Trusting a Stranger (10 page)

Chapter Sixteen

Keira landed hard against a raised snowbank, taking the brunt of the hit straight in the stomach. All of the air left her lungs in one gust, and abruptly she couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t inhale or exhale or force the oxygen into her body no matter how badly she wanted.

I’m going to die
.
Calloway’s going to die. And it’s going to be my fault.

How cruel was
that
for fate?

For a second, the world stayed dark.

Then it was full of spotted pinpricks of light.

And at last, Keira felt her chest rise and fall, and the white-covered ground evened out in her vision.

She pulled herself across the snow until she reached Calloway’s still body.

Please let him be okay
,
she prayed, her heart banging against her ribs so hard it hurt.

She dropped her head to Calloway’s chest. It rose and fell evenly, and when Keira put her fingers to his throat, his pulse was strong.

Thank God.

And then a hand landed on her shoulder and Keira remembered they weren’t alone.

She brought her eyes up nervously and, through her tears, stared at the man above her.

He looked rough and dangerous, with a cut in the corner of one lip, and one of his eyes looked almost black. Like the kind of man who would be firing a weapon in the woods.

“Ms. Niles,” he said.

He knows your name.

And for a second, he looked vaguely familiar.

No. Impossible. She knew no one who matched his description.

“Ms. Niles,” he repeated, this time a little more urgently. “Stay calm.”

His words had the opposite effect that they should have, and panic set in.

She had to get away.

Keira’s eyes flicked around the clearing in search of safety. Of protection.

The snowmobile.

Too complicated.

The cabin.

Too far.

A glint of silver in the snow.

Yes. The gun.

Keira sprang up and hurled herself past the worse-for-wear man in front of her and dove for the weapon. She caught sight of the expression on his face—first full of surprise, then understanding—and he moved, too.

But Keira was faster.

Her hands closed on the gun and for a second she was thoroughly triumphant.

Thank God.

Then the blond man was on her, one hand wrapped around her ankle and the other clawing to get the weapon away from her.

“Don’t do something you’ll regret,” he said through clenched teeth.

“I won’t,” she promised, then drew back her free foot and slammed it into his chest.

He flew back and Keira leaped up once more. With a sharp stab of remorse about leaving Calloway where he was, she took off at a limping run.

The thump of feet on snow told her that the man was following her. And gaining ground.

C’mon, c’mon
, she urged herself.

She was close enough to the cabin that it was a viable option now.

Come! On!

Pushing through the throbbing pain in her thigh, Keira forced herself to keep going. And at last she reached the wooden patio. But as her hand found the doorknob, her head swiveled and she saw that her pursuer had caught up to her.

She spun, cocked the gun and pointed it at the blond man just as one of his feet met the bottom step.

“You’re making a mistake,” he told her, looking far less frightened than she thought he should.

“I do know how to fire this thing,” Keira warned.

“You might want to rethink actually doing it, Ms. Niles.”

“People love a good self-defense story,” she retorted.

“Maybe. But the law rarely favors people who fire on those working with the police. Especially when they’re shooting while in the home of a known criminal.”

The police? A criminal?

Keira eyed the other man disbelievingly. Maybe the last part made sense.

Calloway
was
on the run from the police, after all. But nothing about the man standing in front of her screamed law enforcement. No uniform. No readily proffered ID.

No. He has to be lying.

“You expect me to believe that you’re a cop?” she asked. “And Calloway is what, then...the robber?”

“This is hardly a game, Ms. Niles. My name is David Stark and—”

The rest of his statement was lost as Keira finally clued in to who this man was.

Dave Stark.

Calloway’s friend. His business associate. Whom he’d known for years. And trusted.

A cop?

“I know who you are,” Keira said.

“Then you know Graham and I are friends.”

“Calloway told me about your business arrangement.”

“But he didn’t happen to mention that I work for the Derby Reach PD?”

“If you’re a cop, and you knew he was here, why haven’t you just arrested him?” Keira countered.

“Because I’ve been his friend for far longer than I’ve been a policeman. And because I’ve been helping him for as many years as he’s been on the run.”

“Prove it,” Keira challenged.

“Fine. I have three things in my pocket,” he said. “My badge, my driver’s license and a pay stub to prove the ID is real. I’d like to reach in and get them. Do you mind if I do that?”

“Go for it,” Keira conceded.

Slowly—as if
she
was the unpredictable one—he unzipped his jacket, pulled it open to give Keira a view of what he was doing, and stuck his hand into a side pocket. Just as slowly, he dragged out a little leather case and held it up. The front flapped open, revealing a gold badge.

He closed it up again, then traded it for a wallet, which he held out to Keira.

“
You
take the stuff out,” she ordered.

He complied, first flipping out the plastic-covered license, then unfolding a piece of paper.

