Oh, Noah.
She prayed Nell wouldn’t come home right now. This man would think nothing of killing two women instead of one.
Stiffly, feeling a hundred years old, she walked past him. The moment she did, he thrust the barrel of the handgun hard into her back.
“Kitchen,” he said.
* * *
NOAH BRAKED AS close to the front porch as he could get and leaped out. Children’s voices and then a happy shriek came from one direction. The sound of a car door slamming had his head turning momentarily. Had to be at the place on the other side, he realized as he mounted the steps two at a time and leaned on Colin’s doorbell.
Nothing. The house remained silent.
Was she huddled in her bedroom ignoring him? Hoping he’d go away? But where the hell was her brother?
Noah stepped to the side and cupped his hands to get the best view through the window. There was no movement inside at all.
For the first time, he felt a flicker of alarm. When he’d left her, he’d assumed Colin would be home, or Nell at least. Hesitating only briefly, he bounded down off the porch and circled the house. As he did, he heard the vehicle next door start. Someone was leaving rather than arriving, then.
The back door stood open. What the hell? Why would Cait have gone out— The sight of the shattered window beside it made his blood chill. What if Colin had been home? They could both already be dead.
Using his shoulder in case there were fingerprints on the door, Noah pushed it wider and stepped in. He scanned the main living space at a glance, then raced for the bedroom wing. One door was splintered into pieces that hung from the hinges. The terror of that day when he saw that the windows of Cait’s car had been shot out returned in full force. Redoubled, because now he knew that he loved her.
His heart pounded in sickening jerks as he stepped over the threshold, his gaze going straight to her two bags, abandoned in the middle of the floor. The dresser stood askew, and he guessed she’d been trying to block the door but had run out of time.
He looked in the other bedroom and the two bathrooms to be sure Cait wasn’t there.
911.
No, think. Goddamn it, think.
When he had left only a few minutes ago, he hadn’t gone far down the road. No traffic had passed heading into town. A few vehicles going the other way. He’d swear there hadn’t been time for someone to pull into Colin’s driveway, park, go around back and break in, haul Cait out and drive away. Whoever this guy was, he had to have been waiting. Prepared to leave if Colin had come home first or come home with Cait? Had he been waiting every day, concealed in the woods surrounding the house, waiting for the one time Cait was alone?
Oh, hell. Galvanized, Noah remembered the slam of that car door, the vehicle he’d heard starting. He was willing to bet the sound had come from the house to the north. The night of the bomb threat, Colin had mentioned that the owner was rarely there. Noah hadn’t seen a car passing the driveway, heading toward town. He might have missed it—but he had to gamble one way or the other, and he doubted Cait’s abductor would have wanted to get into heavy end-of-day traffic with her sitting beside him under duress.
Noah wouldn’t let himself think about the possibility that she was unconscious or even dead in the trunk of the car.
He ran, leaping into his SUV, gunning the engine the moment it caught. Gravel spurted under his tires. He barely paused at the foot of the driveway, accelerating to the left, away from town. Flooring it as he fumbled for his phone.
Even traveling at a reckless speed for this narrow, two-lane road, he thumbed through contacts until he found her brother’s number.
Answer, Goddamn it, answer.
“Noah?” Colin said, his voice already edgy.
* * *
“YOU KILLED JERRY,” Cait said. He’d made her scramble in on the driver’s side and crawl over the console to the passenger seat before getting in himself. This wasn’t the silver crossover he had driven the other time; today he drove an almost new dark gray sedan.
She had both her hands flattened on the dashboard, per orders.
“Move your hands and I’ll shoot you,” he had told her matter-of-factly before starting the car. He drove one-handed; the other held the gun on her.
Now she thought in despair that she might as well have spared her breath.