Thriller 2: Stories You Just Can’t Put Down

In the hands of Joan Johnston, the human heart becomes a catalyst for suspense. With more than forty novels and ten million copies of her books in print worldwide, she is a proven master of the craft who knows how to complicate the tensions behind everyday relationships. If there’s a character’s heart to be broken, Joan will snap it in two and decide later if it should be allowed to heal.

In “Watch Out for My Girl,” Nash Benedict finds himself turning Benedict Arnold after promising to look after his brother’s girl while he serves in Iraq. An accidental crush becomes an inappropriate affair of the heart. And that leads the characters headlong into a meeting with murder.

WATCH OUT FOR MY GIRL

“I had a helluva time getting your number, Benedict. I called because Morgan Hunter is missing.”

Nash Benedict heard the irritation in the voice of Morgan’s boss, Captain Hart, Commander of Fire Station 7 in Chevy Chase, Maryland. He made no apology. He was hard to reach for good reason. A picture of Morgan’s anguished face the last time he’d seen her flashed across his mind. His voice was unexpectedly thick with emotion as he confirmed, “Morgan’s missing?”

“She didn’t show up this morning at seven for her twenty-four-hour shift and didn’t call to say she wouldn’t be showing up. She’s never missed a day of work in five years. Never even been late. You can see why I’d be concerned.”

Nash glanced at his watch. 6:00 p.m. “She’s been missing since seven this morning and you’re just now calling me?”

“I’d have called you sooner, but nobody knew how to reach you,” the captain retorted.

Someday soon, Morgan Hunter would be his sister-in-law. She was dating his younger brother, Carter, who’d left six months ago for a one-year tour of duty in Iraq.

“Watch out for my girl, Nash. Don’t let anything happen to her while I’m serving my country overseas.”

Nash had known what Carter really meant was Don’t let some son of a bitch move in on Morgan while I’m serving my country overseas. Carter had never imagined that something sinister might threaten his girl. Or that the something sinister might be his elder brother.

Nash felt the blood pound in his temples. Carter had asked only one favor. And Nash had failed to deliver. Completely.

He’d done his best over the past six months, while Carter was dismantling IEDs-improvised explosive devices-in Iraq, to keep an eye on Carter’s girl. In between covert missions for the U.S. president, Nash had gone sailing with Morgan on Chesapeake Bay, laughed with her at a revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum at the Kennedy Center and picked crabs with her at the Crab Shack in Baltimore.

Nash hadn’t expected to fall in love with his brother’s girl any more than he’d expected her to disappear.

But he was in love with Morgan Hunter. And no one had seen hide nor hair of the woman for the past eighteen hours.

Nash felt a wave of guilt wash over him. This was his fault. Morgan had run from him. Because of what he’d done last night on her front doorstep.

He hadn’t meant to kiss her. They’d been convulsed with laughter, leaning helplessly on each other. She’d turned her face up to his, sharing the hilarious moment. On impulse he’d lowered his head, and his mouth had found hers. For a moment, she’d responded. Hungrily.

Then she’d gasped and backed up a step. And stared at him in the harsh porch light with wide, wounded brown eyes. Asking him without words how he could betray his brother. How he could betray her trust.

Nash didn’t want Morgan to be the victim of some accident, but he grasped at that possibility as something besides his behavior that might have caused her absence from work. “You’ve checked with the area hospitals?” he asked the commander.

“I called the hospitals, I checked with her father in Bethesda, I’ve left messages on her cell-which have gone straight to voice mail. I even sent another firefighter to her apartment in Avendale,” Captain Hart said.

“The front door was unlocked, but the place was pristine, no signs of disturbance. Her purse was there with her wallet inside. But her keys and her cell phone and her Jeep were missing.”

“Are you telling me no one has any idea where she might have gone?” Nash asked the station commander.

“I figured you would know, Benedict. You’re the one she’s been spending all her free time with.” Captain Hart made it an accusation.

“I don’t have a clue where she is,” Nash snapped. “She was fine when I left her about ten last night.” Except, perhaps, for feeling as guilty then about what had happened between them as Nash did now.

