Chapter 25
JENNA
My body is past hot. I’m getting tired and can’t run anymore. If Rod is following me, he’s so far back that I can’t see or hear him. It’s been a whole hour since I got out of there, and still I’ve yet to see any signs of a house or civilization at all.
But in the distance, I can hear what sound like chickens. So I veer to the left a bit and go toward the sound that should mean someone lives near the chickens I’m hearing.
The sound of a small dog barking as I get closer to the chickens has me picking up speed as hope fills me. The little yapping dog comes out of nowhere, yipping at me.
It’s small and ugly as sin, but damn, I’m glad to see it!
I crouch down. “Here, puppy. Take me to your home, puppy.”
It slows down and comes timidly up to me with its tiny tail wagging away. I pick it up and pet him. “Oh, you’re so ferocious, aren’t you? Want to take me to your home, puppy?”
I put him down and follow him as he goes back toward where he came from. Suddenly I feel a lot better, and it occurs to me I might just make it out of here intact.
The chickens come into view and so does a rickety shack. But the old shack has a new satellite dish on the wavy roof and that’s good luck for me.
A screen door is about halfway off, but I knock on it anyway. “Hello,” I call out to whoever may be inside.
“What?” I hear the voice of an old woman.
I take six fast steps backward as a short, round, white-haired women with one eye shows up on the other side of the door. “Oh! Um, hello there. I need some help.”
“Why?” she says with a snarling sound in her old crotchety voice.
“I was kidnapped and need to make a call. Do you have any satellite reception in there?” I ask as I peek around her to see if I see anything that tells me the dish on the roof is working.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She turns around abruptly. “Stop pushing me, Roland!”
I don’t see anyone behind her. “Who?”
She spins back and throws the squeaking door open. “Come in! For goodness’ sake, it’s a hundred and eleven degrees out there!” She waddles off mumbling, “Not a brain in her head, it seems, Roland.”
Incredibly I see a small Wi-Fi router and hurry to see if my cell phone can pick it up. I find there’s a code I need for it. “Ma’am, what’s the code for your Wi-Fi?”
“My what?” she spins back and stops and I nearly run into her. “I don’t know what she’s talking about, Roland. So shut up!”
I look around to find who the hell she’s talking to and shake my head when I find no one. I point to the little router with the green blinking lights. “That machine has a code. Do you remember what it is?”
“Hells bells, where are my manners? You want some eggs, little girl?” She hops on one foot to a tiny kitchen.
“Are you hurt?” I ask, as she wasn’t hopping before.
“Land’s sake! Hurt! Do you need a bandage? I don’t have any, but if you need one I can ask Roland to get you one from the store.” She opens a little brown box, pulls out two eggs, cracks them into a cloudy glass, and hands it to me.
I take it and smile nervously. “Thank you.”
What is wrong with this woman?
Instead of asking her anything else, I go to the router and look at the bottom of it. Sure enough, someone has written a code there.
Thank God!
I put it into my phone and I have service. Quickly I swipe Reed’s name and his voice makes me fall to my knees. “Jenna?”
“Reed,” I say, and have to hold back the cries I want to set free. “Thank God.”
“Jenna, where are you?” he asks.
“I don’t know for sure. Right now I’m at a woman’s house. But he will find me soon, I know it. My footprints are in the sand, and all he has to do is follow them to me.”
“Ping your location and I’ll find you.”
My heart pounds, as I have real hope he’ll come and save me. “Okay. Reed, hurry.”
“I will. You do whatever you have to if he shows up. See if that person has a gun. Shoot the motherfucker if you have to, Jenna. I’ll be there soon,” he says. Then I end the call so I can send him my location.
“Ma’am, do you have a gun by any chance?”
She closes her one good eye and presses her thumb to her chin. Then she walks away and opens a door on the side of the one-room shack. “What kind do you need?”
I walk over and look in the room that’s full of things. Three of those things are guns.
Big shotguns!
Watching where I step, as there’s a lot of crap in the tiny room, I grab the guns and see one box of bullets. I pick them up too and go back to her.
She swats at the air and shouts, “Tarnation, Roland! Stop pulling my hair!”
With a shake of my head, I ask, “Is Roland your husband?”
“No! Are you blind?” She spins in a circle three times, then stops. “He’s my cat, goofy woman!”
She thinks I’m goofy?
“So it’s just you and your cat who live here?” I ask as I take a seat on a rickety old chair with a half-broken seat.
I’ve never shot a gun or loaded one, but I’m about to learn how really quickly. I’d ask the old woman, but I doubt she’d tell me the right way. She must be clinically insane.
“Me and what cat?” she asks as she sits Indian style on the old wood floor that has more than a few holes in it.
