by Godwin, Pam
“I’ve been working with Luke and Tate for the past week trying to do just that. We scoured the IP addresses of all the activity on the email account. There’s no forwarded mail. No suspicious logins. She knows how to erase her tracks.”
“She’s in law enforcement.”
“Her email implied that, but it’s not confirmed. I’ll stop in El Paso to do some digging before heading your way. Might take me a few days. In the meantime—”
“I’ll call you when she starts spilling secrets.” Tomas hung up, seething with frustration.
He couldn’t stop Cole from coming to the house. But it didn’t matter. His plan to break down Rylee piece by piece would begin out there. He turned toward the open door, sweating in the heat that blasted in from outside.
Four hours until sunset.
He spent the next few minutes unloading her truck. On his way back inside, he tore off his sweat-drenched shirt and checked her breathing.
The cuff on her wrist attached to a chain that restrained her to a post. But she wouldn’t be waking any time soon.
He sat back on his heels and let himself fully look at her for the first time.
Long brown hair framed a pixie face. A tiny turned-up nose, cupid lips, and symmetrical features rounded out her delicate bone structure. Flawless porcelain skin and a toned physique gave her the appearance of a woman in her twenties. But she married twenty-three years ago? If that were true, Tomas would’ve been four at the time.
That would put her in her forties now. Hard to believe.
Maybe she had laugh lines when she smiled or crow’s feet when she squinted. But with the muscles relaxed in her face, there were no wrinkles or sunspots. No indication that she was older than him.
Her tits sat high. Her waist tucked in, and her jeans molded to slender hips and legs, leaving little to the imagination. The woman was built. Easily fuckable. Insanely gorgeous.
That only made him hate her more.
Shifting away, he turned his attention to the denim jacket that lay near the door. He remembered it well—the soft texture beneath his hands, the scent of vanilla on the collar, and the small front pocket, where he watched Caroline slip the scrap of paper he’d given her the day she died.
If he hadn’t written down the account information, he wouldn’t be in this mess. Hell, he should’ve never written down any of his secrets.
Not just his secrets. He’d spewed an unedited, unfiltered stream of consciousness in those emails. He’d detailed his fears, his regrets, every internal battle, every ridiculous notion in his head, every terrible thing that happened to him, and his desires… Fucking hell, she knew his darkest cravings, his filthy fantasies, his obsession with fucking and dominating and his inability to emotionally connect to sex.
He’d confessed every shameful thought to his girl. Because she was dead. He never imagined anyone reading it. Why would they want to?
What a dumb fucking asshole.
Except the writing had helped him. It had given him a sense of control over a life that had spiraled wildly and dangerously into chaos.
He lifted the jacket to his nose and inhaled deeply. Caroline’s vanilla scent was long gone. In its place lingered the aroma of an unfamiliar woman. Undertones of lavender drowned in years of deceit.
He hated her with a blinding passion.
Fury burned anew as he stored the jacket safely in his old bedroom.
Then he loaded the woman into the truck and drove her into the desert.
CHAPTER 4
Rylee woke with a hangover.
In the middle of the godforsaken desert.
The sun’s unblinking eye glared down at her, scorching her from the inside out. Nausea, headache, crushing heat… She rolled to her stomach and retched precious fluid, groaning miserably.
Fresh pain seeped into her palms, where she’d planted them on the ground.
“Ow, ow, fuck!” She pushed to her knees and shook out her blazing hands.
The sand was the sky’s co-conspirator, cooking her as viciously as the sun. And there were miles of it in every direction.
He hadn’t just dumped her in this desolate wasteland alone.
He’d shackled her.
A thick leather cuff clamped around her wrist, secured with a tiny padlock. The ring connected to a chain that snaked through the sand and circled the base of an old telephone pole.
From one horizon to the other, that pole was the only sign of human civilization.
Deep cracks forked through the parched earth beneath her, burnt into a hard crust, no more hospitable than a sunbaked rock. If Tommy had driven her here in her truck, the tires had made no impression on the ground.
She felt sick. Aside from her churning stomach, dusty throat, pounding headache, achy muscles, and feverish flu-like symptoms, she was frying in this heat, and that worried her more than anything.
How far would he take this?
She remembered dying. Suffocating beneath his hand. Had he killed her and revived her?
Would he kill her again?
Consumed with panic, she stumbled to her feet and jerked uselessly on the chain. The desert stretched out around her, tufted with shrubs and punctuated with small boulders and tall columns of cacti.
Black vultures circled overhead, eying her like carrion. Reptiles sought shelter in the shadows of the rocks where the sand wouldn’t roast them. There was no shade close enough nor large enough to protect her. No water. No breeze. Not a cloud in the sky to filter the harsh rays.
Each searing breath sank into her lungs, drowning her chest in lava.
“You fucking prick! Where are you?” Her scream echoed across the barren terrain. “This isn’t how an adult faces his problems. You’re a goddamn coward!”
She didn’t believe that. A coward would’ve left her for dead. While he seemed to be doing precisely that, he wouldn’t have gone through this trouble after asphyxiating her. What was his plan?
