Page 15 of Love Undercover
Her laughter died suddenly, and she pushed to her feet, her wary eyes on him.
He sat back on his heels, his thick, chiseled chest rising and falling with effort like he’d just run a marathon.
“Is this a trick?” She took a few steps toward the open doorway.
He shook his head. “It was never locked.”
Her mouth dropped open. That had to be a lie. But she hadn’t even checked. Like an idiot, she’d just assumed. Not that it mattered. She’d heard him prowling out there all night.
“Why stuff me in your trunk if you weren’t even going to bother locking me in here?”
He got to his feet with a grunt, and she stumbled a few more steps toward the door, even though he simply sat down on the end of the bed, bracing his weight with hands on his knees.
“I want you to trust me.”
She scoffed. “Trust you? After you pointed a gun at me?”
“I never pointed it at you.”
She opened her mouth, shut it, opened it again, shut it. Thinking back, she realized it was true. He had never once actually pointed his weapon at her. But that didn’t mean much in the grand scheme. Not when she considered everything else.
“You’re keeping me here against my will,” she insisted, her voice weaker than before. Shocks of adrenaline were still firing all over her body, but she’d stopped moving toward the door.
”Ibroughtyou here against your will,“ he amended, one big hand going to his throat where the towel had rubbed the skin raw. He apparently hadn’t noticed the red mark on his cheekbone. “You can leave if you want to. There’s a town about six miles from here. Northeast.” He coughed, swallowed, winced. “Damn, you have a tight grip.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “I work out,” she deadpanned.
He gave one raspy bark of laughter, wincing again.
“You didn’t explain why you had to stuff me in your trunk.”
He raised his eyes to her face, and this time, his grimace was deeper. “That is. . . a complicated story. I suppose telling you it was for your safety wouldn’t be enough?”
She squinted at him.
They stared at each other for one long moment. She read in his eyes that he was asking her to stay, though she didn’t truly understand why. Nor did she get why she seriously debated on doing just that.
Was she suffering from Stockholm Syndrome? Could that set in this quickly? Or was it some misguided sense of familiarity because of her prior, albeit loose, connection with Chase Lundgren?
It doesn’t matter, she told herself.
She backed toward the door, spun, and sprinted for the front of the house. She tried the front door, found it unlocked, just as he’d said, and left it open as she rushed toward the porch steps and down. Her sandals against the wood felt loud in the stillness outside, the sound bouncing against the trees and back to her.
Ten feet past the car, she slowed, letting her mind take in the thick forest around them. The narrow, dirt driveway wound around through the trees and disappeared a few hundred yards out, swallowed on either side by green.
Her heart thundered against the cage of her ribs, and her stomach sank.
Chase could murder her out here, and no one would know. Not one person would hear her even if she screamed.
Someone would eventually report her missing, but they would never know where to look. Even though he’d given her the direction and the miles to the nearest town, she wasn’t sure she believed it. For all she knew, they were farther than that. Or the town was in a different direction, and he was trying to trick her.
But she still didn’t understand the end game. What if he was a psycho who simply liked to keep her guessing? He might want to keep her for days, luring her into trusting him, then torture her until she begged for death. Who knew an old high school acquaintance would turn out to be a serial killer?
Admittedly, it was a little coincidental that he would kidnap her the same day she’d run into Greg, been questioned about him by the FBI, had her place ransacked, and then someone else had shown up to her apartment to do who-knew-what.
She walked forward a few more yards, getting to the edge of the woods, and a chill ran through her at the shadowy darkness within. Despite the growing summer heat of mid-morning, fingers of cool air reached her where she stood.
She turned back to look at the cabin. A veritable horror house if she ever saw one. Except the inside didn’t match the outside.
