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But the silence stretched. Even if it had been him, maybe he was gone.
But what did it matter if Jimmy had left tonight? If it had been Jimmy on her roof, if he had found her…he’d be back again.
And again.
Until he was through with her.
So what was she supposed to do?
Be like Cheryl, her beloved sister, who had changed her name and disappeared? If Kim ran, she would endanger Cheryl as well as herself because her sister was safe only so long as Jimmy pursued Kim. Though after tonight, she really wasn’t enjoying this plan too much, either.
Her goal had been to set him up to violate his parole, either by getting caught stalking her apartment or by following her out of state. Of course, the original plan had been to take a short leave of absence and set herself up in a very secure hotel, one that he’d never be able to penetrate, but her dad’s accident had changed all that. Now she was still acting as bait, but in a remote and unprotected location.
Not good.
Bright lights glared and her room began flashing in blue, like a disco invading rural Maine.
The police.
Kim snuck over to the window, peering cautiously through the corner of the glass. A cruiser was sitting in her driveway and there was a uniformed officer walking up the front steps toward her door.
For now, she was safe.
But she was certain the danger was only beginning.
SHE FLUNG THE front door open, where a cop stood in the shadows. She’d made it. Oh, God. She’d made it. She wasn’t going to die tonight. Her knees suddenly gave way and she went down.
“Whoa!” The man jumped out of the shadows and grabbed her, pulling her back to her feet. “You okay?”
Something caught in Kim’s chest at that voice. That husky timbre… She looked up, then felt her world spin into a black abyss. “Sean?”
His grip tightened on her arms, and he pulled her into the light. “Kim?”
It was him. His eyes were tired, his face more bony and lined, his hair shorter than it had been ten years ago, but it was him. “Sean!” She threw her arms around him. “I thought you were dead!” He smelled the same as always. That musky scent that had made a sixteen-year-old girl fall in love, and it seized her gut and tugged.
For an instant, his arms tightened and he crushed her against him and it was as if the past ten years had never happened. They were both eighteen again and the world hadn’t betrayed them.
Then he pulled back and set her to the side and a rift of cold air settled in her chest. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
Wrong? She blinked. Wrong was the cold shadow in his eyes, the rigid set to his jaw that said he wanted nothing to do with her anymore. But what could she expect? It was what she’d wished for.
“Kim? You called the cops?”
Sweat broke out on her forehead again and she hugged herself. “He’s going to kill me.” Her voice was no more than a whisper, but Sean must have heard her because the lines on his face deepened and his expression became harsher.
“What are you talking about?” His hand went to his gun. His eyes became vigilant. He looked all cop, and something else. Something more. Someone who knew how to handle a weapon and who thrived on the threat of death.
Where was the gangly kid she’d almost married? The boy whose only goal in life had been to run the Loon’s Nest alongside her parents? Gone, apparently, replaced by a hard man she didn’t even know.
A man who was here to protect her from Jimmy.
“Who’s going to kill you?” He shifted her slightly, putting himself between her and the doorway, his gaze boring deep into the interior of the house. Searching for the threat.
“Jimmy Ramsey.” Just saying his name made her legs start to shake again.
“Who’s he? Is he inside?”
She was freezing, even though it was a hot, muggy night. Guess fear of death would do that to a person. “I heard him outside.”
“Outside?” Sean grabbed her, shoved her inside the house and slammed the door shut behind them. “Who? Your husband?”
Was it her imagination or did he stumble over that word? She shook her head and clutched her arms to her chest, the old T-shirt hanging loosely off her. “My sister’s ex-husband.”
“Cheryl’s husband?” He frowned. “What’s going on?”
She pressed her back against the door, afraid of the house and its cavernous interior with so many hiding places. “He was in prison and he got out and I heard something on the roof and then he climbed down the side of the building and then you came and I don’t know if he’s still here or…”
Something flickered in his eyes, but he offered no comforting words. Not as he would have ten years ago. “Lock yourself in the bathroom while I check things out.” He opened the powder room door, old instincts apparently directing him to the right place without a second thought. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
She grabbed his arm before he could get away. “Be careful. He’s a cop.”