The rule of threes.
She cast her mind back to their ominous conversation, recalling the first and only words he’d spoken to her.
Three seconds to make a life-or-death decision.
Three minutes without air.
Three hours in extreme heat.
Three days without water.
Three weeks without food.
Three months without hope.
Dread swelled, as thick and hot as the air.
He’d already enacted the first two. And now…
“Three hours in extreme heat.” She gripped her lurching stomach and fought back tears. “Three fucking hours of this? Are you kidding me?”
She couldn’t even think about the remaining rules. First, she had to survive the relentless sun.
How long had she been out here?
Pressing a finger against her forearm, she watched the indentation flash from white to pink. Her skin didn’t appear to be burnt. Yet.
She’d arrived at his house with maybe four or five hours left of daylight. Would he leave her out here until dusk? Or all night? Shackled and unprotected?
Predators came out after dark. If she didn’t perish from sun-poisoning, she’d make an easy meal for a coyote or snake.
Tommy had done some stomach-turning shit over the years. He’d killed people. Evil people. But he wasn’t cruel enough to let her die like this.
The sun perched too high in the sky, but maybe it was an illusion. Maybe dusk was only an hour away. She could make it until then. She had no choice.
Sitting with her back to the pole, she lowered her head to her bent knees and adjusted her hair to cover her face, neck, and bare arms. Her jeans and boots should protect the rest of her.
The danger lurked in the unrelenting heat. What was the lethal temperature to the human body? How long could she survive out here?
Tommy seemed to think the limit was three hours. But she wasn’t a hardened, outdoorsy girl. She camped infrequently and always in campgrounds with shade and running water.
God, she ne
eded water. Her throat felt so raw and sandy it hurt to swallow.
She hated him for this. It was unnecessarily cruel and inhumane. But her clinical mind tried to analyze his behavior from an unbiased angle.
He’d witnessed and experienced the worst of human depravity. The torture he’d endured and inflicted on others had desensitized him. She remembered a story about how his team had injected a man with Krokodil, a flesh-eating cocktail that rotted the skin off the bones while he was still alive.
In Tommy’s world, brutality and death were as common as nightfall.
He’d been separated from gentle affection and normalcy for so long he’d lost sight of what normal looked like. He could camouflage himself in society, but he would have to undergo a great deal of therapy and self-help to create a lasting positive change. Especially if he ever wanted to engage in a healthy romantic relationship.
She didn’t judge him for his psychological shortfalls. She had her own litany of issues. But she would never do something so ruthless as chaining a person in the desert, even if her issues were the reason she was in this predicament in the first place.
Time passed in a blistering haze. She held still within the dark curtain of her hair, sweating in the oven of her clothes. With each second, the withered shag of the earth blurred into a weird, dehumanized hue. Neither taupe nor gray nor sandy brown, the land was the color of death, reflecting back at her.
She tried to keep her spirits up, giving herself pep talks and tracking the descent of the sun. But her nemesis barely moved, its everlasting rays blasting down on her, diminishing her morale.
Salty sweat rolled off her brow and stung her eyes, her clothes unbearably hot and sticky. Gritty sand worked its way into her hair and mouth and coated her tongue with stiff fur. She avoided licking her lips, knowing it would only chap them further.
God, she ached for crystal, cold water. The thought tormented her until she became mad with the craving.
Unbidden, she wet her lips and tasted… Strange. She did it again, flooding her mouth with a chemical flavor.
Wiping at the perspiration around her eyes, she held up her hand and stared at a milky residue. Was her facial lotion melting? It should’ve rubbed off hours ago.
She raised an arm to her mouth and licked. Same chemical taste.
Her heart hammered as she ran her hands over her face and neck. She hadn’t noticed it before, but there was definitely a thick layer of cream on her skin.
He’d lathered her with sunscreen.
Oh, Tommy, you miserable, thoughtful, misguided man.
He’d probably done it as an afterthought, telling himself he didn’t want to deal with a blistered body. Misguided reasoning, to be sure.
But she remembered the outpouring of devotion and selflessness in the words of the teenage boy before his abduction. He loved a girl with all his heart. He loved his mother and respected the life she’d given him. Following their unimaginable deaths, he’d remained steadfast, never veering into substance abuse or self-destruction. That kind of inner strength didn’t just go away. It was innate, sewn into the fabric of his being.
It gave her hope.
A gentle breeze stirred up the wispy sand and brushed across her skin like drafts from a fire. There was no escape from the hellacious temperature. It sat heavily on her chest, making every breath an exhausting effort.
Gradually, the heat chased her into a fitful slumber. Each time she woke, she felt disoriented and confused. In and out of sleep, she fumbled between reality and hallucination until everything smeared together, plunging her into a nebulous hinterland.
At some point, the fog lifted, as did the torrential heat. She rubbed her eyes, drowsy and weak, squinting in the dark.
Twilight had arrived in the desert. The huge, pale moon rose over the edge of the desolate landscape, its beams falling on the murky outline of a vehicle.
Her truck.
It parked several yards away, pointed in the opposite direction.
