Page 28 of Final Escape
She stared at him, silent and still, her face chalk-white. And then she walked away.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Carrie stepped outof her SUV on Monday morning, carefully surveyed the teachers’ parking lot, then tapped the lock button on her key ring remote and hurried toward the back entrance of the school.
Everything was as it should be. Students being dropped off by parents at the front door. Some walking from various parts of the small town. Traffic was light in town, since the tourist crowds usually didn’t pick up until midmorning. Which should have made it easier to spot anything unusual. Anyone who might have been following her...or waiting somewhere, to watch her pass by.
But something wasn’t right.
She’d felt it at the back of her neck. That uneasy prickling sensation of warning. She’d had an uneasy premonition before she ever left her riverside apartment. And she’d had it earlier, when someone called her cell phone twice in the middle of the night but hung up when she answered.
She’d immediately gone to her laptop to trace the caller’s name via a reverse lookup website, but the number had been untraceable.
She’d sighed with relief when Logan, Penny, and Tina all drove in and parked over by the boathouse this morning, knowing that she wasn’t alone. Yet even now, with students and teachers all funneling into the school, she again had a disquieting sense that she was being watched.
In the relative privacy of her classroom, with the door firmly shut, she called Trace, impatiently counting the rings. The kids were piling up outside the door and she’d have to let them in before Marie or the principal stopped in to see what was going on. Why wasn’t he answering?
She shivered, remembering one of Billy’s emails from a few months ago.You’re going to be so sorry. Your family, too.
Trace had laughed off her immediate concern for his safety, but he certainly hadn’t wasted a minute where she was concerned. He’d immediately reported the message to both the sheriff’s department and Sam Olson, Carrie’s lawyer, and demanded that they follow up.
She’d always followed Sam’s advice and never responded to any of her ex-husband’s calls or messages. Sam had, though, to keep track of his whereabouts, but Billy had dropped out of sight for many months.
But then there’d been the email he sent to her just a few weeks ago, promising that he’d be paying her a visit soon. Would he? He’d taunted her before and hadn’t followed through. Surely he knew that he’d gain nothing but trouble if he harassed her now.
But could she stake her life on it?
And soon, she might be even more vulnerable, if Logan went traipsing off to follow the rodeo circuit.Rodeo.
It had been a startling revelation, to say the least, and had effectively doused any attraction she felt toward him.
The last thing she needed in her life was a footloose, irresponsible cowboy chasing the sunsets across the country. Perhaps absence made the heart grow fonder, but distance also set the stage for lies and deceit that were hard to detect.
Logan probably wasn’t like Billy at all. There were plenty of honest, good-hearted cowboys out there—many who even belonged to Cowboys for Christ, and who would share her faith.
But even worse than Billy’s lies and hot temper were the sleepless nights and the worry. The years of fearing the ring of the phone, afraid Billy had been injured...or killed, like his buddy Mike two years ago. She could never live that life of fear again. Ever.
