Read Online Don't Look Back by Lynette Eason - Free Book Online

level, but knowing how to defend herself might just save her life. She must have read that in his gaze because she nodded. “All right.”
    “I’ll let Connor know what’s going on. He can continue the investigation into the bones and will call me if he needs me for anything.”
    “All right. Just let me tell my boss and we can go, I guess.”
    They made their necessary phone calls and within minutes were walking down to the firing range located in the basement of the station.
    “Have you ever shot a gun before?” he asked.
    “Yes, when I first came home from the hospital, I tried it a couple of times, but I never got very accurate before . . .”
    “Before what?” he pressed, seeing the distress on her features. “Before I ended up too afraid to leave my own house.” She pulled her hair up in a ponytail and pinned the escaping tendrils with a couple of bobby pins. She placed the earphones over her ears, the goggles over her eyes, and grasped the gun he handed over.
    He brought up a fresh target and said, “Aim for the chest.”
    “What about his head?”
    “Hit him in the chest first. You can go for the head once he’s down.”
    Her jaw gaped a little as she studied him to see if he was serious.
    He was. And he let her see it.
    Swallowing hard, she nodded and turned her gaze back to the target.
    Dakota moved behind her and said, “Now plant your feet apart about shoulder width, get into a comfortable stance.”
    She followed his instructions to the letter as he explained how to grip the gun, how to aim and pull the trigger. “It sounds so easy.”
    “It is once you do it for a while.”
    “What if I miss?”
    “That’s why you have more than one bullet in the gun.”
    “Right.”
    By the time they finished up an hour later, she was hitting the chest area of the target with almost every shot. No bull’s-eyes, but she could do some damage if the need arose.
    He prayed it never would.

    The Hero laughed softly to himself as he studied the pictures in the album. His treasure, his keepsake. One by one he flipped the pages. His first damsel in distress, then the second, the third – the one that got away.
    He’d gotten careless with her. She’d begged him not to slit her throat. “Anything but that,” she’d wept. “I know you’re going to kill me, but do it any way you want, just don’t use a knife.”
    He stroked her cheek with a finger, captured her tears with the digit and watched them drop to the floor. She sucked in such a brave breath and looked him in the eyes, his bright green eyes, the only thing showing through the mask he’d donned. His special mask. The one that turned him into a hero; the man who made everything better. “Then how do you wish to die, Jamie?”
    “You’re my hero,” she whispered, thrilling him with her willingness to say the words without the knife in her face, “you can save me from death.”
    “But only death stops the pain, Jamie. You have to die in order to be free.”
    She looked away for a moment, then back. He saw her desperate struggle to keep her terror under control, but she gritted through her teeth, “Fine. Shoot me.”
    He raised a brow. “I don’t shoot women, Jamie. That’s simply not . . . acceptable.”
    A minute passed as she looked down, swallowed, then looked him in the eye. “Fine. I choose drowning.”
    That surprised him. He hadn’t thought she’d actually choose. But it seemed she surprised him just about every time he turned around. Intrigued with her, he kept her longer than some of the others. But in the end he’d honored her request.
    And look where he was now. She’d escaped. And he still didn’t know how. Fury rose up in him, hard to contain, writhing to get out.
    “Stop the pain, stop the pain. Only you can do it,” the voice whispered, pushed him. “Only you can save me. Be my hero.”
    He slapped his hands over his ears and eventually the voice stopped. Picking up the bottle on the seat beside him, he looked at the