Protecting His Witness. Marie Ferrarella

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      He’d had no wallet on him, no ID. She’d already checked his pockets. Had he been mugged? Or was there some other reason he didn’t have any identification with him?

      Too many questions, no answers, she thought.

      Looking down at herself, Kasey realized that she’d gotten the stranger’s blood on her when she’d dragged him in as well as on the floor and her rug. It wasn’t going to scrub itself out. So, for the next forty-five minutes, she did what she could to wash the telltale streaks of blood from her house and herself.

      When she was finally finished with that, she paused to check the lock on the bathroom door. Satisfied that it would hold, she still brought in a chair. Closing the door, she wedged the chair underneath the doorknob— just in case. She’d learned the hard way that trusting made you exceptionally vulnerable.

      Kasey took the world’s fastest shower.

      Coming out of the bathroom, dressed in a pair of jeans and a fresh shirt, still relatively damp from the shower, she checked on the stranger one more time. This time, he was exactly where she’d left him and he was still unconscious. The body was doing its part to help him heal.

      As for her, she knew that her body was far too keyed up now to sleep. Resigned to yet another restless night, not unlike so many other nights, Kasey staked out a place for herself on the sofa, turned the TV on to one of the classic cable channels and turned the sound down to a whisper. She didn’t really need to hear what was being said. She knew the dialogue to this particular movie by heart. Even so, there was a certain amount of comfort in hearing the familiar repeated.

      She smiled as Cary Grant, resplendent in a tuxedo and radiating charm, came on the scene. Some things you could always count on. It made her feel a tad better.

      He felt as if his body had been disassembled and then put back together incorrectly, with some of the parts missing. Every single bone and muscle in his body made its presence known with one hell of an ache.

      But pain was a good thing, right? Pain meant he was alive.

      Either that or in hell.

      With effort, Zack pried open his eyes. The first thing that came into focus was the flannel blanket.

      He was no expert, but he was fairly certain that there were no pink blankets in hell. Which meant that his first impression was right. He was alive.

      It was a good starting point.

      He played dead for a moment, lowering his eyelids until all that remained opened were two tiny slits. Zack scanned the immediate area in front of him. He was lying on the floor of someone’s house.

      Whose?

      And for that matter, what was he doing on the floor, covered with a blanket? It wasn’t pulled over his head, so they—whoever “they” were—obviously didn’t think that he was dead. But why had they brought him here?

      And, while he was at it, just where was here?

      And what the hell was that searing pain all about? It threatened to take off the top of his head. The only way he could have felt worse was if he’d fallen headfirst into a wood chipper.

      Zack struggled to extract his brain from the center of its cotton-batting prison. He needed to think clearly in order to piece things together.

      He thought back. The last thing he remembered was going out into the alley behind the Internet café.

      No, wait, the last thing he remembered was being shot and struggling with the man he’d been tailing. He’d tried to get possession of the man’s weapon before he could get off another shot. But it did go off again. And this time, the bullet had gone into the other man’s body.

      Had it killed him?

      Zack didn’t know. He always hit what he aimed for but this time, he wasn’t aiming. The discharge had been by accident, forced by the other man’s hand.

      No, wait, that wasn’t the last thing he remembered, he amended again, desperately trying to hang on to loose, stray thoughts. He remembered trying to get away. He did get away. He’d managed to leave the strip mall and find his way into a development of white brick houses. A whole village of them. It was like something out of that silly fairy tale about the three little pigs. Except that he wasn’t the big bad wolf.

      Even so, when he’d knocked on one door after another, nobody would let him in. No one would help him. And then, too weak to go on, he’d fallen to his knees before the last house.

      After that, there was nothing. Had he passed out?

      There was a woman on the sofa, dozing from the looks of it. Did he know her? He didn’t think so. He would have remembered a woman who looked like this one did, he thought. Even from this distance, with his eyes all but shut, he could see the woman with the curly brown hair had class. And looks.

      Too bad he wasn’t going to meet her, but he really had to get out of here. There was someplace he had to be by noon. Dawn was breaking, so he judged that he still had some time left. But he had a feeling he wasn’t exactly himself today and that getting to where he had to be would require a lot of energy. If he didn’t make it in time, all hell could break loose. He knew that without being told. This was a delicate operation that required precise timing.

      Removing the blanket from his body with a hand that felt incredibly stiff, Zack started to sit up.

      The flash of sharp, excruciating pain was completely unexpected. So was the moan that involuntarily escaped his lips.

      The woman on the sofa was awake and on her feet before he realized that the sound had come from him.

      She had long, curly light brown hair and blue eyes that flashed as she came closer.

      “What are you doing?” she demanded sharply, crossing to him.

      He would have thought that would have been obvious. “Trying to get up.”

      “Wait,” she cautioned, putting a hand on his shoulder to stop him. She squatted down beside him. “Put your arm around my shoulders.”

      Why did that sentence sound so familiar to him? As if he’d just heard it moments ago. But that was impossible. He had a feeling he’d been out at least several hours.

      Shaking off any extraneous thoughts, he tried to do the same with the woman. “I can get up by myself,” he told her.

      “No, you can’t.” She said it with such authority, he almost believed her. “If you strain yourself, you’ll wind up breaking open your stitches.” Her tone left no room for argument. “Now, lean on me and let me help.”

      No matter what she sounded like, the woman looked like a delicate little thing. Just proved that looks could be deceiving. The strength he felt in her hands as she wrapped one around his waist surprised him.

      Though he hated to admit it, even to himself, getting up was a lot easier with her help.

      She got him up and onto the sofa. But he didn’t want to sit, he wanted to leave. Had to leave. Still, he was grateful for the momentary respite. Just getting to his feet had taken a lot out of him. He wasn’t СКАЧАТЬ