He was a nobody to her. A zero.

Then he thought—hell, she and the boyfriend didn’t know he had a gun. They didn’t know they had to take him seriously.

“In case you doubt me, here’s a little taste of your future!”

Robert fired a bullet into the side window, the gun kicking back the way it had when he’d shot himself in the foot. The loud bang startled him. The wind was howling so much, he didn’t hear the old glass in the window shatter. But he saw it, and smiled.

He didn’t know what he’d do next, but right now, he had the big important doctor and her hero boyfriend under his total control.

CHAPTER 9

The wind blew water and bits of leaves and twigs in through the shot-out window above the sink. The bullet had lodged in the bathroom door. It hadn’t hit anyone, no thanks, Hank thought, to the son of a bitch outside. Why the hell take a potshot at them? Just to scare them? Why not burst into the cottage and shoot them both, before they realized he had a gun?

Whoever the guy was outside, he had his own agenda, his own way of thinking—but now that they knew he had a gun, Hank realized, they had a chance. Staying low, out of the bastard’s line of sight, his arm bleeding from the knife wound, his back aching from the hit with the kayak paddle, he and Antonia had quickly barricaded the front door with an overstuffed chair and the back door with a couple of extra folding chairs. Their handiwork wouldn’t stop an intruder with a gun, but it’d give them warning, trip him up so Hank could act. He had a knife of his own now, as well as the kayak paddle and the determination not to be taken by surprise a second time.

But he didn’t think Antonia was up to any kind of combat, and he hoped it wouldn’t come to going after the man outside—killing him—in front of her.

Despite her obvious fear, she stayed calm and, once they’d secured themselves as best they could inside the cottage, insisted on bandaging his arm. “Fine,” Hank said, “provided I can keep an eye out for our friend.”

She nodded. “If I were him, I’d hide in the trees along the edge of the side yard. That way I could see both entrances and the windows. Since he shot the window above the sink—”

“It makes sense.”

They moved the table down along the wall so that Hank could sit at one end and still have a view of most of the side yard, without exposing himself in the window.