Hunted (2 page)

He had no intention of letting her go. Five years of running and it came down to this—he had found her and even if she did get out of his grip she knew it wouldn’t be long before Jason sent his men in here to get her no matter who he had to kill to get to her. She would have to move swiftly. She would have to leave even when she had hoped this would be the place she could call home. She liked it here—even if most of that like was because of the man she had fallen hard for—the other part was just it was safe and quiet. It wasn’t Vegas. It wasn’t hell.

“What in heaven’s name is going on out there?” Cathy peered out the window as she sat Riggs’ breakfast on the table.

Keadon and everybody else in the place looked out the window to where Cathy seemed to have her attention glued. What Keadon saw was Heather standing on the tips of her toes while some man seemed to have a firm grip on her arm. He saw Dorian Saunders aiming to protect her with his cane raised high in one hand. He waved the cane frantically as if he wanted to hit the man with it. Dorian was a mere five foot four. He was old in body but not in heart. He had been in the Navy when he was a younger man. He had fought for this country while he was in the best shape of his life, but now his eighty-five year old body was not in fighting form. If he could manage to get close enough to Heather he would probably do her more harm than anything, and that man would surely break him. Fortunately Dorian wasn’t quick on his feet and while every shuffle led him a little closer, there was no threat he would get there before Keadon could.

Keadon shoved his chair back and in long, steady strides he exited the restaurant and came to stand on the second step from the ground.

“I said let go of me.”

“You let her go, or I’ll pound you.” Dorian waved his cane more frantically.

“You heard the lady,” Keadon said in a low, lethal tone. “Let her go.” Keadon watched as the man eyed him and then looked beside him. Keadon knew Riggs had come out the restaurant behind him. He could feel him there. Beyond that, Riggs was much like himself; he would not stand for a woman being hurt. Dorian wouldn’t be able to get enough force to stop the man. Keadon was sure from the look in his eyes that the man knew he and Riggs could break him in two with little effort.

The man was about his size; at least he had sized him up to be at least six feet and a good two hundred pounds of muscle. The man was built, but so was Keadon. Keadon stood at six two while Riggs was just under him at an even six feet. Keadon was two hundred ten pounds of muscle, built, stacked, and well earned muscle, while his brother was the heavier, two twenty-five and built like a friggin’ brick house of solid muscles. Beyond their looks, they could both take care of themselves. Riggs had street fighting down to a science before he graduated high school, while Keadon had gone beyond the basics in the Navy. He could kill this man without breaking a sweat if need be.

Keadon watched as Heather rubbed her recently released arm, took a step back and took a place beside Dorian. She seemed to be trying to make sure he was okay.

Keadon watched the blond walk away. He gave Heather a look, one that said “I’ll be seeing you,” with a deadly promise. Keadon wanted to know what was going on, but his first priority was making sure Heather was okay.

“Thank you,” she said to Dorian. “Thank you all.” She didn’t look at him; she refused to look at him.

Cathy came down the stairs and once Heather had reached near enough to them she pulled her into her arms. “What was that about, honey?”

“He just had me confused with somebody else.”

“My lord.” Cathy rubbed Heather’s shoulders as if she were trying to warm her up. “You’re shaking like a woman in labor.”

“I’m okay,” her voice was feeble, as if inwardly fear still gripped her even though she tried not to display it outwardly. He could tell she was lying and he wanted to know why. Who was that man? And why did she look like a scared rabbit ready to run? He wasn’t a local; Keadon was sure of that because there weren’t that many locals in the area so it was easy to get to know them all in the amount of time he had been there. He was observant of his surroundings. He always watched the world around him. He always had to. When he watched he could see things, like when danger was coming at him, or somebody was lying to him. She was definitely lying to him.

Chapter Two

It wasn’t until her shift was over that she felt fear spring back to the front of her mind. It had been there all day, ever since she saw Jake. She knew he had already made a phone call to Jason. She knew his men were already in route. But now that it was time for her to leave work she was starting to fear that Jake was hiding somewhere, ready to follow her home and get her when nobody else was around to help her.

If she made it home she was going to have to grab her go-bag and get moving. She wouldn’t be able to take much with her. There was no time to pack. There was no warning to prepare her for today. She hadn’t unpacked everything, but she had unpacked what she could. Some of those things she had taken out only a few weeks ago, when she started to think this could be home for her. She should have known the peace wouldn’t last—it never did.

She looked out at the path ahead of her. Usually she would change her clothes, put on her running shoes, strap her backpack to her back and run home after work. That route took her through the woods, and normally she was okay with that, but today the thought of running through the woods frightened her.

“Do you want a ride?” The deep voice vibrated from behind her. She jumped, turning swiftly. She found Keadon standing there just looking at her as if he were studying her.

“You scared me.” She placed the palm of her hand over her heart which was beating triple time now.

