she closed the file and rocked her head from side to side.
Phone threats, written threats, Joan’s threat—blind date or bus trip—a dead calf and a feeling of guilt that wouldn’t subside… All in all, she’d had better weeks. Which made her plans for that night even more appealing.
She needed moments of solitude, sometimes craved them. Her father, a staunch Mennonite farmer, hadn’t understood why. Neither had he understood or approved of her desire to leave the comfort of a close-knit community and board a bus for Chicago. What could college there offer her but headaches and problems? Better to stay in Holcombe, Indiana, marry the boy next door and turn two small farms into one.
She’d looked at Toby next door, then at the application in her hand. Not that Toby wasn’t sweet, but Northwestern had easily outpaced him. She’d wanted to save animals, not farm them.
She’d also wanted—and gotten—an adventure.
A bus ride gone bad had bled into a hero’s rescue, a marriage, a separation, a chance meeting with an aging vet and, finally, a pending lawsuit.
Taking a last sip of coffee, Alessandra wondered how Toby and the farm thing would have worked out. She’d probably be hiding chickens from her hubby’s ax. Better the lawsuit, she decided.
The smoke detectors gave a long screech and a second later the lights died.
The clinic had an emergency generator, but since there were no animals in residence and Alessandra knew the layout well enough to locate her purse and trench coat, she didn’t bother starting it up. Instead, she collected her things and let herself out the back door.
Wind snatched at her hair and coat like claws. Her car would start, it would. Although she probably shouldn’t have let a seventeen-year-old delivery boy tune it up as payment for a full sheet of lab work on his aging retriever.
Dr. Lang called her a soft touch. Joan used a less flattering term, but one look into the dog’s big brown eyes and Alessandra had caved.
Since an umbrella was pointless, she made her way across the pitted parking lot. She’d almost reached her car when a hand clamped onto her arm and swung her around in a rough half circle.
A fork of lightning illuminated the surly face of the calf breeder. He was big, bald and built like a bulldog. His eyes were flinty and he had no neck. The fingers that dug into her skin like talons tightened when she tried to shake him off.
Fear tickled her throat. Swallowing it, she met his glare. “Let go, Hawley.”
“You set the law on me.”
“I talked to the sheriff.”
Lightning flashed again. His lips thinned. “You told him I threatened you.”
“You did.”
“I called you up, told you you’d pay for what you’d done. And, by God, you will.” He took a menacing step closer, sank his fingers in deeper. “You don’t know squat about farm animals. Hell, you couldn’t wrestle a colt from its mama’s belly if your life depended on it.”
She wouldn’t back down, would not give him the satisfaction of reacting to the vicious gleam in his eyes. “I think I could probably do a lot of things under those circumstances.”
His scowl became a sneer, and he yanked her toward him.
“You talk a good game, Dr. Norris, but deep down I reckon you’re really a spineless little city girl who should have stayed in Chicago.” Another jerk, another fruitless attempt to free herself. Fear didn’t so much tickle now as grip her insides.
He bared his teeth in a leer. “Maybe I can think of a fair payment, after all.”
She caught the whisper of movement in her peripheral vision while she was lining up a determined left to his barely visible Adam’s apple. A hand descended on her shoulder, and a voice emerged from the darkness next to her.
“I think that’s enough manhandling for one night, pal.”
Shock kept Alessandra’s fist balled as she snapped her head around to regard the profile of none other than Gabriel McBride.
His expression remained amiable, but the hand that reached out to yank the breeder’s startled fingers away did so with no small amount of force.
Alessandra felt rather than saw Frank Hawley’s sputtering outrage.
“Who the hell are you?”
“Who’s not important. What is…” McBride’s slight movement had the breeder sliding his eyes downward. Lightning illuminated both the Glock and the badge at the waistband of McBride’s jeans.
“You’re a cop?”
“Close enough to haul you in for attempting to harm the lady beside me.”
“That lady’s a killer,” Hawley spat.
“Makes two of us. You’ve got five seconds to disappear. On six, you’re coming with me.”
Hawley showed his teeth again, this time in a snarl. He raised a finger, started to jab it, then curled it back and swung away.
McBride watched and waited through the next thunderbolt before asking, “What the hell did you do to the guy, Alessandra?”
She pushed his arm away. “Nothing. Let go of me.”
“You’re welcome.”
Sighing, she sidestepped him. “Thank you. Now, will you please tell me what you’re doing in South Dakota?”
The smallest of smiles touched his mouth. “Got a bit of a problem, darlin’.”
He took one step back and, before she could reach for him, dropped like a stone to the rain-soaked ground.
Chapter Two
“No hospitals, Alessandra. No cops. Say it.”
McBride was hanging on to consciousness by a fine thread. Experience told Alessandra that thread wouldn’t be allowed to snap until she made the required promise.
He held and shook her wrist. “I need you to say it.”
There was no decision, really. If she didn’t agree, he wouldn’t let her help him. If she didn’t help him, he’d die.
“Yes, all right, no cops.”
“Or hospitals.”
“I heard you, McBride.” She attempted to lever him up. “I can’t carry you, though. You’ll have to help me.”
Alessandra used all her strength to get him to his feet and into the clinic—and all her will not to go against her word. He’d been a cop once. Now he was hiding from them. Every shred of common sense she possessed told her to do what was necessary, then walk away. She also knew she wouldn’t listen to it. She never did.
And so the nightmare would
