Paula Graves - Hitched and Hunted

“Can’t we just go back to the truck?”

“Hypothermia could kill you before we make it back there.” Jake half dragged her to the back door of the nearby house and knocked. After a few seconds, a man opened the door and stared at them, his expression wary but not unsympathetic.

“My wife fell into the floodwaters and swept down here from about a quarter mile upriver,” Jake explained bluntly. “My name is Jake Cooper and this is Mariah. We were helping with the tornado relief. Mariah’s becoming hypothermic—I need to get her out of her wet clothes and warmed up. I’ll need blankets.”

The man seemed to respond to Jake’s firm, no-nonsense tone. “My wife’s a nurse. I’ll get her. You come on in—there’s a bathroom right there.” He led them into a spacious kitchen and gestured toward a short hallway. “First door on the right.”

Jake closed them in the bathroom. “Brave guy, letting us in. He doesn’t know us from Adam.”

“Maybe the b-blue lips were a t-tip off.” Mariah caught sight of her bedraggled state in the mirror over the sink. She looked horrid, her hair a stringy, tangled mess around her pallid face. Her lips had, indeed, turned a sort of sickly bluish-purple color from the cold.

Jake helped her strip off her muddy clothing and began rubbing her down with towels. In a moment, there was a knock and a woman’s voice sounded through the door. “Is she okay?”

Jake wrapped Mariah up in a large bath sheet he’d found in the bathroom closet and let the woman in. “Do you have a fireplace? We need to warm up some blankets.”

“Already warming.” The woman checked Mariah’s pulse with warm, gentle hands. “Not too thready. How’s your head—feeling woozy or disoriented?”

“J-just cold,” Mariah answered, trying to keep her teeth from clacking together too loudly.

“Poor thing. I would offer an electric blanket, but the power will be out for a bit yet.” The woman grabbed a towel from the sink counter and started squeezing excess water out of Mariah’s hair. “We should get you somewhere there’s power.”

“If we can get a ride back to the rescue staging area, I can take her back to our motel. My truck’s parked there.”

“We’ll drive you. We’ve just gotten back from double shifts at the hospital—Gary’s a lab tech and I’m a nurse. We were about to head out there to volunteer ourselves.” The woman handed the towel to Mariah. “I’m Sophie. Nice to meet you. I wish it was under better circumstances.”

She slipped out of the bathroom for a few seconds, returning with a small plastic bag and a folded set of scrubs. “Let’s get you into some warm, dry clothes. These may be a little short for you, but they should fit okay.” As Mariah took the surgical greens from Sophie, the woman turned to look at Jake with a critical eye. “You’re soaked, too. I’m not sure anything of Gary’s would fit you, though—”

“I’m fine,” Jake said firmly. “I’ve been running around so I’ve stayed warm. Let’s just get Mariah back to the motel.”

“I’ll tell Gary what we’re doing.” Sophie slipped back out of the bathroom.

Mariah finished slipping on the scrubs. Despite the thinness of the fabric, the clothes were impossibly warm.

“I’d hold you to get you warm, but I’m still sopping wet.” A hint of humor threaded through the lingering concern in Jake’s voice. Mariah hadn’t realized until now just how much she’d missed that lighter tone. It hadn’t made an appearance all day, banished by the horrors they were witnessing.

“You can make up for it back at the motel,” she promised.

“If you still want to leave town, I understand.”

She knew she should tell him no, that they’d stay and help. But the memory of Victor Logan’s malevolent gaze was burned into her brain, a reminder of why they had to leave as soon as they could get back to the motel and pack their things.

“I want to go home,” she said, hating herself a little.

Within fifteen minutes, they were safely back at the motel. Mariah took a long, hot shower that did wonders for her body temperature, then dried her hair, wrapped herself in a fuzzy robe and finished packing their toiletries for the trip home.

When she returned to the sleeping area, Jake was on the phone. He smiled at her. “Yeah, we’re cutting it short here. We may overnight in Birmingham. I’ll let you know.” He mouthed the name “Gabe.” “No, no—she’s okay. Just a little chilled.”

“Tell your brother I said hi and I’m fine,” she murmured, already eyeing the bed, where Jake had laid out warm clothes, including a cozy thermal undershirt and a sturdy pair of jeans. The rest of their clothes were packed.

“So he talked her into it finally? Well, good for Aaron!” Jake grinned at Mariah as she slipped off the robe and started donning her clothing. The appreciative look he gave her as she stripped naked did more to warm her than the thermal underwear. “Tell him congratulations for us. I’ll see you later.”

“Aaron and Melissa are engaged?” she guessed. Jake’s youngest brother had been trying to talk his girlfriend, Melissa, into marrying him for three months now, but Melissa was too pragmatic to jump into anything. Her history with men had made her a little cautious. To Aaron’s credit, he’d been far more patient with her than he was with most things in his life. “Good for them.”

“He popped the question on her birthday—talked someone at the high school into letting him borrow the gymnasium and set up their own private prom. Sappy devil.”

