usual misdirection and roaming should get him, or anyone watching me, off my trail, so I can safely get to Colorado.”
“I’ll send your usual stuff to the ranch. You’ll have plenty of money and your accumulated mail. There’s a card from your mother. You should call her.”
“No. If she doesn’t know where I am, he can’t hurt her and get information from her. You’ve been checking on her? She’s okay?”
“All is well. I make sure she has enough money. She’s getting along fine. She has her friends and her Thursday night poker parties.”
Jenna thought fondly of her mother. She hadn’t seen her since all of this began. The thought of her sitting around playing poker with a bunch of rowdy men and women from work made her smile. Her mother, always the life of the party, loved with her whole heart and treated everyone as a dear friend. She missed their long talks and confiding in her. After her father died, they’d grown very close. Now, she didn’t let anyone close to her, not even her mother. He destroyed everything in her life, and she wouldn’t let him destroy her mother’s, too. “I miss her.”
“I know. I’ll let her know you’re okay.”
“Tell her . . . I’m sorry. I should have listened when she said he was no good for me.”
“He’s one of the wealthiest men in the country, who knew he’s such a bastard?”
“Money can’t buy you happiness, or sanity. Look at me. I got one of the largest divorce settlements ever awarded, and I’m on the run, hunted by my ex-husband. What I wouldn’t pay for peace and safety. But money can’t buy my way out of this. Nothing can.” She rested her forehead on the steering wheel. “Sorry, the past is haunting me. Thanks, Ben, for everything.”
“You know, Rabbit, Jack might be able to help you. Trust him.”
“I don’t trust anyone. Except you. I’ll call if I need anything, or if the hunt begins again.”
“I hate it when you say that. You don’t deserve this.”
“To him, I’m only the prey. Unless or until he kills me, I don’t think this will ever end.”
“Then let me do more than just find you a new place to hide.” His words came out tight with frustration.
“How is my project coming along?” she asked, reminding him he was doing more.
“Slowly.”
“Then all I can do is run. For now,” she said, hoping to placate him.
“Stay safe, Rabbit.”
“I’ll try, Ben.”
She disconnected the call and turned off the phone. Staring out the windshield for a moment, she tried to gather her strength for the long drive ahead.
Birds chirped in the trees outside. The neighborhood was quiet with charming houses that probably had loving families living in them. Just like the one she grew up in. Sad, she’d probably never have a home and a family of her own. He would never allow it.
Unless she stopped him.
Chapter Two
* * *
“THE POLICE DON’T have a thing on you. They will not pursue the matter further,” David’s lawyer guaranteed.
David hit the END button on his cell phone. Attacked by a masked man, Jenna had survived, but couldn’t positively identify him . . . without lying, or making herself look the fool. The airtight alibi his lawyer supplied the cops ensured he wasn’t a suspect.
“They can’t touch me. I win again, Jenna.”
He smiled at his reflection in the shabby motel’s cracked mirror over the rust-stained sink, not far from Jenna’s most recent hiding place. He wrinkled his nose against the smell of stale beer, sweat, and moldy carpet. She’d brought him to this dilapidated place and it pissed him off. Already shaking from the adrenaline wearing off, he fisted his hands, blood dripping into the sink from the cut on his palm.
He moved his hand through the air, imagined cutting Jenna’s thigh again, and felt the rush of power and satisfaction that line of blood down her pale skin had invoked.
David inhaled deeply to settle the charge of energy memories of making Jenna pay unleashed in him. He smelled the blood, tasted its coppery scent on his tongue, and smiled at himself in the mirror.
No doubt Jenna was on the run again. Good. He so enjoyed finding her.
Chapter Three
* * *
JENNA SAT IN her car outside a diner in Hidden Springs, Colorado. The last four days a haze of highways and back roads. She exhausted herself zigzagging all over the south before heading west toward Colorado. She changed rental cars three times, finally buying a new SUV in