slid and mumbled a curse. “That was different.”
“Not to her.” Not when Bryn knew her only protection from her mother’s hard life was Gray. But he couldn’t know, and it wasn’t Abbie’s place to tell him. “How did you find me?”
“It wasn’t that hard. People tend to go back to what’s familiar. Your parents are dead. Brynna’s too obvious and too close to home. Who else could you trust? Then I remembered your mother’s college friend who used to take you to see all those musicals in Boston when you were a kid. Had a hell of a time tracking her down. Who would’ve thought a theater major would end up in a convent?”
She’d hoped no one. Her mother had died so long ago and Bert hadn’t been an active part of Abbie’s life since then. Abbie had assumed Bert wouldn’t show up on anyone’s radar. Except Gray’s. Because he knew her so well. What if Rafe’s hired goons had followed him? “Please, Gray, if you ever cared for me, go away.”
“You know, between you and Brynna, my ego is taking quite a beating.”
“Then you shouldn’t have come back to the people who can hurt you.”
“You have to testify. I can keep you safe until then.”
Rain started, pecking at the fog. She reached the stand of spruce and looked down at Gray’s dark shape struggling for footing on the rocks below. She’d missed him. But after the way she’d hurt him, she had no right to expect him to put his life on the line for her. She wasn’t the old Abbie, and he wasn’t the old Gray. Too much had happened to both of them. “Go, Gray. Please leave me alone.”
“I can’t, Abbie. Not this time.”
She didn’t wait to see if he made it safely over the last muddy stretch of cliff. She ran through the woods, following not path but memory. Something moved to her right? A deer? She turned her head but saw nothing in the soupy murk. Gray had her imagining Rafe’s minions all around her.
“Abbie!” The alarm in Gray’s voice froze her. A moment later he tackled her to the ground. The hard knock jammed the camera into her chest, stealing her breath. A second later something bit into the tree at her side, drooling chunks of bark onto her arm.
“Stay down,” Gray said, then took off after whoever had shot at them. He disappeared into the fog she’d counted as a blessing only moments ago.
Desperately trying to rasp breath into her lungs, she clawed at the earth at her side. This could not be happening. Not here. This was a safe place. Drops of rain splattered around her. She’d been wrong. Rain didn’t wash away the fear. It was still there. Big and immovable. Raindrops keep fallin’ on my head. She shook her head. Don’t go there. Not now. She had to get away. Tonight. She had to disappear again.
“Can you stand?” Gray’s hand reached down to help her up.
She nodded and sat up, finally getting air into her lungs. “I’m fine. Did you get him?”
“No. He got away.”
She hadn’t realized until then that she’d counted on Gray to catch him and give her a chance for a safe getaway. The bitter hiccup of tears joined her lung-filling breaths. “I have to get back. Bert’ll worry.”
Gray’s hand didn’t let go of her arm. “Abbie.” He opened his left hand. There on his palm rested the proof that her safety was nothing more than illusion.
Chapter Three
“How did he get hold of this?” Abbie’s fingers shook as she picked up the ripped square of fabric from Gray’s palm. Like a chameleon, the square rippled from light to dark, then settled, taking on her skin’s color, and all but disappeared. Steeltex. The experimental fabric her father had developed for the U.S. Army. “How could Rafe’s goon get into the mill? It’s fenced now. Gated. Guarded night and day by military police.”
“I don’t know, but we have to get out of here.” The tautness of Gray’s voice, the protective stance of his body and the predatory way he scanned the area around them ratcheted the tightening squeeze of anxiety in her chest.
“Is he still out there?” She craned her neck and probed the shifting shadows that pooled the woods into shades of black. Her body was strangely numb, as if it didn’t quite belong to her, and it automatically shrank closer to Gray.
Gray poked at the scrap of material peeking out of the top of her fist. “He’s got the advantage. He can see us, but we can’t see him.”
He shook off his jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. “We need to get moving.”
The jacket had trapped his heat and his clean scent, and both swaddled her like a security blanket. A muscle in his jaw twitched as he adjusted the lapels around her neck, then his face settled into a sharp set of unreadable lines.
“I don’t need this—”
He stopped her efforts to remove his jacket. “The white of your blouse drinks in what little light there is and turns you into a beacon.”
Her gaze dropped to his chest. The pearl-gray of his shirt shimmered in the fading light. “But now you—”
“Shh. Let’s go. We have to get to the convent.”
A look in his eyes yielded only a reflection of her dazed-deer look in the lenses of his glasses. This running, this constant fear, wasn’t going to end. Not until either she or Rafe was dead. “We won’t make it…” Alive stuck in her throat. Their hunter was too close. Behind that tree? Behind that rock? The noises of the island became skulking footsteps on the undergrowth, sour breath in the fog, evil glee on the water. “It’s too far.”
“We will.” He tugged on her hand, breaking her paralysis. “One step at a time. Like old times.”
Like the time when she couldn’t run one more step at track practice and he’d fallen back to her pace and joked until she’d forgotten the cramp in her side. His no-worries tone, the warmth of his hand holding hers, the solidness of his body pressed against hers almost had her believing this could be just another training session.
How easily she’d fallen back into the old roles. Him watching out for her, her letting him. Except this time there was no smile to seal the lie that everything was okay. His vigilant scanning and cautious movements erased all delusions this was anything but a hunt and they were the prey.
Trailing behind him, camouflaged in his jacket, she was once again his kid sister’s best friend, one of the girls he continually had to get out of trouble. Then she’d wanted his attention. Now his taking charge was making her feel small and helpless.
Just like her father’s well-meaning control.
Just like Rafe’s manipulations.
Just like WITSEC.
With Gray it was supposed to be different.
Comfortable. Easy. Safe.
At the edge of the woods Gray paused. His breath puffed close to her ear as he took in the obstacle before them. In the creep of fog and darkness the ground continued to slope gently toward the darker mass that was the convent. Like an