“Roland,” I say, and roll my eyes.
Reed, hurry up, before this woman takes me to crazy town with her!
“Scat!” she screams and throws her hands up in the air. They flail around her head.
“You okay?” I ask as I sit here and just watch her.
She stops and looks at me with her one eye squinted. She doesn’t say a word as she looks at me for a long time, then whispers, “I see dead people all the time. You don’t scare me.”
“I’m not trying to scare you,” I say, and finally figure out how to open the shotgun and find a shell already in the chamber. “I see you keep this one loaded.”
“Why does a ghost need a gun, anyway?” she whispers.
“I’m not a ghost. I’m a woman who is being sought after by a crazy motorcycle riding lunatic. That’s why I need a gun.” I put that one down very carefully on the floor and pick up the next one to find it’s loaded as well. And so is the third one.
She shivers and runs her hands over her chubby arms. “I had a dog one time.”
“You have a dog right now,” I remind her. “When was the last time you remembered to feed him?”
“Feed what?” She looks really confused, and that takes some doing with only one eye.
I sigh. “Your dog.”
“Dog? I have a cat. His name is Roland.”
“I know that. You also have a dog. One who needs to eat.” I hear the chickens going crazy outside, take the gun in my hand, and hurry to look out the back door.
My heart is pounding as I think I might have to shoot Rod or some other member of his gang. It slows a bit as I see it’s just the little dog killing one of the smaller chickens.
So that’s how he’s managing to stay alive!
Scanning the area I came from and seeing nothing, I think the dog will bark if it hears anyone coming. So I relax a little.
I turn when I feel tugging at the back of my nightgown. The woman is there pulling on it. “I like this snazzy dress. I sure do. Want to trade for something I got?”
“You’re a bit shorter than I am. I kind of need this.” I walk away and take a seat on the floor so she can have her one chair.
She perches on the broken chair and pulls her white hair up with her fists. It makes it stand straight up off her old wrinkled head. “I think you and me look a lot alike.”
My eyebrows go up as I look at her. “You do?”
“I do,” she says, then licks her fingertip and runs it over one of her very
bushy white eyebrows. “Once I was a showgirl.”
“You were?” I ask, and find myself smiling at the thought.
“Well, showgirl might be a little fancy for what I was.” She looks all around, then leans toward me as she whispers, “I used to take my clothes off for money, and I had sex and gave blow jobs for money too. I used to be rich.”
I’m kind of shocked and kind of not. “So what happened?”
“I bit this guy’s cock, and he hit me in the eye so hard he busted it. I was ugly then, and no one wanted me. I got thrown out of the whorehouse and all I could afford was this place. So I bought it and some chickens and took my cat, Roland, and found myself living in the Arizona desert. Alone.”
“That’s heartbreaking,” I say. “When my fiancé comes, we can take you to a woman’s shelter where you can get some help. And some nice people will come and get your chickens and your dog and make sure they all go to good homes. Won’t that be nice? You’ll sleep in a nice comfy bed and get to take a bath.”
“You’re a friendly ghost,” she says. “I like friendly ghosts. Scat!”
I jump as she screams the last word. “And you can get some help with your problems too. Maybe some nice drugs to help you not live in an alternate universe.” I give her a smile and don’t know if they make anything that would really help her not be crazy.
The dog starts barking. I jump up, run to the door, and see he’s running around the house to the front. I run to that door. As I throw open the door, I see Reed’s rented Mercedes pulling up and run out to him.
He skids to a stop in the sand and jumps out. His arms hold me tight and I let the tears loose. “Reed!”
“Jenna, I have you now. I have you, my angel!” His lips touch the side of my head as I cling tightly to him.
The sound of the shotgun going off has me letting him go. I turn and see the crazy woman pointing the gun up in the air. “Scat!” she screams. “You kids get in here before the vultures come back!”
“She’s not all there,” I say.
“You think?” he asks as he takes my hand and walks around the car to put me in the passenger’s side.
“Reed, we need to take her to get her some help.”
He rolls his eyes. “I’ll get her. What’s her name?”
With a shrug, I say, “I don’t know.”
“Great.” He turns back to look at her. “Hey, come here a minute, ma’am.”
She tosses the shotgun to the side and pulls at her hair. I do believe she thinks she’s fixing it. One hand goes to her hip as she tries her best to saunter, it seems. “So you’d like my services, would ya?”
I get back out of the car. “No, he does not want your services. Remember, we’re taking you somewhere nice. I told you that just a few minutes ago.”
She walks right up to Reed and I flinch as she grabs at his crotch. He moves back just in time to avoid the grasp. “Hey!”
I go take the old woman by the arm. “This is my man. Okay? Now let’s get you in the car and to a place that will be much safer for you.”
