Haunting Rachel by Kay Hooper Page A

shivering.
    “I’m all right,” she said.
    “You’re in shock.” Adam’s tone was quite pleasant, but there was a note underneath that sounded almost savage.
    She glanced at him, hearing the latter and wondering at it. “Accidents happen. We were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
    “Yeah—but this was no accident. Some sorry bastard took the idea of playing with matches way too far. A few more seconds …”
    “We got out,” she reminded him. “Whole and pretty much unharmed.”
    “Yeah.” But he was obviously unconvinced of that. He drove only a couple of blocks, pulling over to the curb in front of a coffee shop. “I’ll be right back.”
    “Okay.” Rachel watched him get out and shut the door, then turned her gaze forward and her attention to the worried questions in her mind.
    Obviously, the explosion had been no accident. But there was no reason for her to assume she had been the target. People committed arson with depressing frequency, and that cop had even said it had happened several times in the area recently.
    So it
was
just bad luck that she had stopped by that day to look at the store.
    Nothing more than that.
    Besides, how could she have been a target? No one had known where she would be today except the Realtor, and since that very nice lady had pulled the addresses out of her file only that morning, there had hardly been time for lethal plans—even if she had been so inclined.
    Which was, of course, ridiculous.
    Still, Rachel was uneasy. The cut brake line loomed much larger now with this second “accident” following so soon after it.
    She didn’t know what to think. Or what to believe. All she really knew was that she was very glad Adam had been with her. She doubted she would have reacted so quickly to the gas if she’d been alone. And though it had all happened too fast for her to be sure, she had the hazy idea that he had shielded her as they’d fallen, his thick leather jacket withstanding some flying debris that would have easily torn through her linen blazer.
    He had probably saved her life.
    And since he had been with her every minute from the time she’d gotten the addresses, he had certainly not been the one to rig the explosion.
    The relief of that was overwhelming.
    Adam returned to the car just then and handed her a steaming cup. “Tea. Hot and sweet. Drink it, Rachel.”
    “Good thing I like tea,” she murmured, sipping.
    He smiled suddenly. “Am I being high-handed? Sorry. I’m not usually a bully, I promise you. Just worried at the moment.”
    “I’m fine. Really.” She did her best to sound convincing despite her awareness that only her death grip on the cup was keeping her hands from shaking visibly.
    He looked at her steadily for a moment, then nodded and put the car in gear. “Okay. But I don’t want you driving today, so I’ll take you home.”
    “Your car—”
    “I’ll call a cab to take me back to the real estate office, and I’ll turn the keys in. It’s no problem, Rachel.”
    She decided not to argue with him. For one thing, she was pretty sure he’d made up his mind. For another, it was pleasant to let herself drift while someone else made the decisions for a while.
    She drank her tea.
    They were almost at her house, when Adam spoke abruptly. “I get the feeling something’s worrying you about that explosion. Am I wrong?”
    Rachel hesitated, but reminded herself that he couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with the explosion. “That car accident I had last week. The mechanic thinks the brake line was cut.”
    Adam shot her a quick, hard look. “Are you saying somebody’s trying to hurt you?”
    “I don’t know. Hurt me, scare me. Maybe. I just can’t think of a reason why anybody would want to do either.”
    “Scare you? You could have been killed today, Rachel.”
    She flinched a little, and stared at her half-finished tea. “You heard that cop. There’s been arson in the area. Besides, nobody could have known