Killer's Prey by Rachel Lee Page A

wanted to erupt. The desire was fairly written all over him. His fists were clenched, and for an instant, just an instant, she saw him as the paper tiger he was. He couldn’t control her anymore. He couldn’t threaten her anymore.
    Her head lifted and she shifted her gaze from him to the front door. Deep inside her grew the certainty that she would never come back to this house. Never. Its walls held years of pain, self-disgust and self-loathing. Just being here was causing the poison to seep back into her.
    She lifted her head another notch and forced her step to grow firmer. Done. Finished. She should never have allowed herself to think that she had no choice but to return. Messed up as her life had become, sick as she still was, she shouldn’t have given in to the craven impulse to hide and lick her wounds. Not with that man.
    Just after she and Jake crossed the threshold, she heard him call after her, “That man’s coming, girl. You’re gonna be sorry you don’t have me to protect you.”
    Her step faltered. Jake shifted a suitcase and grabbed her elbow. “Keep going,” he said in a low voice.
    But she didn’t. Instead she turned and looked back at her father. “Protect me? You never protected me. Not once.”
    Then, before she could say more, Jake let go of her arm and slammed the door behind them. “The car,” he said. “Can you make it that far?”
    She damn well would, even as her legs began to feel like overcooked spaghetti. Reaction, she told herself. It was just reaction setting in. Down the short, bumpy sidewalk to the curb. Jake dropped her suitcases and opened the door for her, helping her into the cruiser.
    Her hands had begun to shake so badly that she couldn’t even manage the seat belt. He leaned in, snapped it into place then loaded her suitcases into the back.
    She let her head fall back against the headrest, and for the very first time thought that at least one police car didn’t smell that bad.
    Moments later they were pulling away from the curb. She scarcely paid attention as Jake radioed to say that he needed to head back to his place. The voice of the dispatcher told him someone would cover him. Then he pulled out a cell phone and she heard it dial automatically.
    “Rosa, I’m bringing Nora back with me. The guest room is ready?”
    She couldn’t hear the answer.
    “Okay. Spray some of that air freshener around it. Nora likes it.”
    That got to her, that he remembered that silly comment. She crumbled then, quietly, a few silent tears running down her cheeks. No one, not ever, had given that much of a damn about her.

Chapter 5
    M aybe it was Rosa’s TLC, or all the excellent food and fresh air, but a week later Jake hardly recognized Nora as the woman he had picked up at the airport. She was striding around the ranch with a firmness to her step. She rode Daisy without a lead and was planning to join him on a short trail ride that weekend, probably the last weekend before the weather turned completely into winter. She went to the library every weekday afternoon, and her afternoons were growing longer.
    The only problem he had was her desire to rent her own place. With Langdon still on the loose, he didn’t like the idea at all, and so far he’d been able to scotch every rental possibility by pointing out all the problems, until finally she had looked at him with wry amusement and asked, “Do you really think I’m going to find something perfect?”
    Of course he didn’t, but he didn’t want her that far away. He didn’t want her to be by herself. Especially not with Langdon out there somewhere.
    He was also troubled by Loftis’s threat as they had left that night, about that man coming after her. Did Loftis know something? Probably not. The cops were keeping mum. None should have revealed that they were watching for the man. The owner of the truck stop? Not likely. Hasty could be garrulous, but he also knew when silence was golden.
    So maybe it had been an empty threat in