Survival Instinct Read Online Free PDF

his not-so-subtle request for reassurance. Blood smeared his muzzle.
    Crap.

    When Karin stood, her knees steadier but a cold sick spot at her stomach and her thoughts still tumbling around from one extreme to another, she finally spotted Dave Hunter.
    Over by his car.
    Well, crap. She’d thought better of him than that.
    He turned away from the road, heading for her with long strides—any faster and he’d have broken into a jog. “Gone for now,” he said. “I thought for a moment there he was going to come back and ram my car, but…hey, are you okay?”
    She didn’t have any warning. It just happened. As soon as he pulled up in front of her, her bloodstained, grass stained, dirt stained hand whipped out and slapped him. Hard.
    Unlike her actions of a moment earlier, it felt right.
    He stared at her, stunned. Hurt, even, in those ice blue eyes. “What the hell—?”
    “What part of ‘just be ready’ didn’t you understand? What part of ‘just be ready’ sounded like ‘run away’?”
    “Hey,” he said, and the hurt had sparked to anger, “if you’d let me in on your plans before you went charging out, I would have told you my gun was in the car.”
    “And there’s a handy two-by-four next to the basement door, so don’t aim those baby blues at me. You didn’t have to leave me hanging, especially since you brought them to this party.” Okay, maybe she wasn’t being quite fair. She was the one who’d come outside alone, preferring to handle things her way. But the feel of the cultivator sinking into flesh made her scrub that hand against her jeans again, and he had brought them here.
    Even if you could never really call those eyes “baby” anything.
    He looked at her, his face going still as he processed the moment—her anger, and the turmoil beneath. His shoulders relaxed slightly. “I saw the size of those guys. I think the two-by-four would have lost. Besides, I wanted to get between them and their car in case they dragged you off.” He tipped his head, not so much in inquiry as in observation. Maybe even dry humor. “You took care of them well enough.”
    She hadn’t wanted to take care of them at all. Not like that.
    “Dewey took care of them,” she said shortly, bending to give the dog another tight hug. His tail thumped. “And they’ll be back. So if you’ll excuse me, I need to go think about that.”
    “You’re kidding,” he said, blunt in his surprise. “You can’t stay here and wait for them.”
    But she had nowhere else to go, not unless she abandoned what Ellen had died to give her. Rumsey would still have all his feelers out for her, for years he’d have his feelers out for her. Let him figure out that she lived, and he’d rat her out in an instant.
    And that meant she couldn’t simply leave. In fact, she couldn’t do anything out of the ordinary for Ellen.
    Dave shifted his weight, hip-shot and out of place on her lawn. He looked like a model who’d been torn from a catalog, not someone who should be in her life. Not before her escape from Rumsey, not after. “Look,” he said. “You’re right. I brought them. I’m here to save a child, and I’ll never be sorry for that. But I’m sorry they followed. I can find you a safe house until this is over.”
    She’d had a safe house until he’d gotten here. “You don’t get it,” she told him, only then realizing that she’d totally lost her Ellen-ness. Too late to go back now; maybe he’d rightly chalk the change up to the shock of it all. But it rattled her; she couldn’t remember losing character before. “This is over. I can’t help you. I don’t have the memories you need.” Literally.
    “You haven’t even tried.”
    She stood, letting her hand trail off the dog’s ear. She couldn’t help but sound tired. It was a chance to ease back into character. “It’s been a year. What I’ve lost…I’ve lost.”
    Too true. Just not in the way he thought.
    In fact, his expression glinted with stubborn