Dead Certain - Mariah Stewart [76]
“I went in for a book—”
“And Officer Burke was where?”
“She was on her way back to the car. She was taking my bag. We’d just come out and I’d locked the door and I remembered that I’d left the book—”
“So instead of having Officer Burke accompany you back inside—”
“Stop right there. Dana did nothing wrong. We’d just both come out of the house. There was no one there . . . no one that we’d seen, anyway. He must have been hiding someplace—”
“Well, gosh, who’d have suspected he’d have hidden himself when he heard you two come in? How clever of him.”
She lowered her voice. “Stop it, Sean.”
“He could have killed you, Amanda.” His eyes narrowed, darkened. “Do you understand? This is the man who killed Derek. He killed Marian. He wants to kill you.”
“Yeah, well, he didn’t, did he?” She got out of the car, her jaw set squarely, her eyes flashing like lightning. “I fought back this time, Sean. I was ready to fight back. He’s the one who left here hurting, not me. I fought back. . . .”
He watched the fury gather in her face, watched it explode as she shoved him away and walked off down the drive toward the back of her property. He gave her a minute, then followed.
He found her sitting on the bench near the koi pond.
“That’s what this is all about to you, isn’t it?” He sat on the end of the bench. “Fighting back.”
“Everything I’ve done since Archer Lowell has been about fighting back.” She looked him directly in the eyes.
“Didn’t it occur to you that he might have had a knife? Or a gun?” He tried to avoid looking at the reddened area near her temple that had already begun to swell. Since she’d denied being hurt, he chose not to mention it.
“Do you know what it’s like to be a victim, Sean? To be totally helpless, to be at the mercy of someone bigger and stronger and have no way to fight back? To be afraid all the time, and everywhere you go?” She wiped away a few escaping tears, not waiting for a reply. “After the attack last year, I promised myself I would never be anyone’s victim again. Lowell took every bit of security, every small bit of confidence I’d ever had. He made me afraid to be in my own home and afraid to leave it. Afraid to go to work. Afraid to run early in the morning or go to the grocery store alone.”
She drew her knees up to her chest.
“Before all that last year, I was very shy. Timid. Didn’t even have the nerve to open my mouth to bid at auctions for things I wanted for the shop.” She smiled ruefully. “Derek even had to negotiate prices for me. I wasn’t assertive enough to argue with anyone over money.”
She looked up and saw the look of skepticism on Sean’s face.
“Archer Lowell changed all that. That woman—the one he had terrorized—no longer exists.”
Sean leaned forward and with one finger traced the L-shaped scar on her face.
“Yeah, that’s the mark of my liberation,” she laughed darkly. “The doctors suggested that a little plastic surgery would take that right away, but I wouldn’t let them. I think they thought if they removed the physical evidence, I’d be able to put it all behind me.”
“That’s only the scar that shows on the outside,” he said softly.
“Right, Chief. Though I must say, I’ve done a damned good job of healing the inner ones all by myself.” Her chin thrust forward just slightly. “I’ve driven away my demons and I’m a stronger person for it. I can take care of myself for the first time in my life. I wasn’t afraid in there, Sean. I wasn’t scared.”
“You should have been.”
She shook her head. “I knew I could take him. I knew he wouldn’t expect me to fight back. Especially not with the level of expertise that I did.”
“Black belt?” he asked.
“You betcha.”
“How’d you manage to do that in sixteen months?”
“Well, I was hardly starting from scratch. I’d taken tae kwon do in high school and in college. Evan insisted on it. But after Archer, I started back to class three, sometimes four nights every week. It didn’t take long to get back in the swing of things.” She made a meek attempt at smiling. “No pun intended.”
He sat