“I can’t believe you kissed me! What were you thinking? I’m going to marry your brother when he comes home. I love him.” She’d swiped the back of her hand across her mouth as though to wipe away his kiss, staring at him above that erasing hand through wary, watery eyes.

“I miss Carter,” she’d said quietly, using his brother’s name to stab him in the heart. “I think it would be better if we don’t see each other anymore,” she’d added, twisting the knife.

Nash shuddered at the memory.

“One of my best firefighters has disappeared,” the captain said. “If you know anything-”

“I don’t!” Nash could hear the affection and agony in the commander’s voice. He knew exactly how the man felt.

“I’ll be calling the local precinct to file a missing persons report when enough time has passed. I don’t like the looks of this, Benedict. I don’t like it at all.”

Nash closed his cell phone and slipped it back into the pocket of his cammies. He was scheduled to leave for El Salvador with his team on a covert presidential mission at midnight.

Which gave him just six hours to find his brother’s girl.

And make amends. Assuming she would let him apologize. Assuming that the reason she’d disappeared was nothing more sinister than an unwanted kiss.

Nash felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck as he thought of what else might have happened to Morgan Hunter.

What if Juan Espinoza, the drug lord whose coca crop Nash had ruined the last time he was in Colombia, had figured out the identity of his nemesis, “The Ghost,” and made good on his threat.

“I’ll find you, El Fantasma. Then I’ll find what you love most. And I’ll destroy it.”

Nash huffed out a breath. He hadn’t feared the threat because he’d been sure his cover was unassailable. No one except his elite team knew that Nash Benedict, son of presidential advisor Foster Benedict, was the scourge of the South American drug trade. And of Montana militiamen. And Basque separatists. And Somalian war lords.

What if one of his many foes had found him out? And come seeking vengeance-through the woman he loved. Maybe his kiss had nothing to do with Morgan’s disappearance.

Nash felt adrenaline spill into his veins. Felt his muscles cord with tension and his neck hairs hackle, a feral beast readying for battle.

But he was also a rational man, and his thoughts held him in place. If Morgan had been kidnapped, why hadn’t he received a ransom note? Or a vindictive message telling him that what he loved most was lost forever?

Maybe the note is on the way.

That thought sent a chill rattling down his spine.

And maybe you’re freaking out over nothing. Maybe Morgan took off for a while to think.

And missed work? Without calling her boss?

Morgan Hunter was the strongest, most confident, most “together” woman he knew, which was a great part of his attraction to her. She was a firefighter who often dealt with life-and-death emergencies. Would a woman with her self-confidence, her physical and emotional strength, fall apart from a single kiss, for which the perpetrator had been well-chastised on the spot?

He had to find Morgan and bring her home safe. That was the least he could do after kissing his brother’s girl.

Morgan Hunter couldn’t believe the predicament in which she found herself. She’d felt confused and upset when she’d grabbed her keys an hour after Nash Benedict had kissed her and gone for a drive to think.

She hadn’t planned to be gone long. She’d left the radio off in her Jeep, because she didn’t want to be distracted or soothed. She wanted to examine her feelings with brutal honesty. Because she had strong feelings for Nash Benedict that conflicted with her love for his brother.

She’d left home without thinking which direction she was going. When she finally noticed her surroundings an hour later, she was driving along a winding, deserted rock-and-gravel road. Almost at the same instant a deer appeared in her headlights.

The deer froze. And so did she.

At least, for that part of a second that would have allowed her to brake before she hit the animal. Or make a wiser choice than the one she made.

Morgan had seen enough accident victims as a firefighter to know that hitting anything head-on, even if she was only going forty-five, was a bad move. So she jerked the wheel to miss the deer, then jerked it again to miss the gnarled trunk of an ancient black walnut-and flipped her Jeep.

It rolled three times before it came to an abrupt and jarring halt right-side-up in the embrace of a copse of spruce. Sometime during one of those rolls, the driver’s side air bag had deployed. It was already deflating, but Morgan smelled the acrid scent of the cartridge that had exploded to fill it with air, and watched wide-eyed as a stream of white smoke rose behind the steering wheel.