“Why’s that?”

She knew he suspected more, but she couldn’t tell him. She couldn’t tell anybody. She simply had to leave. “I guess I was just lost in thought about the path ahead of me.” That wasn’t a lie; she was lost in thought about the path ahead of her—just a different kind of path than the one that would lead her back to her place to grab her bag and hit the road.

“Then let me give you a ride.”

She nibbled her bottom lip before agreeing. “Sounds like a good idea actually. I’m not in the mood for the woods today.” Plus, if she got home faster she could grab a few items that she had unpacked and really wanted to take with her. Then she would get in her car and hit the road. It all depended on how fast Jake had Jason’s troops arrive. Plus, she wasn’t sure he wasn’t still lurking out there watching her, waiting to follow her to wherever she went. This was bad—very bad. This was the closest they had gotten to her. They were close before, but never had she actually encountered one of them. She had either heard somebody was showing her picture around town, or she had seen one of them driving down a street. Both events told her she needed to get moving. She had never encountered one of them—not until now. She was always at least a half a step ahead, and now they were right on top of her. The goose bumps on her skin weren’t there because she was cold; they were there because she was scared.

“Get in,” Keadon said as he opened the car door for her.

“”Thanks. She got into his car and watched as he closed the door. She hadn’t even realized they had been walking toward his car. She was too lost in her own thoughts to realize what was going on around her. Her heart was beating faster. She tried to calm it and her nerves, but calm was not a luxury she would be afforded.

She was about to say goodbye to Loral Hills. The question was what name could she come up with to use in her next move. Heck, where was she going to get another fake ID? She was out of those. Some nice criminal, she inwardly laughed at that thought, had taken pity on her. He, Jessop Derringer, knew the moment he saw her offering up her last piece of jewelry for a car that she was in trouble. “That’s crap jewelry, kid,” he had said. “Crap can’t buy crap.”

“I have this watch too,” she unfastened the watch from her wrist. She had bought it with her own money. She was working and Jason was getting suspicious as to where the money was going. She had to buy something.

“That’s gold plated,” he told her.

“No. I got it from the jewelry store,” she said. He in turn pulled off a whooper of a watch from his wrist, let her hold it and see the difference between solid gold and gold plated. Her watch that she had bought at an upscale jewelry store for seven hundred dollars was worth three at best.

“I can sense you’re in trouble, kid. I’ve been there myself.”

She was sure he hadn’t been where she was, but yes, she was in trouble.

“I’ll help you out, Jill Ann,” he snorted. “You’re going to have to do better with your name,” he told her. He asked how she was planning to be this “Jill Ann” without ID. She didn’t know. She had figured some things out, but researching how to run away from a crazy man was sure to get her caught by said crazy man. Jessop had set her up with five different driver’s licenses, given her the worst car, but still drivable, and some sound advice not to get pulled over for speeding or anything or she would find those “fakies” were not perfect. She hadn’t bought perfect, he reminded her. She hadn’t bought anything, he told her as he pocketed her watch, her earrings, her necklace, all of it. He obviously felt sorry for her, or just didn’t want the cheap Wal-Mart butterfly pendant because he gave it back to her and told her to scram. She was on her last ID here, and she didn’t exactly have the money to find somebody to make more for her. She would have to recycle them. She still had the driver’s licenses even though she wasn’t still using them. Perhaps it had been dangerous to keep them, but she wasn’t sure if she would need them again. Jessop had told her to only use them once, and she was fine with that then. She just didn’t realize she would be on the run so much, that she would have to leave, and change everything—reinvent herself and be somebody she wasn’t just to survive. She should have known. He promised her what he would do if she left. Jason Porter was not a man who made empty promises.

“So are you going to tell me what’s going on or are we going to keep driving down this road watching the trees as if nothing happened today?” Keadon wasn’t one to sit around and wait for answers. He had been waiting all day and his patience was on the edge of insanity because he knew something was wrong—deadly wrong. She was in danger and he would not let her get hurt.

“Nothing’s going on,” she kept looking out the window as if the trees were lined with gold. She was trying to avoid the conversation, but he wasn’t going to let her.

“Don’t lie to me, kid.”

“I’m not a kid,” she snapped. “I’m twenty-five years old. Just because you’re forty-two doesn’t mean I’m a kid.” She huffed. “And nothing is going on. I told you all he just had me confused with somebody else.”

Confused with somebody else…yeah, right. “I’m not buying it so you can stop trying to sell it. I see that look in your eyes. You’re like a scared rabbit ready to run.” He had seen it before—of course he had. He had seen kids join the Navy with every thought of serving their country and ready to run once they actually saw what serving entailed.

“Are you in trouble? If you’re in trouble you have people here who can help you.”

“Nobody can help me,” she uttered those words without hesitation.

