~WH~

~3~

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It was one of those days when it seemed like it would never stop raining. Bella Swan pulled up to the only place in town that was still open at 3 am, the local Waffle House. The sign glowed a cheery yellow welcome with a promise of crispy hot carbohydrates, bringing a sweet syrupy end to a day's worth of hunger.

She'd been at the hospital all day and night. On the very first day of spring training in the Grapefruit League, her mother's new husband managed to slip in the mud and crack his skull against another player while both were diving to catch the ball. If only he'd stayed in their home state of Arizona. It wouldn't have been raining there.

She stepped over the oily puddles in the parking lot and made her way inside.

There weren't too many people in the restaurant, so she had her pick of where to sit. Not wanting to draw attention, she decided on the booth furthest away from everyone else. There were only three other customers in the whole place: two men seated at opposite ends of the counter; one was nursing a coffee, the other looked like a trucker who had way too much energy; and a guy in the opposite corner from Bella, wearing a cowboy hat, whose face was obscured by the newspaper he was reading.

The waitress, a plump woman in her fifties, smiled and leaned over to refill the trucker's coffee.

He whispered something in her ear with a mischievous grin.

She righted herself, rolled her eyes, and chastised the man. "Russell, you are bad."

Russell just laughed quietly into his coffee, looking full of himself.

Finally, the waitress made her way over to Bella, took a pen out of her apron pocket, and asked, "What can I get for you, hon?"

Bella looked down at the menu on the table, already decided on what she wanted. "I'll have the All Star Breakfast, with a pecan waffle, please, with coffee, and a glass of water."

The waitress quickly wrote Bella's choices on her order pad and promptly carried it over to the grill cook.

The trucker was staring a hole through the waitress' backside. "Valentine's Day is comin' up, Doreen. When are you gonna let me take you out?"

Doreen reached over and playfully swatted Russell with her notepad. "I wouldn't go anywhere with you."

Her eyes told a different story.

"We wouldn't haveta go far," Russell suggested, wiggling his eyebrows.

"Yeah. I know. And we wouldn't be gone for long either," Doreen quipped.

That seemed to quiet Russell down for the time being. Long enough for the waitress to tend to her other customers.

Bella sighed and shook her head, as she watched the waitress, coffee pot in hand, make her way out from behind the counter.

The cowboy, feeling her approach, lowered his newspaper. Bella was floored at the sight of him. He was stunningly handsome, but at the same time, very different from anyone she'd ever laid eyes on before. He had pale skin and longish light blond hair. Even the plush shearling coat he wore was a very light tan. Everything about him sort of glowed bright and clean. He graced the waitress with another beatific smile, and Bella had the feeling she was witnessing some sort of cowboy movie star magic at work. Poor Russell wouldn't stand a chance against that guy.

"You didn't even touch your waffle," the waitress noted aloud. "You wanna try something else? The omelettes are real good."

"No, thank you, ma'am, everything's fine." The cowboy smiled up at Doreen again, and she turned away, blushing, although the look on her face appeared unappeased.

She took a few paces before turning again and asking, "Are you sure I can't get you anything else?"

"Just the check, please, ma'am," the strange, yet intriguing-looking cowboy replied as he raised his newspaper.

Undeterred, Russell resumed his flirting with Doreen as soon as she stepped behind the counter. Bella began to feel as if she were eavesdropping, so she searched for something to occupy herself. Spying a local paper on the bench seat across from hers, she picked it up to give it a read.

The bold headline was disturbing. There had been a murder. Another murder. She'd heard about the string of killings on the TV news back at the hospital. The most recent body found was the third in a series the police thought were related. All the victims were young women and all had been killed in a similar manner.

Halfway through the cover story, Bella felt someone approach.

Doreen stood over her, plates in hand, with a sad look on her face.

She shook her head slowly from side to side and tsked as she set Bella's meal down on the table. "The last girl they found was my hairdresser's cousin. Losing her like that tore the whole family up."

Bella set the paper down, unsure of what to say.

"I don't remember seeing you in here before. Are you from around here?"

Bella shook her head.

"Well, you be careful, sweetie," Doreen cautioned, as she refilled Bella's coffee. "There's a serial murderer out there, and all the girls he's killed have been young and pretty like you. They all had brown hair, too."

"Um. Thank you." Bella nodded as she pushed her hair back behind her ears, feeling uncomfortable with the compliment followed by the dire warning. She lifted her fork, eager to change the subject. "This looks great."

"Holler if you need anything." The waitress placed Bella's check under a plate and returned to her flirting with Russell.

Bella was famished. Everything was especially tasty after the long day she'd had without food. Being in the hospital all day watching over Phil was no fun, but he was family, and her poor mother needed her to stand in and take watch because of her delicate condition. Bella almost choked on the food she was eating, practically inhaling it. She needed to slow down.

Peering out at the heavy mist trickling down the windows, she thought about how life could take some funny turns, and she smiled sardonically at the irony. She had planned to move in with her estranged father, who lived in the rainiest place on earth, just after her mother married Phil. They wanted to travel together, but then her mother had gotten pregnant, and had major bouts of all day morning sickness. Bella stayed home to help take care of her, but there Bella was, doing the traveling to check on Phil, sitting in a Waffle House in Florida, getting rained on.

Why Phil couldn't have gone to spring training back home in Arizona, where it was nice and dry, was beyond her.

She continued to peruse the paper while she ate. The waffles were hitting the spot.