It had all happened so fast!

Morgan couldn’t believe she was alive. And apparently unhurt. She gasped with relief and felt a sharp pain in her chest. Not entirely unhurt. She had either badly bruised or broken a rib. She reached down with a trembling hand to fumble at the seat belt release.

She felt tremendously relieved when she heard a click and the seat belt let go. With the constricting pressure gone from her chest, she took another deep breath.

“Ow,” she croaked. Could that excruciating pain be the result of a rib that was simply bruised? She would have to be very careful. If she put a broken rib through her lung out here in the middle of nowhere, it was goodbye, so long, adios, baby.

She recognized the swelling along the back of her neck as a whiplash injury. Warm blood dripped from her chin, and she realized she must have bitten her cheek or her lip.

Morgan was afraid to move. Afraid to discover another injury. Most of the full moon’s light was blocked by trees that had only half shed their autumn leaves. She reached around the deflated air bag, searching for the keys, which she found in the ignition. She tasted blood as she caught her lower lip in her teeth for luck-and turned the key.

The car was dead.

“Bad words. Bad words. Bad words,” she muttered.

There was no sign of civilization from where she was sitting. Thank God she’d brought her cell phone with her. She’d almost left it at home, because she was afraid Nash would call, and she didn’t want to speak to him until she’d sorted out what she was going to say. She certainly didn’t want to talk to him now. Not after doing something so stupid. Better to call 911.

Morgan reached-carefully-into the shallow pocket of her black leather jacket.

And found it empty.

“Bad, bad words.”

She reached up gingerly to turn on the interior light to search for where her phone might have landed. Which was when she realized the windows on the passenger’s side of the car were shattered. Had her cell phone gone out one of those broken windows?

She felt a flash of panic and shoved it down. She’d recently heard a story about a woman who’d lost control of her car on Route 40 and hit a tree. She’d been found-ten days later-partially consumed by wild animals and riddled with insects.

“That’s not me,” she said out loud.

She tried to turn her head to look in the backseat, but it hurt too much. She shoved at the driver’s side door and it screeched open. She eased herself sideways, groaning when she realized that one of her ankles was swollen the size of a grapefruit.

“Great. That’s just great.”

Her Jeep footwell was high enough off that ground that she would have a drop when she got out of the car. She braced herself with her hands, then scooted off the seat and landed on her uninjured foot.

Even that little bit of jarring hurt both her chest and her ankle. She hissed in a breath and held it as she put pressure on her injured foot.

“Ow,” she said again. “Oh, ow.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, relieved that her ankle was only sprained. Painful, but not impossible to walk on. The back passenger door was crushed and wouldn’t budge. She limped to the hatch and opened it and crawled up inside on hands and knees, leaning over the backseat to search for her phone.

She was appalled at how weak she felt. Shock, she realized. Maybe she was even bleeding internally, if that rib was broken and tearing into her flesh.

She knew too much about internal bleeding. Too much about broken ribs stabbing into lungs. Too much about shock killing you as fast-or even faster-than your actual injuries.

She couldn’t find her phone. She consoled herself with the thought that, even if she found it, there might not be any reception out here. If someone picked her up on the road, she wouldn’t need her cell phone. And if no one picked her up tonight, she could always hobble back here and hunt for her phone in the daylight.

She suddenly realized how cold it was. Cold enough to see her breath. Cold enough to make her shiver in the light leather jacket she’d grabbed on her way out the door.

Morgan found a dogwood limb she could use for a makeshift cane and followed the trail of destruction caused by her Jeep back to the road. Her flourescent watch showed it was six minutes past midnight. What were the chances someone would be coming along this two-lane, rock-and-gravel road at this hour?

Morgan stood at the edge of the road and looked in both directions. She wasn’t even sure which way led to the closet place where help could be found. She hadn’t walked ten steps before-to her amazement and delight-she saw a pair of headlights in the distance.

Almost sagging with relief, she watched the car make its slow, winding way toward her. To her surprise, the car stopped fifty yards downhill from her. She started to yell at the driver as he stepped out of the car into the bright moonlight. For some reason her breath caught in her throat and held her silent.

