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City was big, and she’d thought it would take Grigori quite some time to realize she’d left the city instead of hiding out at a friend’s. But his men had been so close on her tail that it was impossible to believe they hadn’t been tracking her through her phone. Chase was right and she’d been a fool to keep it.
    When they’d found her, they’d set Chase’s apartment on fire. With her and Chase in it. Sophie shivered.
    Eventually, Chase stopped and she walked right into him, colliding with his hard body and bouncing backward. Somehow he turned and caught one of her flailing arms before she fell. Her heart skittered as he tugged her up and she hit him again, only this time she hit softer—and she felt the impression of all that hard muscle against her body.
    He was a temple of muscle. A monument to working out, with taut peaks and hard planes in all the right places, a rippling fantasy man come to life. She practically moaned, except that would be weird.
    Weird because they were running from men intent on killing her and weird because he was technically her stepbrother. Though in the few visits he’d ever made to California, all she’d done was think how intriguing he was. Her thoughts had not been sisterly in the least.
    “Steady,” he said, and she nearly laughed. Steady? Oh no, she was anything but steady.
    “Why have we stopped?”
    He tilted his head up, and she realized that she could see him much better now. The shadowy outlines of his face had coalesced into a beautiful portrait.
    “It’ll be light soon. We need to stop.”
    “But shouldn’t we keep going? Keep distance between us and them?”
    He shook his head. “Are you ready to do that, Sophie? How much farther can you go? Another hour? Two? Ten?”
    It hit her then that he was stopping for her. If he’d been on his own, he’d have kept going.
    “I… No, not much farther. My feet hurt and my back aches.”
    Not that she hadn’t felt worse after a day at work, but that was different somehow. She could go home and soak her feet or get a massage from her massage-therapist roommate.
    There would be no massages tonight. She looked at the pinkening sky. Today.
    “All right, we’re going up this tree here,” he said, placing his palm against the side of the tree he was standing near.
    Sophie tilted her head back to look up into the thick tangle of branches. “Uh, I don’t think I’m much of a climber, Chase. Unless you have a ladder.”
    “Actually, I do. There’s a deer stand in this tree. And there’s a ladder up there. Just have to go up and get it.”
    She peered into the tree but didn’t see anything. “How do you know that?”
    He was scowling, but even his scowl made her heart skip. “I’m from Tennessee, darlin’. We like to hunt—and I know the guy who owns this land. He put a stand in this tree, and I’ve used it a few times.”
    He dropped his bag on the ground and eyed the tree. Then he started to climb. She watched him—and realized with a start there was a small wooden structure up there. It was camouflaged so well that it wasn’t easy to see at first.
    “Better step back,” he called down. “Don’t want to get hit by the ladder.”
    She did as he said and then a rope ladder unfurled and slapped the side of the tree. Chase came back down and dropped to the ground.
    “You first,” he told her.
    She looked at the rope ladder doubtfully. But it had held him when he shimmied back down on it, so she gripped the rope and put her foot on the first rung. It was a shaky climb, but she made it up. She pulled herself into the stand and looked around. It wasn’t quite what she’d expected—in fact, it was more like a tree house than a deer stand. It was dark inside, but there were windows with screens and what appeared to be a twin-sized Army cot. In one corner, there was a stack of bottled water and some boxes that she hoped contained food.
    She stepped into the little room, wary for the sensation of swaying with