Sean stopped, surprise flickering on his face. “A cop?”
She nodded. “He’ll kill you.”
“No chance.” He disengaged her grip and guided her into the room, then pulled the door shut. “Lock it.”
His footsteps didn’t take him away until she’d engaged the lock with an audible click.
And then, all she could do was wait.
KIM LEANED AGAINST the door, trying to catch her breath. Her chest was so tight, her hands cold, her forehead hot.
Sean. He was here. At her house. Alive.
And Jimmy was here. At her house. And he wanted her dead.
She groaned and slid down the door to the floor. Her hands were shaking so badly she dropped them to the tiles and let her head flop back against the wood.
What was Sean doing in town? She never would have agreed to come back if she’d known he was around. Even for her sister, she couldn’t have done it. Cheryl had begged her to return to Maine when they’d found out about their dad’s accident because Cheryl was still trapped in hiding and couldn’t come home. For her sister, Kim could endure anything.
Except Sean.
And Jimmy again.
She had no strength left to cope with either of them, not even for Cheryl. She was exhausted, so unbearably tired.
A knock on the door sent her leaping to her feet. Kim smashed herself up against the opposite wall. Was it Sean, or had Jimmy killed Sean? What if Jimmy had come back to finish her off at a leisurely pace?
“It’s me. Open up.”
She nearly collapsed with relief at Sean’s voice. “Is it safe?”
“Yeah.”
Kim inched toward the door and flicked the lock, but the doorknob turned before she could open it. Sean stuck his head into the room, his dark eyebrows knitting when he saw her. She had no doubt that he’d be able to see through her facade and know that she was terrified. For an instant, his face softened and she thought he was going to give her the reassurance she craved, but then his expression hardened. “Come on out. We need to talk.”
An agonizing need to have his arms around her again jolted her into moving toward him, but he turned away before she could reach him.
Nothing. No comfort. No special look. No touch of support, even though he had to know how much she needed it. Regret made her energy sag. Had she done that to him? Changed him from a sweet, doting guy into someone who wouldn’t even touch her arm in comfort? She couldn’t ask. Couldn’t apologize. Where would she start after a decade of silence? Should she try?
He held the door for her and stepped back when she reached him, his eyes cold and distant. Pushing her away. He didn’t want to hear about their past. She could read it in the tight set to his mouth, the way he held his arm so she couldn’t brush against it.
They were strangers now.
Strangers who had to discuss the man who’d almost killed her once and wouldn’t let her escape next time.
Chapter Two
Sean grabbed a soda from the fridge, pulled out a chair with his foot and sat down at the kitchen table. “Talk.”
Talk. God, there were so many things to discuss. And nothing to say.
Nothing except for Jimmy.
Kim sat down across from Sean and tried not to think about how much she wanted him to hold her. Just for a minute, so she could feel secure and loved and warm. Which was stupid. That was the reason she hadn’t wanted to come back. Falling into the trap of the familiar and the safe already, just like her mom had warned her.
A lump came to her throat at the thought of Joyce Collins, as it always did.
Sean fixed his gaze on her. “Jimmy Ramsey. A cop who wants to kill you. Tell me.”
Right. She could focus. She could think. With Sean sitting across from her, his gun on his hip, she wasn’t scared.
For the first time in eighteen months, she wasn’t afraid.
Exhausted to the point of numbness. Freaking out to be sitting across from the man she’d been thirty minutes from marrying. Saddened by the chasm between them and the fact that she’d caused it. But not fearing for her life. It was a start.
“Jimmy is…or was…a cop in L.A. Cheryl met him when he was working at one of the events I brought her to.” What a night that had been. Cheryl had been so excited at the chance to meet a Hollywood star, yet from the moment she’d seen Jimmy, she’d cared about nothing else. “He’s incredibly good-looking, and she was hooked immediately.”
