Survival Instinct Read Online Free Page A

they were.
    Though he was getting one.
    The first man gave a little snort. “No, she shouldn’t be any trouble. That was the whole point of dating her, he said.”
    Ellen looked up at the porch with brows drawn, that wide mouth set in a hint of scowl. Dave leaned down, just enough to reach her ear, just enough to brush her hair. She’d been working that morning, all right; the salty scent of her skin tickled his nose just as her hair tickled his face. He murmured, “Do you know him?”
    She drew back from him, gave him a look he couldn’t decipher and finally shook her head. “Can’t remember,” she said, barely voicing the words at all. Just a hint of whiskey alto on the air.
    The men argued for a few moments. Ellen abruptly pushed away from the wall, moving silently through the basement. “What’re you—”
    “I’ve heard enough.” She picked a few gardening hand tools off the workbench—gloves, a trowel and a clawlike cultivator. “They’ll be back if they don’t talk to me now. At least this way I get to choose the moment.”
    “And you want me to just—”
    “Watch my back.” She raised an eyebrow. Expressive. “You can handle that, right?”
    “Yeah, and I can also go out there and ask —”
    She gave a sharp shake of her head. “I want answers, not confrontation.”
    He thought of how badly he needed his own answers. “I can—”
    Apparently she wasn’t in the habit of letting people finish what she thought would be stupid sentences. “Look, this isn’t your choice. You may have brought these two down on me, but I’ll decide how I deal with it.”
    Dave closed his eyes. He’d been in dim basements—some of them ominous, some of them stinking of the very person he’d hoped to find alive. And he’d dealt with irate witnesses. But not once had he envisioned himself lurking in a basement while the irate witness went out to play some sort of game with the questionable gentlemen who’d come to find her.
    But she was right. It was her home…her choice. And maybe, just maybe, she’d get answers that they wouldn’t give him. Watch it, Hunter. Don’t put her at risk for those answers. That wasn’t how he worked. He opened his eyes to find her impatient and somehow even less like the Ellen he remembered.
    “I’ll let you know if I want a hand,” she told him. Still softly, as had been all their conversation. Still very aware of the men on the porch—who now banged on the mudroom door hard enough to make their true intentions clear. Ellen told the dog to wait and then told Dave, “Just be ready.”
    And with that she marched to the nearest door, leaving him with a plethora of unanswered questions, a definite sense of skewed reality, his hands wishing for the weight of the Ruger he’d left in the car. Ready for what?
    To judge by the purpose in her stride, he was about to find out.

Chapter 3
    K arin paused at the basement’s side door, hefting the hand cultivator. She stuffed the worn leather gloves in her front jeans pocket and the trowel into her back pocket, and she glanced back at Dave Hunter. Assessing him.
    She needed him to wait, but she also wanted the backup if things went badly. She wasn’t sure if he’d do either.
    He stood in the filtered light, the posture of a man who was fit, who knew himself and knew what he could do. But she didn’t need him barging into the discussion, not when she still might chase these fellows off without too much fuss.
    Not a very big chance. But still a chance.
    He shifted his weight back. He’d wait, then. And in the end, he’d do what everyone did—serve their own best interests. She turned away, hesitating just long enough to swipe her fingers along the dirty windowsill and smear the dirt across her cheek, tugging a few strands of hair loose from her low ponytail.
    When she walked out the door, she put on an air of distraction. A woman at work, thinking about frost dates and soil preparation and just how many zucchini would that one