Why is he stopping there?

As she watched, he slid a small, slender body out of the backseat and hefted it over his shoulder. A very long striped, light-and-dark scarf was draped around his neck. The woman’s long blond hair hung almost to his butt, nearly even with the length of his scarf.

Morgan instinctively stepped back into the shadows a moment before the stranger looked in her direction. Her heart was racketing in her chest, and she held her hands over her mouth to keep him from seeing her breath in the cold air.

She stared hard at the license plate of the car, so she could identify this probable killer to the police. But it was too far away to make out the numbers. She had no idea of the make or model. To her, it was simply a dark-colored, four-door car.

The man disappeared into the undergrowth at the side of the road. He came back empty-handed five minutes later, got into his car and drove away.

Morgan realized what a narrow escape she’d had. What if she’d shouted out to the man? What if she’d become his next victim? No one-not Nash, not Carter-would have known what had become of her. She chastised herself for naming Nash first.

You’ve been spending time with Nash. That’s all. You miss Carter. You love Carter. In six months you will marry Carter.

If she survived the night.

When the car disappeared from sight, she struggled back onto the road and began hobbling in the opposite direction the killer had taken. Even with her makeshift cane, her ankle hurt. Her chest hurt. And she was very, very cold.

Morgan saw the headlights appear over her shoulder before she heard the car wheels on the stone-and-gravel road. She turned and saw a dark-colored car. For an instant, she was afraid it was the killer. She glanced at her watch. Ten minutes had passed.

Surely this was someone else. Just in case, she would stay closer to the forest than the road. If the driver was wearing that distinctive scarf, she’d fade into the forest and hide.

She cried out in agony when she raised her arm to flag down the dark-colored car. She saw it had four doors and felt a shiver run down her spine.

When the car stopped, the power window slid down on the passenger’s side. Morgan held a hand to her aching chest as she leaned to peer inside. And nearly cried out with relief. The driver was a woman. There was no sign of a scarf, dark-and-light-striped or any other color.

“You need a ride?” the woman asked.

“Yes. Thank you,” Morgan said as she opened the door and slid into the amazing warmth of the car. “I nearly hit a deer. I ended up driving off the road.”

“You’re bleeding.”

Morgan touched her chin where the blood had dried. “I think I bit my lip when my car flipped.”

“You’re lucky to be alive.”

“Don’t I know it! I was starting to think I’d have to walk home. This road doesn’t seem to get much traffic.”

“No, it doesn’t,” the woman said.

As Morgan pulled the door closed and reached carefully for the seat beat, she saw the fringe of a navy-and-white-striped scarf on the floor of the backseat. And hissed in a tortured, terrified breath.

“I didn’t see your car,” the woman said as she put her car in gear and continued in the direction she’d been driving.

Morgan hesitated, then said, “It’s back a ways, off in the bushes.”

“My husband just got home from work,” the woman said. “I asked him to pick me up some cigarettes on his way home, but he forgot-lucky for you.”

Morgan was very much afraid that she was riding in a murderer’s car-with his wife. Did the woman know what her husband had done? Was she an accomplice? Morgan realized she might have made a mistake getting into the car. “Do you have a cell phone I could use?”

“Sorry,” the woman said, shaking her head. “There’s a pay phone at the convenience store where we’re headed.”

The woman’s cell phone rang.

Morgan’s neck hurt when she jerked it toward the woman, who reached into the pocket of her fur-trimmed coat and retrieved a cell phone, flipped it open and said, “You were right. There was someone on the road. Yeah, she’s in the car with me now.”

Morgan didn’t think, she simply grabbed the wheel and yanked it hard. And found herself headed for another large tree trunk.

“Let go of the wheel!” the woman cried.

Morgan heard the shriek of tearing metal. And a woman’s scream.

The police would eventually have checked out the GPS on Morgan’s cell phone, but Nash was able to access the information immediately. Thank God she’d left it on. If she was still in possession of her phone, she was about an hour north of Chevy Chase, somewhere along Route 40 northwest of Frederick, Maryland.

