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without remorse.
Suzanne looked at his hard profile and shivered.
A few seconds later, he pulled to the side of the road.
They had been travelling down it for over half an hour.
It was deserted and unfamiliar. The last car they passed
had been five minutes ago. John got out, bent briefly
over the front fender and then the back fender. In a
minute or two, he was back behind the wheel, folding a
soft beige blanket around her.
There you go, he said. The deep voice was low,
almost gentle. Suzanne stared into his dark fathomless
eyes for a long moment. Holding her gaze, he wiped
her cheek with a clean handkerchief he took out of his
pocket. It came away stained with blood. With a start
of surprise, she realized that she d been cut. By a shard
spinning away from the wall, propelled by the force of
the bullet. She hadn t felt it up until now, probably
shock had dulled her senses, but now her cheek stung.
Wonderful. If she could feel the sting of pain, it meant
she was alive. 81
Thank you, she whispered, meaning more than for
the blanket and the handkerchief. He nodded and
started the engine. The heat was on full blast, but she
huddled gratefully in the blanket, chilled to the bone
from shock and sleeplessness. They drove on,
endlessly.
Suzanne was quiet, lulled by the dark empty road. They
started climbing and she stirred in the darkness.
Where are we going? she asked quietly.
John looked at her briefly then turned his attention
back to the road.
Where no one will ever find you, he said. 82
CHAPTER EIGHT
Suzanne awoke with a jolt, dry-mouthed and dazed, as
the Yukon took the last of a series of hairpin turns and
rocked to a stop. She sat up, banging her elbow against
the door, disoriented, pushing her hair out of her eyes.
She had no idea how long she d dozed or even what
time it was. Her watch was back in the bedroom,
together with her lost serenity and the broken bits of
what had once been her life.
All gone.
She was too tired to think coherently, but she didn t
need logic to tell her that her entire existence had been
ripped to shreds. Her home her sanctuary, her refuge
was no longer safe. She d had to abandon it in the
middle of the night. Someone had come in the heart of
the night to kill her and she had no idea who, and no
idea why.
Until she knew, until she could be sure the nameless,
faceless threat was gone, there was no going back.
Her life was shattered, wiped out in a few moments.
There was no past, no future. However hard she tried,
she couldn t see beyond the next five minutes. There
was only the here and the now.
She d dozed fitfully in the Yukon, the result more of
exhaustion and overload than sleepiness. Something
inside her balked at the idea of giving herself over to
the unconsciousness of deep sleep, so she d drowsed
off and on, half-drugged with fear and shock,
completely adrift as John drove the Yukon over
unfamiliar roads.
Where were they? She had no idea, except probably
high in the mountains. They d been climbing steadily
for hours. The sky was the pearly gray of cold
mornings; light enough to see by but not enough to
allow perspective.
A shack lay a few yards ahead. A simple wooden
structure, square and unwelcoming. John killed the
engine, plunging them into an eerie silence.
John turned in his seat, wide shoulders blocking the
view of the sky out his window. We re here. His
voice was low and calm.
He seemed so huge in the cab of the vehicle, one strong
arm draped over the wheel, big hand dangling. She
tried and failed to wipe the image of the intruder with
John s knife through his throat from her mind. The
sprays of blood on the floor and the walls, the lingering
smell of coppery blood and fetid death. The sound of
the crackling glass as the sniper fell to his death with
two bullets through his head and the wet thump as he
landed. No matter how hard she tried, the sights and
sounds stayed front and center of her mind, jarring,
shocking.
John moved and the hairs on the nape of her neck rose,
but he was only shifting to open the door. He jumped
lightly down and came around to open her door. He
reached 83
for her, big hands up. She leaned forward, bracing her
hands on his shoulders, feeling the banked strength
there as he eased her down. Her feet touched the
ground, but she kept her hands on him for a moment
longer, anchoring herself to the only solid thing in a
world gone suddenly insane.
They stared at each other, white breaths mingling in the
cold morning air. He moved his head towards the
shack. Come on. It s too cold to stay out here. We
need to get you settled in. He picked up her suitcase
with one hand and took her elbow with the other.
Yes, they were in the mountains, she thought, as they
tramped up the makeshift driveway full of loose gravel.
The air felt thin and clean and brittle, laced with the
unmistakable tang of miles and miles of uninterrupted
pine trees. The few inches of snow on the ground
looked like ice. They stepped up to a wooden porch.
John opened the front door and gestured her inside.
Small, austere, unadorned. A sofa, two mismatched
armchairs, a dining table, a small clean hearth, and a
kitchenette. Bare wooden walls. Spare, cold, bleak. A
musty smell permeated the shack.
This way, John said and opened a door. It gave onto
a bedroom, as spare as the other room. Just a bed and a
rocking chair. He dropped her suitcase on the floor and
gestured to a door to the left. Bathroom s through
there. I suggest you wash up and change into your
nightgown. You must be tired and I think a few hours
sleep in a bed would do you good. Come out when
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