Hunted

And that had hurt him more than he expected it would. When he’d made the decision to retire, his supporters had urged him to reconsider. This will blow over, they’d said. But it hadn’t. And all the long months while he waited for his paperwork to be processed, he’d dreamed about a few weeks at the cabin, knowing that if there was anywhere that he could get his head back on straight, it was here.

The timing was fortunate in that he’d been here to offer Chandler a helping hand. The McCanns had been family when he’d needed it the most. Now was his chance to pay back some of that kindness.

And one didn’t pay back kindness by jumping into bed with the only daughter.

He needed to focus on offering assistance and getting her back on her merry way. But something didn’t seem quite right. It was almost as if the explanation of her accident had been too easy. She hadn’t seemed embarrassed about her carelessness or even angry. She’d reported the facts calmly with relatively little emotion.

Which made him question whether she was telling the truth.

He rounded the last curve in the path and raised the beam of his flashlight to show the Donovan cabin. Then he turned to look at her. “Still doing okay?”

“Yes. As we were walking, I kept thinking of all the times you, Mack and Brody used to sneak out at night and meet one another. This path was well traveled. You could probably still walk it with your eyes closed.”

“Almost,” he admitted.

“Remember the time I tried to follow you? I got about halfway down the path and it was so dark that I tripped on something. That’s when you heard me.”

It had been toward the end of his last summer here and he and the others had taken a liking to fishing in the lake in the middle of the night.

“Mack tried to send me back. You said I could come but only if I wore a life jacket in the boat.”

He smiled at her. “If Baker found out, I sure as hell didn’t want to have to tell him that we’d taken you out on a lake, in the middle of the night, without a life jacket.”

“The three of you didn’t wear them. As I recall, when Mack and Brody got done fishing, they jumped over the side and swam for a while. You stayed in the boat with me.”

“We were too stupid to wear life jackets,” he said. “You were the smart one.”

“I always appreciated that you stuck up for me. And it was such a cool night, almost magical. I could understand why the three of you were willing to give up sleep to do it.”

Magical. That was a good description of most of his experiences at the cabin.

He stepped up onto the front porch, unlocked the door and pushed it open. He flipped on a light and pointed her toward a chair. “Have a seat,” he said as he turned up the heat on the thermostat. He pulled a plastic bag out of one of the drawers and stuffed it with ice from the freezer. “Here,” he said, handing it to her. “I’ve got some pain relievers, too.” He walked toward the bathroom and came back with a small bottle of ibuprofen in his hand. He poured a glass of water and shook out two tablets. “Here.”

“You should take some, too,” she said. “Your back has to hurt from crashing through those tree limbs.”

It did, but there weren’t that many tablets left in the bottle. He’d save them for Chandler. “I’m fine.”

She sat down in the big rocking chair that he always used, holding the ice on her sore shoulder. She nodded at the book on the footstool. “You read Mr. Donovan, too?”

He nodded. Larry Donovan, Brody’s dad, had been a quiet man who stood a foot shorter than his son. He’d never heard the man raise his voice. Yet he wrote the most hair-raising, nail-biting suspense that Ethan had ever read. “Every book. He scares the hell out of me sometimes.”

“Me, too. I was afraid to even look at a chain saw after I read his last one.”

Molly crowded up next to her, just the way she always did to him. The dog whined and Chandler took the ice off so that she could reach out and pet her. She looked around the small cabin and smiled. “It looks just like I remember.”

He nodded. “Your great-grandfather knew something about building. Both cabins have really stood the test of time. They’ll be here a hundred years from now and probably look the same.”

She leaned back in her chair. “I’m grateful that you were here, that you were able to help me. Are you home on leave?”

He could tell her the truth, that he was on permanent leave because he wasn’t sure anyone trusted him anymore. Was sure that he’d lost his ability to trust. But he didn’t want to have that conversation. “I retired. Had my twenty years in.”

That made it seem simple. Reasonable.

She widened her pretty green eyes. “Really? So what’s next for you?”

“I’m not sure. My plans were to hang out here for a few weeks and then make some decisions.”

“Good for you,” she said. “Maybe you’ll go back to school?”

“Maybe.” There was no need to tell her that he’d acquired both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree online while in the service. With honors.

“Or look for work?” she continued on. “With your experience, you should be fine. I’m sure there’s a good job out there for you.”

Was that a note of wistfulness that he detected? Was her own job in danger? But that couldn’t be right. He thought he recalled Mack telling him that Baker had married Chandler’s boss. “How’s your work going?”

“Oh, fine,” she said quickly. “You know,” she added, waving her delicate hand, “if it was supposed to be fun, they’d call it play.”

He smiled. “I guess. You’ve been there quite a while, haven’t you?”

“Six years.”

“The company is a government contractor?”

“How did you know that?”

He shrugged, not wanting to admit that he always listened closely when Mack talked about Chandler. Maybe it was because he’d never had a little sister of his own. “I think Mack might have mentioned it.”

“We’re a vendor for the Department of Defense.”

“What do you do there?”

“I’m a computer analyst.”

“You followed in your dad’s footsteps,” he said, smiling.

“I guess. Computers have always just been easy for me.”

