Beautiful Stranger. Kerry Connor
the third driver. If she somehow managed to sneak out in a car, it must have been with him.”
“Give me the address. I will go there.”
Emmons blanched. “We don’t know for sure that she escaped with the third driver. We’re still trying to contact him.”
“And in the meantime, she may be getting farther away. You said if she escaped it must have been with him. Were you wrong about that as well?”
“No, I—”
“Then give me the address.” He practically spat the words.
Emmons swallowed hard. “At least let me send a team with you. This man is a doctor. He may be reluctant to send her off with anyone other than authorized Thornwood personnel.”
The man appeared to consider this. After a brief pause, he signaled his agreement with a sharp nod of his head.
Emmons reached for the phone. “Even if she’s not with the third driver, rest assured, we will find her.”
A trace of scorn flashed across the man’s face. “The same way you could be trusted to keep her here?”
“I made it clear from the beginning this is not a high-security facility.”
“You also accepted money to ensure she would remain here. And you failed.”
Emmons felt his face burn. Suddenly the mountain of gambling debts he was struggling to cover didn’t seem like such a problem, only because it paled in comparison to the one literally staring him in the face at the moment.
He should have never let things get this far. He should have talked to a colleague about his addiction. He should have thought twice before digging himself into a hole of debt he had no hope of ever climbing out of.
He should have done a great many things. Except one.
“I never should have agreed to this,” he muttered as he started dialing.
“But you did,” the man said, his tone pitiless. “There is no turning back from it now.”
No, there wasn’t, Emmons thought. And now that this man had entered his life, he couldn’t escape the terrifying feeling that his true problems were only just beginning.
THE THUMP WAS HIS first indication something was wrong.
After completing the long drive from Thornwood back home, Josh pulled into his garage, more than ready to change out of his suit and grab some food. He stepped on the brake. The car lurched to a stop.
And a definitive thump resounded from the trunk.
He froze, his weariness after the long day forgotten. An uneasy suspicion raised the hair at the back of his neck.
The trunk was supposed to be empty. The thump indicated it wasn’t. Something was in there, something fairly sizeable from the sound of it.
Had someone put something in the trunk? He couldn’t imagine why. An animal might have climbed in, except he didn’t know how any creature would have managed it.
That left a person. He hadn’t stepped away from the car when he’d stopped for gas on the way back. The only place where he could have picked up a stowaway was Thornwood.
Josh quickly considered his options. Sitting in the car wasn’t one of them. It occurred to him that anything—or anyone—in the trunk could get into the car through the backseat, and vice versa, which was the only way anyone could have gained access to the trunk in the first place. He’d already sat there long enough to raise suspicions in the mind of any unwanted passenger that he was onto them.
He shifted the vehicle into park and shut off the engine, then hit the remote control to close the garage door before climbing out of the car. If there was someone in the trunk, particularly someone from Thornwood, he didn’t want them to get away. He was in enough trouble without setting a mental patient loose.
Once outside the car, he flipped the switch next to the kitchen door to keep the garage light on, not about to have it go out and leave him in the dark with whomever might be in there. He reached for the heavy wrench he’d left sitting next to the step after working on the leaky kitchen sink. The weight of it felt good in his hand. There was no telling if he’d need it, but he wasn’t about to take any chances.
He moved to the back of the vehicle. Lifting the wrench above his head, he braced himself, then slid the key in the lock and threw the trunk open.
A pair of familiar brown eyes—wide and gaping with familiar terror—stared back at him.
He barely had time to react to his discovery when the woman lunged forward. Getting out of the trunk wasn’t exactly the easiest proposition with her body practically curled into the fetal position. She somehow managed it, albeit without much grace, heaving herself out of the enclosed space and landing on the floor in front of him.
He took a step back out of her way, but didn’t stop her. He hadn’t wanted anybody in his trunk to begin with. He wasn’t going to argue with her vacating it.
Once on her own two feet, she stood before him, her chest heaving, her body tense and fidgety. Her eyes darted every which way, clearly seeking an escape. He saw the moment she realized that, with the garage door closed, the only exits were the two doors in the near back corner of the garage—one leading outside, one into the house—and he was standing between her and the door.
Her eyes narrowed a fraction as her gaze shot up and down his body. Probably gauging her chances of rushing him and getting around him. From the way her lips thinned and she swallowed hard, she must have decided they weren’t good.
“Calm down,” he said in his most soothing tone, the one that had been known to settle down even the most terrified child in the E.R. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
In response, her eyes flicked to the wrench he still held aloft.
He slowly lowered it to his side, keeping himself on alert to defend himself if necessary. Not that he would probably need the wrench for that. Viewing her in a standing position for the first time, he could see that she was no more than five-six at the most, and thin. He had more than half a foot and a hundred pounds on her, easy. But he knew nothing about this woman or why she’d been at Thornwood, or what she was capable of. After all, the last time he’d seen her, she’d seemed completely unaware of her surroundings, with drool running down her face.
Only that brief moment when their eyes met had indicated she was lucid—and scared. The fear was still there, along with a fierce determination, and this time there was no doubting she was fully cognizant. He suspected if he dropped the wrench, she’d be on him in a heartbeat, scratching and clawing and kneeing, in her desperation to get away. He would defend himself if he had to, but he really didn’t want to hurt her.
He tried the soothing tone again. “Take it easy. Let’s both take a breath and see if we can’t talk for a second.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” she shot back. Her voice was hoarse as though from disuse, yet calm despite her obvious tension. “Look, you don’t have to get involved. Just let me go and you can forget you even saw me.”
“It’s not that simple. I have to believe it’s not going to take the folks back at Thornwood long to figure out that you’re gone and, when they don’t find you on the grounds, start contacting anyone who left at roughly the time you disappeared.”
“All you have to do is tell them you don’t know anything about me, and you’re off the hook.”
“I don’t think I can do that.”
A knowing gleam entered her straightforward gaze, and her mouth twisted with bitterness. “Because you don’t want to be held responsible for letting a crazy person loose on the streets, right?”
“Are you crazy?” he said mildly.
He carefully watched her reaction. There