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I froze, looking around me, but the trees and shrubbery were so dense I couldn’t see anyone. Nevertheless, I knew. Someone was watching me. Someone who meant me harm.
I shook myself. I was getting paranoid in my old age—no one was out to get me. I was perfectly fine...
Something sped past me, so fast I couldn’t see it, and there was a solid thwack into the tree trunk up ahead. I was staring at it stupidly when I heard the crashing sound of something large moving through the woods, fast, coming straight at me.
I turned to run, blind panic slicing through me, but it was too late. The man who’d been watching me burst through the woods and flung himself at me, hitting me with the full force of his huge body and taking me down to the ground.
I fought him like a wild woman, scratching and hitting at him. I opened my mouth to scream for help when his large hand clamped down on it, muffling any sound.
“Colar!” he said in a low, tight voice. “Collarse la boca.” Shut up. Shut your mouth.
I wasn’t about to do any such thing, and I sank my teeth into his hand as hard as I could, hoping to draw blood, but he didn’t even flinch. “They have a gun,” he whispered urgently in my ear. “Do not move.”
It took a moment for his words to sink in, and I stopped moving, holding very still. And then I heard it, the sound of someone else moving through the woods, stealthy, like a hunter stalking his prey. And I was the prey.
I don’t know how long we lay there, silent, barely breathing. He was heavy, but he made no move to get off me, and I shifted uncomfortably, a rock digging into my back. “Stay still,” he whispered sharply, and I did so.
I have no idea how much time passed—it seemed endless—until the man finally rolled off me. “I think they are gone,” he said in heavily accented English.
I answered him in Spanish. “Who? Who’s gone, who are you, what the hell is happening?” My voice was rising in incipient hysteria.
“I am Salvador. I’ve been watching out for you.”
I stared at him in amazement. “But why?”
“Because he thought you might be in danger.”
“Who did?” I demanded, but I knew the answer.
“Señor Ian. He told me to keep you in sight at all times. I thought maybe he was crazy—men get that way over a woman.” He shrugged. “I was supposed to keep out of the way, but then someone took a shot at you and I could not hide any longer.”
“Someone took a shot at me?” I repeated stupidly.
“Idiota,” he muttered under his breath. “What did you think that was back there—a bumblebee?”
I shivered in the hot afternoon sun. “But who would want to kill me? I haven’t done anything to anyone.” Not strictly true, but hardly worth killing for.
“I do not know, I only know what Señor Ian asked me to do.” The huge man scrambled to his feet, looking around him, and then held out a hand to me.
I rose, brushing myself off. I felt like I was in some sort of alternate reality, one where people wanted to kill me and nothing was as it seemed. “We should tell the police,” I said.
“That is up to Señor Ian,” Salvador said darkly. “I will bring you back to him.”
“No.” My reaction was immediate, and I wasn’t quite sure why. Part of me wanted to throw myself into Ian’s arms and weep. He was strength, he was safety.
He was also someone with a gun. He had no reason to take a potshot at me—if he wanted to get rid of me, he could have made that happen at any time, instead of consistently foiling my attempts to escape. Nor would he have set up a bodyguard. Whoever was a threat to me, it couldn’t be Ian.
Salvador grabbed my arm ungently. “We will tell Señor Ian,” he said again, his voice brooking no objections, and I went along with him, down the rocky trail, all the time feeling that I had a target on my back.
I felt a little better by the time we reached the olive groves, and Salvador released his death grip on my arm. He must have sensed my acquiescence, and he strode down the rutted road to Mariposa, standing majestic in the bright Spanish sun.
But Ian was nowhere to be found. It was the hour of the siesta and I assumed the rest of my so-called family were resting. I doubted if Ian bothered with it.
Any of them could have been in the woods leading to Pinnacle Point. It was absurd—no one had a reason to want to harm me, but they were the only ones here.
Unless they knew who I really was. If any of them had an inkling that I was Granda’s unexpected heiress, they had many millions of reasons for wanting me dead. But so far, everyone had taken me at face value, a far cry from the days when I was a plainer, paler version of Bella.
“Stay here,” Salvador ordered me once we stepped into the empty kitchen, and he started off into the rest of the house. Not being the obedient sort, I followed right after him, straight to Ian’s office. It was still empty.
