“I still can’t believe I didn’t notice you weren’t at your house that night after the party,” Travis said. “The light was on in your kitchen and I thought you were there.” He rubbed his eyes. “I never saw evidence of anyone else, though . . .”
“You were watching?” She was down to short statements at this point. It was all she could do to drag in the next breath.
He nodded, lips pressed together. “For all the good it did. Here we are. On the run. What were you doing at the farm for six hours anyway?” he asked.
“You were . . there . . the whole time?”
“Of course.”
Another deep breath. “I made friends with the pharmacist.” She stopped and lowered herself to the nearest old log on the ground. “Hold on a second.”
“What is it?”
“I need to stop. Just for a minute.” The pain in her ribs and across her shoulder was stealing what little breath she could find.
“All right.” He paused and took the time to look back the way they’d come. “I don’t think anyone was able to follow us. They’d have had to rappel down the side of the mountain like I did.” He took off his beanie and settled it on her head, pulling it down over her ears. “Keep talking.”
Keep talking? Really? “You don’t have to give me your hat.”
He took off his coat and wrapped it around her. “Push your arms in the sleeves.”
“Travis, no, I can’t—” But it was blissfully warm from his body heat. “You’ll freeze.”
“I have on a thermal shirt, a sweatshirt, and a hoodie. I’ll be fine. And besides, I wasn’t just in an accident. You need to stay warm. Now, be still so I can zip it.”
Heather gave in. When she was adequately encased in the much-too-large warm Sherpa coat, he patted her on the head. “That’s better.”
It really was, but if he patted her on the head again, she might have to hurt him.
“You’re good? Can we keep going?” he asked. “I don’t like being out in the open like this.”
“Sure.” She could use a few more minutes but figured the light rain might be getting ready to morph into something heavier, and she’d really like to find a dry place to hole up.
“You can finish your story now that you can breathe.” He held out a hand and she grasped it. “And explain how the pharmacist is involved in you being at the house on the top of the mountain.”
He started off, and she once again found herself pushing through the wooded undergrowth, wishing she were back in her little hotel room, tucked safely in her bed. “So, a couple of days after I arrived in town, I was shopping and he—the pharmacist—had a sign in the window advertising for a delivery person. I asked him about it and said I’d volunteer.”
“Let me guess. You didn’t want to give him the information required for an actual paying job.”
“Bingo. Anyway, he sent me out to the Gunderson farm to deliver some prenatal vitamins. When I got there, she was in labor, so I wound up delivering her daughter. Her sister got there about thirty minutes before I left.”
“I saw her drive up.” He looked back at her. “But I never saw an ambulance or anything.”
“They wanted to stay at home.” She was already tired again and feeling out of breath while her legs ached with the effort to keep up. The pain pulsing from her bruised body didn’t help. She hadn’t realized how out of shape she’d let herself get. There was going to be a lot of cardio in her future—assuming she lived through this.
“I guess the baby was okay?” he asked.
“She was slightly early, but healthy. And the mom was fine. There wasn’t any reason either of them needed to go to the hospital. It was her third child, so she . . . knew what she was doing . . . And I’m going to have to”—she pulled in a gasp of a breath—“quit talking . . . if I’m going to keep walking.”
After what seemed like an eternity, Travis stopped. “There’s a cabin,” he said, his voice soft in the night.
A shudder ran through her. The longer she was still, the more she felt the cold. The rain had started to fall harder, the wind picking up, whipping past her exposed cheeks. If she was cold, Travis had to be freezing.
“It’s dark,” she said. “You think anyone’s in there?”
“Only one way to find out.”
The rain fell harder as Travis tromped through the leaves to the gravel path that led to the front porch. He knocked, and within seconds the bottom dropped out of the sky. Heather gulped lungfuls of air while she huddled next to him on the small porch. It didn’t offer a lot of protection from the rain that was now pounding the earth in a deafening roar, but it was better than nothing.
He knocked again. “Anyone home?” He turned the knob. “It’s open.”
“Then I’m going in.” She slipped past him, stepped inside, and shivered harder. “It’s as cold in here as it was in my house the night I left. There’s wood on the fireplace. You think the chimney’s open?”
He checked. “It’s open.”
Heather explored the small space while Travis worked with the fireplace. In the kitchen, she found peanut butter and jelly, a loaf of fresh bread, eggs, milk, and fruit that were still good. “Someone’s living here, Travis.”
“I gathered that from the stack of fresh wood. Hopefully, whoever it is won’t mind us crashing until the rain stops.”
She rubbed her hands together and returned to stand in front of the flickering flames.
He added another log and looked up. “Why don’t you have a seat?” He gestured to the couch. “You probably need to take inventory and make sure you’re not really hurt.”
“I’m not. Bruised, jarred, angry, but relatively unscathed. I think. I’ll be fine now that I can breathe.” She sank onto the couch. “If you hadn’t come along when you did, I wouldn’t have made it out of there in time.”
“You would have.”
“No. I really wouldn’t have. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
She crossed her arms over her stomach. “But I think you brought my stalker with you.”
He frowned. “I don’t know. He couldn’t have known I’d be the one to come after you. He’s never done anything violent before, has he?”
“No. In fact, I thought he might have disappeared. The last three weeks have been blessedly quiet and peaceful.”
“Until today.”
“Until today. Which is why I think you must have led him to me.”
“I don’t think so.”
She raised a brow. “Why not?”
“Because, first, I’ve been watching you for the past two weeks and I’ve seen no sign of anyone else following you. Second, if someone did follow me, why wait this long to come after you?”
She didn’t have an answer for that one. Wait a minute. “Two weeks?” She forgot about being chilled and stared at him. “You’ve been following me around for two weeks?”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
He didn’t sound very sorry. “But . . . why?”