by Pam Godwin
“If she was seen here,” he drawled, playing the part of a moronic cowboy, “then she ain’t missing, is she?”
Any moment, she was going to burst out the front door and run off her mouth about being beaten and held captive. Then he would have to shoot the detective and bury another body.
But he wasn’t a cop killer. There had to be another way.
“I’m looking for Rylee Sutton.” Detective Hodge cocked his head. “Age forty-one. Brown hair. Gray eyes. Tiny little thing. Absolutely gorgeous.”
“Gorgeous? Is that in the official description, detective?”
“Well, it’s the truth.” The detective stood taller. “Have you seen her?”
The front door opened, and here she came. His hand twitched, the pistol burning in his boot.
“Dean?” Her footsteps approached. “What are you doing here?”
Oh, great. She fucking knew the guy. Probably worked with him. Another admirer?
He clenched his jaw.
She walked past Tomas, circling far out of his reach as if she weren’t limping from the ramming of his cock. That was when he saw her duffel bag clutched tightly in her fist.
So she’d grabbed her shit and intended to leave with this douchebag. Clever girl.
Unless Detective Dean Hodge was compromised.
Tomas didn’t know if she was in danger, but if she was, everyone was a suspect.
Tension flared beneath his skin, but he kept his expression relaxed and voice calm. “Who reported her missing?”
“Missing?” She turned to him, mouth open in shock, and looked back to the detective. “I’m not missing, Dean. Who said I was?”
Now would’ve been the time for her to blurt the details of her captivity, but she didn’t utter a word of it. Even stranger, she’d pulled on a jacket while in the house, hiding the abuse inflicted upon her body.
“Your ex-husband.” Dean gave her a once-over, lingering on her mouth. What the fuck? “He said you disappeared four days ago.”
“Try ten years ago. That’s the beauty of divorce.” She cocked her hip. “He doesn’t get to know where I am or what I’m doing.” She narrowed her eyes. “How did you find me?”
“We put out an alert two days ago. Got an anonymous call that you were spotted here.”
Suspicion snaked through Tomas’ veins. Either Dean was lying or someone was using him to get to Rylee, whether to deliver a message to her, pull her out of here, or something else entirely.
Everything about this felt off.
Her empty expression revealed nothing. Frozen, she stared at Dean’s vehicle. What was she thinking? Escape, most likely.
“Rylee? Is everything okay?” Dean stepped toward her and touched her arm. “How do you know this man? Where’s your truck?”
She could tell him everything, just lay out all the gory details right now. The detective would try to arrest him, and he would be forced to shoot or flee in the Jeep. He really didn’t want to kill an innocent guy. But what if Dean knew more than he was letting on?
“Tomas is just a friend I met in town.” She blew out a breath and hauled the duffel bag over her shoulder. “My truck broke down. Mind if I catch a ride?”
Rylee’s pulse sputtered frantically as she hobbled toward Dean’s truck, sore and uncertain. She was making a decision that not only risked her life but that of her colleague.
Nothing was stopping Tommy from drawing that gun in his boot and shooting them both. But if she let this opportunity slip away, if she stayed here another day, he would continue to starve her and poison her mind.
She’d turned into something she didn’t recognize today and grudge-fucked him in the desert. But that didn’t make the grudge go away. No amount of sex—no matter how huge the cock—could erase the three days she spent in the heat without water.
Or the cruelty in his eyes as he ate that bowl of chili in front of her.
Or the dozens of other vicious acts he’d committed against her since she arrived.
She needed distance from him to think, figure out who was watching her, and talk to her nuisance of an ex-husband. Why in the hell would Mason report her missing?
Something didn’t add up.
Dean followed her without comment, probably confused by her boldness in requesting a ride. She’d made a habit of avoiding all her male colleagues, coming across as a guarded, unapproachable bitch. She was there to work, not get laid.
Early on, she’d learned that something as innocent as eye contact often led to a wrong impression, which led to unwanted attention and harassment. So she kept her head down and avoided, avoided, avoided.
Which was why she had no friends.
As she reached the passenger door of his truck, the space between her shoulders itched.
She turned her neck. Their gazes locked. The desert held its breath.
They stared at each other with a familiarity, an intimacy that hadn’t been there before. The voltage, the sparks, the unwanted chemistry that had been present from the beginning was there, too. But it hadn’t grown into trust. Not even a little.
Someone knew she was here, and Tommy believed she was working with this person. She was under no delusions that sex had changed his opinion. If anything, he thought even less of her now.
She needed to get out of here.
Without looking away, she opened the passenger door.
His eyes narrowed to slits, his knees slowly bending as he reached to pluck the pistol from his boot.
Dean climbed into the truck, oblivious.
Panic spiked, and she subtly shook her head at Tommy, begging him with her eyes.
Don’t shoot him. He’s an innocent man.
He went still, scowling at her. Even at this distance, she felt his murderous fury. It competed with the desert heat, blistering her skin and watering her eyes.
She forced her legs to move, stepping into the truck, her nerves on tenterhooks, shaking with the rush of her breaths.
He didn’t move as she closed the door. Didn’t draw his gun as Dean started the truck and drove away.
