Free Avenging Angel by Tara Janzen Page A

he said coolly.
    “Will he kill you too?”
    “As soon as he gets his hands on me.”
    “What happens to me then?” She didn’t mean to sound entirely self-centered, but her own survival was at the top of her priority list.
    “I hope to have you someplace safe by then.”
    “Where?”
    “I don’t know yet.”
    She didn’t like his answers. She didn’t like his methods. A trembling sigh escaped her as she covered her face with her hands and lowered her chin back to her chest. She was doomed.
    “You have to let me go. You have to. It’s the only chance I’ve got, if I can get to the police.”
    “No.” The single word was succinct.
    “Why not?” she demanded, turning on him, her anger flaring to life.
    His eyes hardened. His explanation was short, to the point, and delivered without apology or room for debate.
    “Because any information the police have, Austin can get. Because if you walk into a station at two A.M., you’ll be dead before dawn. Do you understand me?” He paused and pinned her with a glare so damn serious, it literally made her tremble. “I hope to hell you do, because whether you want to believe it or not, Miss Lane, I’m the best chance you’ve got of getting out of this alive.”

Six
     
    She hated him. He was a despicable, unprincipled, criminal lout. He was a man without honor or conscience, and he was paranoid. There was plenty of proof for that assessment. All she had to do was look at the motel’s furniture. He’d shoved one of the bed frames up against the door, then had angled the mattress over the window, propped up by a chair. He was mean and cruel and thoughtless, and he was crazy if he thought she was going to let him tie her up again.
    “No,” she said, her hands tightening into fists at her sides. She backed farther into the bedroom, widening the space between her and the belt coiled in his broad hands.
    “It’s for your own protection,” he said calmly, following her with an easy, measured tread.
    “Go to hell.”
    “I need to get some sleep. I can’t do that if you’re up and wandering around, or up and wandering out of here.”
    “Then I guess you’ll have to stay awake.” Damn the man. She had put stitches in his skin, suffered along with him through every single stab of the needle, and he thanked her by tying her up again? Over her dead body.
    “Impossible. I’m running on empty.” He stopped at the edge of the bed and faced her, and as quickly as that, she was trapped once again. There was nowhere left to run in the room.
    “That’s your problem.” To hell with compassion and empathy, she thought. She’d be damned if she let him tie her up. He did look like he was running on empty. He couldn’t last too much longer.
    “My problems are your problems,” he said. “Or more to the point, your problems are my problems.” He quickly and efficiently made a loop out of his belt.
    “They don’t have to be,” she said, growing terse as the situation grew desperate. “You can’t possibly know what Austin wants, and I do.”
    “Austin wants you dead. That’s all he wants. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you can barter with him. When you signed your name to Morrow Warner, you signed your own death warrant.”
    She blanched, and her heart skipped a beat. He’d said the damning words no one was supposed to know. “How do you know about Morrow Warner?”
    “I looked.” He shrugged, a tired lift of his left shoulder. “Every night you and Austin worked late, I went back and looked over your work. If you think about it, you might remember that I was always the one on duty those nights. Or you might not remember. My job was to be inconspicuous.”
    “I remember,” she said. She remembered too well, watching him out of the corner of her eye and feeling something she shouldn’t have felt. “What you did was unconscionable and—and against the law. Those files were confidential.”
    His eyes narrowed for a moment in disbelief, then his lips