Page 5 of Shrouded Past

“You shouldn’t move. You need medical—”

She shook her head even before the stranger finished speaking. “You can’t call for help. He might be . . .” Might be what? Her frown deepened as she tried to fish out the answer and couldn’t. “Please, he’s out there somewhere still.”

Piper struggled to get up. To run. Blood loss made her body too weak to cooperate.

The man stared at her with concern and something else—something resembling pain—embedded in deep-blue eyes. He wore a black cowboy hat, tendrils of dark hair plastered against his face curling around it and at the collar of what appeared to be a Western shirt.

When her rescuer didn’t respond, she tried again to leave the trunk and fell back. The knife her captor had used to control her had left several slices in her skin. He hadn’t wanted to kill her. No, he told her she was too important to someone, but that didn’t stop him from hurting her.

“I’ve got you.” The stranger reached down and gently lifted her out of the trunk. The intense pain from her injuries and cold rain soaking through her clothes reminded her she was still alive.

He opened the passenger door to his truck and eased her into the seat.

Piper couldn’t stop shivering, and he noticed.

“Hang on. I’ll turn on the heater.”

She got a better look at him as he rounded the front of the truck and crossed into the headlight beams. Her savior was the epitome of a tall, rugged cowboy. His body appeared deceptively lean—she had no doubt he could handle himself. He’d carried her as if she weighed nothing. His shirt and jeans clung to his frame, and he wore the black cowboy hat tucked down low over his eyes to shut out the rain.

Climbing in beside her, she noticed worn and muddy cowboy boots. She didn’t know him, and yet she felt safe.

But her captor was still out there somewhere. He’d told her he’d come back for her. The threat filled her with terror. She’d heard the truck idling. Had been so certain the driver would pass on by and her kidnapper would take her again. She didn’t know what the man meant when he said it was time for her to go home, but she was certain she didn’t want to know.

Piper leaned against the headrest and winced when her cheek came in contact with the leather. The man had slashed her face and body when she’d fought to get away. The wounds hadn’t been inflicted deliberately but had come as the result of Piper trying to wrestle the knife away from him. She’d battled hard for her freedom and lost.

Her thoughts reeled. She’d just escaped from one captor only to be kidnapped by another.

Piper had slipped from the basement where she’d been held for three years. Running for her life she’d reached a road and started walking quickly while praying the lights in front of her would bring help. Only she hadn’t been so lucky. Someone had come up behind her and jabbed a needle in her neck. Within seconds, Piper had lost consciousness.

When she’d awakened, she’d been certain it was her original abductor—the one who called himself Protector—coming to take her back to her prison.

Nothing could be further from reality.

The man driving the car wore a full-face skeleton mask. All that showed were his eyes. Dark and dead.

A skeleton seemed fitting.

The irony of being kidnapped just as she’d escaped one prison was anything but humorous. She knew the two abductions were somehow connected even before her kidnapper confirmed her beliefs.

Unlike Skeleton Man, Protector had shown himself to her. Every day of those three years she’d seen his face. And only his face—no one else’s. He lived alone, was in his fifties, and seemed anything but a protector.

Whenever she begged him to let her go, he told her he wanted to but couldn’t. He was the only thing keeping her alive.

She’d thought him crazy . . . until she’d escaped only to be kidnapped by a different type of monster.

“Better?” The kind and husky male voice snapped her from the nightmare. She was safe.

For now.

Call it divine intervention or dumb luck that her kidnapper had swerved as they’d struggled for control of the knife. He’d lost control and then slammed into the tree. Piper had blacked out. When she’d awakened, he was dragging her to the trunk and telling her to keep quiet. He’d be back. She’d known she had to do everything she could to try to escape.

Piper turned toward this man she didn’t know and saw his concern as well as the questions he needed answered.

She touched her T-shirt. It was wet and sticky from more than rain. Blood covered the front of it. She could feel the sting of several gashes rubbing against the material.

“My name is Bryce Malone, by the way,” her rescuer said. “What’s yours?”

Fear had her trembling so much that speaking became difficult. “P-Piper. Piper Alexander.”

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