Shelter from the Storm by RaeAnne Thayne

Author:RaeAnne Thayne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Silhouette
Published: 2007-11-08T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

Something woke him in the early morning hours.

He instantly sat up, alert and on edge. The house was quiet, the only sound the low murmur of the fire flickering low, reduced now to just a log burned almost all the way through and a few red embers glowing in the dark.

His instincts humming, he looked around, trying to figure out what had awakened him.

The house was too dark. Too quiet.

It only took a moment for him to figure out why. As he and Lauren had both feared, the power must have gone out in the storm. The fire provided the only light in the house and the usual subtle sounds of a juiced-up house were nowhere in evidence. No buzz of a refrigerator, no whirr of a furnace kicking on. Nothing.

The only thing he could hear now besides the fire was the wind hurling snow at the windows. He slid off the couch and threw another log from the pile onto the glowing embers. It crackled for a moment, but he had no doubt the coals were hot enough that it would soon catch.

Moving with slow caution, he eased to the window and peered out into the storm. He looked up and down her isolated road, but could see no other lights out there, not even the ambient glow from the concentrated lights of town he might have expected.

Though he knew from experience that any power outage was a major pain in the neck for law enforcement officials, the pitch-black set his mind at ease.

If the whole town had lost power, obviously Lauren’s house hadn’t been targeted specifically by someone cutting her juice for nefarious reasons.

He didn’t know what kind of threat might lurk out there for Rosa, but he wasn’t about to take any chances. Someone wanted her dead because of all that she knew. Melodramatic as it seemed, it wasn’t wholly out of the realm of possibility that someone might cut Lauren’s power to have better access to her house.

They had tried to kill Rosa in her own hospital bed. He had a feeling these bastards would certainly have no qualms about killing anybody else who got in their way.

He hated this whole damn situation. A pretty young girl like Rosa should be dreaming about her quinceañera, should be trying out makeup and giggling with her friends and discovering the vast world of possibilities awaiting her. Instead, she was battered and bruised and five months pregnant from a brutal gang rape, doing her best to stay alive.

And Lauren had put herself right in the middle of Rosa’s troubles by bringing the girl home to recover.

He sighed, his mind on the woman asleep in her room just a few yards away. What a mess this assignment was turning into. In the first eight hours after bringing Rosa here, he had hurt Lauren’s feelings, dredged up memories she didn’t want and kissed her until he managed to forget his own name.

He could only wonder, with a strange mix of dread and anticipation, what the morning would bring.

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