Chapter Two #2
A myriad of emotion played over her face.
Anger. Confusion. Then she scrunched up her face right before recognition flooded her expression.
Staring at her was like watching an animation of a cartoon character.
He was a guarded man, and his small handful of friends were equally so, but he found himself transfixed by the raw emotion that the woman easily revealed.
“Oh my gosh.” Her hand went to her throat as she began to pace. “Oh my gosh!” She flattened her palms against her temples, muttering under her breath.
“Are you a junkie?” he demanded.
“What?” She stopped and stared at him for a beat. Then shook her head and the dark strands of damp hair skimmed just below her jawline. “No.” Her focus was back on her thoughts.
“Pacing around like a wind-up toy,” he muttered. “What the hell am I supposed to think?”
“The house. The kids. The men.” She took a break from wearing a hole in the floor and turned her eyes toward him.
He began to approach, once again stopping his forward progress when she shrank back.
“Are you working with them?” She backed up into the wall, let out an audible gasp, and whirled around like someone was behind her. Those big golden eyes searched the cabin, and she darted forward, grabbing a big cast-iron pan from the rudimentary stove, lifting it like a baseball bat.
He raised a brow and crossed his arms over his chest, planting his feet wide. Jesus Christ. Leave it to him to find the fucking forest lunatic.
“Is that how you found me? I know all about your sick ideas for that house. You’ll never get away with it.”
Did he stop her rant? Let her wear herself out? Fuck, he’d just wanted some solitude.
“Stop,” he demanded. The word was spoken harshly and had the intended effect. She paused and stared at him, the pan still in her grip. He dipped his gaze toward the blood trickling down her skin once again. “Your arm’s bleeding. I need to clean and wrap it.”
“It wouldn’t be if your goons hadn’t shot at me!”
He straightened, then sighed, scrubbing his hands over his face.
Drowning his emptiness in alcohol had proven to be a very poor choice.
He was still feeling fuzzy and a bit disoriented, but he turned his back on the woman and began digging through his backpack until his fingers closed around the leather wallet.
When he turned back to the woman, her face was scrunched in confusion, the pan still in her grasp but hanging limply at her side.
He took one step toward her, then another. “I’m going to show you my identification.” When he was close enough, he slid his badge from his wallet and held it out to her.
She took it like a feral squirrel might snatch a cracker away from an offering hand at the park.
“My name is Jude Hayes. I’m with the Department of Homeland Security. You’re safe here.”
“I’m Ivy Nelson. Is that why you’re in the woods? Are you waiting for the men?”
“I have no knowledge of the men you’re referring to, but if you let me treat your arm and head, you can get me up to speed on why you were passed out in the woods in a torrential downpour.”
Her tongue darted out to wet her lips and after a moment of indecision she handed back his identification. “Okay, thank you.”
His shoulders relaxed a fraction, knowing she’d let him look at her injuries. He walked past her toward the bathroom, looking over his shoulder when he reached the threshold. “Leave the pan.”
Ivy looked down at her hand then up at him before placing the pan back on the stove.
“Sorry,” she muttered and followed him back into the bathroom.
Her eyes landed on the vanity where he’d placed her phone, then glanced up at him.
“I didn’t see my cell when I ran out of the bathroom.
I thought I lost it when I fell, or maybe you’d taken it. ”
“I did.” He raised a brow at her. “Out of your back pocket.”
“No,” she sighed. “I mean taken it, taken it. Like stole it.”
“Do I look like a man who’d enjoy a pink phone with a glittery cupcake on the case?”
“My brother’s girlfriend makes them,” she said enthusiastically.
“What?” Again, his voice came out harsher than he’d intended. “Cupcakes?” he added, trying to sound less like the angry son of a bitch he was.
“No. The phone cases. She makes a lot of crafty things from resin. And no, I don’t think you’d enjoy the phone case. The way you’re scowling at me right now makes me think you don’t enjoy many things.”
“I was enjoying my solitude.”
