Kate Walker - Flirting With Danger

‘Yes?’ Even curter than before, if that was possible.

‘How dare you? It’s only Ellie—’

She was reaching out to snatch the phone back when she saw his expression change, the hardening of those strongly carved features, the cold light that came into his eyes, and a sensation like the shiver of icy water slid slowly down her spine.

‘There’s no one called Honey here.’

Honey. It was all she could do to suppress a moan of terror. The sound of the name had the force of a blow to her head, filling her mouth with a taste that was bitter as acid.

Honey. That was his name for her—the name he had written at the beginning of each letter, and, more recently, the way he always started each hateful, horrible phone call. She could hear it now inside her head, that terrible, terrifying whisper—’Hello, Honey.’

Every trace of colour drained form her cheeks, leaving them white and ashen, and she took a shaky step backwards.

At once Evan’s gaze went to her face, aquamarine eyes narrowing swiftly as he took in her reaction. His response was immediate, no questions needing to be asked.

‘There’s no Honey here, and there never will be again—not for you. Do you understand that? No, you can listen! You’re not dealing with Honey now; you’re dealing with me. No, it doesn’t matter who the hell I am. All you need to know is that I’m here, and I’m in charge, and I don’t take too kindly to—’

He broke off sharply, listening intently to whatever the person on the other end of the line was saying. To Catherine’s shock and consternation his response was laughter, but laughter that was so terrifyingly hard and humourless that it worried her almost as much as the knowledge that her tormentor had tracked her down once more.

‘Do that.’ The brutal satisfaction in Evan’s tone made Catherine’s stomach clench painfully. ‘And I’ll derive a great deal of pleasure from taking you apart, limb by limb. What? Oh, no, pal, I won’t be going anywhere. I’m staying right here, and I don’t intend to leave until you’re safely locked away. So if you want to get to your Honey, you’ll have to come through me first!’

Then, as Catherine watched with the sort of transfixed fascination that a rabbit displayed when confronted by a predatory snake, he grinned suddenly, with grim triumph, and let the phone drop onto the table with a clatter that to her overwrought nerves seemed as loud as thunder overhead.

‘He’s gone,’ he said, that dark satisfaction still lingering in his words. ‘He’s a man of limited vocabulary, isn’t he, your Joe?’

And if she had any doubts as to who the caller had been then that drove them away. Honey was what he called her; Joe was his name for himself. Joe as in Joe Public—ordinary Joe. She had no doubt that it was not his real name.

‘Oh, God!’ Her hand went to her mouth, her eyes deep pools of fear above her concealing fingers. ‘What am I going to do?’

‘Do?’ To her consternation, Evan smiled with sudden, disturbing gentleness. ‘You don’t have to do anything.’

‘But—’

‘But nothing. Didn’t you hear what I said? I’ll handle things from here on in. I’m in charge now.’

If it was meant to reassure, then his harsh declaration didn’t have the desired effect. In Catherine’s mind there was not all that much to choose between Evan Lindsay and the stalker who was hounding her. And she couldn’t help wondering just what sort of a force she had unleashed by getting this man involved in her situation— in her life.

CATHERINE woke the next morning to a terrible sense of foreboding, and a feeling of having burned her boats, aggravating rather than improving her situation—which was all the more illogical when she considered that all she had actually done was enlist someone to help her. She should have felt more relaxed, a burden shared was a burden halved, they said, but that was very far from the case.

‘What have we done, Dad?’ she asked when, with her face pale after a disturbed night, she joined her father at the breakfast table. ‘Is Evan really the man we want?’

‘Of course he is, darling.’ Lloyd lifted puzzled eyes from his newspaper. ‘He’s a security expert—one of the top men in his field.’

‘Yes, but he’s so— tough.’

Recalling Evan’s behaviour on the previous night, Catherine couldn’t suppress a faint shudder at the thought of the hard-faced determination with which he had ignored her request for privacy, the controlled force behind his action as he’d cut off the phone call from Ellie, the ruthless, cold ferocity that had been in his face and his voice when he had spoken to Joe.

‘Don’t you think we need someone tough? Look, Cathy, this stalker is ruining your life, making each day a misery. You have to be protected from that, and to my mind it’s time he got some of his own medicine—time we started fighting fire with fire.’

‘But that’s just what I’m afraid of. Isn’t fighting fire with fire more likely to end up causing a raging inferno rather than actually extinguishing anything? After all, what do we know about this Evan Lindsay, other than that he’s some sort of security man?’

‘Personally, nothing at all. But he’s more than just a security man. As I said, he’s an expert, and the company he set up has won a worldwide reputation and respect. He doesn’t do this for the money, Cathy—he doesn’t need to.’

‘But I thought—’ And she had referred to him as just a security man!

‘That he was one of the workmen? Not Evan; he’s the big boss. He could leave everything to the men he employs, but that’s not his way. After all, he didn’t have to check those things through with me last night—though I must say that that turned out for the best.’

So, did this new knowledge change her perception of Evan? Catherine wondered. It certainly went a long way towards explaining the aura of arrogant power and command that seemed to permeate every bone in his body. But money wasn’t everything. He was still Evan Lindsay, who, apart from that arrogance and a total ruthlessness that had shown through the polite social veneer, was very much an unknown quantity.

‘After all, if he hadn’t suggested that he came back here with me then he wouldn’t have been around when that phone call—’

‘Evan suggested—but I thought he said that you invited him here.’

‘You must have heard him wrong, darling. It was all his idea.’

The sound of a car door slamming in the drive outside brought Lloyd to his feet in a rush, twitching aside a bit of the curtain to peer through the crack. Catherine watched tensely, her fingers tightening on the handle of her cup.

‘It’s all right—it’s Evan. Oh, come on, poppet—get rid of that glum face. He’s on our side, remember.’

Which was supposed to make her feel a lot better, Catherine reflected worriedly as her father left the room in order to let Evan in at the front door, but somehow it had exactly the opposite effect. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what was wrong. She knew she needed help—she had even, in a moment of weakness, turned to Evan and begged him to look after her—but that didn’t mean that she was happy about him taking over her life in the way he had done last night.

‘I’m in charge now,’ he had said, and had proceeded to demonstrate precisely how strongly he meant that, moving into action with a speed and force that had made her feel as if she had been hit by a whirlwind. He had checked every aspect of the house and gardens with a thoroughness that even she had privately thought excessive, and issued a stream of instructions to herself and her father before he had finally departed, promising to be round as soon as possible the next day.