What the hell was she doing fighting ghosts, charging at windmills, focusing her own pain in the wrong direction? For a second she listened to the rhythmic beat of his heart, slow and steady. Comforting. And she closed her eyes to drink in the smell of him as her thoughts swirled not only with images of Arianna, but of Zoe Denning, Selma, and Chloe, she finally stopped, her strength gone.

Chloe. That poor girl.

Brianna blinked suddenly. Opened her eyes to stare up at the man looking down so intently at her. His eyes were filled with pain and all his pride seemed to have dissolved in their struggle. “I said, ‘I’m sorry,’” he repeated so sincerely, her heart nearly broke.

“So am I,” she admitted, then pushed herself out of the arms that held her so intimately against him. What was she thinking, letting him comfort her? “Just drive,” she ordered, as the motorcycle roared by. “Just . . . get in and drive.”

She made her way to his damned truck and hoisted herself inside without his assistance. As he slid behind the wheel and engaged the gears, her heart bled one more time and in this instance she realized her pain was because of the torture he’d obviously been through ever since witnessing Arianna being attacked.

From the opposite direction, a huge truck piled high with bales of hay rolled by but she barely noticed as Jase eased the truck onto the pavement, then hit the gas.

Dashing the tears from her eyes, Brianna squared her shoulders and fixed her gaze through the bug spattered windshield, staring forward to the ever-lowering sun. Whatever fantasies she’d had about Jase Bridges had to be squashed. Forever. The teenage crush. The sexy dreams. The daytime thoughts. All had to be abolished.

Right now she’d concentrate on their destination: the Tillman farm where, she hoped beyond hope, they would find Chloe.

Alive.

From her underground jail cell, Chloe heard him arrive, the excited yips of the dog, the heavy tread on the floor above. So this was it. He was back to kill her. She wondered about Zoe and prayed that her sister was alive. Please, God, save her, she thought as she heard the latch on the lock click open, then the scrape of the ladder as he was readying it to be slid into this rotten-smelling prison.