, birdlike landlady coming in from the kitchen. Her flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes proclaimed she had fresh gossip to pass on. Tessa schooled her features into a smile of polite interest. Don’t give her a reason to wonder about you. Don’t leave her with any doubts or fear. “Yes, Mrs. Savage?”
Mrs. Savage straightened her teased mess of gray hair, with her usual mixture of quick curiosity and cringing apologetic smiles. “I do hope you’re not wanting to take a shower, Miss Honeycutt. I know how you like to rinse off after a hard day, but the water’s off again, and won’t be back on until tomorrow. I phoned the company for you—I know how much you like to—”
“It’s all right, Mrs. Savage. I’m used to country ways now.” While she smiled she mentally tallied what she could pack in ten minutes.
The old lady gave her a little, knowing smile. “Oh, but you must be wanting to freshen up and get yourself pretty—what with your date tonight with that nice man—”
Nine minutes—Tessa’s hand froze on the banister. “What man?” she asked, very quietly.
Mrs. Savage’s face creased with ingratiating innuendo. “Oh, my stars, you’re a lucky girl. He came to see you today. I said you wouldn’t be home till five-thirty, being one of your training days for young Matthew—heavens, you’re early today, it’s only one forty-five! Oh, of course, it’s the Easter break. You let the children leave at lunchtime! Anyway, he said he’d come back at five. Oh, and he asked me not to tell you! He wanted to surprise you. Silly me—! You won’t tell him, will you? What a handsome, charming man he is! That lovely hair—so wavy and tawny, like a lion’s mane—and his eyes, like caramel toffee! He’s so tall, so debonair! Just like Cary Grant on An Affair to Remember—”
Tessa reeled back. Cameron’s here. Oh, God, it’s too late, too late…. Then she came at her landlady like a drunken woman. He can’t find me. I can’t let him take me!
“…and he was so kind to an old lady—”
Tessa grabbed Mrs. Savage by the arms, her hold deliberately gentle. Seven minutes. “You didn’t see me. I never came home.”
Mrs. Savage let out a squeaking gasp. “M-Miss Honeycutt?!”
Tessa pulled the old lady closer, eye to eye, not realizing she was all the more frightening because her hold was so very gentle. “You didn’t see me,” she whispered right in her face. “I never came home.”
The landlady’s rheumy eyes goggled. “But—Miss Honeycutt—!”
You’re scaring her. Tessa closed her eyes. Think, think! You need time to get away, and Edna Savage can provide it! With a lightning change of plan, she released her, and gave Mrs. Savage a deliberately pleading look. “Please, I need your help. Can you help me?”
Mrs. Savage nodded, looking doubtful but willing. “Of course, Miss Honeycutt. Anything at all.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Savage. I knew I could rely on you.” Six minutes. “Keep him waiting here as long as you can. Don’t tell him I came home, that you saw me, or told me he came here. Do you understand?”
The elderly lady blinked. “But—he’s such a nice man! Why would you want him to think badly of you?”
Tessa nearly screamed in frustration. Five minutes. “Please, I’m begging you. I never came home!”
Mrs. Savage gave a doubtful nod. “All right, Miss Honeycutt.”
She sagged in relief. “Thank you.”
Run, Tessa. Now.
She tore up the stairs and shoved everything she’d need into an Indian-weave sack, throwing unwanted stuff on the floor in a frenzy of fear. “Shoes.” Cameron’s here.
“Underwear.” North last time. Southwest before that. I’ll have to head east or south—just nowhere near Sydney.
“Jacket—jeans—”
Oh, dear God, that man probably knows I came home. He must know where I live. If he tells Cameron—
“T-shirts. Windcheater.”
Cameron’s already been here, you idiot! Run!
“Toothbrush. Soap. Toothpaste.”
What if he’s outside now watching me? Or calling Cameron? What if he follows me? What if he makes sure I can’t get away?
“Pyjamas.”
If Cameron gets me—
“Hairbrush. Socks!” She flung them into the sack.
I’ll kill myself before I’ll go back.
