Page 10 of When He Fights
Since he hadn’t bothered to identify himself, she didn’t bother to identify herself, either.“He escaped?”Ana cried out.“He escaped and you didn’t think to—ah!”Her words ended in a terrified scream.
“Anastasia!”Grayson thundered.
She ignored him, for the moment, and glared at the truck that hadjustcome to a stop, missing her by inches.Her left hand slammed down on the hood.“Walking here!”Ana snapped.She hit the hood again, for good measure.
Oh, crap.Had that sounded too New York?It felt too New York.And she wasn’t supposed to be New York any longer.She wasn’t Anastasia Patrick.She was Ana Marie Wayne.She lived in Gulfport, Mississippi.She loved crawfish and gumbo.She belonged to a book club, she taught yoga and music therapy sessions, and she was not the same woman any longer.Not.
“Ana, are you okay?”Grayson demanded.
The teens in the truck shouted apologies to her.She hurried out of the crosswalk even as her right hand kept gripping the phone to her ear.As if she’d needed that extra terror right then.Her poor heart couldn’t take much more.“No, I am not okay.”Though she had made it to the sidewalk on the other side of the road.Her rental house waited up ahead.A true beauty of a house, right across from the beach.Big, twisting oak trees—limbs decked out with Spanish moss—shaded the sidewalk.“I just had to learn in a freaking ice cream shop that my ex has escaped prison!”Hushed and rushed words.“Why didn’t you tell me?Why didn’t youcallme?”A courtesy call would not have killed the man.
“It’s all right, Ana?—”
“There is no world where this is all right!”She rushed around to the back of her house.Unlocked the door.Barreled inside.Disarmed the alarm—then reset it because…Logan isn’t in prison!She flew up the stairs, and, even as she kept the phone pressed to her ear, she grabbed her go bag.Oh, yes, she had a go bag at the ready.A necessary precaution since she’d always feared this moment would come.
“I didn’t call you right away because I didn’t want to worry you.”
She came to a dead stop in the middle of her bedroom.The room she’d carefully painted a sky blue.The room she’d furnished with estate sale and thrift store finds.The antique rocking chair.The hand-stitched quilt on the brass, four-poster bed.The art she’d created and hung on the walls.This was her place.She should have beensafehere.“Consider me very worried, Grayson.Very worried.”
“I thought he’d be picked up within a day or two.”Grayson’s halting response.She heard voices in the background behind him.“Didn’t want to risk exposing you unnecessarily.”
“The news report said he’d been out forfive days.”
“Yeah, the story has grabbed national headlines now.”
Her eyes squeezed shut.“He doesn’t know where I am.”That was something.That was what she needed to focus upon.
“I was…actually just about to call you.”A huff of breath.A sigh?“Someone hacked into my files.”
She shook her head.
“I have reason to believe your location has been compromised.”
Her eyes flew open.She threw the strap of her go bag over her shoulder and bounded for the bedroom door.
“I’m sending a guard for you,” he said, his voice all casual and unalarmed.Unalarmed.Like he’d told her takeout was on the way.“You’re going to be safe.You’re going to be protected.”
Her feet flew down the stairs.
“You don’t need to panic.”
Too late.She was in one hundred percent panic mode.“You just said Logan knows where I am!”
“Hemayknow.I don’t have complete certainty that he’s aware.”
Bullshit.“He knows.I sent him to prison.He wants me dead.There is every reason to panic.”She bounded off the stairs and flew for the back door once more.
“Just stay put,” Grayson urged her in his flat, everything-is-under-control FBI voice.“Your guard will be there soon.He promised to arrive before nightfall.He has your address.”
Before nightfall?That was like—at least three hours away.He wanted her to sit and wait for three hours on a guard to arrive?Did he know all the horrible things that could happen in three hours?
“Lock your doors,” Grayson ordered her.“Set your alarm.Stay in your house.”
Impossible.She was already outside.She’d slung her go bag in her Jeep.“I’ve got a better idea.”
“Ana…”
“I get the hell out of my house.I jump in my ride.”She jumped in the Jeep.“And I run like a murderer is on my trail.Oh, wait, he is.”
