‘What are you doing here, then?’
‘I’ve come to warn you that two men have broken out of the high security prison. It was on the news when I was in the car. I went to your place and found you gone…then as I was driving past, I saw your car parked here.’
‘Two men…’ Kate’s forehead creased in a frown. It was of course a very serious matter, but hardly important enough for him to have delivered the news in person.
‘The police don’t think they’ve gone very far. In fact they suspect they’re probably keeping under cover at the moment—they’re both armed, but they’re still in prison uniform. The first thing they’re going to want is a change of clothes, food, money, and possibly some form of security.’
‘Security…?’ Kate was baffled until Dominic exclaimed harshly, ‘Hostages, Kate…bargaining counters so that the police are forced to let them go free.’
‘Hostages… You mean…?’ She looked at him and read the truth in his grim face. ‘You think they might…?’ Her voice tailed away faintly as she remembered how close the cottage and her house were to the prison, and how remote from anything else, and she shivered slightly. ‘I…’
‘You’re coming back to the house with me, now,’ Dominic told her curtly, ‘and I’m staying the night. And before you start making any objections, my motives are entirely altruistic. Tomorrow we’ll make other arrangements. You can stay with Vera and Ian, or your friend Sue, but it’s too late for any of that tonight.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘It’s gone ten now. In another half an hour it will be dark.’
Kate shivered beneath the grimness of his voice, her mind conjuring up unpleasant pictures of the loneliness of the landscape around the cottage.
‘Nothing to say?’
Her mouth had gone dry and she touched her lips tentatively with the tip of her tongue.
‘I’m very grateful to you for your concern,’ she said woodenly at last, ‘but…’
‘Well, you are the widow of an old friend,’ Dominic said derisively. ‘Oh, it’s all right, Kate,’ he added curtly, completely misreading the haunted expression that crossed her face, ‘I’ve no intention of usurping Allwood’s role in your life.’ His mouth curled a little as he asked her tauntingly, ‘Does he know yet that you and I have been lovers?’
This was getting ridiculously out of hand. She ought to tell Dominic that Martin Allwood meant absolutely nothing to her, but somehow she could not.
‘Aren’t you frightened I might not be able to resist the temptation to tell him?’ he demanded savagely, watching her recoil from the cruelty of his words with something almost approaching pleasure.
Kate felt as though she was being torn apart. Why was he torturing her like this?
‘Why… why should you do that?’ she managed unevenly at last.
‘Why?’ He looked both incredulous and furious. He moved and for one moment Kate thought he actually meant to shake her, then he stepped back again, cursing softly under his breath.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ he told her flatly, propelling her towards the door with a hand on the flat of her back.
Kate let him move her, protesting only when she reached her car that she could not leave it there and travel back with him. He let her get in it and waited for her to start it up, following her all the way back to the house, and parking his BMW next to her Mini so that she was blocked in.
Although she didn’t want him staying with her, he was right about it being too late for her to foist herself off on either Vera or Sue tonight, and she certainly did not relish the prospect of being alone in the house with two dangerous criminals on the loose.
Dominic followed her inside the house, carefully locking the door behind him. It had bolts as well as a lock, although Kate rarely used them. It gave her a strange feeling as she watched Dominic slide them into place, almost as though suddenly they were separated from the rest of the world.
‘I’ll go round and check all the windows and doors.’
Kate made a small sound of protest in her throat and watched him turn to look at her. As he stood in the shadows his face took on a closed, almost remote, look as though he was suffering from intense pain.
‘Surely that isn’t necessary?’ she began, only to fall silent when he said quietly, ‘You read the papers, don’t you, Kate? You must surely remember what happened the other summer?’
Her mind prodded by his words suddenly flung up memories of the dreadful ordeals endured by the inhabitants of a small village which had been terrorised by an escaped gunman. Several women had been raped and… Kate shuddered, and Dominic said quietly, ‘Yes… exactly.’
‘I… I’ll go and make us something to eat,’ she offered uncertainly. ‘Have you…are you…?’
‘No, I haven’t eaten, and yes, I am hungry,’ Dominic told her, but Kate had the impression that he knew how desperately she wanted to get her mind off what she had just remembered and that he was saying he was hungry more for her sake than his own. But why should he show her such compassionate caring? It was completely foreign to his nature—at least where she was concerned. She had seen him being charming enough to other people.
Luckily the house insurers had insisted the previous year that Kate have window locks fitted, and while Dominic went round checking that all these were in place and securing them Kate busied herself in the kitchen.
She was acutely conscious of the silence outside in a way that she had never been before, jumping at every tiny sound, the hairs prickling nervously at the back of her neck as she tried to concentrate on making them a simple supper.
The phone rang, but before she could get to it it stopped. Frowning, she went into the drawing-room, to discover Dominic just replacing the receiver.