Nightfall (2 page)

She stayed calm. “I have stuff inside you can use. Soup, an insulated sleeping bag, pretty much everything you need to rough it. You don't have to steal from me. I'll give you the stuff. No strings.”

Silence.

Maybe she should be worried about something else. Something worse. Jenna couldn't even make herself shape the words mentally. Things like that never happened in Culver. She should have been safe walking down the driveway to get her mail. Her mind had been on heading into town and joining Deb and Mara at the Louie: liquor, laughter, friends—not defending against an armed assailant.

“Are you Jenna Barclay?” he asked.

Her heart thudded in her ears. She wondered if she ought to lie. Would that make it worse? Fear tasted sharp on her tongue. She wouldn't give a desperate man a reason to hurt her. Sometimes they didn't need a reason, but she'd play it smart. And she'd walk away from this.

“Yes,” she managed to say. “I'm Jenna. What do you want?”

Instead of answering that question, he returned to one she'd already posed. “No, this isn't a mugging.”

Surely they weren't conversing while he held a gun on her. She felt the barrels through the thick down of her jacket and refused to think about bullets tearing through her flesh, blood-spattered feathers wafting up.

No running, no sudden moves. She'd be all right. She just had to make him think of her as a person. Not an object he could take into the forest and have fun with.

“Then what is it?”

“It's a kidnapping,” he said, and stuffed a cloth in her mouth.

He moved too quickly for thought—even faster than the panic that followed his words. Jenna heard a ripping noise before he sealed a strip of duct tape over her mouth. When he slung her over his shoulder, her stomach slammed against his back. The wind was knocked right out of her, and she had the irrational thought that he smelled like the forest—a tangy whisper of pine, cut with fresh air and moss.

Hauling Jenna as if she weighed nothing, he squatted, snatched her keys, and sprinted up the drive toward her garage. He levered her up one-handed and taped her ankles. Her wrists came next, and that was when the fear sunk all the way in.

He wasn't kidding.

Jenna thrashed and fought. If she let him take her away from here, she'd never see home again. She didn't care about the threat of a bullet. A quick death would be better than whatever he had in mind. Tears seared the corners of her eyes and felt hotter because her skin had chilled in the late autumn air.

But he handled her struggles with impersonal proficiency. She managed to elbow him in the sternum, and he didn't even grunt. Iron man. Unmoved. Maybe begging would work. “Nobody will pay the ransom,” she tried to say, but it came out more like, “Mmdy wuh puh,” before she gave up.

Nightmare. It had to be. She'd wake up soon.

Terror flared like a struck match as he popped the trunk of her car. He deposited her inside with curious care. Once he closed the metal top, it would be like a tomb.

With the setting sun behind him in a nimbus of fire, he looked like a dark god, broad shoulders and features blurred by her tears. But Jenna saw one thing clearly. He wasn't wearing a mask, and that meant he wasn't ever letting her go.

The trunk slammed.

Minutes turned into hours, and hours into eternity. After she died a million times in her mind, in almost as many different ways, the car slowed and stopped. She listened to the engine ticking over.

A key clicked in the lock. Jenna expected her captor to yank her roughly out of the trunk, so she braced. He might not need an excuse to hurt her. To her surprise, he drew her up with the care one would use with a sleeping child. His gentle hands belied the tape across her mouth and her bound limbs.

Wordlessly, he set her on her feet. As her blinking eyes adjusted to the rich twilight, she realized there was no reason he'd fear she might run. In addition to the hobbles on her ankles, they stood in the middle of a deep forest. They might still be in Oregon—she'd lost track of time while he drove—but in a remote region she'd never seen.

A reassuring bulge in her left pocket meant that her cell phone had made it out of the trunk with her. She just needed to bide her time and humor him until she could text someone for help. The New U.S. Rangers could track her phone and find her that way. Though she'd complained about the lack of privacy under the new regime—since the federal government had relocated to Fresno—right now, Jenna appreciated the hell out of their insistence on spying on citizens.

