Tall, Dark And Texan

“N-no,” she said. “Nobody.”

For the first time, his intense expression shifted. He bowed his head, his body heaving with a sigh.

“Get on,” he said.

She blinked with surprise. “E-excuse me?”

“I said get on.”

Get on? Behind him? A clearly unhappy man who looked as if he ate scrap metal for breakfast? It was one thing to admire the king of beasts from afar, but she wasn’t sure she should be crawling right into the cage with him.

“Uh…sure. Can you take me to the police station?”

“Not tonight. Too far away, and it’s too damned cold. I’ll take you someplace warm and safe.”

Warmth and safety. Currently the two most beautiful concepts in the English language. But was this the man who was going to provide those things?

She looked around, shivering wildly, looking for options and finding none.

He revved the engine. Last call.

She mentally crossed herself, strode over and slung her leg over the back of his motorcycle.

“Hang on, sweetheart.”

He hit the throttle, and only by clamping her arms around his waist was she able to keep from tumbling off backward. And in spite of the cold, the noise of the engine and her massive fear of the unknown, her only thought was that she’d just grabbed the Rock of Gibraltar. Even through the thick jacket he wore, she could tell he was all bone and muscle.

“Where exactly are we going?” she shouted.

No response. Either he couldn’t hear her over the roar of the engine, or he chose to ignore her. As they sped down the deserted street, her icy hair swirled in a frenzy around her head, the frigid strands smacking her in the face. She ducked her head against his back, hoping to keep the ice cubes that had once been her ears from cracking and falling off the sides of her head. He made an excellent wind block, which was no surprise. A man his size could have blocked a category-five hurricane. Even through his jacket she could feel his body heat, and right now, heat from anywhere was welcome. She closed her eyes, resurrected a few childhood prayers and hung on tight.

He seemed to drive forever before finally slowing down, and as soon as he did, he reached into his pocket and pulled out something that looked like a television remote. He pointed it at a large metal overhead door on the side of one of the buildings. With a grinding mechanical noise, the door came up. To her complete shock, he drove right underneath it into the building, the engine noise of the motorcycle reverberating off the walls of the empty warehouse.

She glanced over her shoulder to see the door coming down behind them. That familiar sense of self-preservation surged through her again, but Greta hadn’t addressed what do to when trapped on a moving vehicle behind a man the size of a redwood tree.

“Hey!” she shouted. “Where are you going? Hey!”

He never slowed down. He continued through the musty-smelling warehouse, dimly lit by a few overhead bulbs. Twenty feet in the distance stood two large metal doors. He leveled the remote at them, and they parted just as he reached them. He drove between them and swung the motorcycle around in a tight one-eighty just as the doors closed again. She looked around to see that they’d entered a room the size of a small bedroom. No doors, no windows. Then she heard a creaking noise, and it began to move.

Good God, they were on an elevator.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked as they slowly ascended, her voice still paralyzed by the cold.

“Home,” he said.

“Whose home?”

“Mine.”

He lived here? What could possibly live in a place like this besides rats, roaches and ghosts?

Serial killers.

Live here, or just passing through? he’d asked her. Know anybody in Dallas? He might as well have said, Hop on, baby. It’s easier to get away with murder if you’re a transient.

No. He’d said warm and safe. She’d heard him very clearly. It might have been a big fat lie, but right now she had no choice but to pray he was telling her the truth.

The elevator chugged up three floors and stopped. The doors creaked open in concert with the soft rumble of the idling engine. He eased the motorcycle forward until it exited the elevator, then killed the engine.

Wendy instantly got off and backed away. The light was dim, but still she could tell they were standing on a large three-story-high platform enclosed by an iron railing. The elevator led to one place—to this landing and a large metal door dead ahead.

He smacked the kickstand down with his foot, got off the bike and stepped toward the door. Behind her, the elevator doors screeched closed. She whipped around, looking to the left of the elevator, then to the right. Where was the control panel?

“Uh…no buttons,” she said. “How do you call the elevator?”

He held up the remote, then stuffed it into his coat pocket.

“Stairwell?”

“Not out here.”

She was trapped.

She backed against the iron railing, her heart racing wildly, her teeth still chattering like crazy, sounding like a jackhammer in the silence of the huge warehouse.

The man slipped his gloves off, stuffed them into his hip pocket, then pulled out a set of keys. He unlocked one lock. Then another. After the turn of a third key, he swung the door open, stepped aside and nodded for her to enter the darkened room.

He’d looked big sitting on the motorcycle. He looked positively gigantic now. Her question of whether he could make it through a doorway with those shoulders was answered.

Barely.

Swallowing hard, Wendy glanced back at the useless elevator. The nonexistent stairwell. The sheer three-story drop over the railing. She wished she had a choice, but the weather, the situation and the look on this man’s face had relieved her of all of those. Taking a deep, shaky breath, she walked through the door into the darkened room.

Okay. It’s warm in here. At least he didn’t lie about that.

That was her first thought, and for several heavenly seconds, it was her only thought.

Then he turned on the lights.

2

WENDY BLINKED against the sudden brightness, shocked at what came into view. The room was massive. No, it wasn’t a room. Just an extension of the warehouse that contained it, with soaring ceilings crisscrossed with pipes and ducts and wires. Along one wall was a refrigerator, a stove and a few cabinets, with a nearby table and a couple of chairs, which she guessed qualified that area as the kitchen.

Near an adjoining wall sat a television with a sofa in front of it. Against another wall was a desk with a phone, computer monitor, scanner, fax machine, printer. Industrial light fixtures hung from the ceiling, illuminating the room with a garish glow. The floor was nothing more than cracked, stained concrete without a rug in sight.

She heard a clanking noise. Turning back, she saw him lock the door with twists, swipes and flips of his fingers. “Stay here,” he commanded, then disappeared down a short hallway into another room.

Wendy looked around the bizarre warehouse loft. The furniture, the computer equipment and the TV should have made it seem at least a little homey, but stuck inside this weird place, they looked strange and surreal. And not a single personal item graced a shelf, table or kitchen counter to indicate that he was a normal human being and not a reclusive psychopath. She tried desperately to get a grip on herself, but in spite of the warmth of the room, fear mingled with the cold she still felt until she couldn’t tell which one was making her shiver.