Into the Fire - Anne Stuart [76]
She wasn’t there now, he reminded himself. And he couldn’t very well avoid every place in the building where she’d been—he’d have to burn the place down and move out.
No, he could lie on the sofa and not think about her. As soon as he fell asleep.
And only if he were that lucky.
17
Jamie didn’t even glance into her abandoned bedroom. She knew where she was sleeping that night, and it didn’t matter whether or not she had any choice. It was just one more night, and it wasn’t going to make any difference. It wouldn’t change her, and it wouldn’t change Dillon. He could do anything he wanted to her and it wouldn’t make any difference. Make it any easier or harder to leave, when she knew that was her only choice.
It was cold up there, but she opened the window, anyway, to dispel any lingering carbon monoxide. She’d somehow managed to cheat death once already that night—she’d be an idiot to risk her life all over again. Though maybe she was, simply by staying there.
She was too tired to do more than strip off her snow-damp jeans and crawl into his bed, pulling the covers up around her. Her chest ached, throat hurt, and she was so damned cold. She reached inside her T-shirt to unfasten her bra, only to find that it was already free. Dillon must have unhooked it to give her room to breathe, though it wasn’t as if the bra was that tight to begin with. And for some reason the back clasp was still fastened—it was open at the front.
Her T-shirt was damp as well, and her chest felt as if it were covered in icy fire. She pulled the covers up over her shoulders and turned off the light, closing her eyes. Willing sleep to come.
There was a lot to be said for having an iron will, but forty-five minutes later Jamie accepted the fact that you couldn’t force sleep, no matter how determined you are. She should have remembered that. She lay there in the dark, listening to the sounds of the building as it settled into the cold night. Waiting for the sound of Dillon’s footsteps on the creaking wooden stairs.
But he didn’t come. And she told herself that was relief she was feeling, and she should go to sleep now, and first thing in the morning she’d get out of there. And she stared into the darkened bedroom and waited for him. Until she realized he wasn’t coming—he really was going to spend the night down there on that lumpy old sofa, in the remnants of the carbon monoxide.
She sat up in the darkness, clutching the covers around her. The entire evening had become hazy—she remembered trying to fill the tires with air, listening to U2 in the background. She remembered feeling dizzy, and then that damned song came on. And then she didn’t really remember anything more, just odd dreams, with a ghostly Nate watching her as she crawled toward him, reaching for help.
There must have been other dreams, visions as well, but she couldn’t remember them. Someone had turned those car engines on, the noise covered by the blasting of the stereo. Someone had tried to kill her.
As a murder attempt it was kind of half-assed. Anyone could have come by and found her. As Dillon had done, the perfect hero. But Dillon was no hero.
There were two possibilities. He’d done it, either to rescue her and fool her into thinking he was a good guy, or maybe he’d wanted to get rid of her and then thought better of it.
The other choice, the unthinkable choice, was that someone else was there. Someone who really wanted to kill her. Someone who wouldn’t stop. Someone who’d either come up here and finish the job, or who’d kill Dillon as he slept in the garage. Helpless, except that she could never imagine Dillon as helpless.
So that left her with two choices herself. She could crawl out of bed and lock the door, push the furniture against it and wait for morning. No one would be able to get in and finish what they started.
That was the smart thing to do. If it really had been Dillon it would keep him at bay, as well as anyone else who wanted to hurt her.
But she wasn’t going to do that. Her jeans