Hitched and Hunted

“It was an accident,” he said automatically. The declaration sounded no more believable now than it had when he’d first put it forward as his defense. “My foot missed the brake pedal. I’m very sorry about it.”

Hearing his insincere words of regret sickened Mariah. “I want you to leave me alone, Victor. You don’t need the trouble, I imagine.” He had to be on parole to be out of jail this early. He’d been sentenced three to five years, and he was out after only four.

“Neither do you, I imagine,” Victor countered blithely, his mouth curving in a cruel smile Mariah found horribly familiar. “I wonder, which of us will give in first?”

Before she could respond, he tucked his water bottle in the pocket of his jacket, turned on his heel and left the tent, heading out into the rain.

Mariah turned unsteadily back to the table and laid her hands flat on the hard, cool surface, trying to regain her balance. A soft swishing noise rose in her ears, and for a moment, she was afraid she was going to faint.

“Are you okay?” One of the other volunteers put her hand on Mariah’s arm.

Mariah nodded, her head beginning to clear. “Yeah. Just a head rush. I’m fine.”

“Why don’t you sit down?” the woman suggested.

“Actually, I’d like to get some air,” Mariah countered, buttoning up her jacket. She pulled a baseball cap from her pocket and put it on, tucking her hair up under the fabric crown. Bringing the bill low over her face, she hurried past the puzzled woman and stepped into the rain.

She started walking east at a brisk clip, toward the subdivision where Jake had gone about an hour earlier to aid a man who’d flagged him down, seeking help for neighbors trapped in their storm-shattered home. He’d been away almost an hour now.

She needed to see him, and not because she needed something familiar and stable to calm her rattled nerves, though that was also true. She needed to know he was okay. If Victor had done anything to him, she wasn’t sure how she’d ever live with it.

Not again.

When she found him, she’d convince him to cut short their plans to help in the rescue and take her back home to Gossamer Ridge and their cozy bungalow overlooking the lake. She’d pick up her son Micah from the lake house where he was staying with Jake’s parents and never leave Chickasaw County again.

She never should’ve come back here in the first place.

When Jake had told her he’d signed them up for their first couples fishing tournament, she’d found the prospect exciting. He’d been the one who’d taught her to fish, who’d cheered her improvements and praised her skills every time she muscled a largemouth bass from around a stump or teased a finicky spawning female away from her eggs with an expert twitch of a lure. She’d worked hard to prove herself a good student, to make him proud, and the idea of fishing a tournament with him had seemed like a huge pay-off for her efforts.

She’d been a good sport about having to stay in a motel a half hour north of Flint Creek Reservoir since Jake had waited till the last moment to sign them up and had missed the chance at rooms closer to the lake. Since this trip was their first without three-year-old Micah, she’d even thought the extra privacy, away from the constant presence of their fellow competitors, might turn the trip into the honeymoon they’d never had the chance to take.

Until he’d told her they’d be staying in Buckley.

As she walked, Mariah also scanned the area for any sign of Victor. But he was nowhere in sight.

For a second, she entertained the welcome thought that she’d simply imagined his presence there, in the same place where she’d last seen him four years earlier. The last twelve hours had seemed like a harrowing nightmare rather than reality, as she and Jake had weathered the destructive storm unscathed, only to wake to find a community broken and mourning the tragic aftermath.

Maybe being in Buckley, this beautiful, horrible place she’d thought she’d left behind for good, had conjured up the phantom of Victor Logan after all this time. Or maybe it was the specter of violent death resurrecting long-buried memories, each broken body pulled from the debris and zipped into a body bag a stark reminder of that day, not so very long ago, when she’d watched paramedics back away from Micah Davis’s bloody, broken body and declare he was beyond saving.

Mariah faltered to a halt, the memories she’d tried to bury so long ago rising like bile to fill her mind with bitter acid.

Victor had run him down like a stray dog in the street. She’d seen it happen, could now remember every sound, every violent flash of motion and color. If she let it, the memory could play out in an endless, horrible loop, over and over until she felt madness creeping over her in greasy black waves.

