He’d taken this job for the satisfaction of bringing down a killer. The idea of someone going after Olivia had only been an abstraction. Now that it was suddenly a reality, he felt a surge of protective emotions. Like he was a knight or an ancient warrior charging out to protect his woman. He snorted at the analogy, yet he couldn’t shake it. He hadn’t known Olivia well back in high school, and they’d only been together for a few days now, but the idea of anything happening to her made him realize that he’d come to care about her with gut-tightening urgency in a very short time. And not just because of her public persona. On the surface, she might come across as a poised, confident model, but he’d learned that she hadn’t traveled all that far from her roots.
Those thoughts flickered at the edge of his consciousness, because the bulk of his attention was focused on his surroundings.
If the trespasser was in the woods, he’d have two choices. Either hide from the man who had come out to investigate or make a run for it.
Too bad Max couldn’t give away his own location by using a flashlight to flush out the bastard. That might have been efficient from a searcher’s point of view, but it would have been a risky strategy when he was out here alone and the intruder could shoot in the direction of the light.
He used the wood lot for cover, moving from tree to tree, listening for the sound of breathing—or anything else that would give the guy away.
He realized he was thinking of the interloper as a man because all his intuition rejected the idea of a woman sneaking up on the house. But it still could be possible—for someone with sufficient motivation. Which was what? Deep resentment at some old slight? Anger that Olivia had come back to stick her nose in where it didn’t belong?
When he stopped and listened again, he thought he heard the sound of raspy breathing coming from his left. At least he’d made the guy reconsider his risky behavior.
Ducking low and correcting his course, Max headed toward a tree with a sizable trunk. Before he reached it, someone broke from cover and ran.
He couldn’t see more than a vaguely human shape in the dark. The figure was dressed in dark clothing for concealment.
Straightening, Max pelted after him, but the intruder had spent some time preparing for his attack. As Max followed him, running as fast as he could in the dark, he suddenly smacked into an invisible barrier. Nothing solid. Something that had a bit of give.
Seconds after he hit it, he bounced back, feeling sharp barbs tear into his flesh. Christ, what was that? Gingerly he reached for the thing that had stopped him and got more sharp gouges on his hands.
As he tried to figure out what had hit him, he listened to the thud of footsteps disappearing into the darkness. Then the sound of a car starting told him that the assailant had made a clean getaway.
Now that he knew he was alone, he pulled his phone out of his pocket and activated the flashlight feature, playing it over whatever had blocked his path. He saw that the obstacle was several courses of barbed wire, strung across the route the intruder had been following. The bastard had known to duck low enough to avoid the trap as he ran. With no inkling of the danger, Max had plowed right into the wire. It was at shoulder and head level, and he could see he was damn lucky that he hadn’t put out his eye with a barb. Which might have been what the stalker had intended.
“You missed,” he muttered as he ducked under the barrier and continued down the trail, still cautious. The intruder might have fled, but now Max knew he could have left other nasty surprises along his escape route.
Caution slowed his progress considerably. He stepped carefully, aware that another booby trap could be lower down. And he moved with his hands in front of him, testing the safety of the path he was walking. Stopping, he called Olivia’s cell phone. She picked up on the first ring.
“Max?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you all right?”
“More or less.”
She sucked in a sharp breath. “What does that mean?”
“I’ll tell you when I get back. I just wanted you to know that the emergency’s over.”
“How do you know?”
He sighed. “Whoever was on the property got away. I’m checking to see where he parked.”
“It’s a man?”
“I’m just using a convenient pronoun. I’m hanging up now. I’ll be back soon.”
Finally he came to a clearing in the woods beside a farm road. Whoever had been stalking the house had probably driven this far and walked the rest of the way.
The day before, Max, Jack, and Shane had walked around the area. The barbed wire hadn’t been here then. Had the perp brought it with him? Or dragged it from somewhere on the farm? And when had he done it? If it was while Max and Olivia were at the meeting, it would mean that it wasn’t anyone who had been there.