Her heart pounded, and her skin shivered, for perched on the open tailgate was the silhouette of a man.
A cowboy hat angled low on his brow, casting his face in shadow. But it didn’t hide the bristling tension surrounding him nor the rage in his unmitigated stare, burning as hot as the Texan sun.
Tommy hadn’t left her for dead, but she might wish for that before he was done with her.
CHAPTER 5
Rylee lay on her side, her hair stuck to her face and stiff with sand. As she slowly rose to sit, her head swam with fuzz. Dehydration. But her arm was free. Tommy had removed the cuff.
He lifted a water bottle to his lips and drank deeply, watching her, taunting her.
She followed the movement of his throat with longing, swishing her tongue in her mouth, trying to gather moisture where there was none.
“I need water,” she croaked, her voice covered in dust.
The plastic crinkled in his hand, and he tossed the empty bottle in the truck bed behind him.
“You think I can survive out here for three days without water?” Her anger fired on all cylinders as she attempted to stand. “Is this my punishment for reading your emails?” Her legs gave out, sending her back to the prickly earth. “Fucking harsh, don’t you think?”
He stretched out along the tailgate, crossed his cowboy boots at the ankles, and reclined against the side of the truck bed.
Hard to make out his form in the blackness of night, but there was something about his presence that intrigued and allured. Maybe it was his brooding silence. Or the cocksure tilt of his hat. Or the dark, intimidating confidence that radiated from his posture.
Whatever it was, she had no business admiring him with female appreciation. She wasn’t here for that. Besides, the motherfucker had just put her through ungodly hell, and he wasn’t finished.
“You’re going to regret this someday.” She ran her hands over her hair and clothes, attempting to put herself back together. “I know you’re ruthless, but you’ve never harmed an innocent woman. I’m no one, Tommy. I’m sure as hell not your enemy.”
“Tell me your full name and date of birth.” His gravelly voice rumbled from the shadow of his hat as he produced another bottle of water and set it beside him.
So this was his plan. Take away the basic requirements for survival and dangle them piece by piece as a trade for information.
“What did you do while I roasted in the desert for the past three hours?” she asked. “Did you contact Cole to initiate an investigation on me?”
As expected, he gave no answer.
All they had to go on was her first name and the city where she grew up. There were a lot of Rylees in El Paso. It would take time to identify her and those she cared about.
She had an ex-husband who never remarried and a neighbor with benefits. That was the extent of her liabilities.
But the moment he learned her occupation, address, and boring background, the mystery would be over. He would send her home with a threat to kill her loved ones if she ever leaked information about him. Then he would disappear forever.
That outcome was inevitable, but before that happened, she had a desperate, reckless need to help him.
She cared about him. Deeply. It was a one-sided sentiment, a motivation he couldn’t possibly understand because he didn’t know her the way she knew him.
He wasn’t happy. Not today, not last week, not one second in the past ten years. His friends, the family of ex-captives who had his back, didn’t know the extent of his suffering. He concealed it from them because he didn’t want to be a burden. He didn’t even know how to open up to someone. For a decade, he carried around a terrible weight in his soul, confiding in no one. Except a dead girl.
That in and of itself troubled her.
After his abduction, he lived with his vigilante team. But over the years, his roommates found partners, some of them married, and the dynamics of their tight-knit clan changed. They were moving on.
Unless something changed since
his last email, he and Luke were the only bachelors left.
“What happened with the cartel?” She squinted at his shadow, unable to see his eyes in the dark.
Silence.
Exasperated, she glanced around and spotted a black smudge on the ground several feet away. She crawled toward it, marveling at how quickly the sand had already cooled.
“I assume the cartel bought your undercover story? Either that or you escaped.” She focused on the dark object and quickened her movements when she realized it was her backpack. “Where’s Luke?”
She pulled the pack onto her lap and dug through the contents while watching him out of the corner of her eye. His silhouette didn’t twitch. No sound. No attempt to take away her belongings.
It occurred to her that his undercover operation might’ve gone terribly wrong. They went in to find Tula’s sister. Tula, who had fallen in love with Martin and Ricky during a mission in a Mexican prison.
What if Luke hadn’t made it out of the cartel headquarters? What if he’d been forced to kill Vera, Tula’s sister?
“You said your friend killed an innocent girl on a meat hook.” She shivered, her voice wavering. “Tommy? Is Luke okay? And Vera? Please, you have to tell me.”
“Why the fuck do you care?”
Her pulse skipped at the sound of his voice. “I’m invested. For ten years—”
“You’ve been collecting intel on my team. Tell me what you’re doing with that information.”
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit.”
“You needed someone to hear you. So I listened. Through every word, no matter how uncomfortable or horrifying, I silently supported you, rooted for you and your friends. I’m still doing that. It’s the only reason I’m here.”
“You’re a liar.”
“I speak the truth. You’re just not ready to hear it.”
She took an inventory of the supplies in her pack. Some of her belongings were here. The first-aid kit. Sunscreen. Extra clothes. But he’d removed the rest, the things she needed most, such as water, food, weapons, maps, and the compass.