Darkness Bound (15 page)

“This feels strange, but it feels right, too,” Leigh said. “We haven’t known each other long but you make me sure I’m safe, and I know I’ve got a friend who’ll be there for me.”

Standing on tiptoe, she kissed his jaw and wrapped her arms as tightly as she could around his neck.

This was as close to walking a tightrope as Niles ever hoped to come. A man could hear what he wanted to hear in a woman’s words. Misinterpretation would be a deadly mistake.

“I like being here for you. Remember, all you have to do is call, as the song goes.” He laughed but the sound was hollow.

Her upturned face seemed all eyes. She looked at him as if she were taking a picture for her memory. Then she smiled slowly.

He kissed her on those soft, upturned lips; he couldn’t help it. And as his tingling skin met hers his own mouth started to open. His arms did their own thing, closing around her tightly, but carefully.

Even through layers of clothing he could feel her breasts against him. Could he risk letting her know he wanted to make love to her?

Not until she knew what he was, dammit
.

It was too soon.

He took his mouth from hers, then landed a small, hard, rapid kiss, a severing kiss, and he spun her away from him. “I want to hear you lock that door.”

C
ONFUSION SHOULDN’T
feel so good.

The door was locked according to orders but Leigh couldn’t move away yet. She settled her hands on the wooden panels, cold all the way through from having been open to the weather, and set her mind to sorting out her impressions of Niles. Of Niles and the way he did or didn’t feel about her.

The kiss wasn’t really over when he drew away.

Leigh’s heart beat hard. She hadn’t wanted him to stop.

Neither had he. Everything about him had let her know he wanted much more but was holding back. She faced the room. The man was a mystery and although she didn’t like playing games, she thought she could get addicted to sorting out the puzzle that was Niles Latimer.

He was trying to give her more time to decide what she wanted, she was almost sure of it. The big question was, how did she let him know without pushing? They seemed
to have a lot in common, one thing being that they were super-sensitive about other people’s feelings.

The photograph was on a table near one of the chairs. Gib hadn’t stumbled across it, because she hadn’t left it in an obvious place in the condo. He had gone through her closet and found it in a box on a top shelf where she had put it for safety.

In the morning she would make a call to the building manager and get the locks changed. That would keep Gib from “checking” on her place again.

She looked at Chris’s face, and saw only his smile while he held her hand to his lips. The satin flowers in her own hair made her chuckle a little. Those had been purely for Chris. Leigh wasn’t a flowers-in-the-hair girl. She had loved the slim white Vera Wang dress she had worn, though.

A wedding day to remember.

How could she ever forget even a second of that Wednesday.

Okay, the best way to be sure no one thought she was hiding from the past was to pull it into the light. Front and center. On tiptoe to reach the high wooden mantel on her favorite of the two fireplaces, she put the photo in the middle. The silver frame was at odds with almost everything else in the cottage.

Time for that brandy
.

She curled up in a chair with the glass, turned off the one lamp still on, and stared into the fire.

Gib had done the opposite of what he had intended. She was glad to have the only photo from that special day where she could see it easily. It felt right.

A smattering of pops on the roof startled her. But she
knew that sound; fir cones tumbling from overhanging branches. She was allowed to jump at anything tonight. But with a few hours between her and what had happened outside she could almost believe she had imagined the whole thing. After all, she had checked her neck again after dinner and there was no mark to be seen.

Tapping on the window jarred her all over again.
Get it together, Leigh.
When didn’t it rain around here? It was a good thing she loved the weather on Whidbey and never felt as good as when she was there.

Leigh looked over her shoulder. Drops hit the window glass and glittered there, but in the weak porch light she saw snow mixed with the rain.

And she saw a shadow appear outside, behind one of the open curtains. Someone… or something… sat down carefully in a chair on the porch and rocked slowly back and forth.

Her heart and stomach went on a collision course. Even breathing through her mouth and closing her eyes didn’t slow the pounding in her chest.

Niles would come if she called—and he would come quickly.

But he had early work in the morning.

Jazzy was no attack dog but she still wished he were there with her. His bark could be useful.

Carefully, she slid from her chair to the floor where she lay still, her face tilted to watch for fresh movement outside, for what felt like an hour.

The shadow figure continued to rock in its shadow chair.

Keeping low, Leigh crawled toward the window, pausing only to take her cell phone out of her pocket. At
Niles’s suggestion she had put his number on speed dial and now she was grateful.

What did she intend to do when she reached the window? Confirm what she already knew—that someone was hanging around on her porch?

