Nancy Bush's Nowhere Bundle: Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide & Nowhere Safe. Nancy Bush

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      There was no way September was going to admit she had a mild attraction to Wes, especially since he was deeply invested in his own relationship with a woman from his days as an athlete at a junior college. Their relationship was solid; that was fact. So, September kept her case of “the warms” to herself.

      Liv lay on the couch in the darkness, staring at the ceiling once more. She moved onto her side and punched up the pillow, squeezing her eyes closed. Auggie was back in the bedroom and they were waiting for morning. Maybe someone would call them back.

      There’d been an awkward moment or two when neither of them knew what to do. Auggie had finally said he was going to bed, but he was taking a shower first. Liv thought that sounded like heaven, but was too uneasy to strip off her clothes and spend a few moments naked with him around. Maybe in the morrow.

      But then, before he’d gone to sleep, he’d actually walked past where she was sitting on the couch, removing her shoes. He was wearing boxers and nothing else as he strolled into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water.

      He stopped by the couch briefly, made a comment about trading places with her, the bed for the couch. She’d vehemently shaken her head, and he’d shrugged and moseyed on.

      She, meanwhile, had lain back on the sofa cushions fully clothed, her mind caught on the smooth muscles she’d seen moving beneath the skin of his shoulders, the hard curve of his back, his taut, hair-dusted thighs.

      She was shocked at herself. In the midst of her terror and anxiety, this was the overriding emotion quickening her blood? Desire? Lust? Sex?

      With an effort, she dragged her feminine attention away from him and concentrated on the more urgent problems at hand. Dr. Yancy. Think about Dr. Yancy. But a pair of faintly amused blue eyes crowded her inner vision. She flung her arm over her eyes, as if that would help, and squeezed her brain shut.

      “Liv.”

      Immediately she flung back her arm and popped her eyes open. The room was empty and dark. She was alone. Had only heard him in her head.

      What? she answered silently.

      The room was quiet. There was no sound anywhere. All in her head.

      Then, a voice said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Dr. Yancy.”

      She recognized it. It was her own voice. Sullen and combative.

      She saw herself at Dr. Yancy’s desk and the doctor was regarding her with concern.

      “You saw something,” Dr. Yancy said. “Something you’re repressing.”

      “What?” Liv demanded. “What? I didn’t see anything!”

      “Something,” the doctor insisted. She was fading in and out, a watery vision.

      “All I saw was my mother, hanging by her neck!” Liv practically screeched.

      “Something else . . . maybe something that didn’t actually have to do with that day. . . .”

      A cracked door. A beam of light. In the glint of illumination, the wetness of an eye as he turns and sees her . . . outside . . . outside . . .

      “I don’t want to talk anymore!”

      Slam! She was out the door. Running. Running. Running!

      And Dr. Yancy’s voice was calling after her, “It was him, Olivia. You saw him.”

      The memory sank away and Liv came fully awake, drenched in sweat. She heard the door to Auggie’s bedroom slam open and suddenly he was there, beside the couch, kneeling beside her.

      “You cried out,” he said.

      “I saw him. The monster. I saw him through a crack in the door. Dr. Yancy made me remember at Hathaway House but I ran away from her.”

      “Who is he? The monster?”

      “Monster?” She blinked.

      “You said ‘the monster.’”

      “I meant . . . the doctor. The zombie. The bogeyman. I think maybe I saw him, and he’s the serial strangler. But if he’s the doctor in the picture, that means Mama knew him. . . .” She swallowed. “Maybe she knew about him and that’s why he had to kill her.”

      “Okay, wait. Take it slow. We’ll start with him. We’ll call Dr. Yancy again in the morning, if she hasn’t called back. See what she knows about the doctor.”

      “Okay.”

      He smiled at her and actually had the audacity to sweep her hair back from her forehead before he turned to leave. Liv had to fight the desire to call him back. She kept her lips pressed tightly closed with an effort. The last thing she needed was to suddenly depend on him too much.

      Chapter 14

      The next morning Liv woke up when he walked past her to the kitchen in a pair of low-slung blue jeans and no shirt. She sat up, finger-combed her hair, then followed him into the kitchen. He’d picked up his cell and was looking at it.

      “Let’s go somewhere for breakfast,” he said.

      “I don’t want to be seen. . . .”

      “If you’re with me, it’s less chance you’ll be recognized. Put on your baseball cap again.”

      “I guess I’m buying, huh.”

      That stopped him short and he shot her a look. “I . . . guess so.”

      She smiled faintly. “No problem. But I’m going to take a shower first.”

      “Do it,” he said, turning back to his phone.

      “Is there . . . a towel?”

      “Should be. Linen closet’s in the hall outside the bathroom.”

      She left him working through his phone and wondered if he’d lied about being such a loner. Maybe he’d contacted someone. He could be texting someone right now.

      With a last look back at him, she picked up her backpack and headed into the bathroom.

      Auggie had indeed received a text. A raft of them, actually. Mostly from his sister. At least she’d shown the good sense to move from phoning to texting. He’d turned off the text “alert” and they came in silently.

      It was Sunday. He had one day until he needed to bring, coerce or drag Olivia Dugan to the Laurelton police station.

      He heard the taps turn on and he texted his sister, telling her to stop texting him. He would bring Olivia Dugan in tomorrow. Monday. And did she have any leads on the Zuma massacre, or Trask Martin’s death?

      She texted back:

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