Page 6 of Hunted

She shook her head and took an equal step away from him. “I’m calling the police. And then I’m going to turn my dogs loose, and?—”

“You’re not calling anyone, because there’s no phone up here. And if you had dogs, they’d be barking at me by now. Listen, Lexi, I’ll be a lot easier to deal with than whoever comes through that door next.”

When he said that, it scared her, and the noises upstairs came back to her mind. Involuntarily, she glanced toward the wide staircase. Each step was a half log, flat side up, and the railings were birch branches and limbs still dressed in their white, knotty bark, preserved under layers of shellac. Her heart tripped over itself again and then launched into a full gallop.

“Someone’s upstairs, then. Who, Lexia? Your father?”

“Stop calling me that.” She averted her eyes, tried to focus on getting her heartbeat under control, but it was too late. The tachycardia was off and running.

She felt as if she wasn’t getting enough air, which made her breathe more quickly, which made her dizzy. This was not an unfamiliar event, and not a dangerous one, but its timing sucked. Another sound came from upstairs then and her expression probably gave away that it shouldn’t have.

The stranger—whose eyes were the darkest imaginable blue, she saw now that the firelight reached them—reached inside his coat and pulled out a handgun. When she saw it, her heart sped even faster. It felt like a jackhammer trying to break out from inside. She pressed her hands to her chest, an automatic reaction to the thundering of her heart, then spun around and ran out of the great room. She didn’t even know whether she was running away from the gun or toward her stash of meds. She needed to take a pill and take it fast, before this episode got out of hand.

The beautiful Dr. Stoltz had run through a dark archway before he could stop her. Romano hadn’t expected it, and something, instinct maybe, made him hesitate before going after her.

He saw where the broad staircase began, saw her stop at the base of it, and snatch a pill bottle from a stand there. She twisted it open and then quickly dry-swallowed a pill. Then she bowed her head, deliberately breathing slowly and evenly while apparently waiting for relief to come.

She stepped around the staircase, just out of his line of vision. And the second she was out of his sight, he heard her scream.

Romano ducked to one side of the doorway, peering around it, cursing his eyes for not adjusting more quickly to the dimness.

Then she came into sight again, a dark angel in a white cotton nightgown, her eyes wide with fear. But her fear had little effect on the brute who pressed a gun barrel so tight to her temple that it was probably biting into her skin. The thug, all in black and wearing a ski mask, crushed her to his chest.

There was a deep growl that drew his gaze, and then a yellow cat the size of a small mountain lion arched its back, hissed and disappeared into the depths of the place.

Romano cussed mentally, bringing his attention back where it belonged. Lexia Stoltz's eyes were rounder than ever. Dark brown, with lashes like paintbrush fringe. The guy who held her was almost invisible in the darkened room, and he apparently wasn’t aware of Romano’s presence. Experience and caution— or maybe instinct— had told him to park his own ride a few hundred yards down the dirt road, so they wouldn’t have seen that, either.

And he had no doubt it was “they” and not just “he.” Because this fellow was not Mr. White. Romano was one of the only men in US Intelligence ever to have seen White in person, if from a distance. And there was no mistaking him. This guy was one of White’s henchmen, and while their boss worked alone, his muscle worked in bunches.

Romano sidled his way to the front door and slipped through it, unseen, into the winter night.

Lexi still had her pill bottle in her hand. Her heart was still running like a freight train on crack, and it would take a few minutes for the medication to kick in and convert it back to a normal rhythm.

She felt sick and dizzy, partly from fear, but mostly from the racing heartbeat. The man's grip was too tight on her, crushing her chest, which wasn’t helping her tachycardia. The gun barrel pressed painfully against her temple and she was trying not to think how easily he might pull the trigger by accident.

She scanned the room for Jax. Her poor cat would be terrified by all this disruption. He was probably hiding, scared half to death.

“Where is your father?” the man rasped into her ear. When she didn’t answer instantly, the gun barrel drove harder into the side of her head. “Where is he!”

He had an unusual accent. Russian, she thought. “I don’t?—”

“Is he here, in the house?”

“I don’t know what you’re?—”

The barrel embedded deeper. It cut. Warm blood trickled down the side of her face. “He’s not here!” She’d lost track of the stranger, but assumed that this guy was with him.

The pressure eased a little. Maybe now they’d leave, go search for her father somewhere else. What did they want with him? Why was this happening?

Someone might be after me, Lexia.

Her father’s words floated back to her, as if he were speaking them now. But her father had been delusional, sick. And that was more than six months ago, almost seven, for God’s sake!

The man shoved her through the archway into the great room, toward the door. She tripped over Jax and he let out a howl before streaking out of the room to hide. She stumbled on the rug but couldn’t fall down. The man’s grip on her was too tight to let her.

“You will take us to him, then,” he said in that accent.

She’d never been so afraid in her life. And she wondered if these men meant to kill her. And where was the other one? The one who’d played good cop by knocking on the door like a human while his pal had apparently scaled her cabin and come in through an upstairs window.

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