Beverly Long - Hunted

The timing was fortunate in that he’d been here to offer Chandler a helping hand. The McCanns had been family when he’d needed it the most. Now was his chance to pay back some of that kindness.

And one didn’t pay back kindness by jumping into bed with the only daughter.

He needed to focus on offering assistance and getting her back on her merry way. But something didn’t seem quite right. It was almost as if the explanation of her accident had been too easy. She hadn’t seemed embarrassed about her carelessness or even angry. She’d reported the facts calmly with relatively little emotion.

Which made him question whether she was telling the truth.

He rounded the last curve in the path and raised the beam of his flashlight to show the Donovan cabin. Then he turned to look at her. “Still doing okay?”

“Yes. As we were walking, I kept thinking of all the times you, Mack and Brody used to sneak out at night and meet one another. This path was well traveled. You could probably still walk it with your eyes closed.”

“Almost,” he admitted.

“Remember the time I tried to follow you? I got about halfway down the path and it was so dark that I tripped on something. That’s when you heard me.”

It had been toward the end of his last summer here and he and the others had taken a liking to fishing in the lake in the middle of the night.

“Mack tried to send me back. You said I could come but only if I wore a life jacket in the boat.”

He smiled at her. “If Baker found out, I sure as hell didn’t want to have to tell him that we’d taken you out on a lake, in the middle of the night, without a life jacket.”

“The three of you didn’t wear them. As I recall, when Mack and Brody got done fishing, they jumped over the side and swam for a while. You stayed in the boat with me.”

“We were too stupid to wear life jackets,” he said. “You were the smart one.”

“I always appreciated that you stuck up for me. And it was such a cool night, almost magical. I could understand why the three of you were willing to give up sleep to do it.”

Magical. That was a good description of most of his experiences at the cabin.

He stepped up onto the front porch, unlocked the door and pushed it open. He flipped on a light and pointed her toward a chair. “Have a seat,” he said as he turned up the heat on the thermostat. He pulled a plastic bag out of one of the drawers and stuffed it with ice from the freezer. “Here,” he said, handing it to her. “I’ve got some pain relievers, too.” He walked toward the bathroom and came back with a small bottle of ibuprofen in his hand. He poured a glass of water and shook out two tablets. “Here.”

“You should take some, too,” she said. “Your back has to hurt from crashing through those tree limbs.”

It did, but there weren’t that many tablets left in the bottle. He’d save them for Chandler. “I’m fine.”

She sat down in the big rocking chair that he always used, holding the ice on her sore shoulder. She nodded at the book on the footstool. “You read Mr. Donovan, too?”

He nodded. Larry Donovan, Brody’s dad, had been a quiet man who stood a foot shorter than his son. He’d never heard the man raise his voice. Yet he wrote the most hair-raising, nail-biting suspense that Ethan had ever read. “Every book. He scares the hell out of me sometimes.”

“Me, too. I was afraid to even look at a chain saw after I read his last one.”

Molly crowded up next to her, just the way she always did to him. The dog whined and Chandler took the ice off so that she could reach out and pet her. She looked around the small cabin and smiled. “It looks just like I remember.”

He nodded. “Your great-grandfather knew something about building. Both cabins have really stood the test of time. They’ll be here a hundred years from now and probably look the same.”

She leaned back in her chair. “I’m grateful that you were here, that you were able to help me. Are you home on leave?”

He could tell her the truth, that he was on permanent leave because he wasn’t sure anyone trusted him anymore. Was sure that he’d lost his ability to trust. But he didn’t want to have that conversation. “I retired. Had my twenty years in.”

That made it seem simple. Reasonable.

She widened her pretty green eyes. “Really? So what’s next for you?”

“I’m not sure. My plans were to hang out here for a few weeks and then make some decisions.”

“Good for you,” she said. “Maybe you’ll go back to school?”

“Maybe.” There was no need to tell her that he’d acquired both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree online while in the service. With honors.

“Or look for work?” she continued on. “With your experience, you should be fine. I’m sure there’s a good job out there for you.”

Was that a note of wistfulness that he detected? Was her own job in danger? But that couldn’t be right. He thought he recalled Mack telling him that Baker had married Chandler’s boss. “How’s your work going?”

“Oh, fine,” she said quickly. “You know,” she added, waving her delicate hand, “if it was supposed to be fun, they’d call it play.”

He smiled. “I guess. You’ve been there quite a while, haven’t you?”

“Six years.”

“The company is a government contractor?”

“How did you know that?”

He shrugged, not wanting to admit that he always listened closely when Mack talked about Chandler. Maybe it was because he’d never had a little sister of his own. “I think Mack might have mentioned it.”

“We’re a vendor for the Department of Defense.”

“What do you do there?”

“I’m a computer analyst.”

“You followed in your dad’s footsteps,” he said, smiling.

“I guess. Computers have always just been easy for me.”

“I bet you’re good at it.”

She shrugged and then winced when it evidently hurt her shoulder.

“You want some more ice?” He hated that she was hurting.

“No.” She stood up. “But I am really tired. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll just go to bed.”

His mind conjured up all kinds of images it had no business doing. “I promised you a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich,” he said, grasping for the mundane. “And chocolate milk.”

* * *

CHANDLER SHOOK HER HEAD. It sounded wonderful, but she hadn’t been kidding when she’d said she was tired. She hadn’t slept more than a couple hours over the past several days. “I’ll have it in the morning.” She walked over to the kitchen sink and dumped out her ice bag. “How do you think they’ll get my car out of the trees?” she asked, hoping her inquiry sounded casual.

“I imagine they’ll have to bring in a crane. It will take somebody who knows what they’re doing.”

Would it attract a crowd? Would the people who’d run her off the road have stuck around to make sure that she was really dead? What would they do once it was discovered that the car was empty?

Would they start looking around the area? How long would it take them to find her cabin? Ethan’s cabin?

She had to be gone by then. She couldn’t put Ethan in any danger.

“You don’t happen to have an internet connection, do you?” she asked.

He shook his head. “What do you need?”

One more look. Just one more chance to try to figure out if her imagination had been working overtime, like when she read Larry Donovan’s books. She didn’t think so. That’s what had sent her out of the office in a hurry just a few short hours ago.

She wanted to try to remote into her desktop. Not that she expected to be able to. If what she suspected was true, her computer privileges had already been revoked, all permissions associated with her username shut down.