Read No Rules for Free Online

mouth working. She licked her lips. “What dead guy?”
    He didn’t wait for her response, ducking down the hall into the first bedroom. “ Three suitcases?” His incredulous voice carried back to her. “For three days? Are you fucking kidding me?”
    He reappeared with her carry-on bag slung over his shoulder, rolling two stacked suitcases behind him. “Come on, let’s go.” When her frozen feet didn’t move, he grabbed her hand and tugged her along like a fourth piece of luggage.
    It had to be awkward pulling all that weight plus a resisting woman, but he made it seem effortless. She tried to plant her feet but his hand held hers in an iron grip and she ended up staggering after him. “Let go. You can’t do this.” she insisted, fear edging into her voice, as she made a futile grab at the kitchen counter.
    He could, and did. She barely had time to gain her balance as he opened the back door. Then he was tugging her into the attached garage, closing the door behind them. Darkness enveloped them.
    He tugged her alongside her father’s car. “Stay here and don’t move,” he ordered. Releasing her hand, he opened the back door of the car and began tossing her bags inside.
    Stay with the stranger who was trying to take her against her will? The hell she would. It smacked of every fear her mother had instilled in her for the past fifteen years—fear of conspiracies, fear of others controlling her life, fear of men.
    Spinning on her heel, she took advantage of the dome light inside the car, heading for the door they’d just come through, determined to slam it behind her and barricade it with a chair. Donovan might not have pulled a knife, but he was acting as crazy as the guy who had, and no way was she allowing him to—
    She stopped abruptly. Against the back wall of the garage, half hidden by the car, a man lay on the cement floor. Half-closed eyes seemed to stare at her, but they were unfocused and unblinking. Undeniably dead.
    Holy shit. Lifting a hand to her mouth, she smothered a gag as she took it all in, wide-eyed. The slack face with Middle Eastern features. The arm draped awkwardly across his body. The jacket, unzipped and twisted as if he’d been dragged. The dark stain covering almost all of one leg.
    “Goddamn it,” Donovan muttered. “I told you not to move.” A distant part of her brain registered the car door slamming shut as his hands gripped her shoulders, turning her around, walking her dazed body to the other side of car. All she heard was the chanting in her own mind: Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God …
    He pulled and pushed, and she followed his unspoken direction, moving automatically, sliding into the passenger seat, vaguely aware that he buckled her seat belt before closing the door and rounding the car to get behind the wheel. The sudden loud whir of a motor signaled the garage door opening.
    The car roared to life and he backed it out quickly. Her stunned gaze took in the briefly lit scene before the door came down again—the motorcycle on the far right that hadn’t been there before—Donovan’s, she realized—and the dead body against the wall. Oh my God.
    “You okay?”
    She turned slowly, staring at him. “There’s a dead man in the garage.”
    “Like I told you.”
    She worked at ordering her thoughts, trying to make sense of a world turned suddenly upside down. “You killed him?” she croaked.
    His jaw hardened as he looked straight ahead. “I didn’t mean to.”
    Her mind spun wildly. Oh, you didn’t mean to. That’s okay, then. When she had no response, he reached into his boot and pulled out a folded knife. With the flick of a button, the knife sprang open. He held it up between them, the curved blade gleaming in the dashboard lights, razor sharp and deadly.
    She uttered a startled scream and shrank away, huddling against the door and wondering how badly she’d be hurt if she opened it and threw herself out at highway speeds.
    “He was carrying this. He