Page 1 of Claimed By The Tracker

Chapter 1

The Veil in the Trash

LENA

I was supposed to be getting married in less than two hours.

Instead, I was sixty miles away, sitting in a roadside diner in someone else's clothes, gripping a cup of cold coffee and waiting for my father to find me.

Because he would.

That was the part I couldn't stop thinking about.

Not the wedding guests already arriving. Not the twelve-hundred-bead dress I'd abandoned upstairs. Not even the veil I'd ripped from my hair somewhere past the county line.

Him finding me.

My hands started shaking again.

I tightened them around the coffee cup and stared through the window at Delaney's Civic.

I'd actually done it.

At 6:03 this morning, I'd walked out of the Rowe estate and kept going.

For the first time in my life, I'd told my father no.

And I was terrified of what that no was going to cost me.

"You okay, honey?"

I nearly jumped.

The waitress stood beside my booth with a coffee pot in one hand, watching me more closely than I liked.

"Fine."

Her gaze dropped to my hands.

I made them stop shaking.

"Long night?"

"You could say that."

She tipped the pot toward my cup. "Want me to warm that up?"

I looked down at the coffee I hadn't touched.

"No, thanks. I should probably get going."

Her gaze flicked over my half-pinned hair, oversized flannel, and whatever remained of the makeup someone had carefully applied to my face at five this morning.

"You sure you're okay?"

There it was again.

Concern.