Nash made good time on I-270 north and merged onto US-40. The coordinates he’d put into his GPS sent him to Hamburg Road. The sun had disappeared behind the mountains and the sudden chill had created patches of fog, making visibility iffy.

He stopped at a convenience store before he headed up the mountain and showed a picture of Morgan and described her vehicle to the clerk.

The man shook his head. “I’d have remembered a woman like that.”

He showed the picture to another man in the store and said, “Have you seen this woman?”

The man shook his head.

There would be no moonlight for hours, and even then, Nash wondered if it would penetrate the thick undergrowth on the sides of the road. The pavement ended and he found himself driving on a rough rock-and-gravel road. Except where humans had carved hiking trails, the mountain terrain seemed impenetrable.

What the hell had she been doing up here? It seemed impossible he could find a lone woman in this vast wilderness. Except he had precise GPS coordinates that told him where to find her cell phone.

Nash stopped when his headlights picked out the torn-up grass where Morgan’s Jeep had apparently left the road. His heart was in his throat as he grabbed a flashlight and headed off into the undergrowth.

The trail of destruction left a clear path to follow. He found Morgan’s cell phone near a crushed elderberry tree. He hurried forward, but when he reached her car, it was empty.

“Morgan!” he shouted, feeling frantic. “Morgan! Are you out here?”

He was greeted by an eerie silence.

He turned in a circle and saw a light down the hill in the distance, on the opposite side of the road, moving through the underbrush. That must be her! He ran back to his SUV and raced down the winding road, despite the fog that had gathered in the hollows, afraid the moving light wouldn’t be visible when he got to where he’d seen it from above.

When he reached the bottom of the hill, he found a rusted-out Chevy pickup parked where he’d seen the light. But the light he’d seen from above had disappeared.

He heard the engine ticking on the pickup, so he knew it hadn’t been there long. He shined his flashlight in the front seat of the truck. When he tried the doors, they were locked. Then he checked the truck bed and saw blood. Dried blood. Had Morgan been lying in the bed of that truck sometime during the past eighteen hours?

Nash swore in frustration as he tried to find a way through the thick undergrowth on the side of the road. There was a lot of blood in the bed of that truck. Was he too late?

“Is anybody out there?” he shouted. There was no sound, not even a breath of wind to rustle the trees. He fought back his fear and shouted again, “Morgan! It’s Nash. Are you out there?”

He heard branches crackling as though someone was moving through the underbrush. He shined his flashlight toward the sound but couldn’t see much beyond the first colorful layer of bushes. As he was lowering the light, he caught sight of a broken branch. More than a few broken branches. And realized the swath of destruction was wide enough to have been made by a vehicle.

Another accident? He was confused for a moment, but he knew from the light he’d seen-and the truck on the side of the road-that someone was here. He followed the trail, shouting as he ran, “Morgan, I’m coming. Hold on, baby, I’m coming!”

If he’d been in another line of work, Nash would have died a moment later. Some instinct caused him to duck as he felt a rush of air near his ear, and the thick branch that would have brained him made contact with his right shoulder instead, causing him to drop his flashlight. He grunted in pain and turned to confront his attacker.

The man was swinging the branch in the opposite direction when Nash stepped under it and hit him in the solar plexus, doubling him over. Nash followed with an uppercut that rocked the man’s head back. Arms flailing, his attacker fell over backward. Nash followed him, grabbing two handfuls of the man’s corduroy jacket and dragging him upright to hit him again.

The heavyset man put his hands up and cried, “Stop! Stop!”

Nash frisked him one-handed, then dropped him on the ground and retrieved his flashlight. He shined it on the man’s face and realized he’d seen him before. At the convenience store.

“What are you doing out here?” he asked.

“My wife is missing. She went out last night to get some cigarettes and never came back. We had an argument, so I thought maybe she spent the night with her mother. When she never showed up this morning, I thought maybe she had an accident. I’ve been looking for her along this road most of the day.”

“Why did you attack me?”

“I was afraid. People are always dumping stuff up here at night. That’s illegal, you know. So I thought maybe…” His voice trailed off and he shrugged sheepishly.

