Chapter 8 #2
As the vehicle took off, he scanned for the van and the men who had taken them prisoner, but neither was in sight.
When Stephanie started to speak, Craig squeezed her hand.
Not here.
She clamped her lips together and knitted her fingers with his.
They were both breathing hard from the chase and the narrow escape. Now that the crisis was over, he could feel the sexual pull starting to surge between them.
Touching her made him want her, but the physical connection also seemed to strengthen the silent communication they’d first discovered in the dress shop. If they had been in a hotel instead of a cab, he would have taken her directly to the check-in desk and booked a room.
She caught the thought and glanced at him, then away.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “It’s a guy thing.”
Not just a guy thing, apparently.
We have to find a safe place where we can figure out what’s going on.
You think we can do it?
I hope so.
The cab pulled onto the street near her father’s house where he’d left his car, but he asked the driver to stop halfway down the block.
The guy pulled to the curb, and they got out.
After paying the man, Craig motioned Stephanie into the shadows of an overhanging pepper tree. “Wait here.”
“Why?”
“They could have staked out my car.”
“If they know where it is.”
“We can’t assume we’re in the clear.”
She waited while he walked swiftly down the block, all his senses on alert, but nobody approached the vehicle. It could be that the men didn’t even know this was his rental. When he gestured for Stephanie to follow, she hurried down the block and climbed into the passenger seat.
He’d kept their physical contact to a minimum.
But now they were off the street, and when she turned to him, he reached for her, feeling emotions flowing between them.
Relief that they had made their escape, coupled with the sexual need surging between them.
And under that, the uncertainty about their situation—on so many levels.
He lowered his mouth to hers for a kiss that left them both gasping.
He knew they should drive away because the men who had captured them could come back.
But he couldn’t turn her loose, not yet.
Everything inside him had gone cold when he’d seen that gun pressed to her head.
He’d been scared spitless—for her. And he’d realized in that moment that he couldn’t lose her.
He knew she took in his thoughts. Wrenching her mouth from his, she stared at him.
Yes, she whispered in his mind, telling him the same thing. She couldn’t lose him.
How could I have gotten engaged to John Reynard?
You didn’t know what he was.
It’s more than that. If I’d married him, I would have tried to make the best of it. But that was before I knew you.
He tightened his arms around her. A while ago, he had been unable to comprehend a relationship closer than the one he’d had with Sam. Now he was starting to understand the depths of what he had found with Stephanie. The link between them had gotten them out of that van—maybe saved their lives.
But we need . . .
To be closer.
Just allowing that thought sent a surge of arousal through him, yet he eased his body away from her.
We have to find a safe place where we can . . .
Make love, she finished for him.
“Yeah,” he said aloud.
“My family has a cabin out in bayou country, near New Iberia. We can go there.”
He let the picture of the isolated cabin fill his mind. They’d be alone, uninterrupted.
“Does Reynard know about it?”
“I don’t think so.”
He nodded, deciding he’d make a judgment about the hideout later. “Right now, I need to get my laptop from my bed and breakfast.”
She tightened her hand on his. “Isn’t that dangerous?”
“It’s dangerous for my hard drive to fall into enemy hands.”
“Enemy hands. You mean Reynard—or whoever those men are working for?”
“Right. Either one.”
“What do they want with us?” she asked in a strained voice.
“I don’t know, but we’d better find out.”
“I know it’s a stretch, but do you think it has something to do with . . . that clinic?”
“Someone who wants to hurt John could be after you.”
“He didn’t share that with me if it’s true. And they came after both of us.”
“Well, they could be mad that I rescued you.”
“Okay. Right.”
“On the other hand, they could have just killed me and left me there—then taken you in the van. But they took both of us.”
She sucked in a sharp breath.
“But back to your question about that clinic. You have to wonder why they wanted to keep testing the children.” Deliberately he took his hand away from hers.
She leaned back against the seat with her eyes closed.
Hell of a day, he said.
Hard to imagine, she answered.
His head jerked toward her. “We weren’t touching.”
Her eyes widened. “That’s right.”
“But we spoke mind to mind.”
Yes.
“We have to strengthen that skill.”
“Yes,” she answered again. “We have to see how far apart we can get and still do it.” She turned her head toward him. “Did you and Sam have to be touching to speak mind to mind?”
“At first we did. Then later we could do it farther and farther apart.”
Excitement bubbled inside him as he contemplated the possibilities, but he ruthlessly cut off those thoughts. The first thing he had to do was make sure they were safe. From Reynard and from whoever else was after them.
“Why haven’t you reported in?” John Reynard asked the men he had stationed outside Stephanie’s house.
“Nothing to report,” Tommy Ladreau replied. “She’s still home.”
“How do you know?”
“Her car is still where she left it when she came home from her father’s.”
John considered that assessment. He’d called the shop and found that Stephanie hadn’t come back in. But now he was beginning to wonder why she was holed up in her house.
The tracking device he’d had the men put on her car showed the vehicle hadn’t moved. But what if she’d left on foot. Or—in another car?
That question brought to mind the man who’d been stalking her. Craig Brady. There was no information about him, which probably meant that Craig Brady wasn’t his real name.
“Give her another hour,” he said. “Then go knock on the door and tell her you’re just checking in.”
He got off the phone and called a man in the police force who often did some work for him.
“This is John Reynard,” he said when his contact picked up.
“Yes?” came the cautious reply.
“There was an incident at Stephanie Swift’s gift shop earlier today.”
“Like what?”
“Two men came in and threatened her, and another guy charged in afterwards and fought them off.”
“Okay.”
“I want you to go over there and dust for fingerprints. I want to know who those men were.”
“I can’t do it right away.”
“I think you’d better drop what you’re doing and get busy,” he said, then hung up.
Craig drove back to the French Quarter and found a parking space around the corner from his bed and breakfast. He would have told Stephanie to wait in the car but he knew from her thoughts that she wasn’t going to let him go back there alone.
They held hands, trying to look casual as they clung to the sides of the buildings, heading back toward the antebellum mansion where he was staying.
But all his senses were on alert as he scanned the area around them.
Before they reached the mansion, he spotted one of the men who had kidnapped them, waiting in the shadows across the street. It was the bald guy.
Stephanie caught his thought and went still, then followed his gaze.
With the man was looking toward the house, they were able to back up and around the corner.
“We have to get out of here.”
“I need my computer.”
“That’s too dangerous.”
“Let me think.” He laughed softly. “Too bad we can’t convince him we’re invisible.”
“Oh sure.”
He shrugged. “It’s worth considering.”
She stared at him. “You think we could do something like that.”
“I think we may have a lot of possibilities we can explore. But not until we can get out of the city.”
He knew she wanted to ask him to give up on his computer, but he wasn’t willing to do it—not with so much data in it. Of course it was password protected but an expert could probably hack his way in.
“If this guy is out front, you can assume the other one is out back.”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s check that out.”
They reversed their steps, heading back to the alley on the perpendicular street. Staying close to the buildings, they walked quietly toward the mansion. They spotted the curly-haired man in the yard across the street before he spotted them. As Stephanie stared at him, she took Craig’s hand.
He caught his breath when he saw what she had in mind. “No.”