To Trust a Stranger (22 page)

“Mac?” Julie's voice was faint, but it snapped Mac's attention back to the present as effectively as a shout. Glancing over his shoulder as the Infiniti scooted through yet another stop sign, he saw that her beautiful brown eyes were open at last and she was struggling to sit up.

“Yeah,” he said. “Don't move. We're on our way to the hospital.”

“Oh, God, Mac, he-I ... “ Her reply ended in a wordless quaver. That quaver went through him like a knife.

“It's okay,” he said, his voice gruffer than usual because he wasn't sure he was ready to hear the details of what had happened. He figured, while he was driving, it might be better that he not know. If the answers were bad, talking about it might further traumatize her, too. “You're safe now.”

“I-must have blacked out.” She sounded faintly woozy still, and she kept trying to sit up, although her bound wrists seemed to be making sitting up more difficult than it should be. Or maybe she had some injury he hadn't spotted, and it was hindering her. The thought turned him cold.

“No shit,” he said. Then, with another glance at her over his shoulder that nearly caused him to sideswipe a mailbox, he added, in the hard, cop voice he hadn't used in years,

“Did you recognize him? Was it someone you know?”

“No. I don't know. I don't think so. God, he-he knew my name.” She shuddered, and he cursed under his breath. Easy, he reminded himself, take it easy. He deliberately gentled his tone.

“Can you describe him? What did he look like?”

She shook her head, and took a deep, shaking breath. “He was wearing a mask, at first. And then-I didn't get that good of a look.”

“Are you hurt anywhere? Any pain or anything like that?”

“My head hurts,” she said after letting a beat pass in which Mac realized his palms were starting to sweat. “He punched me in the head. And my neck. He was going to strangle me, I think. After-after ... “

Her voice broke. Mac ground his teeth. He took the safer tack of glancing at her through the mirror. She was sitting up ,now. Her head rested limply back against the tan leather upholstery. Her hair in that ridiculous cascading ponytail still nearly reached her shoulders. Her face was covered with a cracked and flaking layer of something brown.

“And my hands are numb,” she continued more strongly, as if rallying. Mac sucked a calming breath in through his teeth. The idea that some bastard had wrapped her wrists with duct tape made him want to start breaking faces. To say nothing of the rest of what had been done to her. “I'll get the tape off for you when we get to the hospital. Just a few more minutes.” His tone was soothing.

“The hospital?”

“That's where we're going.” Clearly she hadn't registered what he'd said the first time. That worried him. Just how hard had she been hit? He stepped on the accelerator, glanced in the mirror again-and went straight through a stop sign. Jesus. He hadn't even seen it. Good thing the traffic in Summerville at three in the morning was so light as to be almost nonexistent.

“Mac. Pull over.” There was a sudden urgency to her voice. “What? Why?” He glanced in the mirror again.

“I think I'm going to throw up.”

Mac groaned, and pulled the Infiniti over to the side of the road. Julie was already fumbling at the handle when he got her door open.

“Hold still.” He had his pocket-knife out and ready. Hooking his fingers beneath the edge of the tape, he sliced through the sticky layers with relative ease, then pulled the tape off with one quick yank and felt a twinge of guilt as she winced. He imagined the sensation was something akin to having a mega-Band-Aid removed the quick way. In short, not pleasant.

“Mac, move. “The order was urgent, and then she pressed her lips tightly together as if she was afraid of what might follow the words. Even as she flexed her fingers and shook out her hands, she swung her legs out of the car and scooted forward. Her bare feet were pale against the dark bristle of the grass as she tried to stand. Her legs were long and slim and luscious beneath the hem of that unbelievably sexy nightgown. From the neck down, she was every teenage boy's wet dream; from the neck up, she was every grown man's fear of what he would end up sleeping with for the next fifty years once the honeymoon was over.