Angling her neck, she stared at the side mirror, expecting Tommy to chase or shoot. But he was nowhere in sight.
She held her breath until she could no longer see the house, until she was confident they were out of bullet range.
Then she dropped her head back and released a sigh of relief.
That had been too easy.
He’d let her go.
“You just met that guy?” Dean glanced at her and returned to the unpaved terrain.
“Yeah.”
“Doesn’t seem like it. I mean, the way he was looking at you…”
She didn’t owe him an explanation. “Thanks for the ride.”
His hand clenched on the steering wheel. “What’s wrong with your truck?”
“Don’t know.” She cut her eyes at him. “Why was there an alert put out on me? Did you not ask around first? My neighbor would’ve told you where I was.”
“Evan Phillips? Yeah, I talked to him. He said you were acting strangely and left. Couldn’t tell us your whereabouts. His statement didn’t inject a lot of confidence in your safety.”
“Ridiculous.” She balled her hands on her lap. “I told him I was going to the desert for a much-needed vacation.”
“A vacation with a man you just met?” His tone grated with judgment.
“You’re crossing the line, Dean.”
“All I’m saying is you should be more careful. That guy was putting off some serious hostile vibes, and I don’t like the way he was looking at you.”
“Like what?” she snapped impatiently. “How was he looking at me?”
“Like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to hug you, fuck you, or throttle your neck. He definitely didn’t want you to leave.”
Perceptive man. He wouldn’t be good at his job if he wasn’t.
She pulled the collar of the jacket against her bruised throat.
“He was fun for a few nights,” she said, a
t the risk of ruining her reputation. “But I need to get back to my truck.”
She couldn’t go home since Tommy knew where she lived.
When she’d spotted her duffel bag in his house, she’d only had seconds to go through it. Her ID, credit card, money, everything she needed was in there except her phone. Didn’t matter. Since someone was tracking her, she would’ve left the device behind anyway.
On her way out, she’d ransacked the kitchen, searching for a weapon. A large butcher knife was the best she’d found. That went into the duffel bag, along with some of her spare clothes she found in the laundry room.
“Where’s your truck?” Dean asked.
“May I?” She gestured at his phone, where it mounted on the dash, showing a map of their location and directions back to the nearest paved road. “I can’t remember the name of the town.”
She had no idea where to go. Somewhere with a motel, a cash machine, and food. Lots and lots of food.
At his nod, she zoomed out on the screen and started scrolling east, searching for the best place to lie low for a few days.
“Where’s your phone?” He veered the truck around a deep ravine.
“Out of batteries.” She paused the screen on a small town that showed a few restaurants, a gas station, and…bingo. A motel.
Pulling her attention away, she glanced at her surroundings. Sand, shrubs, more sand—all familiar but not recognizable. She didn’t remember driving in this way, but she’d been watching her GPS map the entire time.
It seemed strange that Dean would travel three hours to follow up on an anonymous tip. If she were anyone else, he would’ve called in local law enforcement to check it out. But he knew her. They’d worked together for a couple of years. Maybe that explained it.
Maybe she shouldn’t be trusting him.
“Is it slow at work?” She returned to the map, panning away from the town she’d decided on.
“Always.”
“Is that why you’re here? Nothing better to do?”
“I was worried, Rylee.” He ran a hand over his head, his gaze straight ahead, avoiding hers. “I don’t trust these local guys to do a thorough job, so I came to look for you myself.”
It was the right answer, but something niggled.
If someone was after Tommy and they were tracking her to get to him, how deep could they go? Deep enough to involve Dean?
She was in the middle of the desert with a man who showed up at Tommy’s house after Paul went missing. Dean could be on the same errand as Paul. He could be delivering her as a hostage to one of Tommy’s enemy cartels. Or planning to kill her himself as part of some blackmail scheme.
Jesus, Rylee. Stop.
She was fucking paranoid. That was Tommy’s fault. After reading about all the shit he and his team had been mixed up in over the past ten years, she’d developed a scary imagination.
Dean wasn’t part of some criminal organization, but that didn’t mean she could trust him with her whereabouts. If someone was monitoring his conversations, he could inadvertently mention where he dropped her off.
So she quickly scanned the map, searching for a different motel in the surrounding areas. A motel she wouldn’t be staying at.
“Here it is.” She announced the name of the desert town and set it as the destination on the map, rerouting the directions. “Thank you for coming for me.”
“I’m happy to do it.” He paused, eyes on the terrain, and dropped his voice. “What happened?”
“What do you mean?”
“I saw his chest. The scratches and… I don’t know. Sure looked like bite marks. Human bites.”
Heat rose to her cheeks. “We’re adults. It was consensual.”
And hateful and angry and so fucking hot she would never, ever experience anything as amazing or pleasureful again.
“He’s a little young for you.”
“Excuse me?” Her neck went taut.
“Hey, don’t get mad. I’m just making an observation.”
“That was an ageist insult, not an observation. If you have any more of those, keep them to yourself.”
Awkward tension filled the cab, producing a bitter taste on her tongue.