She pressed her hands over her face, struggling to push away the memory. She had to keep it hidden, even from herself. It wasn’t part of her life now. It couldn’t be. Not if she wanted Micah Davis’s son to have a good life with the decent man willing to be his father, almost no questions asked.

Jake didn’t know anything about her real past.

And if she was lucky, he never would.

“Baby, are you okay?”

She looked up sharply at the sound, half afraid she’d only imagined her husband’s voice. But Jake stood a few feet away at the side of an unfamiliar street. She looked around, realizing she’d reached the damage zone more quickly than expected. She now stood across the street from a house the tornado had lifted off its foundation and set back down sideways. The side of the house now facing her had been ripped away, revealing the ruined interior of what had once probably been a nice family home. Emergency vehicles idled at the curb, lights flashing.

“Mariah?” Jake reached his arm out toward her.

Realizing she hadn’t answered his previous question, she swallowed hard and shook off the strange sense of unreality gripping her. Drenched and muddy, with a ripped-up windbreaker draped over his shoulder, Jake looked solid and real, dragging her into the present once more. He stepped past the emergency vehicles and hurried toward her.

She met him halfway, throwing her arms around his waist and burying her face into the damp heat of his shoulder.

“What’s the matter, baby?” His fingers moved lightly up her spine in a comforting caress.

She couldn’t tell him about Victor, of course, but after what she’d seen over the last few hours, she had plenty of ready-made excuses for her shaken state of mind. “This place is just getting to me.”

He cradled her face between his grimy hands. “I know. But we’re doing good things here.” He gestured toward the house. “We just rescued a family of four. Looks like they’re all going to be okay, but if they’d been stuck in there too much longer—”

“I know we’re doing good things.” She looked into his smoky blue eyes to ground herself. Worry faded from his expression when she smiled at him. Sweet Jake, so willing to believe every word she said as long as the lies she spun maintained the little cocoon of safety and comfort they’d weaved around each other.

What would happen to them if Victor ripped it apart with the ugly truth of her real history?

“Could we take a break? Just for a little while?” She looked around them, eyes open for any sign of Victor. But wherever he’d disappeared to, it wasn’t here.

“Sure, we can do that.” He stroked her hair. “We could go back to the truck for a bit. Maybe dig through the stuff we threw in the cooler this morning and put together an early lunch?”

She smiled at the suggestion, reminded that there was little that could go wrong in Jake’s world that couldn’t be solved with a snack. She wondered what it was like to have lived a life so blessedly free of care.

Jake threaded his fingers through hers, tugging gently. She fell into step with him, feeling better as they moved through the busy search-and-rescue area without catching sight of Victor again. They had almost made it back to the staging area on the edge of the makeshift parking lot when a woman came running toward them down a side street that had seemed to escape any of the storm damage.

The woman caught sight of Jake, her eyes fluttering with relief. “Please, my daughter—” She grabbed Jake’s arm. Mariah saw that the woman’s hands were filthy and scraped raw.

The woman looked terrified. Mariah’s stomach knotted in sympathy as she slipped off her own jacket and wrapped it around the shivering, rain-soaked woman’s shoulders. “What happened?”

“My daughter—our dog just had puppies and hid them before the storm. We couldn’t find them before it hit—” The woman moved her hands away from Jake’s arm and grabbed Mariah’s hands instead. “There’s a creek behind the house. She was afraid they could’ve gotten down there—I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Did she fall into the creek?”

The woman was gasping now, from agitation and the exertion of running for help. “All the rain—the bank just gave way—and now she’s just hanging there, and I can’t get her up.” The woman stopped for a hitching breath. “I don’t know how long she can hang on—and the creek’s up!”

“Show us.” Jake was already moving in the direction from which the woman had come. Mariah put her arm around the frightened mother and hurried after him.

The house the woman pointed out was at the end of a cul-de-sac edged with thick, wooded no man’s land beyond the backyard. The woman took the lead, rounding the corner of the house and leading them into a waterlogged backyard that ended sharply at the edge of a steep drop-off.

Mariah started toward the creek when Jake stopped her with a quick, firm hand on her arm. “It’s been raining for three days straight,” he said quietly. “The ground is unstable. You could go down yourself.”

