Deserves to Die Read Online Free PDF Page A

heater, she considered her options. With the temperature having dropped below freezing, the heater was blowing lukewarm air, its rattle nearly drowning out a country song about the pain of love lost that filled the interior. Snapping off the radio, she noticed the defroster was fighting a losing battle with the condensation that was crawling inward over her viewing angle. She gave the glass a swipe with an extra sweatshirt that was lying on the passenger seat, and squinted, trying to find the turnoff to the long lane that wound to her cabin. “Home,” she reminded herself.
    Snowflakes danced, swirling as they were caught in the headlights’ glare, piling along the fencerows and frosting the branches of the evergreens that rose in the foothills.
    She could continue to lie low, retaining her disguise while keeping her ear to the ground, or she could bolt again, heading farther west or north. Or, she could seek her own revenge, try to turn the tables on the bastard from whom she was running, lure him in, and then destroy him. The thought of taking another human life had always repulsed her, but she’d never been so scared before, had never been fighting for her own existence. She’d always had the luxury of naiveté. If she came face-to-face with him again, she had no doubt she could shoot him dead or plunge a knife deep into his black heart and give the blade a little twist.
    “Sick bastard,” she whispered.
    As the wipers of the old Tahoe slapped snow from the windshield, leaving streaks upon the glass, she checked her rearview mirror for the hundredth time.
    No one was following her.
    No menacing pickup’s headlights appeared over the last rise. Still, she could sense her pursuer.
    Letting her breath out slowly, she noticed an old N O H UNTING sign posted on the massive trunk of a giant hemlock that caught in the headlights. She was close. The engine groaned a little as the incline grew steeper, and less than a quarter mile up the hill, she spied the spot where the trees parted a bit and the old lane ambled off the county road. Of course, there were tracks from her Tahoe, enough to be visible despite the snowfall, but so far, he hadn’t appeared.
    Had she finally lost him?
    Most likely not. Several months had passed from the moment she’d stared up at the moon and gasped for air as she’d lain on the soft banks of the bayou. It was there she’d fought the battle of deciding whether to live or die.
    Life had won out, and she’d started her journey of two thousand miles down a desperately crooked path that had finally ended up in the wilds of western Montana.
    Was she safe?
    She doubted it.
    He was nothing if not dogged and deadly.
    Shivering a little, she nosed her Tahoe through the stands of hemlock and fir to the tiny clearing where her cabin, after a call to the owner, was finally equipped with electricity and hot water. There was still no furnace, but she’d picked up a used space heater at a secondhand shop, along with a few other essentials.
    House Beautiful the old cottage was not, but at least it was functioning, the utilities in the owner’s name and billed to him. She parked near the garage, locked her SUV, and made her way inside where the smell of wood smoke and last night’s microwave popcorn greeted her. On a makeshift coffee table was the local paper, where she’d first learned of the attack on Dan Grayson and his subsequent hospitalization. There was a new sheriff in town, if only temporarily, a man by the name of Hooper Blackwater who was rumored to be a strict, by-the-book officer of the law, a person she was pretty certain she couldn’t approach.
    So who, then, would help her?
    The simple answer was Cade Grayson, Dan’s brother, the man from whom she’d heard about the sheriff. But she wasn’t about to go running to that rangy cowboy, at least not right away. Unfortunately, he was the man who had started all her trouble and as such would only be her last resort.
     

Chapter 3
     
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