She threw the sack over her shoulder, grabbed her wallet and keys and bolted back down the stairs, leaving a small, pitiful mess. The only visible sign of her time in sweet Lynch Hill.
A wailing voice halted her flight at the base of the stairs. “Miss Honeycutt! Please! What can I say to him to keep him here? I’m not clever, like you. I can’t think what to say, and I—”
One minute. She turned on the babbling woman, holding her skinny shoulders. Human contact is nice to elderly people. She’s scared. Reassure her. “Just act normal, Mrs. Savage. Give him coffee. Talk about your life. Tell him I’ll be home soon. Tell him I’ve gone to one of my pupils’ houses after school, or there’s a Neighborhood Watch meeting you forgot about, or Amy’s day changed for art lessons. Make up something. Anything to keep him looking for me in Lynch Hill until tomorrow. Just don’t tell him I came home, or you told me he was here!” She released the woman, hoping to God she could trust her. She picked up her sack. “Please. I’m begging you. Tell him nothing.”
“Y-es.” Mrs. Savage nodded, her eyes still bewildered. “I—I—y-yes. I understand. I’ll do what I can to keep him here.”
Tessa kissed her soft, wrinkled cheek, inhaling her violet-scented powder. Another memory to store, another scent to conjure regret. Another unwanted goodbye. “Thank you.”
“He—won’t hurt me, will he?”
She swung back, realizing with a pang what the dear old lady was willing to go through for her. “No. I swear to you he won’t.” He’ll save that for me.
She pressed a fifty-dollar note into her landlady’s hand. Do the drill fast. “Can you clean up my room before he comes back? Make it look like I’m still here? Keep my things for a week. If you don’t hear from me by next weekend put it all in a charity bin. And please, please don’t talk to anyone about this.”
She threw open the screen door, burst through the open space to the verandah and cannoned straight into a hard male body.
She looked up, saw the face belonging to it, and screamed.
Chapter 2
He was about to force his way inside the faded gray frame house when she bolted out the door and slammed into him.
He staggered back under the twin impact of her body crashing against him and the bag she carried thumping into his gut. The echoes of her first scream still rang in his ears; her second, riding on its wave, hit a new note in piercing pitch.
“Be quiet! I won’t hurt you.” He grabbed her shoulders to steady them both. “Where’s your car?”
She blinked and stared at him; her shrill cry stopped with shocking suddenness. Laughter replaced it, a wild sound of disbelief—but even the cynical twisting of her lips lit her exotic face with all its crooked charm. “You’re really something, aren’t you. ‘Hi, Tessa. Long time, no see. Where’s your car?’”
He grabbed her arm, pulling her with him through the door to the verandah. “Where is it? We’ve got to get out of here!”
The laughter snapped off like a shuttered light. “It was you—at the school today. I thought…I thought—it can’t be him! Then you left…and—but you must have known it was me….”
He pulled her off the verandah and down the stairs, around the faded English gardens to the barnlike garage at the back of the house. “We can talk about it on the road. Just run!”
With the sudden fury of a lioness she lashed out, struggling to break free of him. One fist found its mark, attacking arms and chest already battered; her nails clawed at cuts still open and bleeding. “Get away from me! Don’t touch me!”
He grabbed her wrists, trying to hold her writhing body still. “Have you gone nuts? We’ve got to get out of here now!”
She stilled, panting; then she jerked out of his hold, her face blanched, her eyes glassy. “I thought you were dead!”
He rocked back on his feet. “What?”
“You—they said you were dead—” she whispered.
He blinked and frowned, reasserting mental control. Of course they did. Damn fool he’d been to not think of it before!
Did that mean Tessa had never—
He shook himself. “Well, you can see I’m not. Now that’s established, which car is yours so we can get out of here?” He reined in the fierce desire to shake her—he had to get her trust, and bloody fast. “Every second counts. Get in your car!”
She broke away, bolting to a beat-up brown van. “Thank God, a four-wheel-drive,” he muttered as he threw himself onto the passenger seat. “We’ll need to go over some rough roads to—”
She leveled a small gun in his face. “Shut up.”