No. If she was immediately beneath the window, tight against the wall, she would be almost impossible to see from outside.

The figure got up again and disappeared from her sight.

The chair continued to rock.

Leigh buried her face on the backs of her hands against the floor. Sweat ran between her shoulder blades. She hated doing it but she had to call the police. The darn “smart” phone was so smart it took several clicks and pokes, while the readout light kept going off, to get to the dial pad and punch in the three numbers. Lousy cell reception out here didn’t help.

A male voice asked her what kind of emergency she had.

“Intruder,” she whispered. He was out there somewhere.

The emergency operator repeated the question and Leigh whispered, “Intruder,” again.

“You’ll have to speak up. I can’t hear you.” The voice wasn’t unkind.

A board groaned on the porch. He was back. Leigh put her hand over the phone to hide the glow.

“What’s going on?” the man on the phone asked.

Leigh craned her neck to peer up at the window again. At first she saw nothing different. Then she made out the figure again, leaning against the wall of the cottage, so
close he would be able to look in… or reach the front door in a few strides.

“Hello—”

She cut off the guy on the phone and peered closely at the keypad to find 5 and call Niles.

Niles felt himself swim out of unconsciousness but with no recollection of actually going to sleep. He must have hit the bed without finishing undressing and as good as passed out.

Foggy-headed, a little sick to his stomach, and bathed in sweat, he clawed his way from the nightmare that plagued him when he was troubled.

Shit, the banging in his chest was too familiar. He heard a noise like something whistling over his head. The bullets again. And he felt the sand sucking at his boots, slowing him down.

Desperate, he flung himself from his belly to his back and jackknifed his knees. His head came off the pillow and landed hard against his legs.
“You took your eye off the ball and it cost Gary his life.”

When he was rational, he could justify that whatever had happened to his friend could have happened no matter what any of the rest of them did.

Shadowy figures slipped unseen along the ridge above their heads. They waited until Niles and the others had gone around the next bend, all but Gary, and then they dropped him so fast he didn’t have time to make a sound. Even given his strength, there were too many of them to fight off.

And they had left with him the way they came, leaving no sign of what had happened
.

Niles turned his head sideways and opened his eyes. That was the scenario he had dreamed up, or dredged up from his nightmares, and it repeated itself. Less and less often, but no less devastating when it did come.

His head thumped. He heard the shriek of a bullet again and started to fall backward onto the mattress.

It wasn’t a bullet. He scrambled from the bed and ran for the living room. His cell phone was in the pocket of his parka and he’d dropped it on the couch.

He found the phone but it had stopped ringing. Probably wasn’t important but he didn’t avoid calls. He checked and the last one had been made from a number he didn’t recognize.

Shrugging, he scuffed back the way he had come, looking at the readout. Someone had left a text, too.

Three words: I’m in trouble.

That was Leigh’s number.

Wearing only his jeans, and barefoot, he tore from the house, made it up the bluff in two giant leaps and with the aid of a couple of jutting rocks, and rushed the cottage.

Where was he?

Leigh barely got the three-word text sent when the front door burst open.

She would not throw up, not now. “I’ve got a gun,” she yelled, longing for it to be true. “Stay where you are.”

There was no response, no sound at all except for the softly deadened swish of snow-laden wind through the open door.

Leigh ground her mouth into the back of a hand, willing herself to kill even the slightest sound she might make.

She prayed Niles wouldn’t call back.

A piece of furniture was moved, its wooden legs scraped across the floor. Cold air kept pushing through the door, biting at Leigh’s cheeks. She strained to hear—anything—but there was nothing now.

Except that soft, small beat of a heart she had heard when Niles was still there.

Her eyes stung and she pressed them shut for an instant, clearing her vision. What happened next depended on her and her own wits. She had to do something.

From somewhere out there came the round, echoing hoot of an owl.

Time dragged, second by second. She was hot despite the wind from outside.

She didn’t know what she felt or thought but pressure built in her head. Noises crowded her skull.

Run
. Her only chance was to get ready, then spring for the door. If she could make it to the forest she could lose him. But she would be target practice as she crossed the snow she was sure covered everything by now.

In one smooth movement, she crouched, ready to explode for the door.

A hand on the back of her neck lifted her into the air by her hair and the back of her sweater.

A second hand crushed her face so tightly she fought for air.

W
RONG WAS WRITTEN
all over Two Chimneys Cottage. No lights inside, the front door wide open, and the kind of silence that made Niles’s nerves hum from what he could not hear.