Into the Fire - Anne Stuart [61]
She couldn’t find her watch. Not that the stupid thing would tell her what time it was—she hadn’t wound it since she arrived. But it was an heirloom, given to her by her father when she was sixteen, and she treasured it.
It wasn’t in her suitcase, wasn’t anywhere around. Had Dillon taken that, as well, and then neglected to return it? It was the most valuable thing she’d brought with her, and if Dillon was the man she’d always thought him to be, he would have made off with it, looking for a fast buck.
But Dillon wasn’t the man she’d always thought him to be. And she didn’t want to consider exactly what kind of man he really was. All she wanted to do was escape.
She didn’t know why she had to run, just that it was a deep moral imperative. She was over her head here, drowning, and her only hope was to get out before it was too late. She still had enough self-preservation to know that going into his room last night had been the most stupid thing she’d ever done, even worse than getting into the back seat of Dillon’s Cadillac with Paul Jameson. In retrospect that had been nothing more than a physical assault. Dillon was fucking her body and her soul.
She reached out and grabbed the sleeping bag that covered the thin mattress, pulling it away to see if she’d left the watch in bed. And then she screamed.
She ran full into Dillon as he came racing up the stairs, and she slammed against him, adding to her breathlessness.
“What the hell’s going on?”
“Dead…” she gasped. “On the mattress…” She shuddered. “There’s blood.”
He pushed past her, heading for her room. “Stay here,” he ordered her.
She leaned against the wall, trying to control the shivers that ran through her body. She hated the hallway—she always felt as if someone was watching her, some pervert with graveyard breath and twisted thoughts. Silly, of course, when the only other person in the building was Dillon, and he was in her room, not watching her.
“It’s a dead rat.” He appeared in her doorway, his voice matter-of-fact. “I told you I get them all the time.”
“The other one didn’t have so much blood,” she said faintly. “And what was it doing in my bed?”
“If it were a man I could think of any number of reasons, but since it’s only a very large dead rat, then I have no idea. It must have gotten into the rat poison I’ve had lying around, and it dragged itself up to your room to die.”
“Lucky me. Why the blood? The other rat wasn’t bleeding. Until I stepped on it,” she added with a reminiscent shudder.
Dillon shrugged, looking down at her. She was suddenly conscious of how very tall he was, how very strong. And they were alone in the hallway, and she’d just had sex with him. “Who knows? I could come up with all sorts of graphic suggestions, but I don’t think you really want to hear them. Besides, what does it matter? You aren’t going to be sleeping in there anymore.”
“I’m not going to be sleeping here at all,” she said.
His slow grin wasn’t exactly the reaction she’d expected. “Well, no, sleeping wasn’t what I had in mind, either. I’ll stay awake as long as you will.”
“I mean I’m leaving here. Okay? Accounts settled. We’ve done what we needed to do. You got your revenge for spending a year in prison, I got to fulfill a teenage fantasy and now I can get on with my life. Case closed. I’m leaving.” She waited for him to explode in rage.
Instead he tilted his head to one side, unperturbed. “Oh, really?” he said. “And what makes you think that? Personally I haven’t even begun to do what I’ve needed to do for the last twelve years.”
For once he wasn’t standing between her and escape. Her purse and her suitcase were in the room behind him, but as long as she had her shoes and her car she was ahead of the game.
“You can try and catch me,” she said, trying to hide the edge of nervousness in her voice, “but it won’t do any good. I’m faster—”
“I’m not going to run after you, Jamie,” he said in a calm voice. “I told you, I’ll let