From over the edge of the ravine, a small voice cried out in terror. “Mommy, help!”

“Holly!” the frantic woman cried, rushing toward the edge of the yard. Jake caught her, tugging her back to safer ground. The woman struggled against his hold. “She’s going to fall!”

“I’ll get her, but you need to stay here. We don’t want to have to rescue you, too,” Jake told the woman firmly.

Mariah put her arm around the woman’s shaking shoulders. “We’ll get her,” she promised. She couldn’t blame the woman for her hysteria; the little girl didn’t sound that much older than her own sweet Micah.

What if her son were down there, clinging to God knew what, trying not to fall?

“Stay here,” Jake told Mariah as she started after him.

“I weigh less. I can get closer to the edge. You can hold on to me,” Mariah argued. The little girl was still crying in fear, her voice ringing in Mariah’s head until she thought she’d go mad.

What if it were Micah….

Jake frowned, clearly unhappy with her suggestion, but a moment later, he nodded. “We’ll see what will work. Just go slowly—the ground could go at any minute.”

His warning was unnecessary. The spongy ground beneath her feet grew more and more unstable the closer she got to the edge.

Nearing the precipice, she dropped to her hands and knees, creeping forward until she could see over the edge. The drop-off was sheer and farther down than she expected. The creek that rushed past about ten feet below was swollen and muddy, littered with storm debris that moved at an alarming speed. Five feet below and about three feet to her left, a tiny girl with stringy black curls gazed up at Mariah with wide, terrified brown eyes.

“Help!” Her grubby hands were wrapped around a piece of chain-link fence jutting from the side of the drop-off. It must have been part of an old fence that no longer stood in the backyard. Mariah wondered how securely it was wedged into the muddy bluff face. How much longer could it hold the child?

Jake hunkered down next to her, flat on his belly. His brow creased when he took in the child’s perilous situation.

“We could use a rope,” Mariah murmured.

“I’m not sure she can hold on long enough to go for one,” Jake replied, keeping his voice soft so the child couldn’t hear.

“Can you reach her if I hold on to your legs?” she asked.

“I don’t think so, but maybe we can haul the fencing up high enough that one of us can reach her.”

He slid on his belly until he lay just above the child’s precarious spot. Mariah scooted over beside him.

“Holly, my name is Mariah,” she called. “This is Jake. Can you hold on tight to that fence a little longer?”

“My fingers hurt!” Holly wailed.

“I know, but I need you to hold on real tight, okay? Jake’s going to pull the fence up now.”

“No!” the little girl cried in terror. “I’ll fall!”

“No, you won’t, Holly. Because you’re going to hold on just like you hold on to the monkey bars at school. You like to play on the monkey bars, don’t you?” Mariah said gently.

Holly nodded, then shrieked as the fencing shifted, dropping her down a half a foot.

Mariah’s heart skipped a beat. “Hold still, Holly. Let Jake do it all. You just hold on.”

Behind her, Holly’s mother was nearing hysterical, calling out her daughter’s name in a keening chant.

Jake slid forward until the top part of his torso hung out over the ravine. The dirt at the edge of the drop-off crumbled under his weight, shifting him farther forward than anticipated. He grabbed at the top chain links of the jutting fence to steady himself.

“Jake!” Mariah called, her heart stuttering.

“I’m okay,” he said, regaining his balance. He tugged at the chain-link fencing, as if testing its strength. Without the crossbar that would normally give it stability, it was remarkably fluid, since apparently whatever posts had once been connected to the links had fallen away long ago.

Mariah reached down and caught the top edge of the fencing to give Jake more leverage. “Ready, Holly?”

Holly stared up at them wordlessly.

“Let’s do it,” Jake said.

“Here we go. Hang on tight for me!” Mariah tugged at the piece of fencing, catching her breath as the part of the fence embedded into the earth worked completely loose. The rusty chain links dug into Mariah’s fingers as the child’s full weight hung from the dangling fencing.

Holly started crying softly.

“I’ve got you, Holly,” Jake called, quickly shifting one hand down until he caught a lower section of the fencing and pulled it up, bringing the little girl with it. Hand over hand, Mariah and Jake tugged the fencing upward, inches at a time, while Holly clung like a baby monkey to the metal links.

