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Her dream returned, surreal but no less terrifying as he followed her. It was as if they’d played this game before. At the landing, she whirled on him. “Leave me alone, Trent,” she ordered, but he was too close. He planted his hands on the doorframe near her face, trapping her with his body.
“I can’t, damn it. Look, Nikki, I didn’t mean for it to turn out this way.” His mouth curved into a selfdeprecating frown. “I should have told you sooner, but I couldn’t. Once you were released from the hospital, I…I wanted to stay with you. To keep you safe.”
“To sleep with me.”
“Yes!”
The air crackled with his admission, and Nikki’s throat was suddenly clogged. “Well, lucky you,” she said angrily, but the sharp honesty in his gaze cut through the armor of her defense. “You could have stopped things,” she whispered.
“I would have.”
“Sure,” she mocked, and she finally worked up the nerve to ask a question that had been nagging at the back of her mind. “Just who do you think you were protecting me from?”
His lips thinned a fraction. “Crowley.”
She sucked in her breath. “So I was right.”
“Maybe.”
She had a picture of the silver-haired man with his smooth black cane. She’d met him in the camera shop! Her heart nearly stopped. Yes, there was something deadly about him, the gleam in his eye was cold as an arctic well. But she didn’t believe he had the strength or stamina to run her down through a jungle. “But he wasn’t chasing me.”
“I don’t know that anyone was.”
She felt as if she’d been kicked in the stomach. “But my dream. Everything else fits. And who was the man lurking on the veranda, huh? Was that you?”
“Of course not.”
“Well?”
“I thought it might have been a man I had following you.”
“Oh, great! Just great! Now you’re trying to tell me that one of the so-called good guys is a Peeping Tom?”
“No. El Perro denied it.”
“His name is el Perro? Doesn’t that mean wolf or something?”
“Dog.”
“Oh, come on.” She threw her hands toward the sky—in desperation or supplication, she didn’t know which. “This is too damned unbelievable.”
“Is it?” He shoved his face so close she could see the small lines of impatience around his mouth. “You asked wha
t I was trying to tell you and it’s simple. You’re in danger. From Crowley or one of his goons. Just because we’re back in Seattle doesn’t mean that you’re safe. I overheard you talking to Connie. I knew you were onto Diamond Jim. That’s when I started doing my research on you—because there was something about you I couldn’t forget. The senator’s dangerous, Nikki.”
She felt her throat tighten in fear, then shoved the feeling aside. No man, especially not a pathological liar, was going to tell her what to do with her life. “I don’t know why I should believe you.” She reached behind her, found the doorknob and pushed. It didn’t budge.
“Why would I lie?”
“You asked me that before and it took me two weeks to find the answer.” She dug through her purse, came up with her ring of keys and wedged the house key into its lock. With a click, the latch gave way. She shouldered open the door and stood on the opposite side of the threshold. “I’d like to say something profound here, something you could remember me by, but I can’t think of a blessed thing, so I’ll just say goodbye.”
“I’m not leaving.” To prove his point, he stuck the toe of his beat-up leather boots into the apartment.
“I’ll call the police.”
“Fine.” He didn’t budge an inch, and she felt the steam rising from the back of her neck.
“You’ve spent the last two weeks bullying me, Trent McKenzie, but it’s over,” she lied knowing that, in her heart, it would never be finished between them. But she couldn’t think of that now. “I’ll have you up on charges of harassment, fraud and kidnapping. And if those don’t stick, I’ll find some that do. So you’d better haul yourself out of here.”
