Dead Run

The memory made him grin. Kristin James might be a smashingly gorgeous woman, but she trained like a drill sergeant. He’d thought he was in shape and figured it would be easy to keep pace with her. Nope. She was a machine. No way he could forget the kind of bodily pain he’d felt after letting her unleash her personal trainer side during a weight-lifting session.

His smile faded. Kristin was small, but she was stronger than most men. She would be fine, and this stakeout was dumb. He was still in combat mode, seeing monsters in the shadows. Kristin was safe, and he needed to wrap this up, for his own sanity.

He pushed himself out of the chair, but a flash from the corner of the house near her car stopped him.

Lucas squinted against the darkness, wishing he could bolt across the street and demand some identification from the shadowy figure skirting between the vehicles in her driveway. But if it was a neighbor searching for a lost cat, he’d have a whole lot of questions coming and no good way to answer any of them.

The flashlight bobbed under a window then to the far corner of the house, where the gate to the backyard stood in the huge wooden privacy fence. The flashlight paused, and then the gate slipped open and the silhouette of a man vanished.

* * *

The floor joists creaked as Kristin paced the small kitchen on the side of the house, listening to the coffeemaker whir as it heated water. The muscles in her legs ached their protest. After her run today, she’d been too keyed up to stretch, and the tension of the morning had settled in to stay. She’d met with clients all day, coaching them through their workouts, then come home and pounded the punching bag in the basement until her arm muscles quivered. Nothing had helped the stress.

Maybe she ought to tackle painting the guest bathroom. She’d been putting it off, but painting would give her something to do tonight while she wasn’t sleeping. Renovations on the old house in the fast-rising Haymount neighborhood were coming slowly, but the basement and the first floor were done. Kristin paced the length of the kitchen again, staring at the original hardwood, polished to a satiny sheen. Tearing out layers of linoleum had been backbreaking but worth it.

“You could make a three-toed sloth so nervous it would run for the next county.” Kristin’s best friend, Casey Jordan, stood in the arched kitchen doorway, holding a dog-eared and worn book of sudoku puzzles, her shoulder-length blond hair pulled away from her face with a butterfly clip.

“Yeah, well, I think I need to lace my shoes and run a few miles.” Maybe she could talk Lucas into going with her. Except that would be the dumbest thing ever. With her emotions twisted, the last thing she needed to do was give him free rein with her feelings.

“Running is what got you into trouble in the first place.”

“Running is my therapy, like you and your crazy number puzzles.” Casey was talking about this morning’s trail run, but she was right on so many other levels. Running with Lucas had started something Kristin probably needed to stop. Even though she really didn’t want to. Kristin bounced on her toes, nervous energy pushing against her skin, searching for a way out. She pressed the brew button on the coffee machine then turned to her best friend. “You didn’t have to come over.”

“Sure, I did. And number puzzles make me happy.”

“You’re addicted.”

“Nice try swinging this to me. After what happened to you this morning, I couldn’t leave you here lying awake while you listen for things that go bump in the night.” Casey held up a hand to stop Kristin’s argument before it could form. “I know exactly what you’re going to say. You don’t scare easily, but knowing some guy out there has your house key can’t be comforting, especially after—”

“Can we change the subject?” Kristin didn’t want to think about it, but the twinge in her shoulder blade where she’d smashed into the tree kept her from forgetting.

The keys bugged her. Taking her keys and leaving everything else behind felt personal. She’d had the fob for her house alarm deactivated and made sure to set the alarm when she left to work, but that hadn’t brought her a whole lot of comfort. It was doubtful the police would get there fast enough, even with a monitored system. When the system went off last week, it took forever to trigger a phone call to her cell. Her mother’s home alarm hadn’t been a fast enough response the night her dad had lost it. The deed was done before the alarm company could respond.

“The locksmith came this afternoon and rekeyed the locks.” Still, if somebody wanted in bad enough, a lack of keys wouldn’t stop them. The guy was determined. He had known who she was, had mentioned Kyle by name. There was more to this than the surface told, but she couldn’t begin to guess what.

Not that she’d admit any of her fears to Casey. Still, it would be a relief to know Casey was bunked in the downstairs guest room. Kristin could take care of herself, but having an army staff sergeant to back her up wouldn’t be a bad thing.

She pulled the huge mug of coffee from the machine and handed it over, then grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and an orange from the bowl on the table, following the other woman into the living room.

Sinking onto the sofa, Kristin started to set her water on the coffee table, but a soft sound from the side of the house kept the bottle hovering. Probably the wind. Or one of the cats that roamed the neighborhood after dark. She set the water on the table harder than she should have. Stupid day making her paranoid.

