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shoulder, and added, "Then I'll grab my things and we'll get on out of here."
    While she waited, she took in the spacious living room. Newspapers and Time magazines were scattered over the top of a coffee table, along with a couple of hardbound books with worn bindings.
    A straw cowboy hat rested on the back of a leather recliner that also had a denim western shirt draped over it. A couple of soda pop cans stood on an end table, and a large TV took up one corner of the room. She liked that the place had a lived-in look about it.
    At the same time, she felt antsy, like bugs crawled over and under her skin. She rubbed her upper arms with her hands and rocked from her heels to her toes.
    The People. The People had found her. She was on the run—again. She tried to fight the memories as her thoughts turned to the past, but she couldn't stop the images flashing in her mind. And she couldn't stop the old wounds from opening up again.

    For so long she'd been angry at her father and hated her mother. If her police officer father hadn't died in the line of duty, she wouldn't be in this mess. If her mother hadn't been so weak, they would never have ended up in the Temple of Light.
    Lyra clenched her fists. The memory of how she'd found out her father had died was so vivid, it would never leave her mind. She still remembered the faces of the police officers who had come to their home to tell her and her mother that Lyra's father had been murdered during a bank robbery. The way the two police officers tried to keep their expressions stoic. How bright the sunlight had been as it streamed through the windows.
    The scents of freshly mowed grass and her mother's roses coming in through the open French doors. The ticking of the kettle-shaped clock in the kitchen.
    And the prickling of her scalp. The stinging of her skin. The unreality of it all, as if she were someone on the outside watching the scene.
    It had taken her years to realize it wasn't her father's fault for getting killed in the line of duty and leaving her and her mother so that they ended up in the cult. But when Lyra was younger, she couldn't help but feel that if he had chosen a career other than being a cop, he'd still be alive and the Temple of Light would never have happened.
    What Neal had done to her… She shuddered. Once in the cult the other men treated women and girls as subservient. The only reason Lyra hadn't been raped was the Prophecy. Underage sex and forced "marriages" for girls from ages fifteen to eighteen was the norm in the cult, something Neal encouraged. Ironic that the one thing that made her life a living hell, the so-called Prophecy, had saved her from being raped. He hadn't been allowed to touch her until she was eighteen, and he'd never had the chance because she'd escaped.
    When it came to men, she'd learned to keep her distance, but here she was, her life and freedom in the hands of one tall, dark cowboy.
    How could she put any trust in this man named Dare?
    Goddamnit. She couldn't—no, she wouldn't—allow him to take control of her life in any way.
    Dare walked into the living room, carrying a large duffle, and he'd washed all the blood off his face. His eye was red and one side of his face seemed a little swollen. The scratches from her nails were dark against his tanned skin.
    A jolt of awareness shot through Lyra. Fear? Mistrust? Or something else?
    "Let's go." He grasped her hand before she could react, and she winced at the contact.
    Her palms burned where the skin had been scraped off. Dare caught her pained expression and relaxed his grip on her just enough to examine both of her palms.
    With a frown he said, "What did you do?"
    "No big deal." She tried to pull her hands away, but he caught her by one wrist too easily. "Happened when I fell."
    Without another word, Dare held on to her and led her into what appeared to be the master bedroom and to the adjoining bathroom. He closed the lid on the toilet and made her sit on it. After he