A man walked past her and out the door, letting in a cool wet blast of air. She glanced up, hoping to see the cowboy. It wasn't him, but the quiet, dark-haired man from the other end of the counter. The cowboy was still over in his booth with his paper. Above him, the clock on the wall said it was already four in the morning. She needed to get some sleep. She'd planned to rent a hotel room for the night and get back to the hospital bright and early.

The cowboy walked by just then, and she realized she was the only one in the restaurant, besides the cook somewhere in the back, and Doreen and Russell, who had just started to sing along with a love song that had begun playing on the jukebox. Not wanting to intrude on their serenading each other, she felt it was definitely time to go. After a quick sip of coffee, she paid, pulled the hood over her head, and made her way out into the early morning drizzle.

Nearly to her rental car, she was startled to hear a man call out, "Excuse me, miss!"

She whipped around and saw the cowboy from the Waffle House.

"Uh. Is that your car?"

"Yes," she answered warily.

"Well, um, don't go over there. I saw a guy get into your car. He's hidin' in the back seat."

Bella didn't like the sound of that. The extremely good looking man suddenly started to look more like a dangerous man. Thoughts of the killings she'd just read about swirled through her brain. She looked over her shoulder to her rental car but could see nothing through the fog-covered windows.

The cowboy reached his hands out in front of him as if to appease her. "I'm a police officer, ma'am. Do as I say. Come this way."

Her father had warned her about that—bad men using any means to abduct young women. He'd always told her to resist and never go anywhere with them.

"Show me your badge." Her voice trembled. All the while her fingers inched towards the mace her father had sent her.

He reached around to his back pocket.

Bella had the mace in her hand, ready to scream.

He flipped open the wallet, but it was fast . . . too fast. Her eyes were unable to follow the speed of his movements. Something wasn't right.

"Please, miss, just step away from the car."

"Stay back," she growled. Even though the cowboy was surprisingly polite for an assailant, she wasn't taking any chances. It could just be a ruse to get closer, to try to make her trust him. Hadn't Ted Bundy been described as a very courteous young man? She backed away from him. "Don't come any closer!"

The cowboy slipped his wallet back into his pocket and took a step. "Miss, I'm tryin' to tell ya there's a man in your car. I've been trackin' him and—"

He was too close! Heart pounding, Bella jabbed the mace toward him, clamped her thumb down on the button hard, and a stream of blue shot out of it right into the cowboy's face.

Charlie had sent her the kind with the dye in it.

Not waiting around to see what happened next, Bella spun and leapt toward the car.

"Damn stinkin' blue bullshit!" she heard the cowboy exclaim. "Ruined my favorite coat! I'll never get this shit out."

As she reached the rear fender, the back door of her rental swung open, and a man with dark hair rolled out, a long knife in his hand.

Absolutely shocked at seeing the other stranger from the Waffle House, all Bella could think to do was throw the little empty canister at him and scream.

Before she had a chance to retreat, he grabbed her arm and yanked her toward him. He tried to force her into the car, but she clawed at his face with her free hand, slicing open her own arm in the process on the long blade.

She had to fight! Resist! It's what Charlie had told her. She gave it her all; kicking and screaming, and trying to push herself away from the car. Anything to keep from being shoved inside and stolen away.

The man grunted, yelled out, and then was gone, but not before the point of his knife raked across her shoulder and chest, ripping her jacket and shirt, and cutting into her a second time.

She dropped to the curb and slumped against the side of the car, her head thumping against the wet, cool metal. A muffled scream to her right caught her attention, but she couldn't comprehend what she thought she was seeing.

The cowboy was hugging the man who had attacked her and was kissing his neck.

She started to feel dizzy and shook her head to try and clear it. It didn't help. She strained to focus on what was happening just a few feet away. Her assailant stopped struggling and went limp in the cowboy's arms. Then the cowboy raised his head up to the predawn sky, letting the light rain that was still falling wash over his face.

After a moment, he absently tossed the apparently unconscious man up against the neighboring building, watched him hit the brick wall, and drop in a heap to the wet sidewalk below. He wiped his arm across his mouth and stalked toward her.

"What did you do? Did you kill him?" Bella asked. Or she thought she asked. She was feeling so weak. "Are you going to kill me now?"

Giving no answer, all he did was cock his head to the side.

Life went and took another one of those funny turns. If only Phil had gone to spring training in the Cactus League. No rain. No muddy puddles to slip in. No Bella being assaulted and sitting on a sidewalk in the rain in Florida. She hated the rain. She looked down at herself and noticed what resembled blood all over her clothes, though it was hard to tell with just the glow of the streetlights. Her clothes were torn.

If she were in Arizona, she would have been safely in her own bed, sound asleep, and not becoming increasingly aware of pain from multiple sources on her body.

She looked up as the cowboy crouched down in front of her, his ruggedly handsome face deadly serious. And what a beautiful face it was, even with the blue dye dripping off of it.

"Well, girl, you're all cut up from fightin' him hard. You did good, too." He tipped his hat up with his thumb. "You're bleedin' out. If I took ya to the hospital down a ways, they could probably save ya. Maybe. You'd be all scarred up." He looked down the street before his attention returned to her. "But you've seen too much. Ain't many rules in my world, but ya broke the big one, and ya might remember what happened after ya woke up. If you woke up. Can't take the chance." He rubbed at his chin. " Let me tell ya, that blue mace tasted like shit. We'll have to have a discussion about that later. Anyhow, I'm pretty full, but you smell too damn good to waste."

He reached out and lightly slid his hand down over the side of her face, curled into her neck, and swept over her shoulder. "In fact, I never smelled anything as good as you before."

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~3~

~WH~

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