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Michelle wanted to believe that.
Her protector.
And now he was gone.
The second man grasped the sheriff’s elbow and led him away from Michelle’s hiding place and toward the front of the house, where her car was parked. Realization hit almost simultaneously.
Her car.
Her keys.
Michelle’s keys were in the burning house, probably nothing more than a melted blob of plastic. Her mind scrambled with possibilities. Without a vehicle or shoes, where could she go? Who could help?
The sheriff wasn’t a possibility.
Was there anyone she could trust?
Why would anyone want her father dead?
The questions continued with no answers to follow.
A brief flash of headlights was her telltale sign that a vehicle had left. That reality filled her with relief and simultaneously, concern. Here she was, watching her father’s home burn to the ground, knowing his dead body was inside.
Wrapping her arms around her shoulders, she remembered the dinner they’d shared only hours ago. The stories they’d told about her mom and about Michelle’s childhood. Dad was a retired policeman with enough stories to fill volumes of tomes.
Michelle couldn’t possibly comprehend why anyone would want him dead, much less a fellow law enforcement officer.
Lost in the cyclone of her thoughts and watching as second-story beams crashed to the ground, Michelle was filled with the increasing sense of isolation. No mother. No father. No way to retreat to her life.
That loneliness enveloped her, muting the world around her.
She didn’t hear or sense another person, not until a large, gloved hand grasped her arm in a vise grip and lifted her to standing.
Her nearly frozen muscles protested as Michelle gasped, stood, and turned, meeting the dark stare of a stranger. His intense gaze brought back the surging circulation the cold had waned. With his hair covered by a stocking cap, her protests were muted by the force in his almost black orbs.
“You’re coming with me.” His harsh baritone command came in vaper-filled clouds and echoed through her consciousness.
She tried to wrench her arm loose as her words returned. “No. Let go of me. I don’t know you. I’ll scream for help.” As soon as she said the last sentence, Michelle knew it was an empty threat. There was no one who would hear.
He lowered his mouth to her ear. “You have about twenty minutes before Sheriff Perkins comes back. It won’t take him long to determine you’re the one who set Denny’s house on fire.”
She shook her head. That’s impossible. She’d never do such a thing. “I didn’t.” Emotion and memories bubbled in her throat as she gave up the fight to retrieve her arm from this mammoth of a man. Instead, she went slack, confessing what she’d seen. “He’s dead. I saw him. Someone shot him.”
The man leaned even closer, his warm breath scurrying over her exposed flesh. “And you’re next if you don’t come with me.”
Michelle lifted her face, studying the man before her. She didn’t know him, yet there was something…something on the edge of her consciousness. “Who are you?”
“Right now, I’m your only hope. You’re on your own now, and Daddy’s not around to make these charges go away.”
Michelle’s lips opened in a gasp. How could this man know her history? “He never made?—”
The grip of her arm grew tighter and his words more forceful. “Save your story. Now we need to get out of here.”
She looked down at her nightgown—actually one of her father’s old shirts and insufficient for covering her body. “I can’t leave like this.”
Letting go of her arm, the man tugged on the front of his coat, unsnapping button after button and revealing a dark hoodie beneath. In a fluid motion, he pulled the coat from his arms and shoulders and wrapped it around Michelle’s body. The sudden burst of warmth and masculine scent was a heavenly escape until her blood began to circulate, bringing life to temporarily frozen nerve endings.
“Who are you?” she asked again.
