Sam fought a wave of cold terror as she stared at the weapon

“Don’t . . .” she gasped out.

He laughed. “About my name. I like Patterson better than Patton. Yeah, James Patterson.”

The comment made no sense. “What?”

“You ever read his Kiss the Girls?  That’s a favorite of mine. I got a lot of great ideas from that book. Get in the car,” he said, his voice easy and confident now that he’d seen her fear.

His hood had fallen back, revealing a square face and shaggy dark hair. She stared into his hard eyes, the color of flint, and the book he’d mentioned came slamming into her mind. The story was about a man who kidnapped women and held them captive. He made them bend to his will, then killed them when he got tired of them. If she got in that SUV, she was a dead woman, and she was pretty sure it wasn’t going to be an easy passing. She’d rather turn and run and take her chances in the woods.  Of course, he could quickly fell her with a bullet in the leg, and then he’d still have her where he wanted her.

She was trying to decide what to do when the twin beams of headlights cut through the white curtain falling around them.

From where they stood on the shoulder of the road, Patton looked toward the oncoming vehicle.  “Hurry up. Get in.”

“Maybe you’d better get out of here while you still can,” she countered, forcing as much bravado as she could into her voice.

The man answered in a silky tone. “No, I think I’ll wait here and shoot whoever gets out of that car.”

Lord, no. Was she going to get an innocent bystander killed—before this Patton guy bundled her off to a mountain cave or an abandoned house?

The vehicle that pulled onto the shoulder was another SUV.  Sam kept her eyes glued to the windshield, trying to see who was in there, but the interior was too dark to make out anyone. The wipers cut off, and she waited long seconds for the driver to get out.  When the door opened, the light did not go on. But a tall figure emerged, and Sam felt her insides clench.

It looked like a man wearing a parka. He was hatless, and in the snow and gathering gloom, she saw dark hair but not much else.  He stood behind his open door, peering at them through the swirl of flakes. “You got car trouble?  Need some help?” he called out from beside his vehicle.

“No, we’re fine,” Patton responded.

The newcomer hesitated, as though he sensed that the answer wasn’t sincere.

Sam was ready for Patton to make his move. When she saw his arm jerk, she screamed, “Watch out.” Slinging her purse off her shoulder, she lashed out at the man beside her, striking him in the head.

“Bitch,” he shouted, as he fired his gun, getting off a couple of shots in the direction of the other vehicle.

Sam tried to throw herself down the hill where she’d gone off the road, but Patton grabbed her by the collar of her coat and kept her from escaping.

The stranger ducked low behind his open door.  Then he was back inside, driving toward them. Patton hung on to Sam. Although she tried to dig her boots into the gravel of the shoulder, he dragged her along as he made for his vehicle.

He threw the back door open and tried to shove her inside, but sheer panic gave her strength.  Reaching for the post beside the door, she wrapped her gloved hands around it and held on with a death grip.

As Patton shoved at her, she kicked backwards, pounding at his legs with her boots.

“Damn you,” he shouted, making one more try to get her into the SUV, but she kept her grip on the car’s exterior. With a curse, he shoved her aside and turned to the other car, shooting a volley of bullets that hit the windshield and the car’s body.  Still the car kept coming, and Patton must have decided to cut his losses. She had already leaped away, hitting the ground and rolling partway down the hill.  Patton gave her a furious look, but she was too far away for him to come after her and also make his escape. He leaped into the front seat, started his engine and roared off into the blizzard.

Sam lay on the ground, dazed and shaken, watching the vehicle’s taillights recede.  But when she heard footsteps crunching across the gravel toward her, she struggled to sit up.

“Are you okay?” a deep voice asked.

“Mostly,” she answered.  At least she was only a little banged up from the car crash. And she was still out here in the blizzard instead of in that monster’s car.

To prove she was fine, she struggled to her feet and almost fell over. The man who’d chased away the killer plowed down the hill toward her.  She gazed up into dark eyes, and a face reddened by the cold. His gaze was as intense as Patton’s, but it held an entirely different quality. There was a clean masculinity about him. He looked like a guy who did an honest day’s work—as a carpenter or maybe a lumberjack. That last fanciful observation almost had her laughing at herself.

“Do I know you?” she asked in a trembling voice because she couldn’t shake a sense of familiarity.

“No,” he answered quickly.

“But I feel like I do. Or you know me.”

He answered with an indrawn breath.

Maybe her brain was finally cracking under the strain of the past half hour—sliding off the road, almost being scooped up by a man who was certainly planning to kill her.

When she swayed on her feet, the hero of the evening caught her in his arms, and pulled her close, steadying her. Closing her eyes, she clung to him, reassured by his strength and his solid body. He stroked his hands over her back and shoulders.

“You’re safe now.”

