Deception Lake. Пола Грейвс

      Her glare was lethal. “I’ll tell them the intruder was you.”

      “What?” He stared back at her, certain he’d misunderstood.

      “If you call the police,” she said in a calm tone, “I’ll tell them you were the intruder who trashed my place. That you’re an ex-boyfriend who stalked me here all the way from Texas and wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

      Anger built in his gut, hot and painful. “You’d lie about me to the police?”

      Her gaze snapped toward him. “Only if you force me to.”

      “What the hell happened to you?” He lowered his voice, matching her tone. “I get that you probably hate me for the way I treated you, but you were never a liar.”

      “How would you know?” She looked down at her clasped hands. “You never really knew me at all, did you? You only ever saw what you wanted.”

      “I know you were kind.” He watched her fingers twisting around each other, noticed the short, unpainted nails and wondered when she’d stopped getting manicures. It had been one of her few indulgences, her biweekly manicures. She’d been nearly obsessive about nail polish, eager to try all the newest colors and styles. “You were sweet and honest.”

      “Kind, sweet and honest gets you kicked in the teeth,” she murmured.

      “You mean, by drunk and stupid cowboys.”

      She angled her gaze up at him briefly but didn’t answer.

      “I guess I deserve that.”

      Her gaze dropped to the clipboard in his lap. “If you don’t finish filling those out, the doctor will never get to you.”

      With a sigh, he turned his attention back to the papers and answered the rest of the questions. He half expected her to bolt the second he turned his back on her to bring the forms to the reception desk, but she was still sitting there in the corner of the waiting room when he returned.

      “You said your brother-in-law and his wife. She’s not your sister?”

      “No. You know she’s not.” He stared at her, wondering how she could have forgotten the things he’d told her about Emily. She’d held his hand late into the night when he first shared the story of his sister’s murder and how it had ripped away what was left of his family.

      How could she even ask such a question?

      “Mr. Drummond?” A pretty blonde nurse stuck her head through the door leading back to the examination area.

      Jack turned to Mara. “Please stay until I’m finished with the doctor. Let me ride home with you and make sure the cabin’s secure.”

      She just gave a brief nod toward the waiting nurse. “Don’t lose your place in line.”

      With one more backward glance at Mara to make sure she wasn’t already making her escape, he followed the nurse back to the exam room.

      * * *

      HE THOUGHT SHE was going to bug out on him. She could tell by the wary look in his eyes as he glanced her way before following the nurse through the door.

      He was right. She was.

      She waited another minute to make sure he wasn’t going to dart right back out to the waiting room to check on her, then grabbed her purse and headed out the clinic door. Her heart pounding frantically against her breastbone, she looked up and down the street, trying to figure out where to go next.

      Rain clouds gathered in the west, swallowing the setting sun. A few fat raindrops splattered her car’s windshield as she slid inside and sat for a second, willing her nerves to stop jangling.

      She hadn’t even had a chance to think about the man at the cabin, or what he’d wanted, thanks to Jack Drummond and his damn inconvenient head wound.

      How had Jack found her cabin? Did he follow her from the office?

      Why hadn’t she noticed him following her?

      She was losing her edge. Letting Alexander Quinn’s calm competence and promises of protection lull her into a sense of security as false as everything else about her life. The woman she used to be would never have put her trust in an ex-spook with his own agenda.

      She’d have trusted no one.

      She had to go back to the cabin. She had to make sure the intruder hadn’t had a chance to come back and breach the security of the safe room where all her work was hidden, and then, if everything was still there, she had to store it safely until she could get out of Purgatory and find her next bolt-hole.

      She parked her car on a shallow turnaround just off the gravel road leading to her rental cabin, going the rest of the way on foot so she wouldn’t announce her arrival, in case the intruder had come back. She kept her Smith & Wesson pistol in her shooting hand, her finger on the index point above the trigger the way Quinn had trained her to carry a loaded weapon. She supposed she owed him that much gratitude—over the course of the six years since she first met the man in a Colombian hellhole, he’d equipped her to handle the trouble she always managed to find.

      Her cell phone vibrated in the front pocket of her jeans. After an initial jarring rattle of nerves, she ignored the hum and it finally subsided. Probably Quinn checking on her. She’d call him back so he didn’t worry.

      But not before she was packed and ready to get the hell out of Tennessee.

      The cabin lay silent about thirty yards ahead of her, just visible through the thicket of trees. She went very still, watching and listening. The gathering storm was rolling in on a gusty northeastern wind, the mostly bare limbs of hardwood trees rattling like bones amid the whisper of evergreen boughs swishing back and forth.

      But she heard nothing coming from the cabin. Pausing a moment longer, she tried to tap into the old instincts that had kept her alive so far. But she didn’t feel any threat coming from the place she’d called home for the past five months.

      She walked toward the cabin, scanning the woods around her for any unseen threat. She’d made it within fifteen yards of the cabin when a flash of sunlight on chrome snagged her gaze, and she stared with dismay at the big black Ford pickup truck tucked just off the road near her house.

      Jack Drummond’s truck. Of course. In her stupid haste to hurry home and get packed up for her move, she’d forgotten all about Jack Drummond’s damn pickup truck.

      She looked away resolutely. Not her problem. He could get his brother-in-law to bring him to pick it up when he was through at the clinic. Surely she’d be out of here by then. At that point, it wouldn’t matter what Jack Drummond thought.

      She’d locked the front door to the cabin when she left earlier to take Jack into town to the clinic. It was still locked, and after a quick look around the cabin, she reassured herself that she was alone this time.

      Shoving the pistol into the compact concealed-carry holster snapped to the waistband of her jeans, she stopped in the middle of the front room and surveyed the mess. Thanks to Jack’s bleeding head wound, she hadn’t even had a chance to pick up the ruined cushions or shattered lamp stand.

      She wondered how he was doing, and the fact that she was sparing even a second of thought to the irritating man just pissed her off even more. Shoving her concerns aside, she crossed to the mahogany armoire that took up most of the back wall of the dining area and opened the door.

      Inside, where most visitors might assume she kept her dinnerware and linens, was a second door, fitted with an electronic keypad. The perks of renting a cabin from a former spook, she thought with a grimace as she punched in the code and the door lock disengaged.

      Beyond the steel-reinforced door lay a small room about the size of a walk-in pantry, which was apparently what it had been at one time. There had been shelves lining the walls when Quinn bought the place, he’d told her, but he’d removed them to make room for her computer equipment.