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He opened the car door for her in an almost gentlemanly manner, and helped her inside, then reached over and did her seatbelt up for her. Again, Samara weighed up her options. Could she make a run for it and hide somewhere before he could fire off a shot at her? Should she play on the fact he loved her and wouldn’t want to hurt her? Was it worth the risk knowing he might shoot anyone else who got in his way?
Before she could come to any decisions, he was climbing into the car and turning on the engine.
Then he put the gun down in the compartment in the door.
She knew what she had to do.
As he drove off down the street, he rambled away at her about this house he had supposedly bought for her, but she tuned him out, she didn't care, and the more he acted like he knew her, the more it creeped her out. She wished she knew something about him she could use in retaliation, but she didn't. Every time he contacted her it was from a different name or a different number, she didn't know which one—if any—were the real ones. She didn't even know where she had first met him. He had just turned up in her life one day and hadn't left.
Well, she wasn't letting him have her that easily.
This wasn't going to be pretty, but it was preferable to letting him kidnap her. No one would know where she was so no one would find her, and she wasn't living out the rest of her no doubt short life as his prisoner. As soon as he realized she didn't return his feelings, he would kill her, so if this failed and she died, she was only hastening the inevitable anyway.
The man turned the car onto a busy highway, and as surreptitiously as she could, Samara moved her hand to her seatbelt and unclicked it. Then in one smooth motion, she puther hand on the door handle, pushed the door open, and threw herself out.
*****
12:18 P.M.
“She should have been here twenty minutes ago,” Fin Patrick said as he buttered a slice of bread to make his son a sandwich. It was hard to believe that in just a couple of days, Asher, who had been born prematurely after his mother had been shot and gone into labor, was going to be two years old.
“She’s probably just running late,” his wife Chloe said.
“Samara?” he asked doubtfully. His perfect sister was never late for anything. Being late was something that mere mortals did, and his little sister seemed to think it was necessary to be better than everyone else. Not in some sort of pious manner, because she actually thought shewasbetter than everyone else, but because she felt like she had to make up for something she had done when she was a teenager. “Samara isn’t late for anything.”
“Yeah, okay,” Chloe agreed. “But itisonly a couple of days until Christmas, it’s busy everywhere, plus the snow, and she could have gotten held up at work or had car troubles.”
All of those things could be true.
None of them did anything to relieve the tension in his gut.
Fin had learned a lot about his gut since becoming a father. Most of the time, he knew what Asher was going to do before he did it. He knew what his son’s cries meant, when he was scared, when he was in pain, and when he was just throwing a tantrum because he hadn't gotten his own way.
Right now, his gut was telling him something was wrong.
“What if her stalker managed to find out where she lives?” he asked, voicing his biggest fear. Samara had been livingwith a stalker for the last five months. The man had sent her dozens of emails and messages and followed her all over social media to the point where Samara had basically shut down her technological world to get away from him.
“As far as we know, he doesn’t know where she lives or works. He hasn’t had any contact with her outside of her computer,” Chloe said, with the same placating tone she had used every time they discussed his sister’s stalker.
Like that made things better.
He knew that Chloe wasn't disinterested in what Samara had been going through, in fact, she and her partner had tried to use the FBI’s resources to help them track the man down, but stalking cases were hard to prove. Until the stalker upped the ante and made physical contact with the victim, there wasn’t a lot that could be done.
“Things can change,” he reminded his wife.
“I know they can, and Tom and I will keep working this until we find him, so will everyone at Samara’s work, it’s just going to take time.”
Time his sister might not have.
Chloe came up beside him and ran a comforting hand up and down his arm. Fin turned to thank her for everything she’d done for Samara when he caught a glimpse at what she was wearing. Amusement momentarily pushed away his concerns about his sister as he took in his wife’s green elf leggings and oversized sweater with a gingerbread man riding a reindeer on the front. Chloe had an obsession with Christmas clothing. All throughout December she wore it, even at work when she had to be dressed professionally, she usually had Christmas underwear or socks on. He couldn’t help but wonder what she was wearing underneath the garish Christmas outfit.
“You wearing anything else Christmassy?” Fin asked with a raised brow in deference to the fact their toddler was in theroom, and he didn't want to come right out and ask about his wife’s undergarments.
“Snowman panties.” Chloe smirked, plastering herself against his side and nibbling at his earlobe.
Fin couldn’t prevent the lust that rushed through him.
He and Chloe had lost their first child when he had been born prematurely following a car accident, and the loss had driven a wedge between them that he’d thought could never be mended. Then three Christmases ago, one of Chloe’s cases had brought them back together. Following their reconciliation, they’d hit the sheets and Chloe had been wearing a pair of snowman panties that had been both ridiculously tacky and sexy at the same time. The next Christmas she’d bought him a pair of snowman briefs, and it was kind of their tradition to wear them for some Christmas Eve fun that had nothing to do with waiting for Santa Claus.
