The pressure on her was tightened even further, suggesting that he had strength to spare—which was a daunting prospect, to say the least.
“Isn’t that right,” he growled.
“Yes,” she bit out. “Yes, that’s right.”
“So I can expect not to find you on your skis around here anymore. Isn’t that right.”
He jerked her again, the pain making her eyes roll back a little. “Yes,” she choked.
The man relented enough so that she could grab some breaths. Then he kept speaking, that voice strangely seductive. “Now, there is something I need before I let you go. You will tell me what you know about me—all of it.”
Sola frowned, thinking that was silly. No doubt a man like this would be well aware of any information a third party could garner about him.
So it was a test.
Given that she very much wanted to see her grandmother again, Sola said, “I don’t know your name, but I can guess what you do, and also what you’ve done.”
“And what’s that?”
“I think you are the one who has been shooting all those penny-ante dealers in town to secure territory and control.”
“The papers and the news reports have labeled the deaths suicides.”
She just continued on—there was, after all, no reason to argue. “I know that you live alone, as far as I can tell—and that your house is outfitted with some very strange window treatments. Camouflage designed to appear as the interior of the home, but…they are something else above and beyond that. I just don’t know what.”
That face above her own remained utterly impassive. Calm. At peace. As if he wasn’t muscling her in place—or threatening bodily harm. The control was…erotic.
“And?” he prompted.
“That’s it.”
He inhaled on the cigar in his mouth, the fat orange circle on the end glowing more brightly. “I’m only going to let you go once. Do you understand that?”
“Yes.”
He moved so quickly she had to swing her arms out to regain her balance on her own, her poles digging into the snow. Wait, where did he—
The man appeared right behind her, his feet planted on either side of the tracks her skis had made, a physical barricade to the path she had traveled from his house. As her left biceps and her right wrist burned from blood returning to the areas it had been squeezed out of, a warning tickled across the nape of her neck.
Get out of here, Sola, she told herself. Right now.
Unwilling to run the risk of another capture, she shot forward into the plowed road, the waxed, scaled bottoms of her skis struggling to find purchase on the packed, iced-over snow.
As she went, he followed her, walking slowly, inexorably, like a great cat who was tracking prey that he was content only to play with—for now.
Her hands shook as she used the tips of her poles to spring the bindings, and she struggled to get her skis back in the rack on her car. The whole time, he stood in the middle of the road and watched her, that cigar smoke drifting over his shoulder in the cold drafts that funneled toward the river.
Getting inside her car, she locked the doors, started the engine, and looked in the rearview mirror. In the glow from her brake lights, he appeared downright evil, a tall, black-haired man with a face as handsome as a prince’s, and as cruel as a blade.
Hitting the gas, she pulled off the shoulder and sped away, the car’s all-wheel drive system kicking in and giving her the traction she needed.
She glanced into the rearview again. He was still there—
Sola’s foot shifted onto the brake and nearly punched down.
He was gone.
Sure as if he had disappeared into thin air. One moment there in her sight…the next, invisible.
Shaking herself, she punched the gas again, and made the sign of the cross over her heavily beating heart.
With a crazy panic, she wondered, Just what the hell was he?
THIRTY
Just as the shutters were rising for the night, Layla heard the knock upon her door—and even before the scent drifted in through the panels, she knew who had come to see her.
Unconsciously, her hand went to her hair—and found that it was a mess, matted from her having tossed and turned all day long. Worse, she hadn’t even bothered to change from the street clothes she’d put on to go to the clinic.
She couldn’t deny him entrance, however.
“Come in,” she called out, sitting up a little higher and straightening the covers that she’d pulled up to her breastbone.
Qhuinn was dressed in fighting clothes, which she took to mean he was on rotation for the night—but mayhap not. She was not privy to the schedule.
As their eyes met, she frowned. “You don’t look well.”