He shut up. Yeah, she’d changed, all right.
“Good.” She spoke with a fierce, terrifying quiet. “How much did he pay you to do this? Did you set this up, or did he?”
His heart pounded in sickening rhythm, but he lifted a brow in a show of cool unconcern. If she saw the fear clenching his gut she’d leave him behind on the road alone and unarmed. “Which ‘he’ are you talking about? Your dad, your brother or your husband?”
She held the gun before his eyes without wavering, her vivid, glowing face filled with grim hatred and desperate resolution. Terror lurked beneath the steel in her eyes, held at bay only by the force of her will. “Damn you, David, answer me!”
He reached out to reassure her, but halted as she lifted the gun barrel to level right between his eyes. “Does it matter now? For God’s sake, Beller’s after us!”
Her eyes glittered. “How much is he paying you this time?”
“What?” Paying him? This time? “What the—”
“I hope you asked for more this time. A resurrection’s a rare occurrence. After all, anybody can die. It’s Easter holiday, too—very appropriate. I hope you asked for double time, at least.”
He blinked again. “Are you insane? What the hell are you talking about? And why now? Beller could be here any minute!”
She shook her head, showing her teeth in a fierce smile. “So you’d better prove to me I’m safer with you than him, and fast. Or you’re on the road. Don’t move, David. I know how to use this—and don’t think I won’t. Did you work out this plan, thinking I’d be so shocked by your sudden resurrection from the dead I’d go along with anything you said without question? How much is Cameron paying you to bring me to him? How much?” She was screaming now, her forehead beading with the perspiration of intense stress.
He could feel tiny drops of sweat breaking out on his upper lip; he watched in wary fascination as her finger curled around the trigger, her thumb pulled off the safety catch. “I’ve never taken a cent from your father, your brother or Beller. I’d never sink as low as that.”
The gun wobbled in her hand. “They told me you were dead—and you never came for me,” she whispered a second time. “Why?”
The half-terrified, confused betrayal in her eyes was something he understood—he’d been there. He’d hated this woman every minute of the past six years, and her look, her words said she didn’t exactly hold tender memories of him, either. “When we’re safe I’ll explain,” was all he could think to say.
Explain? What a joke. Could anyone understand the crazy mess his life had become since meeting Tessa?
“This is a scam.” Her voice was a hoarse croak. “You can’t pull a trick on me he hasn’t already tried—and I’d rather die now than go back to him.”
He finally lost it. “Tessa, for God’s sake will you look at me? It’s not just you he’s after!” With a lightning movement he had the gun in his hand, jamming the safety into place, checking the barrel for bullets. “Don’t scream—if I was going to shoot you I’d have done it years ago. Now look at me, woman,” he snarled. “He did this to me because of you!”
Eyes wide with horror gradually unclouded. She seemed to look at him, to take in the blood trickling down his temple, the swollen eye and torn lip, the contorted purpling masses on his arms, chest and thighs through his torn T-shirt and ripped jeans. “If I had a car left I wouldn’t be here. Beller blew up my truck, right in the middle of town. God knows how—I was only gone three minutes. Thank God whatever he used had a faulty timer.”
Or maybe it didn’t? He frowned. Maybe Beller didn’t want him dead—just disabled. Unable to reach Tessa in time.
I thought you were dead, she’d said….
There’s no time to think!
He handed her back her gun with the bullets still in the barrel, sweating on the hope she’d understand the significance of his act. “Your landlady’s watching us from the back window. How long do you think we’ve got until he charms her into spilling her guts? When he knows what type of car we’re in and which way she saw us go, we’re stuffed until we can get a new car. So can we please get the hell out of here now before he kills both of us?”
Her eyes searched his for a moment—the strange, unforgettable eyes of amber and gold that still visited his dreams after six years. Then she started the car and screeched away from the house. But she left the loaded gun on her lap—and whether it was to use on him or Beller he didn’t know.
Right now he didn’t care. He was safer taking his chances with Tessa than an obsessed maniac like Cameron Beller. On a blown-out quiet sigh he said, “Head for the northern highway. We can stay at my place tonight.”