Without letting the gun go, Keira moved just close enough that she could read each of them. And as much as she wanted them to be fake, she was sure they were legitimate. “David Rodney Stark. Employee number 102 of the Derby Reach PD.” Even Keira’s desperate brain couldn’t come up with a reasonable explanation for carrying around a phony pay stub.

Her body sagged.

Dammit.

Calloway had been paying a cop to...do what exactly? Bring him mushroom soup and information? Why was the other man even agreeing to it?

Then a low groan came from behind the man in question, and Keira traded in her concern about the cop for concern about Calloway, who was half standing, half slumping on the snow.

* * *

G
RAHAM
LET
D
AVE
slide an
arm across his back and guide him into the cabin.

His attention, though, was on Keira.

Her hair was still wild from the crazy ride on the snowmobile. Even though she held a gun in her hand, she’d sucked her bottom lip between her teeth and looked like she was trying not to cry.

Because of you.

If he’d had the energy and the time, he would’ve cursed himself out for somehow managing to twist the situation so that instead of him worrying about her, she was worrying about him.

But you
don’t
have time
, he reminded himself.
And you can’t protect her, get the cabin ready in case you don’t make it back and keep your own body breathing at the same time.

Which somehow seemed important now. Guns-out revenge wasn’t an option. Not if he wanted a chance at something he hadn’t thought about in a long time. A future.

So he spoke, and he wasn’t sure if it was because of his recent brush with unconsciousness or if it was because he was saying something he really wished he didn’t
have
to say, but his words sounded hollow and far away.

“Dave, you need to take Keira off the mountain. Now.”

Keira stiffened and her mouth dropped open as if she was going to argue, but Dave beat her to it.

“The crash is all over the news, Graham. Which is what I came here to talk to you about. They’re looking for a body, trying to identify the driver. What do you think they’re going to do when they find out she’s not so dead, after all?”

“You’re not going to let them find out. You’re going to take her to your hotel and stay there.”

His friend ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “I came here to convince
you
to come with me. To remind you again that everything we’ve been working for is about to slip through our fingers. Not to transport some girl you just met, keep her hidden for you and
still
not accomplish what we’ve been trying to accomplish for the last four years.”

Graham met his friend’s eyes. “I’m asking for two days, Dave.”

“This has nothing to do with her. You said it yourself just two days ago.”

“What other choice is there?”

“Let the cops find her.”

“And if they find out who she’s been with? If that info gets back to the wrong person before I catch up to him?”

“Graham, something’s gotta give. I’m tired of chasing down bad leads and using resources I have no right to be using. I’m sick of making excuses to my wife and not seeing my kids and worrying all the time that I’m going to get caught helping you. Four years is a long time to live like this. I thought we were done. Now I feel like we’re starting up all over again.”

Graham’s temper flared. “I
lost
my wife, Dave. I
lost
my kid. And you come up here and expect me to lose someone else because you think things have been too hard on
you
? I won’t take the risk that Ferguson might get ahold of Keira, too, and use her as leverage. The only way to ensure her safety is to take her away from here.”

“You could turn yourself in instead.”

Graham’s gut clenched. “Turn myself in?”

“You’d rather have me help you with a kidnapping?”

“Stop!”

The emphatic protest came from Keira, who was shaking her head and fixing Graham with an achingly sweet glare. “Calloway isn’t turning himself in to save me. He sure as hell didn’t kidnap me. And you guys need to quit talking about me like I’m not here and not capable of making my own decisions.”

“I can’t let you stay here,” Graham told her.

“And you can’t make me leave,” she replied.

He moved closer and lifted a hand to Keira’s cheek. “You
have
to do this. It’s the only thing that’s going to keep you out of danger. Let Dave take you somewhere safe. I promise you, I won’t be far behind. I’ll take care of what needs to be taken care of and I’ll come for you.”

“And if you get killed in the process?” Her voice shook. “Calloway, I—”

Graham leaned down and cut her off with a kiss, not caring if Dave was watching. She brought her hands up and buried them in his hair, and he didn’t let her go until her could feel her heart thumping through both layers of their clothes.

He leaned away. “I have a damned good reason to stay alive, Keira.”

“Two days?” she asked breathlessly.

Graham exhaled and made a promise he hoped he could keep. “Forty-eight hours, no more.”

Get in, get Mike Ferguson and get back to Keira. Then he’d figure out his next move.

Minutes later, he bundled her up—thoroughly if not comfortably—and was leading her to the snowmobile. There he kissed her again, this time tenderly, then helped her straddle the vehicle.

Dave looked unhappy, but Graham didn’t care. His eyes were stuck on Keira’s slim form, and they stayed there as the snowmobile roared to life and the two of them sped off into the thick woods.