She stood quietly, awaiting instructions. Crazies liked feeling in control, didn't they? She wouldn't give him any reason to search her—or worse. Giving the man a quick once-over, she reassessed what she'd hoped back in her driveway. He didn't need winter gear. A knit cap stretched over his skull, and he wore dark heavy-gauge jeans and a woodland camouflage jacket that looked military. He slung a
serious
semiautomatic rifle across his back. The gun he'd poked between her shoulder blades must be the nine-millimeter in his hip holster.

Fighting him was completely out of the question. A one-man army.
Oh shit.

“I'm sorry it had to be like that,” he said, his voice rough. “But we needed to get away from the city. You wouldn't believe me without proof.”

Believe what? She'd already seen half the world come to a screeching halt.

Jenna stared at him in silence. How was she supposed to answer through the duct tape anyway? Not that there was any point. It was a stretch to call a burg like Culver a city. Not that crazy people needed to make sense. A frisson ran through her as the sun filtered out of the dense foliage entirely, drenching the world in shadow. Nightfall had never looked so sinister.

“Anyway, we should get inside. We can talk in the cabin. It's freezing out here, and I promised your dad I'd keep you safe.”

That was pure bullshit. Mitch Barclay had been dead since she was twelve, and even before that, he'd never been particularly interested in her well-being—except when it suited him. He'd faded in and out of her life like a ghost, each time seeming a little less connected to reality. His final visit had been so strange that she hadn't wanted to see him again. He'd come just to stare at her, it seemed, like he could x-ray the inside of her head.

The man knelt and peeled the tape from around her ankles. She wanted to run, but taking off ill prepared in the cold might be stupider than staying put. Besides, her feet had gone completely numb. Blood rushed back in splinters of pain.

Distracting herself, Jenna tried to memorize the dwelling's exterior. Maybe she could put some detail in her text message. They stood in a clearing ringed by heavy trees. The split-log cabin looked like someone's hunting retreat, rustic but not shabby or poorly maintained.

When the man straightened, he was bigger than she'd realized, perhaps as much as a foot taller than her own five foot six. His swarthy skin bespoke some mixed ancestry, and he was built like a Mack truck. Solid muscle. Quite simply, she could hit him with a brick and he wouldn't even notice.

She'd have to outsmart him.

With a gesture, he indicated she should precede him toward the cabin. It wasn't good manners as much as him keeping an eye on her. She stumbled a little, her legs still stiff and tingling. He steadied her with a surprising hand on her back. She flinched and pulled away, but a small part of her was thankful that she hadn't fallen.
Keep it together. Stay calm.

Jenna crossed the tidy porch, her shoes clunking against the plank wooden floor. Dread churned her nausea when she reached the door. He leaned past her and opened it—again, probably not a courtesy so much as recognizing the limitations of her bound hands. The inside of the cabin matched the exterior: woven rugs, hand-carved furniture with homey sewn cushions, and a big stone fireplace. Avocado appliances decked out an antiquated kitchenette, and a ladder led up to what might be a loft.

“Go in,” he said. “I need to take care of some things. Then I'll cut you loose, so you can ask all the questions I see burning in your eyes.”

Mason watched from the doorway as Jenna settled onto the oversized wing-backed chair. Despite an expression stricken with fear, she did so with grace. The massive seat would better suit a lumberjack, all but dwarfing her. She kept her back straight, bound hands in her lap, and those cool green eyes aimed at the barren fireplace.

He wanted to be surprised at finding Mitch's daughter graceful and collected. Prophetic, canny, even capable—that would make sense. Mitch Barclay had definitely been resourceful. But graceful? Never. Yet Mason had felt it when he'd scooped Jenna into the trunk. Through the winter coat and her belated struggles, he'd held a dancer's body. Long limbs and resilient muscles. His own muscles had responded, blood and bone finding a match in her strength.

Strength they'd both need to survive the coming storm.

