The Getaway Bride

“Dave, help me!” the guy on top of him yelled. “I can’t hold him by myself.”

The other young man promptly threw himself on top of the mini pile. The commotion had drawn attention from other apartments. Already others were rushing to help—or to gawk.

“Give me at least fifteen minutes,” Page called from her car. A car Gabe recognized—he’d helped her pick it out the week before the wedding.

“Page, stop!” Gabe shouted after her, momentarily ignoring the others. “Don’t do this. I only want to talk to you—”

The roar of her car engine drowned out his words.

2

PAGE HAD NO DESTINATION in mind when she left Des Moines. She drove aimlessly, almost blindly, south. When she passed the car dealership where she’d worked for the past five months, she didn’t even glance back.

She’d driven away from so many different places in the past thirty months that it barely caused her a pang to do so now. She would call Monday and let someone know she wouldn’t be back. Her employer would be angry, but no one would worry about her enough to list her as a missing person. They would simply assume that she’d rudely quit without notice.

She doubted that anyone ever missed her when she made these abrupt moves. They missed her efficiency, perhaps, but not her. She’d made sure of that. There was only one person in the past two and a half years who’d probably grieved for her when she’d left, and she’d told herself that he’d gotten over her long ago.

Out of habit, she touched the thin gold chain at her throat, where it disappeared beneath the collar of her shirt. She still couldn’t believe that Gabe had found her. She’d nearly had a heart attack when he’d stepped in front of her on that walkway. It had been like seeing a ghost.

Or like seeing a long-mourned part of herself.

How had he found her? How long had he been searching for her? And what was the connection between running into him and the photographs that had arrived in her mail? Both incidents had occurred the same day. Was it simply a bizarre twist of fate—or was it something much more sinister?

She tried to calm herself by focusing on the music coming from the cassette deck. And then she realized what song was playing. Sawyer Brown’s Mark Miller was warning her that even the quickest way wasn’t fast enough when you run from love.

She turned off the stereo and reached up to wipe at her face, finding it wet. She didn’t know how long she’d been driving with tears streaming down her face. She swallowed a sob. She wouldn’t cry. She never allowed herself to cry.

She forced herself to concentrate on her driving. Though she had little regard for her own life these days, as cold and empty as it had become, she was desperately determined not to cause harm to anyone else. That sole motivation had kept her alone and on the run for more than two years.

KEEPING IN TOUCH by cellular phone, Blake and Gabe caught up with Page in Wichita, Kansas, several hours after she’d escaped Gabe in Des Moines.

Gabe couldn’t help but be impressed with Blake; the guy seemed to have an almost psychic ability to locate Page. The other two detectives Gabe had previously hired had not been nearly as efficient.

As though sensing that he’d be needed, Blake had been nearby when Gabe had gone to confront Page at her apartment. He’d seen what had happened with the young men who’d rushed to “rescue” her from Gabe, and had followed Page at a discreet distance when she’d left town.

&n

bsp; When she’d checked into a motel in Wichita, Blake had taken a room directly across from hers where he could keep an eye on things until Gabe arrived.

Her only stop, Blake informed his client after Gabe had slipped discreetly into his room, had been at a small pharmacy just inside the Wichita city limits. She’d emerged with a small plastic bag and had driven straight to this motel. She hadn’t been out of her room since.

Gabe paced the cramped motel room like an enraged panther, his blood pounding in his ears.

“Why did she look at me that way when I tried to talk to her?” he demanded. “Why did she scream and run when I touched her arm?”

Sprawled in a chair by the window, his fingers templed in front of him, Blake watched Gabe’s movements with searching eyes. “You said she acted terrified to see you. What threat do you pose to her?”

“None,” Gabe insisted, throwing up his hands for emphasis. “I never laid a hand on her. Never even raised my voice to her. Hell, we weren’t married long enough to have our first fight. There’s no reason on earth for her to fear me.”

He’d said similar words to the Des Moines police when they’d arrived at the summons of the apartment dwellers who’d acted as though he were an ax murderer. He’d told them that Page was his wife, that he’d only wanted to talk to her, that she hadn’t given him a chance to speak—much less frighten her—before she’d started screaming for help.

The police had been suspicious, but there’d been no reason to hold him, particularly since Page had disappeared. His record had checked out clean, of course, and there was no one to file a formal complaint against him. He’d been released with a stern warning not to cause any further trouble.

Blake continued to watch him. “There must be something,” he mused. “Did she take any money when she left you? Any valuable personal belongings? Is she worried that you want to charge her with theft? Did you tell me everything when you hired me?”

“She didn’t take anything from me,” Gabe answered wearily. Nothing tangible, anyway, he added to himself. “She didn’t even pack all her own things. As for money, there wasn’t any to steal. Nearly everything I had at that time was invested in the business.”

Just as nearly everything he’d made since then had been spent locating Page.