Chapter Two
It was midnight, and Shelly still couldn’t sleep. She paced the confines of her cabin, her bare feet sliding over the old, wood floors. She’d tried to sleep, but every single time that she’d closed her eyes, she’d seen her stranger. She’d seen him dying, for her.
The fire crackled in the large, stone fireplace.
The red and orange flames were dancing as she stared straight at them.
Guilt twisted her stomach. The same guilt had her hands shaking in front of her.
A man had died, and she was so sick of death.
Sick of it reaching for the people around her, over and over again. Sick of—
A soft knock sounded at her door. Her head jerked toward the sound, and her brows lowered as she gazed at the door. She was near the top of the mountain, on an isolated, private stretch of land. Land that had been in her family for generations.
The knock came again, only harder this time. Stronger.
Shelly swallowed as she inched toward the door.
It was too late for a visitor. The place was too isolated for some tourist to wander up to her doorstep by mistake.
Her phone was on the table near the door, and she grabbed it.
Her fingers swiped over the screen. She could call Blane and get the sheriff there in…
In thirty minutes. Because that’s how long it takes to get from his place to the top of this mountain. Oh, damn.
The knock came again. Harder. And…
“I know you’re in there.” A man’s voice. Strong. Familiar. “You’re standing behind the door, and you’re scared, but you don’t need to be.”
No, no way. No. She was wrong about the voice being familiar. Wrong because it couldn’t be, could not be—
Her stranger?
She surged toward the door, flipped the locks and yanked the door open. A cold burst of wind and snow hit her, and Shelly stared in shock at the man before her.
It was him. Her stranger.
The hero.
The dead man.
Her knees started to buckle. The phone slipped from her grasp and dropped to the floor.
She was about to follow that phone and hit the wooden floor, but—but he caught her.
He moved so fast, catching her and lifting her into his arms. He held her easily as he swept into her cabin, kicking the door shut behind him.
She should scream. She should jerk out of his arms. She should do something.
“You should breathe,” he told her, and his lips—firm, sensual—kicked up just a bit. “That’s what you should do first. Breathe. Then you can scream. You can jerk away from me. You can do everything else you have planned, but you have to start by breathing.”
He carried her to the chair in front of her fireplace. He sat her down ever so carefully even as she sucked in a couple of deep gulps of air.
He knelt in front of her, his hands going to cage her in the chair. His hair was mussed and dusted by a bit of snow. His eyes were just as amazingly blue as they’d been before. He wore a t-shirt—the same black t-shirt he’d worn at the bar. Jeans. Boots.
“You’re dead,” Shelly said.
“I actually get that a lot.”
“What?”
His right hand moved to cup her cheek. His touch was so warm, and she flinched against him.
“Easy.” His gaze didn’t leave her. “I just want to make sure you’re not going to pass out on me.”
Her hand caught his. Held tight. “You’re here. Really here.”
One dark eyebrow raised. “Yes.”
“I’m not dreaming? Hallucinating? Having some kind of breakdown?” Shelly needed to be one hundred percent sure of this.
All trace of amusement left his face. “I’m right here.”
She shook her head. “I saw you die.”
He glanced away from her.
She was still holding his hand. Still holding him, and Shelly didn’t think she’d ever let go. “Who are you?”
He swallowed. “I really hoped you’d know.”
What? “I’m Shelly. Shelly Hampton, and I wish that I could say I knew you, but I’m sorry, I don’t.”
“Shelly.” He seemed to taste her name. Savor it.
She shivered.
His gaze focused on her once more. “I need to tell you some things. And when I do, I want you to promise me that you’ll keep taking those deep breaths, okay?”
She sucked in another deep gulp of air.
“The things I say, they’re going to sound crazy, but I swear, they are true. I’m not lying to you. I won’t lie to you.”
His voice was so deep and hard. His gaze so intense.
“I don’t know who I am.” His gaze held hers. “A few months ago, I woke up in a lab. I was strapped to an exam table. Men and women in white coats rushed around me. I heard them saying my experiment was a success.”
She pulled in another breath.
“They kept me locked away in a facility—didn’t take me long to figure out it was run by the government.
They thought I couldn’t hear them when they talked, didn’t think I picked up on their whispers, but I did.
They said the place was part of Project Lazarus, and I was a test subject. A fucking lab rat to them.”
She had no idea where this story was going. She didn’t—
“Then they killed me.”
“What?”
