How to Tame a Silver Fox – Episode 21
Smoke thickened beneath the bedroom door while the stranger waited in the hall. Harper held Chris’s phone like a torch, its pale beam catching the fury in his eyes. Whoever had trapped them knew enough about Boston to make him afraid of the truth.
“Tell her,” the voice called again. “Or let history repeat itself.”
Chris tested the doorknob, then pressed his palm against the wood. Heat was already building on the other side. “We’re not negotiating.”
“That’s what you said in Boston.” Footsteps retreated down the hall as something heavy scraped across the floor, blocking the door from outside.
Harper coughed into her sleeve. “Chris, the window.” The narrow ledge beyond it led toward the guest-room balcony, but rain had made the stone slick.
Chris pulled a blanket from the bed and wrapped it around her shoulders. “You go first. Keep one hand on the wall and don’t look down.”
“We go together.” Harper remembered the smoke curling under the door and the guilt on his face when she mentioned Boston. She did not trust him to follow if he believed staying behind would protect her.
The bedroom door groaned as fire weakened the frame. Chris opened the window and climbed onto the ledge, keeping his body between Harper and the drop. “Put your foot where mine was.”
Cold rain struck her face. Harper edged sideways, gripping his hand while smoke poured from the window behind them. The ground below seemed impossibly far away.
Halfway across, her shoe slipped. Chris caught her around the waist and pinned her against the wall before she could fall. For one breathless second, fear and attraction became impossible to separate.
“I’ve got you,” he said. Harper believed him, but she also felt the tremor in the arm holding her.
They reached the balcony as glass shattered inside her room. Chris forced open the guest-room door, guided Harper through, and triggered the main alarm from his phone.
He started toward the hall. Harper caught him again. “The intruder wants you to run back into a fire. Don’t give him exactly what he wants.”
Chris looked toward the smoke gathering along the ceiling. Protecting Harper meant leaving the person who had threatened her free to escape, and every instinct demanded the opposite.
Sirens rose outside. He chose Harper, leading her down the rear stairs and through the kitchen as flames climbed the front staircase.
Firefighters rushed past them into the house. Across the street, a hooded figure watched from behind the emergency vehicles, then disappeared between two parked cars.
Harper saw him too. “Who died in Boston?” she asked, because the stranger’s accusation had sounded personal.
Chris stared at the burning window of her bedroom. “Evan Mercer,” he said at last. “He trusted me to come back for him—and I never did.”