“Big, brave girl,” Mariah murmured as Jake finally tugged Holly’s small form within reach. Letting go of the fence, she wrapped her fingers tightly around the child’s tiny wrists.

Anchoring herself in the muddy yard with the toes of her sneakers, Mariah hauled the little girl up to the bluff’s edge in one sharp movement, rolling onto her back and bringing the girl the rest of the way to solid ground.

Holly clung to her for a second, until she caught sight of her crying mother. Scrambling up, she raced across the muddy yard and threw herself into her mother’s waiting arms.

Mariah pushed up onto her elbows, locking gazes with Jake, whose smile of relief and love brought tears stinging to her eyes. The rain obliterated them before she could blink them away, but the ever-present burn of guilt remained.

She had to tell him the truth. Somehow.

But not here. Not now.

As she eased to her feet, careful of the unstable edge, movement several yards behind the woman and her little girl caught her eye. A man stood at the edge of the property, staring at her with malevolent intensity that even the driving rain couldn’t obscure.

Victor.

Forgetting where she was, she took a faltering step backward. The soggy soil beneath her feet trembled under her weight. She stood very still, her gaze still locked on Victor as she waited for the ground to settle enough to dare a step away from the edge.

For a second, she thought it would hold. Then the ground fell out from beneath her, and she was plunging straight downward, the swirling flood waters looming up to meet her.

The last thing she heard before she entered the icy water was Jake’s voice howling her name.

Chapter Three

The world was dark and upside down.

Bleak and icy cold, the atmosphere closed in on Mariah in fetid waves, adding to the numbing shock that had already turned her arms and legs to flailing, useless appendages.

She hit something hard, shoulder-first, and realized she wasn’t as numb as she’d thought. As pain scorched along her nerve endings into her fuzzy brain, her head burst upward through the murk. She felt the sharp sting of air on her face and drew in a quick, sweet breath.

She saw something large looming toward her at an alarming rate of speed. She almost threw herself sideways to dodge it, until she realized it was a large, weathered tree trunk jutting out into the swollen creek bed. She braced herself, pulling her feet up so that her legs could cushion the impact. Her tennis shoes hit the trunk and she immediately bent her knees to absorb the hit, twisting toward the creek bank so that the rebound would push her toward land.

The ploy worked. Her back slid against the rock-strewn shoreline, shoulders digging into the mud. She grabbed handfuls of mud, anchoring herself, fighting against the swirling current. Her foot touched something hard—a rough boulder embedded in what had once been shoreline, though it was now underwater thanks to the flooding. She planted her feet on the rock, letting it help her stay in place.

Rain was falling in driving sheets, adding power to the flood waters racing past her precarious, half-submerged perch. Her surroundings were unfamiliar, the rushing water and rat-a-tat of rain hitting the canopy of trees above masking any sounds that might have identified her whereabouts.

She heard the sound of something falling toward her. Lying on her back, holding her position with every bit of strength she had, she could only lay her head back and roll her eyes up as far as they could go to see what was coming.

Dark, intense eyes stared back at her from a swarthy, time-weathered face.

Victor.

Her heart stopped so long she thought she’d died. Then it burst to life, racing faster than the flotsam swirling past her. There was nowhere to escape. If she let go, she’d be sucked back into the maelstrom again. She doubted she’d be able to surface for air this time before the water took her completely.

“Interesting situation.” Victor edged his way down the incline toward her position on the bank, looming over her like a conquering giant. “So completely at my mercy. You must wonder if I have any mercy left in me, after what you did.”

She didn’t speak, though anger started to drive out the fear, spreading heat through her cold limbs. What she did? All she’d done was tell the truth about what she saw him do.

“Your husband is looking for you. I wonder if he’d care what happened to you at all if he knew the truth about you.”

She sucked a quick breath through her nose, struggling against the urge to lash out at Victor for his cruel taunts. Looking away from him toward the swollen creek, she found her voice. “Of course he’d care. He’s a decent human being.”

