Anne Stuart - Into The Fire

She also had a car on the verge of dying and a light snow that had begun to fall. She turned on the windshield wipers, forgetting that they were broken. The night seemed darker still on this narrow back road, the lights barely cutting through the darkness.

And then she realized it wasn’t her imagination, it wasn’t exhaustion. The lights were getting dimmer, the car was slowing, cruising to a sudden, coughing halt in the middle of the road. The New Age piano was still going, but it sounded like a warped record. And then even that stopped, and the last of the light gave up the ghost, and she was left sitting in the darkness.

Crying was an option, an appealing one, but she resisted. She hadn’t really cried since she’d heard that Nate had died. She was afraid that once she started she’d never stop.

She certainly wasn’t going to start crying right before she came face-to-face with Dillon Gaynor. She wouldn’t give him that pleasure.

She rolled down the window, put the car in Neutral and stepped onto the wet pavement. The car was on a slight rise, and she couldn’t leave it sitting in the middle of a road, even one as deserted as this.

Pushing a car onto the shoulder was a lot harder than it looked, even with the aid of a slope. And it was just about impossible to steer through the open window. God knows there was no stopping it when it began to roll, picked up speed and knocked her onto her knees on the pavement. She watched it slide off the road, ending up on its side against a copse of trees.

She flinched at the crunching sound. Volvos were strong—they could take a lot of punishment. Even a twelve-year-old one was tougher than a lot of new American cars. She’d get someone to tow it out tomorrow, fix it.

Hell, Dillon lived in an old garage. Maybe someone still worked there, and she’d kill two birds with one stone.

Her watch was an elegant antique, a family heirloom. It needed to be wound every day, having been made long before aquaglow was invented, and it had stopped hours ago. There was no way she could tell what time it was. It had to be after midnight, but that was as close as she could come. She hadn’t seen another car since she’d gotten off on this secondary road that led into the small mill city of Cooperstown. She had a choice—climb down the embankment, crawl into the back seat of her car and wait for morning. The snow had picked up a bit, but one night in below-freezing temperatures wouldn’t kill her.

And maybe she’d wake up in the morning stiff and sore, and think better of her impulsive trip. Maybe she’d rent a safer car, abandon the Volvo and drive straight back home. What did she think she could learn from a man like Dillon Gaynor? A man who always kept his secrets?

That wasn’t going to happen. She’d come too far, worked herself up to face him. She left her second thoughts back in Rhode Island. She wasn’t turning back now.

She’d been heading in the right direction—she was certain of that. Her only choice was to follow the empty road and hope that eventually she’d find what she was looking for. All she had to do was manage the snowy bank and grab her purse from the car without falling again.

In the end it was almost too easy. Her feet were numb, from the cold, from walking. She’d scraped her knee when she’d landed on the hard pavement, and her winter coat was back in Rhode Island, where the weather had been unseasonably balmy. She kept walking, huddled in a thick sweater that had seen better days, plowing forward through the slowly drifting snowflakes.

The building where Nate died sat alone on the edge of the run-down little town. She hadn’t even been able to find Cooperstown, Wisconsin, in the road atlas—it had taken the Internet to find a route. The place was little more than a ghost of an old industrial town, and the building itself looked as if it had once been some kind of factory back when this had been a viable community. Now it simply looked abandoned, and she would have walked on if she hadn’t seen the glimmer of light behind one of the filthy windows. And the sign by the door—Gaynor’s Auto Restoration.

After so many miles, so many hours, she simply stood outside the closed door, afraid to take the last step. She could hear voices, and a moment later the door opened, light and noise spilling out into the night as two men flew forward, locked in an embrace of fury.

She stumbled back, just in time, and the two ended up in the thin layer of snow, one on top as he methodically pounded his fist into the other man’s face with a casual violence that would have horrified Jamie at any other time. She hadn’t seen anyone hit someone in twelve years. And it had been the same man administering the beating. She knew it with a kind of sick fear.

He dropped the man back on the ground and rose. She could see blood on his fists, and he wiped them casually against his jeans. “Don’t come back,” he said.

It was the same voice. Huskier, but the same. Nate had been beaten to death, beyond recognition, in this very building. Maybe by those very hands.

She stayed in the shadows, silent, motionless, horrified. He saw her, anyway, his head jerking up as he peered into the darkness.

“Who’s there?”

He wasn’t alone. The small figure of a man stood in the doorway, blocking the light from spreading out onto the little tableau. The man on the ground was groaning, cursing, but smart enough not to move. And Jamie wondered if she had time to run.

She wasn’t going to, she reminded herself. She had a bad habit of running from trouble, and this was what she’d been determined to face.

She stepped out of the shadows, moving up to him. He wouldn’t know who she was, of course. He’d barely been aware of her back then, and he hadn’t seen her since that night so long ago, when both their lives had changed. She’d be the last person he expected to show up on his doorstep.

She was right about one thing. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

He knew exactly who she was. It was one shock on top of another, and she came out with the only answer she could muster. “I’m looking for answers.”

“Nate’s dead,” Dillon said, his voice as flat and expressionless as his eyes.

“I know that. I want to know why.”

He said nothing. He looked just as she remembered, and yet nothing like it at all. He stood with the light behind him, and she couldn’t see his face. She could only see the blood on his hands.

“Go home, Jamie,” he said after a long moment. “Go back to your safe little boarding-school world. There’s nothing for you here.”

She didn’t even stop to wonder how he knew that she taught in a boarding school. “I can’t. I promised my mother. We need answers.”

“Your mother,” Dillon said with a throaty laugh. “I should have known the Duchess would have something to do with this. I don’t give a shit what you and your goddamned mother want, I only care what I want. And that is for you to get in your car and get your scrawny little ass out of here before I lose my temper. I’m already in a bad mood, and you should remember that I’m not very nice when I’m in a bad mood.”

The notion was so absurd she found she could laugh. “You’re never very nice,” she said.

“True enough.” He glanced past her. “Where’s your car?”

“Broken down somewhere.”

“And I’m supposed to rescue you?”

“Aw, Dillon!” The man behind him spoke. “Let the poor girl in out of the cold. You’re scaring her.”

“Easy enough to do,” he said carelessly.

“C’mon, man. We’re finished our game, anyway. We can’t play two-handed, and I don’t think Tomas is going to be in any shape to play cards for a while.” He stepped out into the alleyway, a short, skinny little man, smaller than her own average height. He probably wouldn’t weigh more than one hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet. Less than she did. If there was one thing she didn’t possess, it was a scrawny ass.