Turning, Mason locked the door behind him and stalked through the dusk to check the windows. Bolted and blackened. He climbed the metal extension ladder. His pulse kept the moderate rhythm of steady movement, amplified by the urgency of preparation. As he paused atop the roof, he inhaled. The nighttime forest breathed with him, the snap and spice of cold evergreen air.

After making sure the barbed-wire screen and charcoal filter over the chimney were secure, he climbed down and collapsed the ladder. He shoved it into the tiny cellar with the rest of the ammo and supplies, then snapped the padlock.

Next was Jenna's car. He'd taken a chance driving so close to the cabin, valuing speed over stealth. Now he checked the ignition, harboring slight hope that it would flare to life. A turn of the key produced nothing—not even a click. The little hybrid was too new, too wired with computer-based circuitry. They might have used his '78 Bronco, but not for long. The Fuel Wars would hit the west in time, and the Bronco would be harder to hide. Better to make a clean break with old luxuries.

Accepting that the car was a useless relic, he grabbed the emergency gas can from the trunk. At least its fuel would still come in handy. He used his hunting knife to slice a three-foot length of garden hose and shoved it into the tank. Eyes closed, he sucked and sucked on the filthy green rubber, his lungs bursting. Gasoline filled his mouth. He sputtered and spit, then caught the flow of fuel in the can.

When he'd completely drained the car, he popped it into neutral. One hand on the open driver's-side door and the other on the steering wheel, he rocked the foreign compact back and forward. Sweat soaked the T-shirt beneath his camo field jacket. The car edged forward. Momentum took control. Grunting, pushing until his shoulders burned, he steered it into the woods, then dragged netting laced with branches over the gold metallic paint job.

Good. Everything as he'd planned.

Mason looked back toward the cabin. It stood small, squat, and blanketed in darkness. A shiver touched the nape of his neck, quickly followed by the primal call for safety. Get indoors.
Now.

Minutes later, arms laden with firewood and the rifle across his back, he kicked the cabin's only door with his heavy work boots—and caught Jenna in the midst of a getaway. Her ass hung halfway out a window. His toolbox lay open beneath her dangling feet. A serrated kitchen knife had taken her place on the chair, with strips of dull silver duct tape scattered on the floor.

Crossing the cabin with long strides, Mason flung the split logs toward the fireplace, where they crashed like bowling pins. He stripped off his work gloves and grabbed two handfuls of female. Hips, to be exact. That soft upper-thigh part of the hip where a little extra flesh tempted a man to squeeze. He tightened his fingers. Her surprised yelp sent a rush of blood to his cock.

“Let go of me!” She kicked backward. He yanked her back into the cabin, her head smacking the window frame. “Ow! Shit!”

Every instinct told him to protect this woman, but his nerves were already shot to shit after getting her out of town—and knowing what was to come. He'd
seen
it.

He spun her and pushed her against the stout log wall. “Where would you go?”

“Home!”

Her knee came up between his legs. Mason deflected the desperate attack with his forearm. She twisted and tried to spin free, forcing him to let go of her hips. He settled for her wrists, still red from the duct tape, and pinned her hands above her head.

“My name is Mason,” he said, pushing his body flush to hers. That thump of blood increased. Fighting had always done that to him. Violence and sex together. “If you leave now, you'll find yourself walking back to Culver. No water. No flashlight. No vehicle.”

Pale green eyes widened. “What'd you do with my car?”

“It's in the woods, and the gas from the tank is in a can.”

“
Why
?”

“I'm saving your life. I know you don't see it, but it's the truth.” He inhaled through his nose, regaining control of his fight response. “At least acknowledge that heading back to civilization isn't a good choice... because I'm carrying a semiautomatic rifle.”

She nodded, a mere tilt of her head.

“I'm letting go of you.” He could hurt her, but keeping her safe
and
cooperative would require more than brute force. “I said you could ask questions. Can we do that now?”

A sneer twisted her lips. “You're asking me? I don't have a choice.”