So she was in trouble…he just didn’t know what kind. He couldn’t help her if she wouldn’t talk. “It doesn’t matter anyway.

I’ll be leaving today and I won’t be any concern of—”

“You’re not going anywhere,” he barked. “Look, you can’t run from whatever it is.”

“I have run before—five times actually.”

“And you plan to keep running?”

“If he finds me he’ll make me go back and I can’t. It would kill me, I know it would. And he won’t hesitate to kill anybody who stands in his way.”

“Is this an ex-boyfriend, ex-husband?” He didn’t think she had been married before, but he supposed she could have been.

She snorted out a sarcastic laugh. “I should be so lucky.”

“Heather,” he was losing his patience. He needed to help her and she wasn’t making that mission easy for him.

“Debbie, actually.” She turned to him and looked at him briefly before shielding those brown-green eyes filled to the rim with unshed tears of fear. “My name is Debbie—Porter,” she shook her head. “My mother, Mindy Douglass-Porter, married Jason Porter when I was fourteen. My mom had me when she was sixteen so she was still young and wanted certain things. She had worked hard to be more than what people told her she could be. They thought she would be a dropout because of me, but she wasn’t. She had dreams and while all of them did change and the job she got wasn’t really the job she had initially gone for, she managed. She worked her way to the top of her sales account representative department—on her back,” she shook her head. “A few favors here and there got her promoted. I knew that because she always brought them home.” She sighed softly. “Anyway, she found Jason…or more like he found her. He insisted on adopting me right away. The judge pushed it through—bought and paid for,” she shook her head. “He has money, enough to buy power—enough to buy anything. My mom was on a business trip. She took me with her that one time because the Social Services rep told her I couldn’t stay in Wisconsin an entire week on my own—it wasn’t legal despite my age. Vegas,” she laughed. “At fourteen I thought it was a dream. Vegas had lights and fun—or so the girls at school told me. Vegas is the place where dreams come true, they told me. For me Vegas was the start of my nightmare.” She fidgeted restlessly before taking a deep breath and continuing onward.

“Jason saw us checking in to one of his casino hotels. He went after my mother—sometimes I think he only went after her because of me. But he had money, power, prestige, and my mom wanted that so she had the insanely quick Vegas wedding and before the week was up Jason was sending movers back to our place in blistering cold Wisconsin to pack up our house and bring everything back. He had pulled some strings to get me into the best school. He even got my mom a new job with better pay and loads of travel. The job she had before really wasn’t anything much, some around town days out and a stay or two in the next couple cities over, but nothing like this new job. The old job was fine. We were surviving, but she wanted more and Jason offered that. He dangled gold and diamonds and she salivated, went for the bait hook line and sinker. She liked the attention, she liked the life.” She shook her head. “The adoption went through so fast it made my head spin. I mean, I never knew you could adopt a child, without her willingness, and in less than three weeks. How does that happen?”

“Debbie…”

“I’ll tell you how. You have enough money to buy the judge, the social workers, everything. You just buy them. And with my real father being a mystery to me as my mom wasn’t quite sure—at least that’s what she had said—it was real easy to not have anybody contest it—other than me—the brat fourteen year old who was just pouting because she had to move and leave her friends behind. That wasn’t it at all, but that’s what they made it out to be. My fifteenth birthday—he waited that long,” she shook her head. “My mom was away on business and Daddy Jason…yeah, he insisted I call him Daddy. Not Dad, not father, but Daddy.” She let out a sarcastic snort. “Even when he was getting to know my body in the biblical sense he insisted I call him Daddy.”

“What the hell?” Keadon felt his hands grip the steering wheel tighter.

“Whenever she was away I had to take her place in everything—and he made sure she was away often. I told her. I told her what he did to me and she said sometimes we just have to thank people in different ways. Can you believe that?! I’m her daughter. I’m her flesh and blood and she sides with him. She sanctions him, his actions, all of it. I tried to get help at school. I tried to tell somebody. My teacher tried to help me. It went to court and surprise,” she said as if she were surprising a kid at a birthday party she didn’t want to be at. “The judge said I was a troubled teen who was trying to sully a good man’s name. The teacher and social worker who were on my side suddenly wasn’t so sure that I wasn’t just having trouble adjusting to a new place and a new school. I had nobody. Nobody would help me. And trying to get help just hurt me more because he was so angry with me. He just got…rougher. He took it out on me that night, all night, and my mother did nothing to stop him. I know she heard me screaming. I know she heard me begging him to stop, begging her for help and she did nothing. She was right down the hall, Keadon,” she brushed away tears as her voice started to shake. She was trying to hold herself together, and she was near breaking. “She was right down the hall and she wouldn’t help me. She wouldn’t,” she shook her head; “help me. All I wanted was for her to help me and she wouldn’t.”