Mean Streak by Sandra Brown

Author:Sandra Brown [Brown, Sandra]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Mystery, Romance, Suspense
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2014-08-19T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

He pretended to be one of the volunteers who’d been searching for Emory.

He blended in with them, dressed as most were in heavy outdoor gear. His scarf—the one she’d knifed—covered his chin. He had turned up his coat collar, too, so it covered a good portion of his face. His cap was pulled low. He was wearing dark sunglasses to help hide the scratch she’d inflicted on his cheekbone. It was healing but still visible.

Most of the marks she had left on him weren’t. They were deep inside where wounds were never superficial and scars had significance.

For a city the size of Drakeland, her disappearance and recovery were major events. Upon hearing that she was back in the fold, and feeling the flush of success even though she hadn’t exactly been found, a hundred or more of the volunteers had congregated outside the local hospital to give her a hero’s welcome.

Now, as the sheriff’s office SUV pulled up to the emergency room entrance, it was swarmed by cameramen and reporters, most of whom were up from Atlanta. Gawkers, who had no idea what was going on but were drawn to the spectacle, elbowed for space and a more advantageous view. Uniformed officers were trying with limited success to control the pandemonium.

He stood head and shoulders above everyone in the crowd, but the chance of Emory spotting him was remote. She wouldn’t be looking. This was the last place she would expect him to be.

It was the last place he expected himself to be.

He continued to ask himself why he’d come. The answer continued to elude him. Halfway home after delivering her, he had felt the compulsion to make a U-turn, and he had. Some things one just did and never came to terms with why.

So here he was: the reason for her absence, a witness to her homecoming.

A potbellied man in uniform alighted from the driver’s side of the official vehicle, opened the rear door, and assisted her out of the backseat. With a heavy blanket draped around her shoulders, she looked small and overwhelmed. She was wearing her sunglasses, so her eyes were concealed, but her mouth was unsmiling. Her sneakers were muddy from running the mile between his cabin and the Floyds’ place.

He hadn’t counted on her waking up and realizing where he’d gone in time for her to get there and witness the beating he’d given them. He’d left her snug beneath the covers of his bed, rosy and warm, doped by sex, sound asleep. The next time he saw her, she was standing in the Floyds’ yard, breathless and aghast.

The Floyd brothers were the reason he’d come to North Carolina. He had vowed to seek retribution, vowed to get it. He just hadn’t counted on things happening how they had, or when they had.

He’d considered postponing taking action until Emory was no longer under his roof and compounding the danger. But after the incident with Lisa, after he and the brothers had declared themselves enemies, he couldn’t predict what they would do.

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