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as she closed the door of the mansion on Madden and watched
him walking back to his car. The shaking came first. Then the
chills, and, finally, the tears. They were loud, and they were
ugly. But for once it didn’t matter. There was no one here to
witness her falling apart.
    Don’t leave town. We’ll be wanting to talk
to you again, real soon.
    She told her mind to be silent and she headed
for the stairs, sobbing hard, barely able to see through the blur
of the tears in her eyes. A good thing, too, she thought as she
moved through the huge house, because the study doors were open,
and she didn’t want to see what was in there. The blood on the
floor. The marks of her bare feet drying in it.
    But the images kept replaying over and over
again in Kirsten’s mind as she ran to her room, closed the door
behind her and brushed the wetness from her face. She dragged a
suitcase from under the bed, opened it, then went to the
closet.
    He changed his will, Kirsten. Named you his
sole heir.
    “Shut up!” She rapidly tossed clothes onto
her bed.
    Don’t leave town….
    As if they really expected her to sit here,
just sit here, waiting for them to show up at the door with an
arrest warrant. She didn’t know how, she didn’t know why, but
somehow Joseph was responsible for this. All of it.
    And he was thorough. If he wanted her
destroyed, she would be destroyed. There would be no stopping
whatever hideous wheels the bastard must have put into motion. He
was capable of anything. Anything. She was scared. She was as
scared as she’d been at fourteen when she’d first met Joseph Cowan,
right after the horrible accident she’d caused. Joyriding in her
daddy’s car without permission. Without a license. Without a
freaking brain! The one stupid, foolish act that had sealed her
fate for good.
    Joseph Cowan had owned her, body and soul,
from that day on, even though she hadn’t known it then. She hadn’t
known it until her wedding day, years later. Or…it would have been
her wedding day. But the bastard had shown up to claim what she’d
unwittingly sold to him long ago. Just like Satan claiming a damned
soul.
    She had to run.
    “Kirsten?”
    She spun so fast she almost fell over her
feet. Adam Brand stood in the bedroom’s doorway, looking from the
pile of clothes on the bed to the open suitcase beside them…then
focusing on her face. That was when his expression changed. His
brows went up, and his lips thinned. She turned away fast. “I told
you to stay away from me, Adam. I meant it”
    “Yeah. I remember. You also told me you were
fine, but you look like you just picked a fight with a hurricane
and lost. So I’m thinking maybe you’re not so fine, after all.”
    “It’s none of your business.”
    “It is if you’re planning to skip town,” he
said. “That is what you’re planning, isn’t it?”
    She straightened, but didn’t face him.
Instead she strode into the bathroom, leaned over the sink and
cranked on the water. She didn’t bother closing the door. He would
come in if he wanted to. He had obviously made quick work of the
locks on the doors downstairs. Or had she even thrown them?
    “Kirsten, you don’t have to run. We can
figure this out.”
    Bending over, she splashed water on her face.
Then she lathered a cloth with cleansing lotion and began to scrub.
Nobody was going to look at her with mascara streaks running over
her cheeks, no matter what the circumstances might be.
    “Figure this out, Adam. The bastard left me
everything he had. And the minute the rangers learn that, I’ll be
taken out of here in handcuffs. I don’t plan to wait around for
them.”
    Adam stepped right into the bathroom. She
heard his booted footsteps, and when she reached for the towel, he
handed it to her. “So you lied about the will?”
    “No, I didn’t lie about the freaking will. He
changed it.” She snatched up a brush and began tugging it through
her hair.
    “I see.”
    “You don’t see a damn thing, Adam Brand.