He pulled out a notepad and jotted something down. “Keep going.”
His index finger on his left hand was crooked now, as if it had been broken and healed wrong. What had his life been like in the ten years since she’d left?
“Kim.” His voice was devoid of warmth or familiarity. He was nothing but a cop to her anymore.
As it should be. As she’d wanted. So why did she feel as though a black cloak had suddenly been wrapped around her soul? “Jimmy pursued Cheryl hard, and they were married two months after they met.”
“Two months? That’s not like Cheryl.”
“He was manipulating her, but I couldn’t talk her out of it.” How she’d tried. “It nearly ruined our relationship.” After more than six years of estrangement between her and Cheryl, she’d been too afraid to risk their tentative new friendship by lobbying against the marriage. “So I backed off.” What an awful, horrible mistake that had been.
“And then?” His eyes were intent on hers, but they were devoid of emotion. Empty of warmth. She didn’t recognize them.
She sighed. “Then Jimmy started beating Cheryl up.”
“Damn.”
Exactly how she’d felt the first time she’d seen the bruises on Cheryl’s arm. “After he put her in the emergency room, I talked her into leaving him. The women’s shelter slipped her out of the hospital before he even knew what happened.”
His pen was motionless, suspended above the paper with the stillness of death. Oh, nice analogy. How about the stillness of a snowman on a subzero day? That was much cheerier. No death analogies needed.
“And then he came after you?”
Kim shrugged, but she couldn’t stop the shiver that raced through her body. “He thought he could convince me to tell him where she’d gone.” Plus, he’d been pissed. Really, really pissed.
He set the pen down and leaned forward, his voice no longer quite as detached and clinical as before. “How did he try to persuade you?”
It took two deep breaths and supreme effort to block the image from her mind before she could answer. “A knife.”
He cursed, then shoved back his chair and yanked her to her feet. “Let me see the scars.” His eyes were no longer empty of emotion. They were hot and angry, and something buried deep inside her quivered in recognition of his passion.
She tried to pull away. “Forget it. It’s over.”
“I have to know what I’m dealing with.” But he released her arm. “If he was on your roof, it’s not over.”
Oh, God. Right. It wasn’t over. “So you do think…you think he was here?” Her voice sounded so weak and pathetic she hated herself. Why couldn’t Sean tell her that it had been some four-legged creature and that she’d been a paranoid fool? She lifted her chin and cleared her throat. She would not be Jimmy’s victim anymore. “Did you find tracks?”
Sean hesitated. “It could have been an animal. There are indications of a bear around the house and on the deck near the grill.”
“But you’re not sure?” Why couldn’t he be certain? Why couldn’t he say Jimmy had never been near the house? Dammit. Even a bear with rabies would be better than Jimmy.
“No, I’m not sure.” He cracked his jaw, the pop loud in the silent house. He still hadn’t regained his aloofness, his fingers twitching restlessly by his sides. “So do you have scars or not?”
She shrugged and didn’t answer. Her scars were her own private hell, thank you very much.
He slammed his fist into a cabinet as he turned away, leaving a raw dent in the wood from the high-school class ring he still wore on his finger. He rested his hands on the counter and dropped his head. She could see his shoulders rise and fall with his breath. Guess he figured out the answer to his question on his own. Bully for him.
After a long moment, he turned toward her. His face was reserved again, though he was struggling to contain the emotion rumbling in his eyes. “You didn’t tell him where Cheryl was, did you?” His tone assumed the answer she gave him.
“No. I didn’t.”
He nodded and she thought she saw a flash of respect cross his features. “Did he try to kill you?”
She swallowed. “Yes.” It was when she knew he was going to kill her that she realized she would never be like her mother and accept death as the easy answer. It was sort of difficult to get excited about finding the will to live, given the circumstances at the time, but a part of her was grateful that she’d discovered her strength.
A muscle ticked in his neck, but the rest of him was immobile. “Prison?”
“I testified against him. I put him away.”
