“Could I talk to them?”
“We have a meeting next Monday.”
“You can’t get them before?”
“I can try. But it’s like herding cats. The girls come and go for a lot of reasons. But there is a core group that’s stuck with me. I can call some of them.”
“Okay.” His body tensed as if his mind worked in overdrive. “Any way you could go stay with your mother or sister right now?”
“I’m not leaving my house.”
“You already suspect Dayton was here.”
“I’m calling a security company first thing in the morning. I’m having a security system installed.”
“I can pull a few strings and get it done faster.”
“Thanks.”
“You’d be better off living with someone.”
She shook her head. “Not my mother or sister.”
“I don’t want you here alone.”
“I appreciate your help, but you are not the boss of me, Brody.”
“Jo.” His tone threatened.
“Jo nothing. I’ve taken care of myself for a long time, and I’ve managed fine.”
“Jo,” he said, hesitating. “I care about you.”
She shook her head. “Don’t do this.”
“Do what?”
“Turn what happened into something personal.” Maybe it had been for a split second, but the moment had passed.
“Seemed pretty personal to me, Jo.” He tucked in his shirt, studying her face as if she were a prime suspect in a murder investigation.
“Let’s not kid ourselves, Brody. This isn’t forever. This was for today. It was fun. Lord knows it’s been a while for me, and I had forgotten how nice it is to touch a man. But we both know what we had the first time wouldn’t have lasted if not for the baby. Let’s enjoy it for what it was.”
A frown creased the lines around his face. “A quick roll in the hay?”
A chill shivered down her back, cooling the last embers of sex. “You make it sound cheap.”
“No, you make it sound cheap.”
She folded her arms over her chest. “The last time you didn’t want forever.”
“I’m thirty-six now. Not a twenty-one-year-old twit. I’ve changed.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’ve wanted you since the instant I saw you on that climbing wall. Been thinking about you more than I should.” His jaw tensed and released. “I thought that maybe we could give it a whirl.”
“A whirl?”
“No one is promising forever right now. I get that. But I like you. I respect you. Why can’t we see where this takes us?”
She shook her head. “Brody, I don’t think that is smart thinking.”
He moved toward her, clearly using his height to his advantage. “Now I always figured you were smarter than me when it came to book smarts, but I thought when it came to street smarts I had you licked.”
“You make me sound like a cloistered nerd.”
He grabbed the edge of her shirt and rolled the soft fabric between his index finger and thumb. “I think you’ve kept your nose in the books too long, and you’re a bit gun-shy.”
“Gun-shy? Yeah, you are right. I’m gun-shy of you. I’m not gonna lie. Last go-around was too tough for me, Brody. I don’t want to hurt like that again.”
He tugged her a little closer. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I don’t think you did when you were a kid. You were being you. Just like you didn’t tell me about Hanna. You put work first. And it’s okay if you do.”
“You’re mixing me up with the twenty-one-year-old.”
“That guy wasn’t all bad. He married me when another guy might have walked away. He never denied that the baby wasn’t his. He joined the Marines so he could take care of that baby. Granted, his delivery could suck but at least he stepped up to bat.”
He held up his hands. “Stop it right now.”
“Stop what?”
“Stop thinking about the past so much. We’ve got right now. Not yesterday and not tomorrow, and right now I want to make sure you’re safe.”
She cocked a brow. “I’m not going to change my mind, Brody.”
His grin was sly. “Not asking for anything now other than maybe a meal. I’m hungry. We can commit that far, can’t we?”
“Sure.” She studied him an extra beat and moved away, wondering if she’d been hoodwinked.
Sadie shook off the haze of drugs that ass had given her. He’d wanted her quiet and compliant, and so he’d forced pills and bourbon down her throat until she’d been too dazed to offer resistance. She’d seen her share of nasty on the streets but feared the worst was to come.
She reached for the chain that kept her leg tethered to a hook bolted in the wooden floor. She tugged hard at the chain but it didn’t budge. On the other side of the room, moonlight trickled in through a curtained window. Judging by the clarity of the night sky, they were far from any town.
Outside the room, she heard footsteps. Her heart leapt in her chest as fear bubbled fresh in her blood. She lay back and closed her eyes, doing her best to keep her breathing smooth as if she were sleeping. Leave me alone. Leave me alone.
As his steps moved closer to her door, she heard a cell phone ring. His footsteps stopped. He cursed, hesitated, and answered the phone with a pleasant “Hello.”
Sadie opened her eyes and saw the shadow of his feet in front of the crack where he stood.
The man outside shifted his stance from side to side, and she listened as he spoke. “I look forward to it. And tomorrow works for you?” Again silence and a friendly “Great. See you then.”
His cell phone closed with a snap seconds before the lock on the door twisted open. She pressed her back into the corner, held her breath and kept her body as quiet and steady as she could. Still her thoughts raced and her heart rammed her ribs hard.
His face backlit from the door behind him, she could see dark stubble covered his chin and thick bangs swept over downcast eyes as he reached for the chain around her ankle and unfastened the lock. He slapped a hand on her butt. “Time to wake up, princess. Time to get this show on the road.”
She didn’t move at first, hoping against hope that he’d leave. But he grabbed her by the arm, crushed her flesh in his calloused fingers and hauled her to her feet. Forced to open her eyes, she stared at him through blurred vision.
He g
rinned and captured her face in his hands, painfully squeezing her cheeks. “Time to play. Time to play.”
“What do you want? Is this about the delivery I made last week for Daddy?”
He chuckled. “No. This has nothing to do with anybody you know.”
“Then why?”
“Something I do.”
She stared into determined dark eyes. “You asked about Jo.”
“Yes.”
“How do you know her?”
“She’s my sister.”
“No way.”
“Believe it.”
She stared into his dark eyes a long time. “You don’t have to do this.”
Without answering he lifted her and carried her outside. The sky was clear and the stars bright. She’d been right about being in the middle of nowhere. The drugs made her head spin, and she thought she’d get sick.
“Please put me down.”
Silent, he carried her a short distance before lowering her into the car trunk. He smiled at her and then slammed the lid closed, encasing her in darkness.
The trunk had a foul smell and made her gag. The ride in the trunk was a haze. Bumps, the sounds of tires crunching gravel and dirt kicking up. She tried to stay alert, but the drugs grabbed ahold and pulled her under.
When Sadie woke a second time, a weight pressing on her chest made it tough to breathe. She pulled at the restraints that bound her arms against her chest. Raising her head she realized she lay in a grave and he was burying her alive. She screamed, but the night absorbed all the sound. In the distance a coyote howled.
“You don’t have to do this! Come on, mister, please! Whatever I did wrong, I can fix it!” The cold, clammy dirt made her skin crawl and she wriggled her shoulders, trying to get the dirt off as if it were a thousand bugs crawling over her skin.
He jammed the shovel blade into an earth mound and loaded it. He turned and slowly dusted her body with the dirt. He wasn’t in a rush. He enjoyed this. “You can wiggle all you want, but it won’t make a difference. My knots are sure.”
He shoveled more dirt on her feet and chest this time; the weight pushed her deeper into the dirt and made breathing hard and her nose was filling.