Mortal Danger

whatever we need to do. Take care. Talk to you soon. ’Bye.”
    He sounded so normal, as if the world hadn’t changed two days earlier. She didn’t call him; she was afraid he actually might come driving up in her car, although his sense of self-preservation would probably keep him from doing that.
    Within a week, Kate’s father arrived from Arizona, and she could finally go back to the cottage.
    She didn’t sense that John was anywhere nearby now. What would he do? Where would he go? She wondered if he might commit suicide, but she doubted it. He had told her she had ruined his life—that his life was over—but blaming her seemed to Kate to be nothing more than his tendency for high drama again. Her biggest fear was no longer for herself; she feared that he would hurt someone else, probably another woman.
    She made up her mind to do her best to find him, to see that his out-of-control behavior could be stopped. Hopefully, it would take a combination of confinement and psychological treatment.
    But where was he?
     
    Dave Gardiner moved ahead with the investigation into John Branden’s attempt to kill Kate. Gardiner didn’t doubt that it had been a serious attempt, and that Kate would probably be dead if she hadn’t managed to escape.
    With Paula Krogdahl present, Gardiner took a videotaped statement from Kate. Safe inside the sheriff’s office, with Paula and Gardiner beside her, she managed to recall the events of May 29 in detail. But, later, as they walked around the property where she and John Branden had lived for so many years, where she had come close to dying, the tension in her voice was obvious. Sergeant John Sevey, in uniform, sat in the same lawn chair in the same spot where John had waited for Kate that night. It was difficult to see the tall lawman sitting there and not see the ghost of John superimposed on him, but she blinked her eyes and John vanished. She and Gardiner walked from the lower part of the property, up the sandy path to the cottage, videotaping as they went.
    It was clear that Kate’s mind was back in that night as she pointed out where John had hit her in the face, explaining now that the nerves to her front teeth had been severed by the blow. Her clothes had been torn off and left on the ground near the rhododendron, but they had disappeared, along with John. Her shoe, however, was still caught in its branches.
    “Maybe the raccoons took my clothes away,” she murmured faintly. More likely, John had taken them with him when he’d left, perhaps to hide the blood staining them.
    As Kate and Dave Gardiner entered the house, she shuddered. Nothing had changed. The knife used to keep her from resisting was missing from the butcher block; the others were all in place. John’s clothes from that night—black sweatpants and a green sweatshirt—were gone. The guns that he had once kept in his hiding place were gone. She couldn’t be sure how many he’d secreted there. She wasn’t an expert on guns, but she had seen so many: a Colt .45, Smith & Wesson .38, an AK-47, some long guns that she couldn’t identify. John liked guns.
    There were phantom presences in the rooms now—Kate and John as they had been in their final night together. At least Kate devoutly hoped it had been their final night.
    She had a little money, but she had no job. She had no place to live. She feared that he was out there somewhere within a few hundred miles, able to get to Gold Beach in a few hours if he chose to, stalking her or planning how he could follow her every move. It wouldn’t be just a matter of her finding a little house or an apartment somewhere; she would have to relocate someplace where John wouldn’t be able to find her. She could go back to American Airlines, and she would. But would the airline be able to hide her from John?
    She had to find him, because he was terribly dangerous while he was loose. At the same time, she had to be sure he wouldn’t find her.
    It seemed impossible.

Chapter Seven
    Kate wasn’t surprised when she saw the envelope in her post office box. She recognized John’s handwriting on the envelope at once—large printing with a Sharpie pen. It was postmarked in a small town in Oregon, but she knew he wouldn’t be there. He was never in the places where his letters came from, especially when he was in trouble. She recalled how he’d had her sister mail letters for him from Sarasota during the Lakhvir trial. The date on this letter was stamped “June 9,