He rolled back his shoulders and surged to his feet. His hand pulled from her hold as he towered over her. “I think they killed me five times. Part of their experiment, you see. Because they wanted to see how long it would take me to come back from the dead.”
She could only stare at him. I’m in the mountains, alone in my cabin, with a man who is insane. I let him in my home. Does that make me crazy, too? It must, it—
“You’re not fucking crazy,” he growled. “And you’re also not remembering to breathe, Shelly. Breathe.”
She sucked in more air. Her heart was racing so fast she thought it might burst from her chest at any moment.
“I hate that you’re afraid of me. I-I didn’t think you’d be afraid.” He raked his hand through his hair. “I thought you’d see me…that you’d know me.”
“Um.” She cleared her throat. “Excuse me, but I have to tell you that we’ve never met. Never. I mean, not before I saw you in the bar tonight. We’re strangers.”
His whole body stiffened. “We can’t be.” His hand dropped to his side. For an instant, fury was on his face, and his lethal glare had fear surging even stronger inside of her. She pressed back into the chair and tried to figure out how she could escape. How she—
“You can’t run from me.” A muscle jerked in his jaw. “I’m here to protect you. You’re in danger, don’t you see that?”
She was seeing that fact pretty clearly. Because the guy in front of her was spinning some wild story about a government experiment and—
“You were in my mind. From the minute I woke up in that hell, you were in my head. I’d have flashes of you.
I couldn’t remember anything else, only you.
” He was definitely angry. He spun away from her, pacing toward the fire.
“You were—you are the only thing I know, and you stare at me like I’m a monster. ”
Time for her to run. While his back was turned. Now. Shelly leapt from the chair and raced for the door. Her hands flew out and—
Hit him.
Because the big, probably crazy stranger was suddenly in front of her. Impossible. He’d been behind her. He’d been in front of the fireplace. But now he was between her and the door. He’d beaten her to the door. And he wasn’t even breathing hard.
“I am not here to hurt you. You’re in danger, but not from me.” His voice was low, and it seemed to sink right beneath her skin. “I found you…I tracked you…I searched for you because I knew I had to keep you safe.”
“But you don’t know me.” Her voice was too high. Cracking. A terrible contrast to his. “We don’t know each other.”
Pain flashed in his eyes but was quickly masked. “You are the only thing I know. They held me in their lab, kept me prisoner for months. Experimented on me again and again. Killing me, bringing me back.”
No, surely…
Dear God, that couldn’t be true, could it? “Y-you were shot tonight. Show me your back.”
Staring straight at her, he yanked the shirt over his head.
She swallowed. Twice. The guy was built. He didn’t just have a six pack going on. More like a twelve pack. But there were scars on his chest. Faint white ridges. A lot of them. Bullet wounds? Knife wounds?
He turned, giving her his back.
And where there should have been a gaping hole…her fingers reached out and touched warm skin. He jerked hard beneath her touch, and she heard him hiss out a rough breath. “Got the bullet out. I’m okay now.”
She didn’t stop touching him. His skin was…it was slightly red in the middle of his back, near his spine, and she could have sworn that what looked like some kind of fresh scar tissue was starting to form. “Impossible.” Was that…was that blood still on his back? Dried blood?
He turned toward her. Offered her the shirt in his hand.
Shaking, she took the shirt and she found the hole that had been left by the bullet. There was dried blood on the shirt. His blood. She dropped the shirt. Backed up four quick steps. Shook her head. “This isn’t happening.”
“I wish it fucking weren’t. It’s my life, though. Or what’s left of it.” He gave a grim laugh. “You’re what’s left of it. I found you.”
Those words—Oh, God.
“I knew you were out there. You were in my head, and I knew you had to be real, no matter what bullshit the assholes in that lab told me. When the place was destroyed, I escaped. I came looking for you.” He advanced toward her.
Shelly backed up another step.
“You’re in danger.” His hands fisted at his sides. “I know it. I can…I can sense things, okay? Hell, I can come back from the dead. I think that proves I’m not exactly normal.”
No, he was far from normal.
“My senses are better than a normal man’s. Far fucking better. I can hear through walls, I can hear whispers from a hundred yards away. I can see better than any human—see, hear, smell. I’m faster, I’m stronger.”
Nothing he was saying reassured her. “How do I know that you aren’t just crazy?”
His eyes narrowed. “I can prove it.”
Um…
A moment later, he opened the cabin’s front door. Cold air blew inside, chilling her. “Come and watch,” he invited.