Guardian
Prologue

Thirty year-old Andrea Dodge sat on her black leather sofa and stared into space. The phone was still in her hand and she was being told, "If you'd like to make a call, please hang-up and try, again," but she wasn't hearing anything, except the words of the cop friend who'd said, "There was a mix-up and Sam got out on parole."

Sam Cook was her abusive ex-husband who had shot and killed her mother and father on Christmas Day, ten years before. He had also beaten and put four bullets into Andrea, leaving her for dead. But, miraculously, she hadn't died and later, walking into the courtroom on crutches, she testified against him.

The jury had given him life without parole, but now, thanks to a mistake in the system, having been mistaken for a man named Samuel L. Cook, he was out. She had no doubt he would be looking for her and that, when he caught up with her, she would be his victim once again.

She'd changed her name and had moved out to St. Paul, Minnesota where she got a job working in a bookstore. A couple of years later, on her twenty-second birthday, her first Jack Freeway novel was published and she'd gone on tour with that book and with the books that followed. Sam was in prison forever. What did she have to fear?

Cursing, she threw the phone across the room where it banged against the fireplace mantle and skittered across the hard-wood floor. Even with her new name, he knew who she was, thanks to the photos on the back of her books. And she knew he would have no trouble finding her. No matter what she did, there was always information to be found somewhere. She would have to leave her home, again, and start over some place else. She would even have to take on another new name.

Swearing, again, she ran her fingers through her shoulder-length raven curls and reached for a legal pad to begin making a list of things she needed to do. He'd just gotten out that morning so she figured she had twenty-four hours to disappear. She knew she'd figured wrong, when she opened the front door half an hour later to get a package from the postman.

A gun in his hand, Sam stepped from around the east corner of the log house where she'd been living for the past five years and said, "Hi, Baby. Long time, no see." Carelessly, he shot the postal worker, who fell towards her, knocking Andrea backward onto the floor of the foyer.

Stunned, with the breath knocked out of her, she thought about using her crutches to defend herself, but in the same instance realized one of them was propped beside the door and the other was between her and the postman who was on top of her.

"Did you really think I would never get out?" Sam asked, grinning down at her. His sandy brown hair looked greasy and he looked as though he hadn't shaved in several days. The light in his stone-blue eyes was cold.

"Go to hell," she replied.

"Not until I've broken every bone in your body."