“Not nearly as romantic as your proposal,” she teased, wrapping her arms around his waist. “How did it go again—‘Hey, Mariah, wanna get hitched?’”

“If I recall correctly, you were duly impressed.”

She rubbed her cheek against his chest, her smile fading. He had no idea how desperate she’d been at that point in her life to find some sort of security and family. She wondered if he’d remember things differently if he knew the whole truth.

Would they even be together if she hadn’t been at the end of her rope? She’d never let herself ask that question before, perhaps afraid of what she’d discover.

Beneath her cheek, Jake’s sweater was thick and soft. He’d dressed in clothing as warm as her own. She managed a teasing grin. “Got colder than you realized?”

He smiled back at her. “My goose bumps have goose bumps.”

“Maybe you should have joined me in the shower.”

He pulled her closer, kissing her forehead and threading his fingers through her hair. “You were brave today. You saved that little girl’s life.”

“We didn’t get to tell that poor woman I’m okay.”

“We could stop there on our way out of town.”

“No, it’s not on the way, and it would just interfere with the rescue efforts.” Mariah already felt guilty enough about leaving all those poor, suffering people behind. But she couldn’t risk seeing Victor Logan again. “Besides, she probably took her little girl to the hospital to be checked out.”

“Maybe I should take you to the hospital, too. You’re still shivering.”

She couldn’t tell him her chills had more to do with the cold-eyed man who’d been seconds from tossing her back into that swollen creek before Jake arrived.

Not yet. Not until they were safely away, back in Gossamer Ridge, with Jake’s big, capable family surrounding them.

But when they got home, she was going to tell Jake the truth. The whole sordid story.

It had been a mistake to create a fictional back story for her own life. Jake deserved better, and she was strong enough to face her past.

She’d survived seeing Victor again, hadn’t she?

Barely, a cowardly voice whispered in her ear. You barely survived with your life.

THE SECRET TO GETTING away with something, Victor knew, was to look as if you know what you’re doing. In his case, it was simple enough; Victor actually knew his way around the underbelly of a truck. He’d been a mechanic since the age of sixteen, working in garages and repair shops across three states. He’d been bitten with the wander bug at an early age. With his skills as a mechanic to sustain him, he began a twenty-year sojourn across three states to find where he belonged.

Twenty years to figure out he’d never belong in this world full of cretins and imbeciles who were more interested in expanding their wallets and waistlines than improving their minds. It had taken Alex to show him the truth: he was better than all those people he’d spent his life trying to impress.

After that, he’d lived his life as he wished, taking the jobs that would best accomplish his particular needs at the time. Alex had been generous, as well, sharing his wealth with Victor in exchange for Victor’s keen eye for opportunities.

Alex’s money had bought Victor the toolkit he was using right now under Jake Cooper’s Ford F-150.

Victor had followed Marisol and her husband from the disaster scene, seen him forced to park the truck many slots down from their motel room because of the bass boat hitched to the back. It had been easy enough for Victor to park nearby, bring out his tools and act as if he was there on business.

Victor was slender enough to slide easily under the truck and snip the serpentine belt without engaging the car alarm. He left just a thread of belt intact. It would snap within a few miles, and not long after that, the engine would start to fail.

He pushed out from under the truck and walked purposefully back to his van, securing his tools on the floorboard behind the front passenger’s seat. He stepped into the van through the side door and closed it behind him, quickly stripping out of his wet, soiled coveralls.

Then he left the parking lot and set up a couple of blocks down the service road. Cooper would have to drive past him to get to any of the three interstate access roads.

And Victor would be ready.

MARIAH WAS TOO QUIET. It reminded Jake, uncomfortably, of their first interactions three years ago. She’d showed up one day, looking for work, and his sister Hannah, always a sucker for a stray, had talked their parents into hiring the shy, pretty young single mother for the clerical job at the booking office of the marina and fishing camp the family ran.

Jake had found her stunningly beautiful from the start, but her quiet demeanor had almost nipped their relationship in the bud. He’d always preferred vibrant, fun-loving girls with lots of energy and lots of sass. Mariah’s subdued, self-contained calm seemed just the opposite.

But as she revealed her past in painful little snippets over the next week, he began to understand that what he’d seen as self-possession was really lingering sadness at the loss of her husband, Micah’s father. He’d apparently died young in a tragic car accident, leaving Mariah pregnant and alone. He’d had nothing to leave them, forcing Mariah to fend for herself and her child with her own resources.

Pity had turned to sympathy, and sympathy to infatuation. By the time she’d finally agreed to go out with him three weeks after they met, he was halfway in love. Their first kiss two dates later sealed the deal for him, and it hadn’t taken long to convince her they were meant to be a family.

They’d eloped to Gatlinburg within two months of their first meeting. He’d never doubted his snap decision to marry her, or be the father to her adorable son Micah, who’d just turned three in December.

But at times like this, when she went quiet and insular, he was reminded there were still things about her history he didn’t know. Things he hadn’t thought important.