Chapter Seventeen

Keira quickly gave
up trying to keep a reasonable amount of physical space between herself and Officer David Stark. Her helmeted face was pressed between his shoulder blades, and her legs squeezed his hips. She rode that way not because she was any more comfortable with him than she had been since the first second she’d laid eyes on him, but because he navigated the mountain with reckless abandon.

Trees whipped by in a blur. Snow kicked up and into Keira’s shirt, then melted there. It made the wind hit her that much harder and made it that much more necessary to crush herself into Dave’s back.

She was holding on to him out of necessity. And she wasn’t happy about it.

The only good thing about it was that it helped to keep her mind from everything else. She deliberately blocked out her thoughts and focused on the scenery instead. It was nothing more than a blur of white, and they rode for so long that Keira was sure they were going to run out of gas.

Parts of her were frozen. Parts of her ached. And
all
of her wished she could go back in time to before her accident so she could just go back to being herself. No gunshots, no makeshift stitches, no crazy ache in her chest over a man she just met.

But her concern for Calloway’s well-being overrode her efforts. And try as she might, Keira couldn’t shake the fact that the most pressing of her worries was that he might never be able to keep his promise and come to her.

So maybe it wasn’t that the accident skewed her view. Maybe she’d known all along that Drew wasn’t right for her. Maybe she hadn’t really been leading a full life at all. It just took crashing into the Mountain Man’s life to reveal it.

Somehow, she was sure she could pick any moment from the past few days and attach more meaning to it than she could to any other part of her life.

So, no. She
wouldn’t
erase the accident. Because without it—without Drew and her stupid trip to the chalet to make her move—she wouldn’t have almost died and she wouldn’t have had the best kisses in the world with the most interesting man she’d ever met.

And yes. She’d take those little glimpses of heart-pounding excitement over another twenty-four years of never realizing what she was missing.

As she came to that conclusion, a final blast of snow flew from underneath the snowmobile, and she and Dave ground to a halt.

The seed of doubt in Keira’s mind grew as she leaned away from him and took in her surroundings. The trees were well behind them, and there was nothing but a snow-covered hill in front of them.

Keira swung her legs off the snowmobile uncertainly, and Dave did the same, but with far more self-assurance. Then he tipped his goggles to his head and helped her pull off the borrowed helmet.

“Here’s the deal, Ms. Niles,” he said, his voice sounding extraloud now that the roar of the engine had cut off. “On the other side of that crest is the side road that leads into Mountain View Village. If we head into town, we might be walking straight into a sea of press. But what
I
want is to avoid them—and everyone else—if at all possible.”

Keira stared at him. “You’re not taking me to the hotel?”

“I want the same thing you do—to protect Graham. And to do that, I think we should steer clear of the resort town altogether. Get you somewhere safe and sound and far away from here,” Dave told her.

“But Graham—”

“Hasn’t thought this all the way through. Up here, I can’t keep you hidden. Not effectively. Too many people are looking for you. If I take you off the mountain completely, I at least stand a chance of keeping you out of the limelight.”

Keira waited for him to add something else about Calloway, something hopeful. But he just handed her the helmet again.

“We all set, then?” he asked.

So Keira nodded. She didn’t see that she had much of a choice.

* * *

A
S
MUCH
AS
Graham
wanted to toss aside everything and throw on his snowshoes and start moving, he knew better.

Four years of waiting had taught him the value of patience, and as desperate as he was to get to Keira, his experience told him that he needed to be prepared. There was no way for him to avoid going back to the place where it all started. But if he had to do it, he could do it right.

He started with his hair, hacking it to nearly respectable length, revealing far more gray than he’d had when he went underground. Then he moved on to his face, shearing it so that the formerly bristly beard was gone completely. When he was done, the skin underneath it was almost raw with the effort.

He bathed head to toe, and though he kept himself fairly well-groomed anyway, he made an extra effort this time to scrub away every ounce of dirt. There was no sign of grime under his nails, no campfire scent lingering on his skin.

Toss on a white coat
, Graham thought humorlessly as he gave himself a final once-over,
and I might be able to go straight back to the office.

Right then, though, he laid out something far more practical. Snow-proof, waterproof pants. Lined, but not so thick that they would impede movement. On top, he’d wear a matching coat with good breathability and a removable interior. Both items were unused—Graham would have to rip the tags off before putting them on—bought long ago with the assumption that one day, he would have to abandon his home. Underneath those, he’d put on running gear, completely practical and also in new condition.

He had sharp jeans, a still-in-the-plastic T-shirt, and just in case, a dress shirt and tie, ready to go into his bag.

The cabin itself had been transformed, too. Graham boarded up the windows, careful to use well-worn pieces of wood and nails that had seen better days. He tore apart the bottom step in a way that made it appear to be natural rot, and punched a hole through the front part of the deck, too. He used a shovel to throw up several mounds of snow in front of the house, as well, and another snowstorm or two later, they’d look completely natural.

