“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bishop said flatly.
She blinked. “Clement. The man you killed. He was lying in a pool of blood just outside the camper.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t kill anyone. You must have been having nightmares.”
“But I . . .”
He came up to her, caught her chin in his hard hand, and his face was grim. “There was no one here, Evangeline,” he said slowly, deliberately. “You saw nothing.”
After a moment she nodded. She was being unusually dense. Clement had tried to kill both of them, after all. Even if Bishop’s remedy was a little extreme she couldn’t really fault him. “I saw nothing.”
“Now get in the fucking truck.”
There was no blood in the dirt, no sign of a struggle, no sign of any disturbance. She didn’t want to know what he’d done with the body—there were plenty of scavengers in the north woods who could take care of things. She didn’t want to think about that either, and she moved across the small clearing to climb into the driver’s seat. Sure enough, the keys were gone, but she found her spare set beneath the seat. If only she could talk him into putting Merlin in the cab; then she could take off before he got in. She leaned over and opened the glove compartment to retrieve her wallet. Of course it was gone.
She leaned back, holding on to the steering wheel as she took deep, calming breaths. He rapped at the window, and she would have locked the doors, ignoring him, but he was holding Merlin’s shaking body, and she had no choice. She opened the door.
“If you think you’re driving, then you’ve lost your mind somewhere in the last five years,” he said. “Move over and let me put Merlin between us.”
At least that was a blessing. She didn’t want to be cuddled up against him, thigh to thigh in her small pickup. She didn’t bother to argue, sliding across the bench seat to a perch at the far end. If she could bring herself to leave Merlin, she could easily escape. It was clear Bishop liked the dog, would keep him safe. But for how long? You didn’t abandon your family in times of danger, and Merlin was the only family she had.
She slid over as far as she could go. Merlin collapsed against her, whimpering happily, his big head in her lap, and she stroked his fur, almost ready to cry.
Bishop had climbed into the driver’s seat, and a moment later they were bumping along a makeshift road. She buckled herself in, then looked over at Bishop. “You need your seat belt.”
“Why? Because I’m such a caut
ious man with a concern for human life?” he shot back.
“No, because if we hit something, you’ll be flying all around the cab like a frog in a blender, and you’ll probably kill Merlin and me when we would have been perfectly fine.”
His grim expression lightened slightly. “Frog in a blender?” he echoed. “You do have an interesting way of looking at things.” To her surprise he fastened the seat belt. “There. Does that make you happy?”
“Where’s my wallet?”
“In a safe place. I don’t want to tempt you into taking off. It would just waste time while I went looking for you, and trust me, I would find you.” It sounded like a threat, and she wasn’t fool enough to think it was only her imagination.
“Why don’t you just let me go?” she demanded.
He hesitated, as if he were considering options, and then he looked at her out of those beautiful, wrong-colored eyes. “Because they’ll find you, and use you to get to me. If I ignore their demands, and I might very well have to, then they’ll torture and kill you, probably send me bits and pieces of you until they give up and just put two rounds in the back of your head. And you’ll be praying for it by that time.”
She couldn’t say anything. She leaned against the door, staring at him while he drove. She wanted to tell him he was delusional, but she’d seen the dead man, seen what both of them had been willing to do in that vicious, deadly fight. This was no fantasy.
Her mouth felt dry as dust, and she swallowed. “Why would you give a good goddamn what happens to me?”
She didn’t think he was going to answer, but eventually he did. “You’re my wife. If anyone’s going to kill you, it’s going to be me.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, just give me an honest answer for once!” she snapped, exploding in fury and impatience. “You know as well as I do that we weren’t ever married.”
“Of course we were.”
“That would make my marriage to Pete bigamy.”
He didn’t even blink. “Yes. I checked very carefully to see if he was in the business, but he was clean, just a slimy college professor with a taste for coeds and plagiarism. Look at it as a gift. You were never really married to that piece of shit.”
“I’m touched,” she said acidly. “I’ll need some proof.”
The first glimmer of a smile lit his brooding face. “My, how you’ve changed, Angel. You used to be such a trusting soul.”