Page 8 of Hunted

Lexi blinked, not moving. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening. My God, what did this man want? What did it have to do with her father? Why did he want to search her house?

Of all the questions swirling in her mind, she only voiced one. “A couple of hours until what?”

“Until some friends of these guys show up, or maybe some other guys who'll be just as nasty. The rope, Lexi.”

“What is this all about?”

He scowled at her until his dark brows touched.

Still breathing as if she’d just run a marathon, she shook herself and turned toward the little greenhouse beside the cabin. On the way, she scooped up a handful of snow and slapped across the back of her neck. The shock it made her gasp, and there was an awful sensation in her chest as her heart converted itself back into a normal rhythm. And then it eased.

She continued on to the garden shed, the one that held all of her father’s gardening tools. He used to love to putter in his garden at home, and the first thing he’d done upon arriving up here was to start a new one in the back, hoe out the old greenhouse and get it fixed up. The last three months of his life, he’d spent more time on his gardening than he’d spent with her.

Lexi hated the greenhouse.

But she went inside anyway, and she found some rope.

Chapter Four

The two thugs were bound, gagged and struggling in the living room of Lexi Stoltz’s log palace. Romano had blown out the candles—didn’t want their thrashing around to knock one over and start a fire. He’d turned on lights, instead, half-surprised they even had lights this far up in the middle of nowhere.

Lexi didn’t like the lights. She told him so without speaking a word. The way she squinted and shielded her eyes, it seemed as if she’d rather scamper off into the woods, into the dark, away from him and every ugly human being ever to draw a breath. To live out there, with her own kind, the wary woodland creatures.

The image fit. She seemed like something rarely seen by mortal eyes. Something that only came out of hiding when she was certain no one was near, afraid of being hurt or something.

She was definitely afraid of something.

The thugs most of all, at the moment. She wouldn’t walk by them, even though they were tied up. But she followed Romano as he walked through the house, questioning him once or twice. Her voice was deep and smoky. But when he passed the bad guys, she hung back.

He stopped halfway up the staircase, staring up at the seemingly endless hallway above, the countless doors lining it. “You couldn’t have lived in a quaint little cottage, could you?”

His shoulder raged and nagged for attention. It was only a matter of time before more guys-in-black showed up. And here he was with a search grid the size of Grand Central.

“You’re not going to get away with this, you know.” She sounded like some heroine in a murder mystery. “Someone will be coming along any minute now, and you?—”

“Someone will be coming along all right, but they won’t be much help.”

She stood just inside the archway, and though she’d been speaking to him, her eyes were glued to the two wriggling black bundles hog-tied on the floor. One of them was bleeding all over her hardwood. Her lower lip trembled. He told himself not to care.

Her wide brown eyes stayed right there in his mind’s eye, though. He couldn’t make them leave. Damn. There was something about her that made him want to reassure her, maybe take her by the hand and tell her it was going to be okay.

He walked away, ignored her, found her father’s room and wondered if the man was really dead, or if she’d made that up. The room looked as if he’d just left it this morning. Still …

He went through drawers, closets, checked under the bed. There was a stack of papers in a shoebox under there, and he pawed through it, not finding much that stood out. A couple of unremarkable bank statements, a safe deposit box receipt, some junk mail. He shook his head, and headed back into the hallway. She was standing there waiting for him.

“Look, I don’t have time to search this whole place, so I’m gonna have to trust you. Where are your father’s notes?”

She blinked and her gaze finally met his. “Notes?”

“The project he was working on just before he dropped out of sight, Lexi. The biological weapon he developed. Where is it?”

Her eyes narrowed. She was either completely unaware of the mess her father had created or a very good actress. He hadn’t decided which.

“My father never worked on any kind of weapon. You’ve got the wrong man, or the wrong information. He was a virologist.”

“Yeah. That much I know.”

Romano pushed a hand through his hair, rolled his eyes, swore— none of which helped the situation. When he looked at her again, she was staring at the floor near his feet. He glanced down, saw the bloodstain on the carpet, and fresh drops raining down from his arm to add to the mess.

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