When Graham glanced up at the sky, he thought he probably wouldn’t have to wait long for Mother Nature to help him out with that.

Finally, he stood back to survey the house once more, looking for any other signs that would give away its most recent use. He was satisfied that there were none, and anyone who thought it was worth getting past the snow and the broken patio would be sorely disappointed when they got inside. Everything that
could
be burned,
had
been burned. From the mattress to the curtains to—regretfully—the food, it had all been incinerated.

Only the most necessary items had been saved, and they fit neatly into Graham’s backpack beside his extra clothes.

Be Prepared. Back to the Boy Scout analogy.

* * *

F
ROM
THE
MOMENT
Graham drafted his to-do list, to the second he completed it all, took less than four hours.

The sky was dark, the stars a speckled tableau above his head, and he was ready.

Traveling at night wasn’t for everyone.

But to quote Dave, this is
me
we’re talking about.

Graham turned away from his home, not even bothering with a second look. He’d once walked away from a thirty-year-long life. This was nothing.

* * *

T
HE
GRUELING
HIKE
brought Graham all the way to the edge of the resort town. He was covered in sweat, aching and no less determined.

He kicked out a shallow hole in the snow, then stripped off his travel gear in favor of his jeans and T-shirt. He stuffed his cash and falsified ID into his jacket pockets, and filled the hole with his discarded items and marked the spot with a distinctly shaped rock as big as his head. Graham was sure he could locate it again, but there was nothing personal left in the pack, so if found, it wouldn’t arouse suspicion in the finder.

It wasn’t ideal, but it would do. It had to.

From his spot, the lights were too close and bright enough to make his head hurt.

No time for self-pity
, he growled silently and stepped back into the trees.

Graham traipsed up the road, mentally recalling the name of the hotel Dave used each month.

I’m not going to go in
, he told himself.

He just wanted to make sure they got there before he found a way down to the city.

He paused at a large overblown map at the top of Main Street. He found the place—Rocky Side Hotel—quickly. As he scanned the location, he realized that even if he skirted the perimeter streets all the way in, he’d still have to pass through a very busy area in order to reach the hotel itself. He cursed the fact that Dave had chosen somewhere so public as his monthly stopping point. Mountain View had plenty of more out-of-the-way places to stay. Romantic bungalows. Three-star hotels. The only place more attention-drawing would’ve been the chalet itself.

Graham forced himself to keep going.

It was well past any reasonable hour to be out on foot anywhere else, but in Mountain View the second the sun went down, the skiers became partiers and they stayed out until it rose again. As a result, even keeping to the edge of town didn’t stop Graham from running into people.

After so many years in isolation, it was overwhelming.

So he was nervous. Far more on edge than he should have been.

Maybe he
would
go in. Maybe he’d just check on Keira, then see if Dave had a reasonable line on a vehicle.

And to breathe.

He knew it was ridiculous to assume that someone would know him, but that didn’t make the feeling go away. When he finally had no choice but to head into the busy square in front of Dave’s hotel, and a grinning club rat caught and held his eye, he expected to see some flicker of recognition. Some frightened spark that said,
Oh, that’s him. That’s the man accused of killing his wife.

When he tried to cross a street a little too soon and a stranger grabbed his shoulder to stop him from falling in front of a party bus, he just about punched the Good Samaritan in the face. Even after Graham stumbled through an apology, the wary look didn’t disappear from the man’s eyes.

Graham didn’t breathe easily until he reached the building with the large hand-painted sign that declared it as the correct hotel. His hand closed on the metal door and he pulled. It didn’t budge, and when Graham took a step back he saw why.

The Rocky Side Hotel was closed for renovations.

What the hell?

Graham squinted at the sign giving the closure dates. Dave hadn’t been there at all. Not in the past thirty days anyway.

So where had he taken Keira? Another hotel?

No.

A sinking feeling hit Graham straight in the gut.

He must have taken her home.

What for? To give her up, like he’d wanted to? For a misguided sense of right and wrong?

Graham reached up to yank on his hair, but came away empty-handed. It was too short for the habit to be satisfying.

His friend
knew
how much danger Keira would be in if Ferguson learned about her. To bring her that much closer, even if he thought it was because he was doing the right thing...

Graham shook his head and took another few steps away from the closed hotel and smacked into an unsuspecting passerby. The guy stammered an apology, but Graham cut him off by grabbing his arm.

“What’s the easiest way to get out of town?” he demanded harshly.

The stranger’s eyes widened. “Now?”

“Yes, now.”

“It’s two in the morning.”

“I’m aware.”

The man scratched his head, looking drunkenly puzzled, then grinned brightly. “Truck stop!”

“Truck stop?”

“Yeah. The delivery guys come and go all night so they don’t mess with the tourist mojo during the day. Six blocks of back alley will get you there.”

Graham released his arm. “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

The partier stumbled away, and Graham moved quickly.