The bad part was, even with a silly ponytail and a face full of muck, she still looked beautiful. And with that thought, Mac realized to his dismay that he was already smack in the middle of the quicksand, and it was closing over his head.

She was about halfway out the door when she swayed and sank back. Mac, standing a little to one side to give her room, saw that she needed help and bravely put himself directly in the line of fire. Grabbing her by both elbows, he hauled her out. With an arm wrapped around her waist he supported her as she stumbled about six feet away from the car.

He then stood over her feeling helpless while she dropped to her knees at the side of the road.

16

HER HEAD SWAM, HER STOMACH HEAVED, but in the end she managed to keep herself from vomiting by sheer force .of will.

After a moment in which the issue hung in the balance, Julie sank back on her heels and flopped forward so that her head rested on her thighs and her arms lay limply on the grass beside her folded legs, too dizzy and exhausted to even sit up. Her stomach settled, but her head throbbed mercilessly, her throat ached, and her newly freed hands tingled and burned. Julie looked at the marks the tape had made on her wrists and shuddered.

“Julie?” Mac crouched beside her and put a hand, warm and large, on her back. For once the muggy heat was welcome; she felt cold to the bone. The scent of fresh-cut grass was all around her. The grass itself felt cool and faintly damp beneath her.

Julie turned her head toward him, registered the gilt-edged outline of his head against the star-dusted sky, registered the broad-shouldered power of his build, registered his sheer masculine beauty, and felt comforted. No matter if he had deceived her in the matter of Debbie, Mac could be counted on to keep her safe.

“I'm glad you're not gay,” she said.

“Me too.” His voice was dry. He was looking her over carefully. She smiled at him. If it hadn't been for Mac-well, she wasn't going to think about that. Not now. If she thought about what might have happened, she feared she would totally lose it, which would not help the situation in any way that she could see.

“How are you feeling?”

“I'm okay,” she said.

“I can tell.” The dryness took on a grim edge.

She watched as he glanced away from her, then back.

“There's a water fountain over there. Feel like a drink?” It was only then that she realized they were at the edge of
Sawyer
Park
, a children's play area consisting of a grassy acre chock-full of swings and slides and sandboxes and other assorted kiddie paraphernalia. She knew it well, thanks to countless afternoons spent playing in it with Erin and Kelly.

“Sounds good.”

Before she could make more than a feeble attempt to rise, he made a sound under his breath and scooped her up in his arms. He straightened as easily as if she weighed nothing at all, and started walking with her toward the small silver monolith of a drinking fountain that gleamed in the moonlight some hundred yards away. Julie didn't even think about protesting, but curled close against his chest and looped her arms around his neck, content to be right where she was. Her knees felt rubbery, her head swam, and she had a funny feeling that she wasn't quite hitting on all her usual mental cylinders. She wasn't sure she could have walked to the water fountain even if she'd wanted to. But she didn't want to. She loved being in Mac's arms. They were hard and strong beneath her knees and around her back. His chest was firm and solid, and his whole body was so warm. She realized that what she was experiencing was probably a trauma induced primitive female reaction to his superior male strength, mentally deplored the retro-ness of her own response, and settled down to savor it anyway. She let her head rest on his wide shoulder, closed her eyes, and tightened her hold on his neck.

“Okay, I'll bite,” Mac said a beat or so later, sounding slightly grumpy. She opened her eyes to find that they were closing on their goal fast: his long strides were eating up the ground. “Want to tell me what the heck that stuff is on your face?”

For a moment Julie couldn't think what he was talking about. Then she remembered the Mudd, and surprised herself by smiling. Here she was, enjoying a little escapist romantic fantasy about being borne away into the darkness by a truly hot guy, and all the while she looked like a refugee from an I Love Lucy episode. Was that the way life worked or what? At least, her life. “Mudd.”

“You usually sleep with mud on your face?” He sounded politely interested. “Mudd. M-U-double dee. It's a mask. For your skin. I was going to take a bath before I went to bed, and I put Mudd on my face first. Then I saw him in the mirror before I could get in the tub.”

