Kerry Connor - Strangers in the Night

She couldn’t see it, but she could sense him smile. “You let your accent slip back there in the street. You’ve got it back now. Pretty good, I have to admit. I never would have guessed.”

Was he telling the truth? It was certainly possible. She’d been half out of her mind back there.

He took advantage of her momentary silence to step forward again, forcing her to retreat just enough for him to step inside and shut the door behind him. Not bothering with the lock, he reached over and flipped on the light.

The glow from the single yellow bulb wasn’t enough of a shock that her eyes needed time to adjust. The light flared and then there he was, exposed to her for the first time.

He was just as intimidating in the light as he’d been in the dark. His face matched his body. Shaggy black hair crowned a head composed of sharp features and hard angles. He was older than she’d imagined for some reason, maybe forty. Lines were carved into thick grooves around his eyes and mouth. He wasn’t a man anyone would describe as handsome. He was too hard. Too cold. Too purely masculine in a raw, elemental way. Unyielding. Dangerous.

She found her voice at last. “Who are you?”

“The name’s Ross. I’m a bounty hunter.”

“I hate to break it to you, Ross, but there’s no bounty out on me.”

“I’m not after you. I’m after Taylor.”

A bounty hunter. She almost laughed out loud. All the people who were after her, and the one who’d caught her was looking for someone else. He’d found a lot more than he’d bargained for and had no idea what he had.

“Your turn,” he said. “Who are you?”

“That’s none of your business.”

He grabbed her arm before she could move, his fingers digging through the layers of clothes. “Lady, anything and everything related to Roy Taylor is my business. That makes you my business.”

She didn’t even blink. He’d lost the ability to shock her after that last bombshell. “No,” she said quietly, forcefully, looking him straight in the eye with one arched brow. She jerked out of his grasp. “It doesn’t.”

She noted with some satisfaction the hint of frustration that entered those pale gray eyes. It was quickly replaced by a far less-encouraging hard determination.

One corner of his mouth curved in challenge. “Then you won’t mind if I call the police and report what happened tonight.”

The police. Her heart lurched in her chest at the notion. If there was anyone more dangerous to her than Taylor, it was them.

“I don’t have a phone.”

He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket. “I do.”

She kept her expression impassive. “Do what you want. I’m going to go change.”

Then she was moving again, quickly, before he had a chance to react. She dodged into the bedroom a few feet away—the benefit of living in an apartment roughly the size of a postage stamp—and slammed the door shut behind her. The lock on the door wouldn’t give him much trouble if he tried coming after her. She flipped it, anyway, willing to take what she could get.

She was across the room in a flash. Her backpack was sitting on the mattress where she’d left it. Thankfully she hadn’t set it by the front door like she’d originally planned. Grabbing it, she moved to the bedroom window. It slid up silently at her touch. She created enough of an opening to fit through, then tossed her backpack through it, following a second later.

She landed hard on her hands and knees on the cold metal of the fire escape. It swayed beneath her. She ignored the motion—there was no time to be afraid of anything but the man who’d be coming after her at any moment—slung the backpack over her shoulder and hurried down the fire escape. With each step, it felt like she was moving too slow. Her feet kept slipping on the framework, her hands struggled to find purchase every time she fell. There were only three flights down to the street. It might as well have been a hundred. She glanced down and all she saw was darkness.

Fear lodged in her throat. She swallowed it back with the same ruthlessness with which she’d done everything so far. She couldn’t give in to fear. There was no time for it.

She finally reached the end. She’d have to jump the rest of the way. She dropped her backpack over the ledge, using the sound of its landing to judge the distance to the ground. A few feet. She could make that. She had to.

The landing jarred every bone in her body. It hurt, but not enough to signal anything was broken. Even before her body stopped weaving in an attempt to steady itself, she grabbed for the backpack, threw it over her shoulder and plunged forward into the night.

Two steps later she ran into a wall. Again.

An iron hand clamped down on her forearm. She jerked her head up in shock to face the man who loomed over her. Her first thought was that it had to be Ross, but then she realized it wasn’t. This man wasn’t quite as tall or broad. The uneasy sensation that skittered along her nerve endings warned her he was infinitely more dangerous.

“Gotcha,” he sneered, and her alarm skyrocketed.

“I don’t think so.”

The familiar voice came from behind her, startling both her and her captor. Almost as the words were spoken, she was yanked out of his grasp. He barely had time to lift his head before a fist came out of the darkness and landed a blow to the chin that sent him crashing to the ground.

Her savior spun her around to face him. She looked up in shock to meet Ross’s steely glare.

“How—”

“Back door,” he said, his voice grave. “There’s something you need to understand. I’m not stupid.”

His tone revived her anger. “You have to be. A smarter man would take a hint.” She dropped her gaze to the hand fastened to her arm like a vise. “If you want to keep that hand, I suggest you remove it.”

“Fine.” She was so surprised by his capitulation she didn’t even realize what he was doing until he had the cuff fastened around her wrist.

Outraged, she jerked at the metal ring affixing her arm to his. “Get this off me!”

“Do you really want to argue about this now?”

As if on cue, the man at their feet let out a soft groan.

Ross arched a brow at her. “Another friend of yours?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know who he is.”

“Well, we can wait for your new friend here to wake up and see what he has to say about it. Or maybe we should wait for Taylor to show up.”

“I told you I don’t know any Taylor.”

“And I told you I don’t believe you. Take your pick, lady. Taylor or me.”

She scrambled for another option and came up empty. She just knew she didn’t want to stand there arguing with him. Like it or not, Taylor was out there. “Fine,” she said through gritted teeth. “Let’s get out of here.”

She moved first to take the lead. Ross didn’t give her the chance. He surged forward toward the rear of the building, pulling her with him.

He stopped at the back of the building to make sure it was clear. Once he’d ascertained it was, he started moving again without saying a word. There was nothing for her to do but follow.

For now.

T HE SEDAN had New York plates.

Taylor barely glimpsed the license plate out of the corner of his eye. He was halfway down the block when the fact sank in.

After a half hour of aimlessly wandering the streets, he’d doubled back to the main one where the bar and the drugstore where the woman worked were located. Being on foot was getting him nowhere. He could cover more ground in his car.

But he’d kept alert on his way back, searching for any sign of the woman, paying attention to everything that fell within his range of vision.

Like the sedan with New York plates.