“Right,” she said and bit her lower lip.
He glanced away and scrubbed his hands under the faucet before opening a dressing for her arm wound. With his palms clean, he felt her arm for debris.
“Splinters,” he muttered, more to himself.
“Yeah.” She looked up at him with wide eyes. “The men who were chasing me shot at a tree just ahead of where I was going. Some of the bark hit my arm. At least, I assumed that’s what happened. I didn’t actually hear the gunshots.”
“They could have had a silencer.” Or the woman could’ve hit her head too hard and imagined it.
Could be under the influence of something, although her eyes seemed too clear.
“Why were they chasing you?” He took tweezers from his medical bag and reached toward her arm.
“This is going to hurt, but I’ll be quick. ”
She nodded. “I’m a home inspector.” Ivy didn’t hide the wince when he pulled out the first piece of bark from her wound, but to her credit, she didn’t complain. “It was a weird assignment from the start.”
“How so?” He was glad she was talking. It would distract her from the pain.
“Usually, I’m hired by a home buyer or a seller who wants to be proactive.
In this case, the buyer’s Realtor hired me last minute, but the buyers didn’t want to attend the inspection.
This house may have been in disrepair, but it was by no means cheap.
More of an estate. A mini mansion. And the land it was set on was spectacular.
Anyways, after my initial assessment of the outside space, I used the lockbox to enter and then made sure to dead-bolt the door.
It took me about four hours to do a thorough inspection of the first two floors, and my last stop was the crawl space. ”
He eased another splinter out of the wound.
Again, she made a face of discomfort but kept talking.
Her words were clear and her reflection detailed.
He dismissed the idea that she’d sustained a traumatic brain injury or that she was under the influence of drugs.
Her speech was too clear and her account about what had happened was precise.
If someone had been chasing her, he needed to get in touch with the authorities as soon as he finished cleaning her wounds.
“I was just crouching in the crawl space when I heard the back door open. I had assumed all the other doors were locked, as the house was vacant. I was about to call out when I got a bad feeling.”
Being a Realtor always struck him as a dangerous job, but he’d never thought about that of a home inspector.
Several times throughout her story, he’d wanted to stop her and ask what the hell she’d been thinking going out to an unknown property alone.
He’d kept his mouth clamped shut—for now.
He didn’t know this woman. She’d probably tell him to go screw, not that it mattered.
“There were two voices. Men. Eddy and Leo. That’s what they called each other. They sounded angry. Started saying things that just didn’t make sense. I used an app on my cell phone to record the conversation, but I’m not sure if I caught any of it from the crawl space.”
His stomach clenched as memories were tossed to the surface. He knew how it felt to be frozen in fear. To have a space you thought was safe intruded upon.
“Are you okay?” she murmured.
Something touched lightly to his cheek, and he reared back as though he’d been slapped.
Christ, she’d just placed the pads of her fingers against his face.
It had been decades since he’d been touched with such tenderness, and it shook him.
Welled up agonizing memories that were fighting to break loose.
“I don’t like to be touched,” he said through clenched teeth.
“Sorry, I—Your expression looked so broken for a moment.”
He shifted her arm near the sink and flushed any remaining debris with water.
Tension built in his chest. Anger at himself.
His existence. One he’d tried so hard to make meaningful through the lives he saved.
None of it mattered though, not when he hadn’t been able to protect the only ones he’d cared about.
For that, he loathed himself. He twisted the faucet tap with too much force.
“Not a moment,” he growled, feeling more like a beast than a man.
“A lifetime.” Not that he’d been expecting company, but if he hadn’t been drinking earlier, he never would say something like that.
Ivy’s eyes widened, but not with fear. There was empathy in the glittering depths, and it only made his anguish intensify.
He looked away, grabbed the dressing, and hastily wrapped it in place.
He said nothing as he cleaned and bandaged her head wound and he was thankful she didn’t try to fill the silent space with chatter.
When he was finished, he cleaned up the supplies, then turned to her. “Pull up the recording.”