Victor was silent so long that Mariah sneaked another look at him. His eyes were narrowed, his expression contemplative. Was he planning how to get away with another cold-blooded murder? All he’d have to do was pry her fingers away from her death grip on the muddy bank. The water still covered almost two-thirds of her body. Her foothold on the rock wouldn’t withstand the rushing power of the flood.

“Mariah!” Jake’s voice rose above the water’s roar, coming from somewhere above.

A shock of relief rattled Mariah’s whole body, so sudden and potent that she nearly lost her grip anyway. She dug her fingers deeper into the mud. “I’m here!”

Victor moved suddenly, reaching down to grab her fingers. She struggled against his touch, terrified.

He twined his fingers through her hair and tugged, sending paralyzing pain shooting through her scalp. “I’m trying to save you, you stupid bitch.” He loosened his grip. “He’s watching.”

Hot tears spilled over her icy cheeks, but she stopped struggling as she spotted Jake scrambling down the incline toward them. She let Victor drag her the rest of the way from the water, scrambling to a sitting position as soon as she felt solid ground beneath her feet.

Seconds later, Jake was there, nudging Victor aside to wrap her in his warm, strong arms, pressing hot kisses against her cheek and brow. Mariah snaked her arms around his neck, relief pouring over her as strongly as floodwater.

“Are you hurt?” Jake held her away from him for a few seconds, his gaze moving over her in search of injuries.

She tested her stiff limbs. She ached from the cold, but everything seemed to be in working order.

“You’re going into hypothermia.” Jake’s search-and-rescue training kicked in. He was an auxiliary deputy back in Chickasaw County, an experienced tracker who’d rescued his share of lost hikers. Mariah knew he was good at what he did.

She glanced over his shoulder at Victor Logan, who stood with statuelike stillness, watching with malevolence that sent a shudder skittering down her spine.

“Just get me to the motel,” she said through chattering teeth. “I want to go home.”

Jake lifted her to her feet, wrapping his arm around her waist when her knees wobbled upon standing. As she regained her footing, he stopped to look at Victor, whose expression shifted to neutral immediately. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

Victor’s eyes narrowed so slightly, Mariah wasn’t certain she hadn’t imagined it. “Right place at the right time.”

“Well, however it happened, thank you.” Jake started up the incline, his grip on her waist firm and supportive.

“Need help getting her up the bank?” Victor asked.

“I’m fine to walk,” Mariah said quickly, moving closer to Jake. She forced herself to add, “Thank you.”

Her legs ached with exertion by the time they reached the top of the sloping embankment. They were at the end of another, unfamiliar cul-de-sac, in someone else’s backyard. Mariah wondered how far the river had taken her. “Where is this?”

“Not sure, exactly. I think it’s about five blocks down-river of the other place,” Jake answered. “We need to see if anyone’s home. You need to get somewhere dry and warm.”

“Can’t we just go back to the truck?”

“Hypothermia could kill you before we make it back there.” Jake half dragged her to the back door of the nearby house and knocked. After a few seconds, a man opened the door and stared at them, his expression wary but not unsympathetic.

“My wife fell into the floodwaters and swept down here from about a quarter mile upriver,” Jake explained bluntly. “My name is Jake Cooper and this is Mariah. We were helping with the tornado relief. Mariah’s becoming hypothermic—I need to get her out of her wet clothes and warmed up. I’ll need blankets.”

The man seemed to respond to Jake’s firm, no-nonsense tone. “My wife’s a nurse. I’ll get her. You come on in—there’s a bathroom right there.” He led them into a spacious kitchen and gestured toward a short hallway. “First door on the right.”

Jake closed them in the bathroom. “Brave guy, letting us in. He doesn’t know us from Adam.”

“Maybe the b-blue lips were a t-tip off.” Mariah caught sight of her bedraggled state in the mirror over the sink. She looked horrid, her hair a stringy, tangled mess around her pallid face. Her lips had, indeed, turned a sort of sickly bluish-purple color from the cold.

Jake helped her strip off her muddy clothing and began rubbing her down with towels. In a moment, there was a knock and a woman’s voice sounded through the door. “Is she okay?”

Jake wrapped Mariah up in a large bath sheet he’d found in the bathroom closet and let the woman in. “Do you have a fireplace? We need to warm up some blankets.”