Hunted. Beverly Long

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СКАЧАТЬ he said, his voice soft.

      He had no idea. She remembered the headlights in her rearview mirror and the impact of the car against her back bumper, and shivered. “Yes. I think I flipped over in the air because my backpack and purse got thrown somewhere else in the car. I landed right side up, fortunately. The air bag inflated. I was just taking stock of my situation when you came along.”

      “We’re lucky Molly can be a pain in the butt, otherwise I wouldn’t have found you. If you can’t walk back to the cabin, I can always carry you.”

      The idea of being in Ethan Moore’s arms made her warm up suddenly. “It’s my shoulder, not my legs. I can walk.”

      “I know that. But injuries have a way of sneaking up on a person.”

      “I’ll be fine once I can get to the cabin,” she said.

      “Here’s the deal. There’s electricity but no heat or hot water at your cabin,” he said. “I was actually going to stay there until I discovered that. That’s when I moved to the Donovan cabin. Fortunately, Mack, Brody and I always had keys to both. I think it was your brother’s idea. Always have a plan and a backup plan.”

      That sounded like Mack. And the situation at the cabin sounded rather grim. But she’d come this far, she wasn’t stopping now. “I’d still like to go there. I...I need to see it.” For days her world had been in turmoil. The cabin had always been there, solid, safe, comfortable. Everything she needed right now.

      “As the crow flies, we’re about a mile from there. If you need to stop at any point, just tell me. Don’t hide anything,” he said. “Knowing about someone’s abilities or inabilities is sometimes the difference between life and death. All right?”

      “Got it.”

      “Okay. Give me a minute to find the flashlight.”

      She stood perfectly still, afraid to move. She could barely see her hand in front of her face but somehow he was confidently moving around in the dark.

      It took him less than a couple minutes to locate the flashlight. “Here we go,” he said. “It was practically buried in these pine needles.”

      Suddenly a swath of light split the dark night and she immediately felt better.

      He turned and led the way on the narrow path that required them to go single file. The terrain was rough and without her one arm for balance, she felt awkward and slow. But he never said anything. And he never got more than a couple steps in front of her before slowing down so that she could catch up.

      When they reached the cabin, he stopped and turned. “Why don’t you stay here for a minute and let me take a look first. All kinds of things can happen in an unattended space.”

      Yikes. She hadn’t considered that. Just her luck, a bear had taken up residence. “If you think it’s necessary,” she said.

      He let out a loud sigh. “Mack would kick my butt if I did anything different.”

      As she recalled, from all the wrestling matches that had occurred in their basement, Mack and Ethan had been very evenly matched. She reached into her jeans pocket and pulled out a small key ring with two keys. “It’s this one.”

      “Shouldn’t take me more than thirty seconds,” he said.

      “Okay. Be careful,” she added.

      He walked away. “Don’t worry.”

      Worrying was all she’d done since she’d realized what had happened and was still happening.

      She hadn’t said goodbye to her stepmother, hadn’t been able to face the woman who sat behind the big desk in her five-hundred-dollar suits.

      While she couldn’t be 100 percent sure, she was pretty confident the trail led right to that shiny desk with its silver pens placed just so.

      If only Claudia Linder was just the CEO of Linder Automation. But six months ago, under a full moon, in the presence of twenty slightly drunk guests, Chandler and Mack being two of them, Claudia Linder had married Baker McCann, becoming Claudia Linder McCann, Chandler and Mack’s stepmother.

      Her dad had been over the moon about finding a second love. He’d been alone since his wife had died more than twenty years earlier.

      It would destroy him if what Chandler suspected was true.

      But how many would pay if Chandler turned her back and said nothing?

      It had been thirty seconds since Ethan had entered the cabin and he still hadn’t called for her. In fact, she couldn’t hear anything from inside. Her heart was pumping in her chest. She wished the dog had stayed with her.

      Something was wrong.

       Chapter Three

      The front door of the cabin swung open. A light had been turned on. Ethan stood in the doorway, his arm raised, motioning her in. She ran toward him, not caring that it jarred her shoulder.

      “It’s okay,” he said, stepping aside quickly.

      She nodded and for the first time in many days, when she stepped over the threshold into the familiar space, thought that he might be right.

      She took a deep breath and the sense of family filled her lungs. The main living area of the cabin was one big room, with a kitchen on one side and family room on the other. Off to the left, down a short hallway, were two small bedrooms and a bath. The floors were all narrow slats of pine, and the round-log walls were the best that Colorado had to offer.

      It had been in her family for generations. She knew the Donovan cabin was the mirror image. Her great-grandfather had built them both in the 1930s. In the 1960s, Grandpa McCann had inherited the cabins and paid for electricity lines to be strung from the main highway and had dug a well. By the 1990s, they’d been passed down to her dad, who saw no need for two cabins. Baker McCann had sold one to his best friend, Brody Donovan’s dad.

      And her family had kept the other one, spending summers here since she was a child. Both Baker and Mr. Donovan had worked from home. Baker as a computer analyst, Mr. Donovan as a novelist. That flexibility allowed them to come in June and stay until Labor Day. The McCanns had stayed home the summer Sally McCann had died. Baker had barely left the basement and had stopped tinkering with the old helicopter that he was rebuilding. He certainly wasn’t up to vacationing with his two children. Mack had been angry that they’d missed a summer in the mountains. Chandler had been too young to care as much. But by the next year, her dad had pulled himself together and things had gotten back to normal. Except the new normal had included Ethan Moore.

      He and Mack had shared a bedroom, she’d had the other and her dad had slept on the pullout sofa. Every morning, the boys had met Brody Donovan at the end of the lane and they didn’t come home until dark. They’d fished, hiked and swam in the lake. And at night, when Mack and Ethan had returned to the cabin, they’d played cards. It was how she’d learned to play poker, first watching, then finally, when she got the hang of it, they’d let her sit in on a few games.

      “How are you feeling?” Ethan asked, СКАЧАТЬ