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Gabe’s fingers tightened around hers. “That’s ridiculous,” he said roughly. “Even if this lunatic did kill Pratt, you can’t blame yourself. It wasn’t your fault.”
“James Pratt died because of me,” Page insisted. “His wife and children and parents and siblings grieved at his graveside...because of me.”
She caught her breath on a sob and forced words out “I couldn’t deal with it. I ran. When I couldn’t drive any longer, I got a motel room. I don’t even know what town it was in. I took a sleeping pill and fell into bed, still in my clothes. I didn’t want to think. The phone rang in the middle of the night, waking me.”
Gabe didn’t have to ask who was calling. “He told you he’d killed Pratt?”
“He was furious. He told me he’d almost gone after everyone else who had ever mattered to me. You. Your family. Jessie and her children. All of you. He told me if I ever went to the police again, I was signing your death warrants. He said he’d start with the children—because they’d be easy. He told me he might be taken out along the way, but not before he’d gotten to someone I loved. Someone else who wouldn’t deserve to die.”
She swallowed another sip of her drink, her. hand unsteady as she lifted the can to her pale mouth. The cola seemed to burn its way down her throat, judging from the face she made.
“I begged him to leave you all alone,” she said after a moment. “I asked him to kill me, instead. He knew where to find me. It would be so easy. He only laughed—an ugly, vicious laugh. He had no intention of killing me, he said.”
“And?”
“I told him I would kill myself,” she whispered. “I told him I’d rather die than have him hurt anyone else because of me. I told him he’d left me nothing to live for, anyway. I was fully prepared to do it that night.”
Gabe felt a cold rush of horror go through him. It was caused by the look in her eyes, the tone of her voice. He believed absolutely that she’d been prepared to go through with her threat. To end her own life.
“He wouldn’t have liked that,” he said, imagining the man’s reaction to the threat of having his victim permanently removed from his sick games.
“He started screaming at me. Cursing me. He said if I dared take the easy way out—the self-serving way out, he called it—everyone I’d ever cared about would die, as well. And he would be angry enough when he killed them that he would make sure they suffered.”
“He’s insane.”
Page snorted with a spurt of the spirit she’d subdued since she’d begun her tale. “What was your first clue?”
“And you have absolutely no idea who he is?” They’d been over that question before, but Gabe was still finding it hard to believe someone could hate her that much without her even suspecting who it was.
“I don’t know,” she repeated flatly. Believably. “If I did, I would tell you. I’ve told you everything else.”
“Everything?”
She shrugged. “You know the rest of the story. I’ve kept moving, changing identities, cities, finding work when I ran out of money, doing my best to keep from endangering anyone else along the way. I lied, of course, when I told you I’d been with other men. There were no men. No friends, no lovers, no one. I tried so hard not to let anyone get close enough to be endangered just by being near me.”
Rubbing a weary hand over her face, she said, “Everywhere I went, he found me, no matter how well I thought I’d covered my tracks. Sometimes it took him a few weeks or months, but there was always a day when an envelope arrived in the mail or beneath my door.”
She moistened her lips. “The day you found me, in Des Moines, I had just received two more photos. One of you. One of the woman who managed the apartments where I was living. I hadn’t befriended her, but I liked her. She was kind to me, no matter how often I rebuffed her friendly gestures. Her kindness had put her in danger. I knew I had to run again, to protect her.”
“And you ran straight into me.”
She groaned. “Yes. I was horrified to see you. I knew if he found out you were near me
, that you had entered my life again, he’d...”
She couldn’t finish that sentence.
“He always finds out,” she whispered. “He’s the devil, and he can’t be stopped.”
Her eyes turned wild again, her voice frantic. “Gabe, please. Let me go. Get away from me—as far as you can. I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you.”
He was a bit shaken by her passionate plea, but he shook his head. “If you’re asking me again to go home and forget about you, don’t. I won’t do it.”
She made a strangled sound—half sob, half growl—and shook her hand free of his. “Don’t you understand?” she shouted. “This man is a murderer! And you will be his next victim if you don’t do what I ask.”
“Not if we find him first.”
From her reaction, he might as well have suggested they sprout wings and fly to safety.
