Page 51 of Boxed In

She heaved in a sigh and let it out. At least she knew he wanted her to stay with him, and that meant he was prepared to protect her.

Was Decorah Security a better bet? Luke hadn’t called them. But maybe the warrior was keeping him from doing it.

At least for now. She’d tried to call her friends. But maybe she owed it to Zabastian to show some trust.

Zabastian. She’d used that name. Shouldn’t she be calling him Luke?

He was going to be Luke again, wasn’t he? Or was having Zabastian inside his mind a recipe for disaster?

She wished she knew which way to jump. But she figured that, for the time being, they were safe in this house.

oOo

With his heart blocking his windpipe, Carl dashed through the door and into a hallway. On one side was a laundry room. And at the end of the hall, he found a door to the outside of the building.

With a sigh of relief, he rushed through and out into the night, then stopped to drag in huge drafts of air. When he no longer looked and felt like demons were after him, he started for the side of the building, then slipped into the woods, brambles tearing at his pants legs as he worked his way around toward his car. He had almost reached the front of the building when the sound of breaking glass made him stop in his tracks. While he’d been in the basement, the men had come around the side of the apartment. And they were on a patio. One of them had picked up a paving stone and heaved it through the sliding glass door.

It was safety glass, and once they’d broken through, rounded chips began falling out of the hole and dropping to the ground.

Carl watched from behind a tree trunk large enough to conceal his girth. He should slip away before they saw him, but his legs simply wouldn’t work. He stayed where he was, gripping the tree bark to keep from slipping to the ground.

One of the men must have been wearing gloves because he reached toward the window and began enlarging the hole. When a considerable amount of the glass had been removed, the three men slipped into the apartment and disappeared.

Carl breathed out a sigh. Whatever was happening with Olivia was getting out of control.

This couldn’t be about the shipment of antiques. Could it?

A stray thought struck him, and he cringed. What if some of the antiques belonged to them. And they were just trying to get their property back.

He cursed under his breath. He’d hate for these guys to be in the right. And even if they were, they were dangerous. He should call the cops.

But he couldn’t do it from his cell phone because they’d trace the call back to him. And he didn’t want to seem like he was involved. He’d better wait until he could get to a pay phone.

Teeth clenched, he pushed away from the tree, swaying on unsteady legs for a moment. When he thought he could move, he ran as fast as he could through the woods and emerged on the sidewalk.

He made a strangled sound when he saw the nosy neighbor standing in front of his car, taking down his license number.

Lord, no!

Without thinking about what he was doing, he leaped forward, knocking the piece of paper and pencil out of the man’s hand.

“Hey!”

The man spun around, gave Carl a murderous look and lunged. “You!”

Carl had never been particularly quick on his feet, but he was able to dance back, barely avoiding a blow. “You don’t want me! You want the guys who are robbing her apartment,” he shouted.

“What?”

“They broke the sliding glass door. They’re in there. Call the cops.”

The man blinked. “Huh?”

Carl snatched up the paper with the license number, praying that the guy wasn’t smart enough to remember a string of letters and numbers. Damn, he should have smeared mud on the plate. But it was too late for that now.

He was in over his head. And the only thing he could think to do was get out of there.

The nosy neighbor started back toward the apartment. Was the poor jerk walking into a death trap? Carl didn’t know. But at the moment, the important thing was saving his own bacon.

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