the road where there were swirls of red-and-blue lights approaching. The fire department, an ambulance and a sheriff’s cruiser. Could be one of his brothers, Dade or Gage, in the cruiser, because they were both deputies.
“I’ll talk to them,” Grayson volunteered. “You stay with the trainer until the EMTs have checked her out.”
He would, but while he was doing that, Mason could ask some questions that might help them get to the bottom of all of this.
Grayson and Rusty headed out in the direction of the approaching emergency responders, and Mason threw open his office door. His attention zoomed right to the sofa where he’d left Abbie.
She wasn’t there.
Mason looked at the adjoining bathroom. Door closed. And that’s probably where she was—maybe crying or falling apart from the inevitable adrenaline crash.
He took a moment to pull on his boots, but when he still couldn’t find his shirt, he crossed the large working space and knocked on the bathroom door.
No answer.
So he knocked again, harder this time. “You okay in there?”
Still no answer.
He rethought that crying or falling-apart theory and moved on to one that caused his concern to spike through the roof. Maybe she was unconscious from an injury he hadn’t noticed.
No knock this time. Mason kicked down the door and was thankful when it didn’t hit her. He looked at the sink first. Not there. Then, the separate toilet area. Not there either. And she darn sure wasn’t in the shower.
That’s when he noticed the bathroom window was wide-open.
What the devil was going on?
He hurried to the window and looked out. Thanks to that hunter’s moon, he saw her. Barely. She was at least thirty yards away, her pale blue gown fluttering in the wind.
Abbie was running as if her life depended on it.
Chapter Two
Abbie didn’t take the time to tell herself that it’d been a really bad idea to come to the Ryland ranch. But that’s what she would do later. For now, she just had to get out of there as fast as she could and hope that she could somehow make it to safety.
Safety with no car, no money, no shoes.
Clearly, she had some big strikes against her.
Abbie glanced over her shoulder and saw one of the biggest strikes of all. Mason Ryland. Her boss and perhaps the person who wanted her dead.
She’d been a fool to come here, and that foolishness might soon get her killed.
With Mason’s footsteps bearing down on her, Abbie didn’t give up. She ran, praying that she would make it to the fence before he could grab her. The fence wasn’t a sure thing. First, she’d have to scale it and then try to disappear into the thick woods that surrounded the sprawling ranch. But just reaching the fence was her next obstacle.
“Stop!” Mason yelled.
His angry voice tore through the darkness, through her, and she had a terrifying thought.
What if he shot her?
After all, he had a gun. Abbie had seen it when Rusty and he had pulled the door off her. The sight of that weapon and his fierce take-no-prisoners expression had caused her heart to skip a beat or two.
She kept running, her lungs already starved for air, but she wasn’t fast enough. With the fence still yards away, Mason grabbed her shoulder and dragged her to a stop before he whirled her around to face him.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Mason demanded.
Abbie wanted to demand the same thing, but she couldn’t gather enough breath to speak. Mercy, her teeth were chattering from the chilly night air and the fear.
“Well?” he pushed. He looked down at her. At her face. At her gown. At the garment she was wearing over her gown. “And why did you steal my shirt?”
“I borrowed it,” Abbie managed to say. She would have done the same to a pair of shoes if she could have found them. She hadn’t. So she’d run out of his office barefoot.
He mumbled some more profanity and stared at her as if she’d lost her mind. Maybe she had. But thankfully he didn’t shoot her or threaten to do it. That reprieve meant she had a chance to try to talk him out of whatever he was planning to do to her.
“Look, I’ll just go,” she managed to say after sucking in some more air.
“To heck you will.” He kept a punishing grip on her arm. “First, you’ll tell me about that fire and why you ran. After that, I can decide if I’ll arrest you for arson.”
That put some air back in her lungs. “What? Arrest me? I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Mason gave her another you’ve-lost-your-mind glare, and those ice-gray eyes drilled into her. Abbie couldn’t see the color of his eyes in the darkness, but she knew them well enough from her job interview. Not that he’d given her more than a passing glance in the three days she’d worked for him.
Well, he was doing more than glancing now.
In addition to the glare he’d aimed at her, his gaze kept dropping to her cotton nightgown. It wasn’t a garment meant to be provocative, but she felt exposed with Mason’s attention on her.
Mason had a way of doing that, she’d learned.
Tall, dark and dangerous with his black hair and hard face. His brothers had those same Ryland looks, but they were softened on their faces and bodies. Not Mason. He looked like an ornery vampire.
Without a shirt.
Added to that were those gunmetal-gray cop’s eyes that saw, and had seen, way too much.
Abbie slid her left hand over her chest. Over the silver chain that veed down into her gown and in between her breasts. She couldn’t let Mason see the pendant at the end of the chain. If he did, the anger and questions would come at her full blast.
“We can stand out here and freeze our butts off,” he continued, “or you can tell me what happened.”
Because she couldn’t tear out of his grip and because he had that gun, Abbie knew she had to give him some kind of answer. The truth?
Probably not.
Not until she was sure she could trust him, and so far Mason hadn’t done anything to make her believe she could. Well, except pull her out of the burning house, but she wasn’t sure yet why he’d done that. Maybe her shouts for help had drawn so much attention that he felt he had no choice but to make a show of rescuing her. He probably wouldn’t have wanted anyone saying he’d let his trainer burn to death. Even if maybe that’s what he’d wanted to happen.
“I already told you I’m not an arsonist,” she
