How much time did she have? Minutes? Seconds? Did she imagine the flush of the toilet and running of the water? There was so much ringing in her ears it was hard to tell.
She tried not to think about how much her head hurt or the long slide down the roof onto the ground if she lost her balance, and carefully crept along the rough asphalt shingles to a corner at the far side of the front porch.
Now came the hard part: getting off the roof. It was a good fifteen feet to the ground. She peered into the semidarkness below and the ground seemed to sway. Or maybe that was her. The dizziness was getting worse, and she was fighting to keep the meager contents of her stomach where it belonged. Taking a deep breath, she used the vines of a long-dead plant that were wrapped round a gutter and the wooden slats of the house to work her way down.
As she didn’t have a car, her plan was to hide in thecellar—the house had the kind that could be accessed from the outside—until Scott left. She’d then retrieve her purse and keys before making her way back into the town through the countryside.
It all hinged on Scott assuming that she’d run into the fields or to the road and going after her.
Somehow she made it to the bottom. Or what she thought was the bottom. The dirt ground was dark below her feet and she misjudged the distance when she jumped the last couple of feet.
Her body jolted with the unexpected pressure of the extra distance, turning her legs into jelly. Under normal circumstances she might have been able to keep her balance, but her equilibrium was off and she fell on her backside.
The force of it took the wind from her lungs—and her sails. What was she doing? She wasn’t Spider-Woman or a trained operative; she was a farm girl from Minnesota. She was lucky she hadn’t killed herself with her little jaunt across the roof.
Her head was pounding, and she could barely see straight. She didn’t need to be a doctor to realize that she must have a concussion.
Where did she think she was going to go anyway? Relentlessness was in the Navy SEAL DNA. Scott was just going to keep coming after her. He was one of the most highly trained warriors in the world, skilled not just in physical strength and toughness but in intelligence, tactics, escape, survival, and clandestine operations. She was a reluctant spy thrown into a situation way over her head who only knew the basics of self-defense. How long did she think she could stay ahead of him?
She hadn’t had a chance of escape since the first moment he’d seen her.
She wanted to put her face in her hands and cry with frustration, but she was suddenly jerked to her feet.
• • •
Scott didn’t think he was still capable of being disappointed, but he clearly had a stupid chip when it came to Natalie.
She’d seemed so dazed and groggy the couple of times he’d woken her up that he’d just about convinced himself that she was telling the truth. When he got back from taking a piss, he’d half expected her to be lying there still asleep.
He knew immediately where she’d gone, as the broom from the hall that he’d propped strategically in the bedroom doorjamb hadn’t moved. However, the window—or more precisely the curtain that he’d left tucked in it—had.
He’d been standing on the porch waiting for her as she made her way off the roof and nearly broke her leg by the fall into the dead flower bed. Obviously the Russians had neglected the escape-from-second-floor-of-a-building training. She sure as hell wasn’t going to win any Spy of the Year prizes.
Still, something about the fall pissed him off. Not just that she’d run from him at the first opportunity, or that she could have killed herself on that roof, which from the look of it, didn’t seem all that sturdy. But that she was willing to go to such lengths to get away from him seemed to reinforce just how far apart they were now. The woman he’d thought he loved and had wanted to marry was now climbing out of second-floor windows to get away from him.
It was like a bad dream. Except it wasn’t. It was painfully real.
Her attempt at escape also told him something else. He took her by the arm and hauled her up. “I knew you were lying.”
She blinked, looking a little dazed and confused. “Lying?”
“About the baby.” How the hell could she lie about something like that?
She seemed taken aback. “I’m not lying.”
“Yeah, right. Then why the hell else are you running? And I don’t know a lot of pregnant women stupid enough to climb out of a window when a fall like that could make you lose the baby.”
Suddenly she blanched. “Oh my God,” she said, with wide eyes. “I didn’t think. Do you think...?” Her eyes filled with tears as her hand covered her stomach. “I didn’t mean to hurt it; I was just scared.”
Now he was really angry. She was taking this way too far. “Stop it,” he said. “Just stop it. Enough with the baby... oh, shit.”
She swooned in his arms and lost consciousness. If he hadn’t been holding her by the shoulders she would have crumpled to the ground like a rag doll. He knew she wasn’t faking it; she was utterly deadweight in his arms.
At first he thought it was something he’d done. He’d been holding her. But he hadn’t shaken her... had he? But then his hand reached around to cradle her head and he felt it—the huge knot at the back of her head.
She hadn’t been lying—not about the fall at least. Why hadn’t she said anything?
She had, he realized. He just hadn’t believed her.
