Perfect Read online

  It was too late. The Blazer was moving steadily across the creaking timbers, plowing snow with its bumper, tires spinning and grabbing and spinning again as the four-wheel-drive gear did its work.

  Blankets clutched to her chest, snow swirling all around her, Julie stood in a state of helpless paralysis, forced to watch what she could not prevent.

  Not until the car, along with its insane driver, reached safety did she breathe again, and then she felt a perverse rush of fury at him for putting her through yet another new terror. Ungracious and ungraceful, she trudged across the bridge, opened the passenger door, and climbed in.

  “We made it,” he said.

  Julie gave him a killing look. “Made it to what?”

  The answer to that came minutes later when they made one last hairpin turn at the top of the mountain. There in the middle of a secluded clearing in the dense pines was a magnificent house made of native stone and cedar and surrounded by wooden decks, with huge expanses of glass. “To this,” he said.

  “Who in God’s name built this place up here, a hermit?”

  “Someone who obviously likes privacy and solitude.”

  “Does it belong to a relative?” she asked, suddenly suspicious.

  “No.”

  “Does the owner know you’re going to use his place for a hideout while the police are looking for you?”

  “You ask too damned many questions,” he said, pulling the car to a stop beside the house and climbing out. “But the answer is no.” He came around to her side of the car and opened the door. “Let’s go.”

  “Go?” Julie burst out, pressing into the back of the seat. “You said I could leave when I got you here.”

  “I lied.”

  “You—you bastard, I believed you!” she cried, but she was lying, too. All day long she’d been trying desperately to ignore what her common sense had warned her: He’d kept her with him this long to prevent her from telling the authorities where he was; if he released her now, there was absolutely nothing to prevent her from doing exactly that.

  “Julie,” he said with strained patience, “don’t make this any harder on yourself than it needs to be. You’re stuck here for a few days, and it’s not that bad a place to spend some time.” With that he reached across her, snatched the keys out of the ignition, and stalked off toward the house. For a split second she was too furious and too miserable to move, then she blinked back the tears of futility stinging her eyes and got out of the car. Shivering uncontrollably in the freezing blasts of wind, she trudged in his wake, carefully placing her feet in the knee-high craters his feet made in the snow drifts surrounding the house. Wrapping her arms around herself, she watched him try the doorknob. It was locked. He rattled it hard. It was locked tight. He let go of the door handle and stood there, his hands on his hips, looking about him, momentarily lost in thought. Julie’s teeth began to chatter. “N-n-now wh-what?” she demanded. “H-h-how do you in-intend to g-get in?”

  He gave her an ironic glance. “How do you think?” Without waiting for a reply, he turned and headed toward the deck that wrapped around the front and opposite side of the house. Julie trotted doggedly at his heels, freezing and angry. “You’re going to break a window, aren’t you,” she speculated with revulsion, then she looked up at the giant panes of glass that soared to the peak of the roof at least twenty-five feet above and added, “If you break one of those, it’ll fall down and cut you to pieces.”

  “Don’t sound so hopeful,” he said, his gaze switching to several large mounds of snow that had obviously accumulated over something beneath them. He began digging in one of the mounds and unearthed a large flowerpot, which he picked up and carried toward the back door.

  “Now what are you doing?”

  “Guess.”

  “How should I know?” Julie snapped. “You’re the criminal, not me.”

  ‘True, but I was sent up for murder, not breaking and entering.”

  In disbelief, she watched him trying to dig in the frozen soil in the clay pot, then he slammed the pot against the side of the house and broke it, dumping the soil onto the snow beside the door. Wordlessly, he crouched down and began hammering his bare fist on the soil while Julie watched in incredulous amazement. “Are you having a temper tantrum?” she demanded.

  “No, Miss Mathison,” he said with exaggerated patience, as he plucked up a piece of dirt and brushed at it with his finger. “I am looking for a key.”

  “No one who can afford a house like this and pay to put a road up an entire mountain in order to get to it is going to be naive enough to hide a key in a flowerpot! You’re wasting your time.”

  “Have you always been such a shrew?” he said with an irritated shake of his dark head.

  “A shrew!” Julie said, her voice strangled with frustration. “You steal my car and take me hostage, threaten my life, lie to me, and now you have the—the gall to criticize my manners?” Her tirade was interrupted as he held up a dirt-encrusted silver object that Julie realized was a key, which he then inserted in the door. With an exaggerated flourish he swung open the door and gestured her inside with a sweep of his arm. “We’ve already agreed that I’ve broken all of Emily Post’s rules of etiquette where you’re concerned. Now, I suggest you go inside and look around while I get our things out of the car. Why don’t you try to relax,” he added. “Get some rest. Enjoy the view. Think of this as a vacation.”

  Julie glared at him open-mouthed, then snapped her jaws together and said irately, “I’m not on a vacation! I’m a hostage, and don’t expect me to forget it!”

  In answer, he gave her a long-suffering look, as if she were being impossibly difficult, so she jerked her gaze from his and marched into the house. Inside, the mountain retreat was both rustic and startlingly luxurious, built around a gigantic center room shaped like a hexagon, with three doors opening off of it into bedroom suites. Soaring wood ceilings were supported by gigantic crossbeams of rough-hewn cedar, and a winding staircase led up to a loft that was lined with handsome bookcases. Four of the six walls were made entirely of glass, offering a view of the mountains that Julie knew would be breathtaking on a clear day. The fifth wall was built of native stone with an enormous fireplace carved into the center above a raised hearth. Facing the fireplace was a long L-shaped sofa upholstered in a butter soft silvery leather. Opposite the sofa and facing the windows were two overstuffed chairs and ottomans upholstered in silver and green stripes that blended with the fat throw pillows on the sofa and raised hearth. A thick carpet with the same design as the throw pillows sculpted into the border covered part of the gleaming wooden floor in front of the fireplace. Two more pairs of chairs were positioned invitingly near two of the windows and a desk was tucked into an angle created by the glass walls. At any other time, Julie would have been awed and intrigued by what was the most unique and beautiful place she’d ever seen, but she was too upset and too hungry to give it more than passing notice

  Turning, she wandered into the kitchen area, an efficient, modernistic galley-type affair that stretched across the back wall of the house and was divided from the living room by a high counter with six leather stools in front of it. Her stomach growled as she looked at the oak cabinets and oak-fronted built-in refrigerator, but her appetite was already losing the battle with exhaustion. Feeling like a sneak thief, she opened a cabinet that contained dishes and glassware, then another that contained—luckily—a wide variety of canned goods. Deciding to make a sandwich and then go to bed, she was reaching timidly for a can of albacore tuna fish when Zack opened the back door and saw her. “Dare I hope,” he said, kicking snow off his boots, “that this means you’re domestically inclined?”

  “Do you mean, can I cook?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not for you.” Julie put the can of tuna back and closed the cabinet door just as her stomach let out an audible growl of protest.

  “Jesus, you are stubborn!” Chafing his hands against the cold, he walked over to the thermostat