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Luke turned on the engine when she reached the end of the block, and he began to drive slowly in her direction, taking care not to catch up.
After a couple of blocks, the neighborhood ended and Jane took a path that went through the park bordering White Rock Lake. Luke pulled up to a curb, scrambled out of the car and began jogging after her. Her pace was slow enough that he was able to get within viewing distance of her again in a couple of minutes, then he slowed to match her pace.
She seemed oblivious to the fact that she was being watched. He made a mental note to give her lessons on situational awareness. She hadn’t looked over her shoulder at all since he began following her, and she barely looked from side to side. She seemed utterly focused on something straight ahead.
When she reached a fork in the path and had the choice between going through a wooded area or an open, populated one, she chose the woods. Luke made another mental note to give her a sound scolding for that idiotic move. Even if she hadn’t been a target for crazies because of her book, just the fact of being a woman should have kept her out of the woods.
A car alarm sounded from somewhere in the neighborhood behind them, and Jane glanced over her shoulder. Luke ducked behind a tree, and after a few moments of no sounds except the car alarm, he heard her footsteps crunching on the path again.
He waited, then began jogging again, deciding it was time to make his presence a little more detectable. If she couldn’t catch him being stealthy, maybe she could pick up on his presence if he were bumbling along like a really inept criminal.
Luke picked up his pace, purposely let his foot fall on a few twigs, and pretty soon he was within easy hearing range of her. After a few minutes, Jane veered off on another trail through an even more secluded area, and he lost sight of her. By the time he made it to that trail, he couldn’t see or hear her up ahead, so he slowed to a stop and listened.
The sounds of birds in the trees overhead were all he could hear, but his senses were on alert. He had a hunch she was no longer jogging ahead of him, but had possibly ducked into the trees to hide.
Luke walked along the path, looking for any place she might have chosen to hide. He spotted a dense clump of trees and undergrowth off to the left and stopped. If Jane was in there, he’d scare the hell out of her by flushing her out, but she deserved a good scare for running alone in the woods.
He waded into the brush, found a little clearing, and bent down to see if he could spot her. Sure enough, a telltale swatch of blue fabric could be seen through a little opening in the brush. Luke grabbed a long stick that was lying on the ground next to his foot, and poked it through the undergrowth until it made contact with Jane’s thigh.
She screeched, and the next thing he heard was her scrambling to get out of her hiding spot. Luke hopped out onto the trail, stopping her dead in her tracks. Jane’s expression went from horrified to surprised to afraid to angry in two seconds.
“If I were a bad guy, you’d be in serious trouble right now,” he said.
“You jerk! You scared the hell out of me!”
“Jogging alone in the woods? I think that qualifies you for the Too Stupid To Live Awards.”
Jane narrowed her eyes at him. “I’ve got pepper spray on my key chain, and I would have used it on you if you’d gotten close enough. Maybe I will anyway.” She held up the key chain and aimed it at his face.
Luke took a quick step forward and swiped her forearm with his own, wrapped his hand around her wrist, and squeezed until she let go of the key chain.
“Now what?”
“Is this your way of teaching me about security? You’re fired.”
“Honey, if you haven’t figured out from this little demonstration that you need me, then you deserve whatever harassment you get.” He let go of her wrist, and when she bent to pick up her keys, he kicked them into the brush.
Jane’s eyes shot fire at him. She asked in a barely controlled voice, “Why did you do that?”
“To show you how useless your pepper spray is with a reasonably competent psycho.”
“I’m glad we’re on the same page about your mental state,” she muttered as she bent down to fish her keys out of the weeds.
If Luke had taken a few moments to think out his next move, he probably would have nixed it, but she had just called him a psycho….
He took another step toward her and kicked her foot out from under her, then flipped her onto her back and pinned her to the ground.
“You are so, so fired.”
Okay, maybe he’d gone a little too far. “You have absolutely no common sense about being in the woods alone with a man. How do you know I’m not a psycho?”
