“No, that’s fine.”

Gwen asked what time she wanted to be woken up. Jordie gave her a time. “But wake me if you receive any news.”

The marshal nodded but made no promises. “Get some more rest.” She pulled the door closed as she went out.

Jordie got back into bed, rolled onto her side, and curled into the fetal position.

What a godawful mess.

By escaping, Josh had set things into motion, but it was unfair to lay her present circumstances entirely at his feet. She was also culpable. When the FBI agents had questioned her six months ago and asked specifically about her relationship with Billy, she should have told them about that cursed trip to Costa Rica. Of course, she hadn’t known then about the funds that Josh had transferred down there to facilitate Panella’s getaway.

She’d also made an egregious mistake by going to that redneck bar on Friday night. When Josh was being taken away and she’d told him, “I’m done,” she should have meant it. She should have ignored the anonymous phone summons.

Instead, she had responded as years of conditioning had trained her to. Old habits weren’t hard to break—they were impossible. Or so it seemed. Josh needed her, so she went running, this time plunging headlong into the appalling situation in which she now found herself. She was under the suspicion of the FBI.

And then there was the conundrum of Shaw Kinnard. Regarding her kidnapper, her heart and her reason were at odds. No, that was inadequate phraseology. She was foundering in an emotional maelstrom.

She’d witnessed him commit cold-blooded murder. Although he hadn’t treated her cruelly, never once had he let her forget that she was his hostage and under threat of death. He had kept her frightened and unsure. Her fate had been at his whim.

The moment I laid eyes on you, your life was spared. Truth? Or just nice words to keep her off balance? She’d been inclined to believe him. She’d wanted to badly, not as a hostage, but as a woman.

And that was the most frightening aspect of the entire experience. That was what had her caught in a whirlpool of conflicting and incomprehensible emotions.

As she’d watched the ambulance speed away with him in shackles, she should have been weak with relief. Instead, all she’d felt was despair. She’d inflicted his wound, but it pained her that he was suffering so terribly. If he lived, he would face harsh punishment for his crimes. Knowing that should have been gratifying. It wasn’t.

The thought of his forbidding face didn’t cause her to shudder with revulsion, as it should have. Instead, she ached to look into it again. Recalling his touch, she didn’t flinch. Rather, she had a bone-deep yearning to be touched again. She didn’t try to erase his kiss from her mind but avariciously clung to the memory of it, deeply regretting that he had limited himself to only one.

She should have been brimming with happiness just for being alive. And she was.

But there was no real joy in it, because of her profound sense of loss over possibilities unrealized.

Chapter 24

Josh anxiously awaited daybreak.

He sat at the kitchen table, fiddling with a box of toothpicks, nearly jumping out of his skin at every sound. He was reminded of a popular bumper sticker from a few years back: YOU’D BE PARANOID TOO IF EVERYBODY WAS AFTER YOU.

The darkness made him jittery, but he was afraid to turn on the lights, now even more so than before. A light had brought about Shaw Kinnard’s capture. That was just one of the surprising tidbits that had been on the late newscasts.

According to the report, a fisherman had spotted light inside a building that had been abandoned for years. He had alerted local authorities to it, and that had led to Jordie’s rescue and her abductor’s arrest.

Good fortune for her. Disaster for the perpetrator.

Since Josh fell into the latter category, he’d taken the lesson to heart, switched off the TV immediately, and had kept every light off since. Total darkness was safer, but hell on his nerves. Throughout the wee hours, he’d crept from window to window of the house, afraid that when he looked outside he would see armed men in uniforms sneaking up on him, surrounding the house, spreading a net he couldn’t escape.

He wasn’t that good with guns, but he kept a loaded pistol within reach on the table next to the box of toothpicks. He was glad he’d planned ahead and had left the gun here in the house along with the frozen TV dinners and stocked pantry. It gave him peace of mind. With it close at hand, he didn’t feel so naked and exposed.

He detested being naked and exposed. Even in his own shower. Because occasionally, as much as he tried to avoid it, he would accidentally catch a glimpse of himself in the bathroom mirror and see his grotesque scars.

The passage of time had faded them. They were no longer red and pink but slick and white and shiny, like repulsive worms crisscrossing his back. He remembered being told how lucky he was that his clothing would conceal them. Even Jordie had told him that once.

“Nobody will ever know they’re there, Josh.”

He had yelled at her that he knew they were there.

That indisputable fact had shut her up. She’d never tried that platitude on him again.

Frustrated over the reminder of his deformity, he knocked the box of toothpicks over the edge of the table. They spilled onto the floor. Still feeling restless, he reached for one of his cell phones and bounced it in his palm. He’d removed the battery from the one he’d used to call Joe Wiley. This was a new phone, new battery, and it was charged.

He was tempted to call Wiley again, ask him if what they’d reported on TV about Jordie was true and that she really had come through her ordeal unharmed. He also wondered if Wiley had asked her about Costa Rica yet.

She would probably be mad at him for telling the FBI agent about her and Panella’s little getaway. From the day she’d returned from Central America, the junket had been a closed subject. Taboo. Off-limits. Josh’s tentative inquires about it had been met with frigid silence. She was probably still touchy on the topic.

But he’d had to give Wiley something last night, hadn’t he? Would Jordie rather have remained at the mercy of Shaw Kinnard, hardened criminal? They’d said on TV that he had been “gravely wounded,” but they hadn’t disclosed the nature of his injury or how he’d sustained it.

Josh hoped he’d died.

He knelt, gathered up the toothpicks by feel, and replaced them in the box. Then he made another circuit of the ground floor of the house, tiptoeing through the dark rooms, taking peeps out the windows. No need to check the second floor. He’d done so twice.

Outside, nothing was moving. He was okay.

But the suspense to know about Jordie was killing him. Yielding to temptation, he returned to the kitchen, picked up the phone, and tapped in Joe Wiley’s number. After three rings, the agent answered, sounding groggy, as though the call had woken him up.

“I heard about Jordie. Is she really all right?”

“Hi, Josh. I wondered when you’d break down and call me. I had a bet going with my wife that you—”

“Is she?”

“She’s fine. But why don’t you come see for yourself? I’ll come get you, drive you straight over to her.”

“Is her kidnapper dead?”

“Last I heard, no. But you’re not the only one who hopes he’ll die.”