Into the Frying Pan by Sarah Osborne

Author:Sarah Osborne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2019-03-10T18:10:08+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

I tried to catch my breath. My attacker was gone. He—or she—had managed to shove me hard into the jagged edge of the stone wall. A sharp pain in my right shoulder shot down my arm.

Gingerly, I moved my shoulder, then my elbow and finally my wrist. I felt along my humerus, my elbow, my ulna, my radius. Everything appeared to be intact and already the pain had lessened.

I wasn’t about to see if my attacker was waiting for me at the other end of the tunnel. Turning around I walked quickly back the way I’d come.

In the sunlight I saw I was bleeding, but it looked worse than it was. My shirt was ripped, and my forearm where I braced myself was scraped. I used my sleeve to put pressure on the only abrasion still oozing blood.

I was shaking and took deep breaths to calm myself.

It wasn’t the physical injury that unnerved me. It was the attack. Someone saw me enter the tunnel and came after me—not to kill me, thank God, but to scare me off. Or perhaps to injure me enough, so I’d have to leave.

Why would a killer who worked so methodically to alter a cannon, act in such a reckless way? Anyone might have seen him. Was it simply rage at my unexpected presence? I thought about Phil—Josh described him as losing it at his father’s party. Ryan had a hair-trigger temper, but why would he consider me any kind of threat? Why was I a threat to anyone?

An ominous thought entered my mind. Perhaps the killer wasn’t done. Perhaps whoever attacked me was afraid I might interrupt their plans to kill again.

The voice didn’t sound like Phil’s, but it could have been anyone’s—man or woman. It was low, more of a grunt than anything else. I also couldn’t tell anything about the attacker’s height or build. The person bent over as they ran away. And the uniform, was it Confederate? All I saw was a silhouette of a jacket and a hat.

I tried to hide among the trees to the left of the tunnel entrance. The tunnel led away from the battlefield, and to return the person might have to come back through. My goal was to see him or her but remain hidden. Unfortunately, an officer spotted me first.

“You, miss, what are you doing there?” He approached me. “Are you all right?”

He must have seen my torn and bloody shirt.

“It’s nothing. Someone pushed me as I was walking through the tunnel.”

“An accident? Why didn’t they stay to help you?”

“I guess it was a hit and run, and I don’t think it was an accident. The person told me to get the hell out of here or something close to that.”

“Can you describe him?”

“I’m not even sure it was a him,” I said. “I thought it was someone in uniform but all I could see was his back running away from me.”

He looked at my arm. “You need to go to the first aid tent.

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