For the next thirty minutes, they drove in silence. She should’ve been thinking about what she was going to do without a car and a phone, but her focus kept pulling back to Tommy, to the fervent way he’d kissed her, touched her, and claimed every inch of her body. He hadn’t just physically branded her. He’d indelibly seared himself onto her soul.
His cruelty was unforgivable, but the sex was unforgettable. He was no longer in her sight, but she doubted he would ever leave her mind.
“I’m sorry.” Dean turned onto the main road, following the directions on the map. “I shouldn’t have said what I did.”
Sand turned into pavement, but the desolate surroundings remained unchanged.
She stared out the window at the vista of buttes. “How’s the Wagner case coming along?”
“We got a lead on the location of a meth lab.”
For the remainder of the drive, they talked about work. A neutral subject. Familiar ground.
When he pulled up to the motel, she looked around and panicked. There was nothing around. Not a car or a restaurant or another building in sight.
She didn’t intend to stay here. Not where Dean knew her location. She needed to get to the next town over, where she had options and could hide out for a few days.
He turned off the engine. “Are you sure this is where you left your truck?”
“It’s the closest motel to the mechanic.” She grabbed her bag and opened the door. “Thank you for the ride.”
“I’ll come in with you.”
“No need.” She stepped into the wretched heat.
He reached across the seat and caught her elbow, stopping her. “Let me take you to dinner. There’s nothing here—”
“No.” She wrenched her arm away. “I’ll see you in a month, Dean. Drive safe.”
She shut the door on his response and strode toward the motel office.
Inside, the scent of tobacco smoke attacked her nose. A young blonde woman sat behind the desk, flicking ash from a cigarette, her gaze glued to her phone.
Rylee turned toward the window and watched Dean pull out of the lot. She didn’t move until his truck vanished beyond the horizon.
“Need a room?” the girl asked.
“I need transportation to the next town.”
“Can’t help you there, babe.”
“You can’t call me a cab? Or a vehicle for hire?”
“Nothing like that comes out here.” The girl snorted without looking up from her phone. “You’ll have better luck using your thumb out on that road.”
Rylee glanced at the highway, which hadn’t seen another car since she’d arrived.
Shit.
Desperate, she grappled for options. “When do you get off work?”
“In six hours.”
Double shit.
She couldn’t wait that long. She needed food, a shower, a bed, and a million other things to formulate a plan, and she needed to do all of it in a place where no one could find her.
Tommy might’ve let her go because he didn’t want to shoot Dean. But he would come for her now that the detective was out of the way.
The girl lowered her phone and toyed with one of her short blonde ringlets. “I have a one-hour lunch break.”
“When?”
“Right now.”
Exhilaration coursed through her as she dug through her duffel bag and removed a wad of cash. “I’ll pay you two-hundred dollars to drive me to the next town.”
“Okay.” The girl shrugged a shoulder. “Sure.”
Yes! Mind spinning, she turned toward the cash machine in the corner. “Does that work?”
“Last I checked.”
Perfect. She would withdraw enough cash to get her by for a few days and destroy her credit card. “Do you have a trash bag?”
“Umm…” The blonde’s eyebrows knitted. “Yes?”
“I need that, too.”
The duffel bag would stay here, and only the things she needed would go in the plastic bag. Things that couldn’t have been bugged.
If Tommy or anyone else was tracking her, she was going to make it as hard as possible.
For the next three days, Rylee holed up in the shittiest motel room in Texas. Restless, overstrung, and nearing her wit’s end, she paced the stained carpet and chewed her nails down to nubs.
When she’d paid for the ride here, she had the girl drop her at a corner store a mile down the road. There, Rylee had bought a range of everyday items, including a cheap, prepaid smart phone. After paying in cash, she carried it all on foot to this smelly, dilapidated, out-of-the-way motel.
By the time she’d checked in, her body throbbed everywhere, a reminder of the beating she’d taken in the desert. Her immediate concern had been taking care of her basic needs—shelter, water, food, hygiene, pain-killers, sleep.
So much sleep.
God, she’d needed that rest. After asphyxiation, extreme thirst, starvation, and unthinkable stress over the past week, she slept through most of the first two days. She never wanted to wake up.
But she couldn’t hide forever.
The prepaid phone burned in her hand as she paced the room. She hadn’t stepped outside once since arriving. Hadn’t called Mason or Evan or any of her colleagues. Hadn’t logged into her email at home or the systems at work.
The television stations reported no major news. A web search on Paul Kissinger turned up exactly nothing. As if he didn’t exist. She didn’t know who had hired him or why. She didn’t have names, physical descriptions, eye-witness reports, behavioral habits, a motivation… Absolutely nothing to profile.
She had no plan. No solution. Not a single goddamn thing to go on.
Desperate, she’d pulled up an internet browser and typed random search strings.
How do I identify who’s stalking me?
What types of devices are used to track cars?
Can bugs be hidden on a person?
If I’m being followed, what should I do?
Every answer led to the obvious course of action. Call the cops. Ironic, considering her occupation. She wanted to call her colleagues but didn’t know who to trust. Dean had already helped her, so contacting him was the most logical option.