Hunted Read Online Free Page B

It was how she’d learned to play poker, first watching, then finally, when she got the hang of it, they’d let her sit in on a few games.
    “How are you feeling?” Ethan asked, interrupting her memories.
    Every muscle ached and the pain in her shoulder hadn’t gotten any better. “I’m okay,” she lied.
    He reached toward her, his palm open, and with the pad of his thumb, gently brushed the bridge of her nose, then her cheeks. “You’ve got some marks here from the air bag,” he said. “Do they hurt?”
    “Not really.” Her cheeks were too cold to feel much else.
    “We should assess for other injuries,” Ethan said.
    Speaking of assessing... Wow. Ethan had grown up and into his body. At twenty-two, he’d been tall and lanky. At thirty-eight, he was still lean but his frame was thicker with muscle. His hair was still buzzed short, military-style. His face had the same strong chin, high cheekbones and dark eyes.
    He had a long, fresh scratch that started at his ear and ran down the side of his neck. She wondered if there were more scratches and cuts on his back from rescuing her from the tree. “I don’t think I’m the only one hurting,” she said.
    He shook his head. “I’m fine. Nothing a little hydrogen peroxide and ibuprofen can’t handle. I’m going to walk over to the other cabin and get my truck. There’s an emergency room about forty miles away where we can get your shoulder looked at.”
    She shook her head. “It will be fine,” she said. “I think I just sprained it. I don’t need a doctor.”
    “Can I at least take a look at it? I don’t have any formal training but I’ve spent the past twenty years with medics attached to my unit. I’ve picked up a thing or two along the way.”
    “Okay.”
    He unzipped the coat that practically hung to her knees. Very gently, he helped her pull one arm out and then he lifted the material away.
    He gently probed her shoulder area and her collarbone. When he tried to gently rotate her shoulder, it moved but it hurt a lot. “What do you think?” she asked.
    “I think you should go to the doctor. But beyond that, I’m pretty confident that you didn’t dislocate the shoulder. It appears more likely that it’s a soft-tissue injury, more of a sprain. We should get some ice on it.” He walked over to the refrigerator and opened the freezer door. It was empty. “I have ice in my cabin,” he said.
    She nodded.
    “We need to call the police,” he said. “The accident should be reported.”
    “I’ll do it in the morning. I want to get some sleep first.”
    “I suppose it’s not going to make a difference.” He studied her. “Are you going to call Mack?”
    She might have to. But not yet. If she was wrong and the attack had been totally random, she didn’t want to plant seeds of doubt. He hadn’t been crazy about her father and stepmother’s marriage, either. Had said more than once that there was something about Claudia Linder that he didn’t like. “I don’t think there’s much he can do about a car in the trees.”
    “He’d want to help. But if he’s working out of the country, it might take him a few days to get back, regardless of how much he wanted to.”
    “I guess.” Tomorrow, in the daylight, somebody was bound to see her car. If she didn’t report it, somebody else would. The car was registered in her name. It would probably only be hours before the police notified her dad and stepmother that she’d been in an accident and was missing.
    Her dad would be terrified. Her stepmother was the wild card. Would she be grieving alongside her new husband or would she start to hunt in earnest?
    By morning Chandler was going to need a plan. Right now, it simply seemed beyond her. She was tired from the drive, sore from tumbling over the mountain and almost falling out of a tree, and rather discombobulated by suddenly seeing Ethan again after all these years.
    Ethan reached down to pat Molly’s head. The dog was crowding up