Casey curled her feet under her in a blue-and-white-striped wing-back chair and laid her book on the end table. “So...let’s talk about who played your knight in shining armor today.”

Kristin’s stomach sank. She should have known this was coming. Casey knew Kristin’s stance on dating, but the woman relished a good love story.

Well, there sure wasn’t one here. Kristin dug her thumb into the orange, releasing a soft citrusy spray, then pulled back the peel. “Nothing to talk about. Lucas and his buddy came around the corner. He chased the guy and called the cops while Travis acted like I was some weak female who needed his help.”

“Sounds like they played cleanup after you took care of the problem yourself.”

Kristin smiled and tipped the water bottle, taking a long drink. She’d defended herself quite nicely, if she did say so herself. If there was anything good about this day, it was the way she’d proved her strength, even if part of it was to herself.

“Too bad you can’t use the incident in your advertising and branch out into self-defense classes.”

No. The thought was a little tempting, but Kristin would never glorify an attacker by using his twisted behavior to sell her own skills. “I’ve got my hands full with personal training clients and hanging out with you.” Not to mention, the idea of having to defend herself if the guy returned wanting to talk about Kyle had her stomach knotted like a rope hammock.

“Hanging out with me. Whatever.” Casey waved a hand in the air, but Kristin could see it on her face. Under the tough-girl mask she always wore, Casey never could quite believe she was good enough, had said more than once she couldn’t understand why someone like Kristin would ever want to be her friend. Every time she said it, Kristin wanted to hug Casey and reassure her of her own awesomeness.

Before Kristin could say anything, Casey shifted in her seat. “What are you not telling me? Is there something more between you and this Lucas guy?”

“Absolutely nothing.”

“Kris...”

“You know what I can’t get out of my head?” If Kristin could possibly change the direction of this conversation, she was going to do it.

“What’s that?”

“The guy who came at me today...he had this tattoo.” She shuddered. Couldn’t help it. The thing was gruesome. “This snake on his leg. Wrapped all the way around his calf, dripping blood... I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“You told the cops? That’s a seriously strong identifier.”

“I did.”

“And you’re not getting me off track. That’s not the thing you’re hiding.” Casey arched an eyebrow in that knowing way she had. “I want to hear about—”

“The guy who came at me on the trail mentioned Kyle. By name.” She winced, hating she’d confessed that much, but even though it invited more scrutiny, it was the one way to shake Casey off the Lucas thing.

“What?” Casey leaned forward and set her mug on the table hard, coffee sloshing onto the dark wood. She swiped the spot with her fingertips. “You were targeted? Because of your brother?”

“Looks like.”

“Why? What did the punk do to—”

“Kyle’s dead, Case. I get it—you never trusted him. But he was still my brother.”

“Who ditched you for years and only showed his face because he needed a place to crash.” The hardness in Casey’s expression faded, and she sat back, pulling at the hem of her purple Carolina Beach sweatshirt. “I’m sorry. He’s gone, and I should watch my mouth.”

“He was trying.” Kristin hated the weakness in her voice. Her brother had been the only family she’d had left. When they were small, he’d always played protector, even though he was a year younger. They’d been close, each other’s best friend and closest companion. He’d defended Kristin at every chance, though he never witnessed their father’s brutality. Kristin had protected him from the truth as much as possible, and Kyle had idolized the man. He’d run away shortly after their parents’ deaths, refusing to believe their father had done something so heinous. While Kristin had spent the remainder of her high school years with their grandmother, taking on her mother’s maiden name after refusing to be known by her father’s anymore, Kyle had wandered, staying with distant relatives and friends, generally getting into trouble before deciding to make the army his life. Those last few months before he deployed, when he’d been stationed at Bragg, had reunited the siblings, however briefly.

While Kyle was still a bit of a loose cannon, he’d matured. Other than being basically silent about anything personal, he’d seemed normal...for this new, more distant version of Kyle. He’d even helped her finish the basement before he deployed, using some of the skills he’d learned earning money in high school to put in drywall and paint. Other than his utter failure at communicating, those few weeks had been good.

When he’d been killed, he’d left Kristin his life insurance and the ’68 Camaro he’d been restoring in her detached garage. While she’d often sat in the front seat of the car and toyed with the idea of turning the key, she hadn’t had the heart to drive it. It was his baby, the one thing he’d been enthusiastic about.

“Listen, Kris...”

Kristin shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. I admit he could be—” A crash from the backyard brought her to her feet, and she was halfway to the door before she realized she was plunging headfirst into danger...like her mother had on the night she died.

FOUR (#u9ec7ce48-9153-568e-8c0e-c1aafa5bea16)