When She Wasn't Looking Read Online Free Page A

was telling the truth, that I can’t stay. Someone is after me.”
    “Running isn’t the answer.”
    “It’s worked so far.”
    He leaned closer to her. “Call and we’ll figure out everything else later.”
    “But I—”
    “Just dial.” His head lolled to the side. “Please.”
    She didn’t know if it was the pain in his voice or the pleading, but she gave in, threw all rational thought aside and pressed the buttons. On the second ring, she glanced over at him. The color had left his face and his hands opened and closed as if he were trying to keep the blood flowing.
    “This is a mistake.” Courtney didn’t realize she’d said the words out loud until she heard them.
    His rough laugh turned into a cough. “At least the day can’t get worse.”
    But she knew better.

Chapter Four
    Kurt Handler stared at the closed file on the edge of his desk. He didn’t have to open it. He knew every line contained in the four-inch-thick folder. No one else ever read through it or touched it. He carried the pages with him in his briefcase and in his head. The words haunted his nights and hovered over him during the day.
    He spun his chair around and stared out the windows lining the wall behind his desk. He’d been watching over this part of Washington, D.C., his small corner of the world with the famous Watergate and Kennedy Center as his neighbors, for a decade.
    He earned every square foot of the tenth-floor office space. He put in endless hours, ignoring his sons’ baseball games and wife’s pleas for more time at home, to focus on his commercial-real-estate business.
    His job was to stockpile money and guarantee security for all four of them. Every time the market took a downturn, he adjusted. When his competitors struck, he hit back even harder. He owned huge portions of this city. In an area driven by power, he brokered more deals, negotiated more dollars, than any of the new-money business owners trying to muscle into his territory.
    He’d survived and thrived, putting his kids through college and gifting them with trust funds that would ensure they’d never have to struggle or beg as he had. The idea he could lose it all because of the meddling of an ignorant girl made him furious.
    She refused to accept the facts in front of her and move on. She insisted the police got it all wrong. She could ruin everything.
    He waited for his associate in that craphole of a town in Oregon to check in. Kurt hated depending on someone else for help, but he had hired the best. And if he had to take care of the problem on his own this time, he would.
    * * *
    F IVE HOURS , an ambulance, two police cars and a hydraulic spreader later, Jonas sat on an emergency-room table with his legs dangling over the side and his shoulder bandaged.
    They were lucky to be alive. The mangled metal formerly known as a car had crashed around them but not into them. A thousand little things had probably made the difference, but the rough terrain and the crawling speed he was forced to drive had made survival an option.
    The hospital loudspeaker spewed a constant stream of announcements. Nurses rushed in and out of the individual cubicles lining the L-shaped room. He heard bells and alarms, smelled the harsh scent of antiseptic.
    He blocked it all out and concentrated on everything that had happened since he showed up on Courtney’s doorstep that morning. The pieces sat there, but he couldn’t put them together in a comprehensible way. Chases, car accidents, killing. Not his favorite way to spend a day.
    It all led back to her, to something in her past. It, whatever “it” was, put her in danger and nearly got him killed. He’d figure it out. At the very least he intended to gather more intel before getting into a car with her the next time.
    He also vowed not to leave her side until the threat passed. Right now she lay in a bed on the other side of the flimsy curtain. He could hear her grumbling, even had to argue with her a few times when she