He caught her arm and pulled. Reese screamed and grabbed for the door frame with her free hand. Her fingers scraped metal. Wade peeled her loose and dragged her toward the opening. She kicked again, but the angle was wrong, and she didn’t make contact. He hauled her over the lip of the van and out into the open air.
Her knees hit the gravel, and pain shot up both legs. Reese caught herself on one hand and coughed. Wade still had a hold of her arm, and he pulled her to her feet. She looked around.
She was in a clearing, surrounded by dense trees. A weathered brown cabin sat off to one side, its logs darkened with age. Small windows reflected the trees around it. There were no other houses anywhere in sight. No one was close enough to hear her.
Wade pulled her against his side with one arm wrapped around her back, his hand clamped around her far bicep. His other hand closed around her wrist, keeping that arm pinned between them.
“Walk,” he said.
Reese walked because the bruising grip gave her no room to do anything else. Gravel shifted under her shoes. Her knees still hurt from the fall, and her hip pulled with every step. She kept her free hand over her belly and forced herself to look around instead of freezing.
The cabin sat ahead with a short set of front steps leading up to a covered porch and a single door. A propane tank stood beside one wall, and firewood was stacked under the same overhang.
She looked for somewhere to run. The gravel road disappeared back into the trees. The woods were thick and uneven, and Wade’s hands were tight around her arms. The cabin was the only open path, and he was walking her straight toward it.
At the foot of the steps, Reese planted her feet. Wade kept walking. Her shoes dragged over the gravel, then caught on the first wooden step. She leaned back hard, dropping her weight as much as she could with his arm locked around her. For one second, he had to stop.
“No,” she said.
Wade tightened his grip and pulled her up the steps. His hold wrenched her shoulder, and every step hurt the hip she had landed on in the van. She stumbled on the top step and went down to one knee before he hauled her upright again.
Reese twisted away from the threshold, but he held her close with one arm and turned the knob with the other.
“Inside,” he said.
“No.”
He shoved the door open and pushed her forward. Reese tried to turn sideways in the frame, but Wade was behind her, stronger and already moving. His hand pressed between her shoulder blades. She stumbled over the threshold, lost her footing, and went down on her hands and knees just inside the door.
Reese pushed herself up with one hand over her belly and scrambled farther into the cabin. The front door was behind her, and Wade was still there.
The room opened straight ahead to a small kitchen along the back wall. A white refrigerator stood on one side, with a propane stove, a deep metal sink, and a window over the counter. To Reese’s left, a stone fireplace took up most of the wall. A set of fireplace tools stood beside it.
A brown plaid couch sat in the middle of the room facing the hearth, with her bags on the floor beside it. Past the couch, at the back right corner, a short hallway led deeper into the cabin.
The windows showed trees and the pale rectangle of the clearing. Reese turned to face Wade as he locked the front door.
“Sit down,” he said. “You need to calm down.”
She stayed where she was. Her hands shook, but she kept them in front of her, one over the baby and one loose at her side. She considered what she could use as a weapon as Wade took a step closer.
He turned to her and put the door key in his pocket. “I know this looks bad right now,” he said, opening his hands.
“You kidnapped me.”
Wade’s expression tightened. “No. I came to get my wife.”
There was a red scratch on his cheek where she had caught him, and he had not wiped the blood away.
“How did you find me?” she said, her throat ragged.
“I found your current location on a people-search site. I’d been looking since you left, but I hadn’t found you listed anywhere except Spokane until two days ago.”
Her stomach dropped. Wade had found the new listing.
“As soon as I knew where you were, I made a plan to get you back. I booked this place before I left Spokane. We needed somewhere private to talk things through. Finding you broken down on the highway only made it easier for me to get you here.”
Reese kept one hand over her belly. Her other hand fisted at her side.
