Jake agreed, a little surprised. Victor had seemed intent on helping out here just a few minutes earlier. “Hey, do me a favor—my wife Mariah’s helping out at the staging tent. She’s probably worried about me by now. Can you tell her I’m fine and I’ll be there soon? Mariah Cooper. She’s about five-eight, long black hair, gray eyes, gorgeous—you can’t miss her.”
“Will do,” Victor agreed, an odd light shining in his eyes. He turned and hurried away.
“Ready to do this?” Don asked, waving at the mess in the bathroom trapping the family in the tub.
Jake nodded. Stepping carefully into the mess, he went to work, putting Victor’s strange expression out of his mind.
MARIAH WAS CROUCHED BEHIND the water table, opening a new case of bottled water, when she heard a voice as familiar as a nightmare. She stood quickly, banging her head against the edge of the table so hard she saw stars for a moment.
When her vision cleared, she saw a short, muscular man with midnight-black hair flecked with silver standing in front of one of the emergency dispatch stations, rattling off an address. Her heart fluttered wildly before settling into a gallop.
Victor.
As if she’d spoken the name aloud, Victor Logan turned his head toward her. His black eyes gleamed with predatory excitement. Mariah’s first instinct was to take flight, but she was trapped between the table and the wall of the tent, other volunteers blocking her means of exit. She could do nothing but stand there, like a bird in a snare, while Victor walked the short distance to her table.
He bared his teeth at her in a horrible smile. “So, Marisol. It’s been a while.”
She tried to speak but nothing emerged from her throat.
“I have news of your husband. Quite the hero, your husband. Big, strapping, strong fellow. He asked me to tell you he’s fine.” Victor’s smile widened. “For now.”
Chapter Two
Mariah clutched the edge of the table, her fingertips stinging from the pressure of her grip. She found her voice, though it came out faint and strangled. “What have you done?”
“I told you, he’s fine.” Victor picked up one of the bottles sitting on the table in front of her. He made a show of studying the label.
Mariah stepped backward until she felt the canvas of the tent against her back. “What do you want?”
Victor didn’t answer, twisting the top off the water bottle. He took a long swig, his eyes never leaving hers.
Mariah clenched and unclenched her fists, eyeing him warily, like a cornered mouse watching a very large, very hungry cat. To her right, the volunteer blocking her exit route moved away, leaving her an unexpected opening.
But before she could make a move in that direction, Victor stepped into the gap, reading her intentions.
She’d forgotten how well he knew her.
He screwed the cap back onto the water bottle. “You haven’t told him you were a street whore, have you?”
Though he didn’t speak loudly enough for anyone else to hear him, humiliation poured over Mariah in waves of heat. She glanced around to see if anyone was watching. But they were all too involved in their own efforts to pay any attention to the two of them.
She swallowed the lump in her throat and lifted her chin. “I was never a whore.”
“So you say.”
She lowered her voice to a growl. “The closest I ever came was living under your roof and letting you manipulate me into being your special project.”
“I gave you an education you sorely lacked.”
“My education was all part of the game you played with my life.” Anger overcame her lingering sense of shame. “It was all about you, all along. The puppeteer, pulling all the strings—”
His brows converged over his long nose. “Apparently I failed to teach you gratitude.”
“I’m grateful you helped me when I needed a hand.” She softened her voice. “But it should have ended there. It certainly didn’t give you the right to kill the man I loved because you could no longer control me.”
“It was an accident,” he said automatically. The declaration sounded no more believable now than it had when he’d first put it forward as his defense. “My foot missed the brake pedal. I’m very sorry about it.”
Hearing his insincere words of regret sickened Mariah. “I want you to leave me alone, Victor. You don’t need the trouble, I imagine.” He had to be on parole to be out of jail this early. He’d been sentenced three to five years, and he was out after only four.
“Neither do you, I imagine,” Victor countered blithely, his mouth curving in a cruel smile Mariah found horribly familiar. “I wonder, which of us will give in first?”
Before she could respond, he tucked his water bottle in the pocket of his jacket, turned on his heel and left the tent, heading out into the rain.
Mariah turned unsteadily back to the table and laid her hands flat on the hard, cool surface, trying to regain her balance. A soft swishing noise rose in her ears, and for a moment, she was afraid she was going to faint.
“Are you okay?” One of the other volunteers put her hand on Mariah’s arm.
Mariah nodded, her head beginning to clear. “Yeah. Just a head rush. I’m fine.”
“Why don’t you sit down?” the woman suggested.
“Actually, I’d like to get some air,” Mariah countered, buttoning up her jacket. She pulled a baseball cap from her pocket and put it on, tucking her hair up under the fabric crown. Bringing the bill low over her face, she hurried past the puzzled woman and stepped into the rain.
She started walking east at a brisk clip, toward the subdivision where Jake had gone about an hour earlier to aid a man who’d flagged him down, seeking help for neighbors trapped in their storm-shattered home. He’d been away almost an hour now.
She needed to see him, and not because she needed something familiar and stable to calm her rattled nerves, though that was also true. She needed to know he was okay. If Victor had done anything to him, she wasn’t sure how she’d ever live with it.
Not again.
When she found him, she’d convince him to cut short their plans to help in the rescue and take her back home to Gossamer Ridge and their cozy bungalow overlooking the lake. She’d pick up her son Micah from the lake house where he was staying with Jake’s parents and never leave Chickasaw County again.
She never should’ve come back here in the first place.
When Jake had told her he’d signed them up for their first couples fishing tournament, she’d found the prospect exciting. He’d been the one who’d taught her to fish, who’d cheered her improvements and praised her skills every time she muscled a largemouth bass from around a stump or teased a finicky spawning