From murder. But she didn’t feel entirely safe on a deep personal level. Patton had pretended that he was going to rescue her. She couldn’t let go of the feeling that this man was pretending something, too.

Her hat had fallen off in the scuffle. Had he lowered his head and brushed his lips against her hair? Or was that purely her imagination?

Putting a little distance between them, she lifted her head and searched his face. “What’s your name?”

“Jax Warden.”

It wasn’t familiar.

“And you are?” he asked, his question sounding very formal, as though he was also trying to get some distance.

“Samantha Donovan. Sam for short.”  She switched the focus back to him. “And what do you do?”

“I work for a security agency. I’ve been staking out this stretch of road, waiting for the bastard to do his thing again.”

“Oh.” The breath whooshed out of her lungs as she pulled away. “How do I know any of that’s true?”

He dug into his pocket, brought out his wallet and flipped it open to a plastic card issued by something called Decorah Security.  It had his picture and his name. 

“Okay?”

She nodded.  He could have gone to a lot of trouble to fake it, but it looked legit—as far as she could tell in the headlights of his SUV and the driving snow.

“What were you doing out here?” he asked, repeating Patton’s question.

“Trying to get to my parents’ house for Christmas,” she clipped out.

He looked up at the falling flakes. Instead of commenting on her decision, he said, “The guy wasn’t expecting anyone to crash his party. Not on a night like this. We need to get out of here, before he reloads and comes back.”

She shuddered, looking toward the ruined windshield and the bullet holes in the side of his SUV. “Can you drive it?”

“I hope.” He peered down the hill where her car had taken its fateful ride. “Maybe we’d better get the food.”

She had decided to trust him. Now she reared back. “What?”

###

Jax made a sound low in his throat, mentally kicking himself for giving something away. “You were going home for Christmas.  You were bringing food to your parents, weren’t you?”

Her eyes narrowed. “How would you know that?”

“It makes sense.”

When she continued her ten-mile stare he added, “My agency sent me because I know things.”

Her jaw jutted out. “What things?”

He wasn’t going to tell her about his psychic abilities. Not now. Maybe never if he could help it. He settled for: “I knew something bad was going to happen here tonight. That’s why I was on the road in this weather.”

“How?”

“Working the probabilities,” he answered, wishing the conversation had not gone in this direction. He could see she wanted to keep asking questions, but he said again. “We need to get away from here. Do you want me to lock your car?”

When he saw her hesitating, he wanted to demand that she trust him. But trust wasn’t something you could order up.  Finally, after a few seconds hesitation, she fumbled in her purse and pulled out a key ring.

Jax took it and started down the hill, half walking and half sliding through the snow piling up on the ground.

“That went well,” he muttered to himself as he fought to stay upright, following her tire tracks, which were rapidly disappearing under a blanket of white.

Of course he hadn’t been straight with her. Samantha wouldn’t have believed him if he’d told her the truth.

But he’d left his lair as soon as he realized she was in trouble.

Samantha.  He hadn’t known her name until she’d told him—which was one of the maddening aspects of his talent. He’d been seeing flashes of her life for days, but he hadn’t been able to drag her name into the vision. If he had, he would have rushed over to her house and warned her. Instead he’d been reduced to patrolling this stretch of highway, looking for her Ford Focus.  Too bad he hadn’t been able to see the big Black Dodge SUV that was also out tonight, but his impressions had been coming from Sam—not the killer. When he’d closed his eyes and gotten into a delta brain wave state, he’d been able to see her clearly—her blond hair, her pretty little nose, her blue eyes fringed with surprisingly dark lashes. He’d seen worry in those eyes—and also determination. He would have liked to enjoy figuring out who she was. But fear had always been in the back of his mind as he’d watched her. He knew she was heading for a dangerous confrontation, and if he didn’t get there in time, she would get scooped up by the killer who had been prowling this stretch of highway. 

He slid the final few feet to her car, banging against the cold metal. When he had steadied himself, he unlocked the door, looked at the stuff in the back, and pulled out the two carry bags of food.  He also saw a duffel, which he knew held the clothing she’d planned to wear at her parents’. When he hefted it, he found it wasn’t heavy.  He hoisted it over his shoulder, locked the car, and started up the hill.  The return trip was a lot more difficult than the slide down. More snow had fallen, and every step threatened to send him tumbling back the way he’d come. He had to turn his feet sideways and use them as wedges against the incline. It was slow going. When he got within a few yards of the top, Sam slid down and took one of the food bags. Together, they staggered the rest of the way to his SUV, where he slung everything into the back. 

To his relief, the engine turned over. But he was concerned about the fusillade of bullets into the car.

“What?” she asked when she caught his grim expression.

“Let’s pray that none of his slugs hit the radiator or the gas tank.”