“I bet you’re good at it.”

She shrugged and then winced when it evidently hurt her shoulder.

“You want some more ice?” He hated that she was hurting.

“No.” She stood up. “But I am really tired. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll just go to bed.”

His mind conjured up all kinds of images it had no business doing. “I promised you a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich,” he said, grasping for the mundane. “And chocolate milk.”

* * *

CHANDLER SHOOK HER HEAD. It sounded wonderful, but she hadn’t been kidding when she’d said she was tired. She hadn’t slept more than a couple hours over the past several days. “I’ll have it in the morning.” She walked over to the kitchen sink and dumped out her ice bag. “How do you think they’ll get my car out of the trees?” she asked, hoping her inquiry sounded casual.

“I imagine they’ll have to bring in a crane. It will take somebody who knows what they’re doing.”

Would it attract a crowd? Would the people who’d run her off the road have stuck around to make sure that she was really dead? What would they do once it was discovered that the car was empty?

Would they start looking around the area? How long would it take them to find her cabin? Ethan’s cabin?

She had to be gone by then. She couldn’t put Ethan in any danger.

“You don’t happen to have an internet connection, do you?” she asked.

He shook his head. “What do you need?”

One more look. Just one more chance to try to figure out if her imagination had been working overtime, like when she read Larry Donovan’s books. She didn’t think so. That’s what had sent her out of the office in a hurry just a few short hours ago.

She wanted to try to remote into her desktop. Not that she expected to be able to. If what she suspected was true, her computer privileges had already been revoked, all permissions associated with her username shut down.

Not having access would be a little more proof.

But then what would she do with it?

Confront her stepmother?

Tell her father?

Call the police?

She realized that Ethan was waiting for an answer. “Nothing important,” she said. “Well, good night.”

“We’ll have to put sheets on the bed in the spare bedroom.”

“Just a blanket is fine.”

He ignored her and proceeded to pull a shallow plastic container out of the closet. He took the lid off and then gathered up a bottom sheet, top sheet and a pillowcase. Then he pulled out a blanket.

She helped him put the bedding on the mattress—at least as much as her injured shoulder would allow—and she was struck by the easy familiarity between the two of them. It was as if they’d been making beds together for years.

“Thank you,” she said. She locked eyes with him and was pulled in by the intensity of his gaze. “I know how lucky I am that you were here tonight. I appreciate it, I really do.”

He stared at her and she felt her skin grow warm. The bedroom was small, dimly lit by just a bedside lamp.

“Ethan?” she said. Did he feel it, too?

He hesitated. “Just make sure you let Mack know that I was helpful,” he said, his tone light. He turned away. “Good night, Chandler.”

* * *

ETHAN NORMALLY ENJOYED a beer around five o’clock, especially if it had been a particularly warm afternoon. And maybe with dinner, in the right surroundings, he’d have a glass of wine. He rarely drank late at night, though. But, he rationalized as he stood in the small kitchen, popping the top of a pale ale, the prospect of sleeping ten feet away from Chandler McCann would be enough to make a teetotaler reach for the whiskey bottle.

Why the hell couldn’t Mack’s little sister have grown up ugly? Or at least plain.

No. She was gorgeous and had a nice personality to boot.

She’d demonstrated tremendous composure when she’d been eighty feet in the air. Most men he’d known wouldn’t have been as brave. And her shoulder had to be hurting, but she wasn’t complaining.

She could have easily died tonight. That made the beer in his stomach roll and he set the bottle down.

He lay down on the couch and waited for Molly to jump up, to stretch out, to take up way more space than she should have. But she didn’t move away from her spot outside the door of Chandler’s bedroom. She rested her head on her paws.

He closed his own eyes, strangely content that both he and Molly were watching over Chandler.

He didn’t wake up until a blast, loud and sharp, had him literally jumping off the couch. For a second, he thought he was back in the military, flying at night, and that his bird had been hit.

He got his head back in the present moment, went to the door, opened it and looked outside. The snow that had threatened all day had started to fall. There were already several inches on the ground. But when he looked up, he could still see the smoke. He judged the distance and whirled when he heard a noise behind him.

Chandler stood in the hallway. Her dark hair floated around her shoulders and the T-shirt that he’d given her hit her mid-thigh. Molly stood next to her, her nose in the air, her body on full alert.

“What was that?” Chandler asked, her voice rusty with sleep.

He stared at her. There wasn’t any easy way to say it. “I could be wrong, but I think your cabin just blew up,” he said. He ran his fingers through his short hair. This was all his fault. He’d known there were people who held grudges. He’d read the anonymous letters.

Had one of them snapped?

He was supposed to be staying at the McCann cabin. His mail was still getting delivered there. A reasonable person would have assumed he was there.

She still hadn’t said a word. He couldn’t blame her. If he was right, she’d just lost something that had been in her family for generations. She would hate him when she learned the truth.

She slowly walked toward the door and looked past him. Smoke was continuing to billow up into the sky. Molly crowded in next to them but the dog, finally showing some sense, stayed inside the cabin.

Finally Chandler turned to him. Her eyes were dark with pain. “I think I’m in trouble. Real trouble.”

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