Eagle had no idea what his name was, or what he’d done in the past, but there wasn’t a doubt in his mind that Taylor wasn’t his first victim. He’d done this before. Stalked and kidnapped women to torture them.
Moving faster than his target could react, Eagle punched him in the face as hard as he could.
The man staggered but didn’t fall. He growled and lunged at Eagle, knife swinging.
Eagle sidestepped as the man got close and hit him again. This time he went to his knees, dropping the knife and instinctively reaching for his broken nose.
Before the man could get up, Eagle was on him. He got behind the man and put him in a headlock, wrapping an arm tightly around his neck. They were both on their knees, and the man frantically thrashed and bucked in his hold, throwing wild punches behind him, trying to dislodge Eagle, with no luck.
Neither spoke a word, both concentrating too hard on winning this fight. It was to the death, and they both knew it.
Eagle tightened his hold, not feeling an ounce of remorse when the man went from trying to hurt him to clawing at the arm around his throat to get it to loosen. Eagle remembered what the man had said while trying to find Taylor—that he wanted to choke her out over and over again. How he’d gloated that she wouldn’t even know if it was the same man strangling her or if she was being tortured by several different men.
The thought of his Taylor in that situation, being in any situation where someone would psychologically and physically hurt her to satisfy their own sick desires, made Eagle tighten his arm even harder.
But it would take too long to kill him this way. As much as he wanted the man to undergo the same suffering he’d obviously planned for Taylor, Eagle needed to get this done. He needed to find his woman and make sure she was all right.
The man was making gurgling sounds deep in his throat as he tried to get air into his lungs. Moving quickly, Eagle released him. As he’d hoped, the man was too relieved to finally be able to breathe to fight him. The sound of the guy gasping for breath echoed, but Eagle barely noticed. He was concentrating too hard on what he had to do.
Without hesitation, without saying even a single word, Eagle grabbed the man’s head and wrenched it to the side as hard as he could.
The snap was loud in the quiet forest, but Eagle felt no remorse whatsoever. The man had threatened Taylor. Had bragged about the horrible things he’d planned for her. The world was a better place without him in it—and more than that, Taylor was safer without him breathing.
Dropping the man facedown in the dirt, Eagle stood. Now that he’d mitigated the threat, his entire concentration was on finding Taylor. Wiping his eyes once more, he called out her name.
“Taylor?”
There was no answer.
Kneeling on the ground next to the dead man, Eagle parted the vines and looked into the hollowed-out log.
It was empty. She wasn’t there.
Confused, Eagle stood. Why had the man been looking at the tree trunk if Taylor wasn’t hiding there?
Dread blossomed in his chest, and he looked around frantically. Desperate to see some sign of Taylor, his eyes scanned every inch of the small clearing.
The sound of a helicopter high above suddenly echoed throughout the forest, but Eagle couldn’t feel relieved that the cavalry had arrived. Was Taylor lying somewhere hurt, unable to move or respond?
For the first time in his life, Eagle panicked. Was he too late?
No, he wouldn’t accept that.
“Taylor!” he yelled as loud as he could. “Where are you?”
There was no answer to his desperate call, only the sound of the helicopter’s blades rotating overhead.
Taylor barely dared to breathe. Her heart was beating so hard it was difficult to hear anything over the sound it made in her head. So much so, she’d heard her stalker talking but hadn’t been able to make out most of his words.
She’d chosen her hiding spot carefully, praying the nearby tree trunk and vines would make her kidnapper think that was where she was hiding.
It was just a decoy.
When he didn’t find her there, Taylor hoped he’d assume she was still running, would then take off in the direction he thought she’d gone. Leaving her free to double back to Eagle’s car, where she could hopefully find her phone, or Eagle’s, and call for help.
She refused to believe that the man she loved was dead. Her stalker had to have been lying to make her panic. At least, she hoped that was what he’d done.
To the side of the tiny clearing had been another huge patch of blackberry bushes. Without hesitation, Taylor had gotten down on her hands and knees and backed into them, using dirt, sticks, and leaves to bury herself further. She had no idea if she’d completely covered her clothes and hair, but she tried to control her breathing and not move even an inch.
Flinching when she heard her name being yelled loudly in the forest, Taylor did her best not to whimper in fright. If the stalker found her, he was going to kill her.
The next sound she heard was the ringing of a phone.
It was such an odd thing to hear in the middle of the forest. Taylor had no idea who her stalker was talking to—the thumping of her heart prevented her from understanding the soft conversation.
Just when she thought she’d gotten lucky, that the man had left the clearing to search for her elsewhere, the leaves above her rustled.
This was it. The man had found her—and she was going to die.
“Flower?” a man cried.
But it didn’t sound like Eagle. This man sounded unsure, frightened.
Torn between wanting to reveal herself to the man who’d used Eagle’s code word and wanting to sink into the earth, Taylor remained frozen.
Her stalker could’ve discovered the code word. He knew Eagle’s nickname, and he’d found them on the road today. He could be trying to trick her, to make her give up her position.
“Oh my God, Flower!” the man said again.
This time, Taylor could feel the dirt being brushed away.
Knowing if she was going to make a move to run, she had to do it now, Taylor lifted her head.
The second she did, she met a pair of blue eyes looking back at her in shock.
There was nothing recognizable about the man kneeling in the dirt beside her. He had blood dripping from a nasty gash in his forehead, which he’d somehow smeared all over his face and hair. But something in his gaze made her frantic heart stutter . . .
“Flower, are you hurt?”
Without the leaves and other camouflage covering her ears, or the thudding in her chest drowning him out, she could finally hear the man clearly.
The second he said her name again, Taylor knew it was Eagle.
Flying out of the bushes and flinging dirt and sticks everywhere, Taylor threw herself at Eagle. He caught her, falling back on his butt yet somehow managing to hold on. The blackberry thorns had caught in her hair and scraped up her already-bleeding arms as she’d launched herself out of her hiding spot, but Taylor didn’t care.
Eagle was alive—and he’d found her.
She knew without a doubt that this was the man she loved. Her pursuer could’ve somehow learned Eagle’s code word, but Taylor’s gut told her that he hadn’t.
And she recognized Eagle by his scent. By the way they fit together. By the feel of his arms around her.
“Eagle!” she exclaimed.
“Fuck,” Eagle swore in an agonized tone.