High-Stakes Bride. Fiona Brand

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      Susan Marlow, clearly visible in a long pale nightgown, struck out, knocking the shadow back and abruptly the scene made sense. The shadow was a man dressed all in black, his hands, his face—every part of him blanked out—except for a narrow strip where his eyes glittered.

      He swung, his arm a blur. Susan crumpled and, with a fierce cry, Dani launched herself. The stick arced down, crashing into the only part of him she could see, his eyes. The jarring force of the blow numbed her fingers and sent the stick spinning. A split second later she was flung through the air, for a timeless moment tumbling….

      When Dani came to she lay sprawled at an angle, half under the kitchen table. Pain throbbed at the back of her head as she dragged herself into a sitting position and clung to a table leg for support.

      He was at the sink. He had taken off what she now realized was a balaclava and was washing his face. As he turned, the glow from a flashlight uplit a broad chest and powerful shoulders, dark hair cut close against his skull, and a face that was nightmarishly distorted. Blood streamed from a swollen, misshapen nose and a livid cut below one eye where the flesh had peeled open revealing the glistening white of bone—the effect like something out of a horror movie.

      Clutching his face to stem the flow of blood, he stumbled into the tiny lounge, the flashlight beam flickering over broken furniture and shards of glass as he stepped through the window he’d smashed to get into the house and merged with the night.

      Dani huddled by the kitchen table, spine jammed against the wall. Freezing cold filtered through her pajamas, spreading like liquid ice as she stared through the wreckage of their home, gaze fastened on the empty rectangle of pure black where the window frame was pushed up.

      Long seconds ticked by, and slowly, minute-by-minute, the extent of her victory settled in, steadying her. For the first time she’d had the courage to hit out, and she had hurt him—enough that he’d had to leave. When she was certain he wasn’t coming back, she crawled over to Susan and her heart almost stopped. Susan was white and still, and for a terrifying moment she was certain she was dead.

      Frantically, she clutched at her shoulder and shook. Susan’s head lolled, her eyes flickered and relief shuddered through Dani.

      Forcing herself to her feet, she limped to the kitchen counter, reached high and grabbed the first aid box. Setting the container beside Susan, she pried off the lid, found the cotton wool and disinfectant and began dabbing at the split on Susan’s lip and the grazes on her jaw and temple. Susan flinched, but didn’t wake up.

      Panic gripped Dani as she fetched a bag of frozen peas from the freezer, wrapped them in a tea towel and set the makeshift icepack against the side of Susan’s face. She should call an ambulance, but Susan had said not to call anyone because if the welfare people got to hear what was happening, they’d take her away—this time maybe for good. The same went for the police. As badly as they needed help, they didn’t need what came with it. According to Susan the paper trail left them too exposed, and he was clever. It was one of the ways he used to find them.

      Stoically, Dani continued cleaning away the blood then set about making up a bed up on the floor. She didn’t know how long it would be before Susan woke up, but, in the freezing cold of a South Island winter, she had to be kept warm. Shivering, her stomach tight with fear, Dani lay under the pile of quilts with Susan, waiting for her to wake up.

      Blankly, she stared at the open window.

      The glass was gone, so closing it was a waste of time, but she should have pulled the curtains to help stop the cold air pouring into the house. It wasn’t snowing or sleeting, but there would be a frost; ice already glittered on the sill. Shuddering, she wrenched her gaze free. She hadn’t wanted to go near the window because somehow the magnetic black space was part of him.

      With an effort of will, she forced herself to concentrate on Susan. Her breathing sounded better, although it still had a catch as if even sleeping, she was hurting.

      Dani moved closer, shielding Susan from the window and the freezing stream of cold air, misery condensing into a piercing ache.

      They would be all right. They just had to move again.

      And this time they would disappear.

      Chapter 1

      Four years later, Jackson’s Ridge, New Zealand

      The noonday sun burned into the darkly tanned skin of twelve-year-old Carter Rawlings’s shoulders as he slid down the steep scrub-covered hill just below his parents’ house. Grabbing the gnarled branch of a pohutukawa tree, he swung and launched off a platform of black rock that jutted out from the bank, the tip of one of the ancient lava flows that had made its mark on Jackson’s Bay and a string of other beaches stretching along the east coast of the North Island.

      Wincing at the heat pouring off the sand, he loped down the beach to check out the new kid who had just moved next door.

      A pair of gulls wheeled above, shrieked and swooped low, beady eyes hopeful. Carter slowed to a walk as his feet sank into the cool damp sand that delineated the high-tide mark. Keeping his gaze fixed on the thin body of the boy, he searched the pockets of his shorts. “Sorry guys, no food today.”

      Normally he remembered to grab a slice of bread for the gulls, but today it had been all he was capable of to sit at the table once his chores were done and bolt down a sandwich before being excused. The new kid was the first exciting thing that had happened all summer. Maybe it shouldn’t have been, but in Jackson’s Ridge, a tiny coastal settlement that had flat-lined long before he was born, a new neighbour ranked right up there with the apocalypse.

      The surf-casting rod the boy was holding flicked back, then forward. Silvery nylon filament shot out across the waves. Bait and sinker hit the surface of the water just beyond the break line and sank.

      Great cast. Perfect. The kid had done it like a pro, except, Carter now realized, the boy, Dani, who had moved in the previous evening, wasn’t a “he.”

      She had red hair scraped into a long plait over one shoulder and a blue T-shirt plastered against her skinny torso. Her faded cut-offs were soaked and she’d lost one of her sneakers in the tide. He caught the glint of a tiny gold stud in one lobe. A tomboy, maybe, but definitely not a boy.

      He shoved his hands in the pockets of his shorts. “Hi.”

      For an answer she stepped into the water foaming just inches from her feet and waded in until the water eddied around her knees. Her rod dipped as she wound in slack line; a few seconds later it shivered as something nibbled at the bait. She moved forward another step, playing the fish.

      Automatically, Carter studied the swell. The waves came in in sets. Jackson’s Bay was sheltered so it wasn’t usually a problem, but every now and then a big one arrived. “Careful. There’s a rip just there, sometimes it—”

      Water surged, she staggered. A second wave followed, forming a sloppy breaker, and with a yelp she went down, the rod flipping into the surf.

      Carter lunged, turning side-on to the wave as his fingers latched onto her arm. The water went slack then almost instantly surged back out to sea, the pull dragging the sand from beneath his feet.

      “Let go.” Staggering upright she wrenched free, dashed water from her eyes then dove into the next wave and came up with the rod.

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