“There’s dried blood in the back of your pickup.”

“Oh. That’s nothing.”

“Nothing?” Nash shot back.

“I found a deer on the side of the road-hit by a car, I guess. I put it in my truck, figuring I’d butcher it. But it wasn’t dead and it woke up and jumped out.”

Animal blood. Nash shook his head in disgust. He turned and followed the trail of broken branches and car wreckage to a dark-colored Toyota. It had run head-on into a sycamore.

His heart began thudding hard when he spied the bloodstained windshield on the driver’s side. His flashlight reflected something on the passenger’s window. A bloody handprint.

Then he saw the long-legged female body lying on the leaf-strewn ground. The head and shoulders were covered with a black leather jacket. He recognized the distinctive silver buttons.

The jacket belonged to Morgan.

He gave a cry of anguish as he ran forward and dropped to his knees beside the body. He gently eased the jacket away, even though the woman was apparently dead. And swallowed the sob that erupted as he realized…it isn’t Morgan!

This must be his attacker’s wife. But who had covered her dead face with Morgan’s jacket? And where was Morgan?

“Nash.”

His name came as a whisper on the wind. He felt his heart surge with joy as he called into the darkness, “Morgan! Where are you!”

Equally quiet, a ghostly warning, “Look out!”

Nash whirled and rose in one motion and found himself facing a Colt.45 automatic.

“Where the hell is she?” the stranger said in a harsh voice. “That bitch killed my wife!”

“What’s your connection to the woman who owns that leather jacket?” Nash asked.

The stranger sneered. “She saw me dump a body. Couldn’t leave her out here after that. Sent my wife to pick her up. And that bitch crashed my car.”

Nash glanced at the car and realized how desperate Morgan must have been. And how brave. And how precious she was to him.

“She killed my wife!” the stranger ranted.

Nash glanced at the dead body. He knew Morgan must have done everything in her power to save the woman. It was what she did.

“When I’m done with you, I’ll find her, and she’ll pay.” The stranger was distracted by a crash in the underbrush.

The instant he turned his head, Nash leapt. He was nearly deafened by the gunshot, but the bullet shot past his ear into the night. He made short work of disarming the stranger. This time he used the man’s own weapon to knock him out.

When the short life-and-death struggle was over, Nash shoved himself onto his feet and said in a calm, quiet voice, “Where are you, Morgan?”

A faint voice said, “I’m here.”

He followed Morgan’s voice to a spot in the bushes behind the sycamore tree. She was sitting up with her back braced against a red maple. He kept his flashlight lowered, so it wouldn’t hit her in the eyes. But he couldn’t help noticing her blood-soaked shirt. And her bloody, lacerated face.

His knees surprised him by buckling, and he dropped onto the leaves beside her. “What kind of shape are you in?” He was afraid to touch her. She was covered in blood.

“Cracked rib, I think. Sprained-maybe fractured-ankle. Whiplash. Multiple cuts on my face and arms. Broken finger.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s enough!” she said with asperity. “You took long enough getting here.”

“I was waiting for your call.”

She avoided his gaze and said matter-of-factly, “I lost my phone. And the dead woman’s phone got broken in a million little bits in the crash. I was afraid to go out on the road, because I knew that killer would come hunting his wife. So I’ve been hiding.” She paused, met his gaze and said, “Waiting for you to find me.”

Nash brushed the knuckles of his hand across her blood-crusted cheek. “When I saw that body, I thought you were dead.”

“When I saw that tree coming at me-”

“I’m sorry, Morgan.”

“I know. So am I.”

“I’m leaving the country in a few hours. If you need me-for anything-leave a message on my phone and-”

She moaned as she lifted her arm to brush her scraped knuckles across his cheek. Her eyes brimmed with tears as she said, “Goodbye, Nash.”

He didn’t pretend to misunderstand what she was saying. He couldn’t fight for her. Not when she loved his brother. He had to let her go.

“So, do I call an ambulance?” he said at last. “Or can I just pick you up and drive you to the nearest hospital?”

She managed a tenuous smile. “Call the cops to come get that murdering son of a bitch. Then take me to the nearest hospital.”