She shuddered, and his grip tightened. The instant when she had seen her attacker in the mirror was vivid-too horribly vivid to be borne. She tried to dismiss it from her mind; it was impossible. Out of nowhere came the memory of her little voice. Goose bumps prickled to life all over her as she realized that the voice had been warning her. It must have been some kind of sixth sense. On some level, she must have realized that there was someone in the house. That thought was scary, too. She didn't much like the idea that she knew things she didn't know she knew.

“How did you know I was in trouble?” Maybe he'd had a sixth sense experience, too. “Darlin', you have a scream like a banshee. I was standing outside by your pool when you let loose. Hearing you took about twenty years off my life, by the way.” He took a deep breath. “Then I saw that someone had already broken in. It wasn't the best moment I've ever had, let me tell you.”

For a moment neither of them said anything more. His feet moving over the grass and the chirping chorus of the usual insects were the only sounds. Moonlight bathed the playground in a ghostly glow. The playthings took on a whole different ambience in the dead of night, Julie discovered. A sinister ambience. She felt a chill race down her spine and realized that the sheer terror of being attacked in her own home was still with her, hiding deep within her body's cells to reemerge at will like a particularly nasty virus. Never again, she feared, would she feel totally safe. If it could happen there, it could happen anywhere, even in this innocuous little playground. “Assume the worst” seemed to be her body's new rule of thumb, and she was correspondingly anxious. Thank God Mac was with her. She would have been spooked out of her mind otherwise. No, if Mac hadn't been with her, she wouldn't have been here in this cheerful-by-day, eerie-by-night playground to be creeped out by ghostly toys. Maybe she wouldn't have been anywhere. The thought sent a whole series of chills chasing after the first. He must have felt her shiver, because his arms tightened around her, cuddling her closer.

“Mac. Thank you.”

“For?” He slanted a glance down at her. His face was very close.

“I think you probably saved my life.”

He grunted. “Not a problem.”

“What if he comes after us here?” Her voice was low. The terror was bubbling up again, sparked by their isolation, by the darkness, by the sense that anything could lurk in the shadows. She glanced fearfully around.

“I'll keep you safe whatever happens, I promise. But you don't need to worry: he won't come. He's long gone, believe me.”

“You have a gun, don’t you?”

“Yup.” “You know how to use it, right?” His mouth twitched. “I used to be a cop. Before that, Navy SEAL. That make you feel better?”

“A little. No, actually, a lot.” She felt dizzy, and rested her head against his shoulder again. He looked down at her.

“You okay?”

“Yes. Why aren’t you a cop anymore?”

His jaw tightened. She felt a sudden tension in his body. For a moment she thought he wasn't going to answer, and she lifted her head and looked at him inquiringly. His gaze met hers and held for the briefest of moments. Then he glanced away.

“I got fired.”

“You got fired?” Getting fired from the police force was the last thing she would ever expect to happen to Mac, Julie realized with some surprise. The Debbie thing notwithstanding, he was just about the most solidly reliable person she had ever met in her life.

“Why?”

He sighed. “Because drugs went missing from the evidence room and were found in my possession. A boatload of people were willing to swear I'd been dealing. I got fired. I would have been prosecuted, but the department didn't want the publicity.” “You were innocent.” It wasn't a question.

“Yeah, I was. The guy I was investigating at the time got to me before I could get him.” They reached the fountain then and he set her on her feet, keeping both hands on her waist and standing behind her, bracing her body with his. Julie rinsed her mouth several times then sluiced her face and throat, which felt bruised on the outside but didn't hurt particularly when she swallowed. No internal damage then, she judged, and felt thankful. The water was more lukewarm than cold, but it rinsed the Mudd away and made her feel better nonetheless. After several splashes she felt almost normal. When she was finished, she looked around at Mac, blinking as she wiped the water from her cheeks with her fingers.