I take her to the back seat and, once I get her inside, I get back into the passenger’s side and take in a deep breath, then cough and gag as I realize the woman smells awful.
Reed looks over at me. “The rental company is going to charge me to clean this thing. You know that, right?”
I nod and smile. “But at least we’ll both know we did a good deed.”
He pulls back out of the dirt driveway and we head for town. “I can’t wait to get out of this damn state.”
“I’m going straight to the police station,” he says, as I hear the old lady singing some song in the back seat. “I was told to take you in so they could get you to press charges on Rod and his gang for kidnapping.”
“Reed, do I have to? That will mean a trial and seeing them all and I don’t want that. I just want to go to California. Please, Reed. I’m tired, and if I start something here it’ll mean coming back here over and over.”
He gives me a look like it’s not a thing he wants, but he nods. “Then tell them you don’t want to press charges. But if Reed makes it to our home somehow, we will press charges. Okay?”
“Okay,” I say and lay my head back on the soft leather. “Tell your mom I’m burning this nightgown and I’ll buy her a new one. This one’s had it.”
“Yeah, I’m not talking to my parents. I don’t know if I ever will again,” he says, and I pick my head up and look at him with my jaw dropped.
What the hell happened with them?
Chapter 26
REED
With Arizona far behind us, Jenna and I relax as we sit in a bathtub full of hot water. The trip home went pretty fast and now I’m feeling much better, as I have her back in the mansion.
I told her about my parents and their take on the whole Rod thing. She thought we should stop by after we left the police station and talk to them to see if they had changed their opinion at all, since he showed his true colors and kidnapped her.
But I just wanted to get her home. I think if their opinions had changed they’d have given me a call.
Her hand runs over my leg as she lies back on me in between my legs. “I’m glad that old lady was taken to the hospital and then to a nursing home. That was very nice of you to pay for all that.”
“Well, she was kind of like your crazy angel in the middle of the desert. It’s the right thing to do. She’ll like the nursing home much better than that shack, I bet.” I run my hand through her wet hair and kiss her neck. “I’m so glad you’re back in my arms. I was a fucking wreck when I found you gone.”
“You a wreck,” she says with a light laugh. “Never.”
I run my hands down her arms. “Yes, me. A wreck. Jenna, I still think it would’ve been best to press charges on him.”
“Reed, please. The whole thing is so upsetting. I just want to forget about him and all of the things that were going through my mind about what I would have to do if he made it to that room before I could get away are haunting me. I just have to push it all away. I can’t deal with it. I just can’t.” Her body shakes as she shivers.
“Okay. Don’t think any more about it.” I kiss her neck and lay my head back on the cool porcelain.
What she must’ve been getting ready for as she was thinking about what he was going to do to her once he got to her had to be horrible. I can’t imagine. Or I don’t want to, anyway.
I lean up and take some shampoo and wash her hair. I’m going to pamper the hell out of her. She must have been getting ready to get her ass beat for hours. Thankfully, she got away, and I got to her in time, so she’s enjoying a nice hot bath instead.
I think Rod needs his ass beat for what he did to her. And for what he was going to do to her again if she hadn’t managed to talk that other girl into helping her escape.
Her hand is shaking as she reaches out to take the glass of wine I poured her. I put my hand in the water to get the suds off. “Let me.” I get the glass instead and put it to her lips.
She takes a drink, then says, “Thank you, Reed. Thank you for everything. I don’t think I can ever repay you for all you’ve done for me.”
“Your love is more than enough. And I should be the one thanking you. Thank you for making me the happiest man in the world.”
And then she starts really shaking as I rinse her hair out. “Reed, I was so afraid I would have to have sex with him to get him to trust me. I was so damn afraid. But I was ready to do whatever I had to, to get him to trust me and think I was going to go back to him willingly. That way he’d let me have a bit of freedom and then I could run. Run back to you.”
My heart aches, and I hold her tight to me. “Jenna, just put it all out of your mind for now. I’m going to hire a therapist who deals with things just like this to help you. You will never be alone to handle this on your own. I’ll be with you every step of the way.”
She turns in my arms and I see the unshed tears in her pretty eyes. “Reed, what happened t
o him to make him the way he is?”
“I wish I knew. Rod has always been wired differently. I’m pretty sure he has some kind of disorder and my parents didn’t help anything with the way they treated him. He should have had some kind of evaluation done when he first started exhibiting that type of behavior.” I kiss her forehead. “Ready to get out of the tub and into bed? I’ll bring dinner up and feed you. Then we can do whatever you want to. Sleep, watch television, talk, whatever you want to do, Angel.”
She looks up at me and sighs. “Do you know what I really want to do?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“I want you to take me to the bed we will share forever and make love to me.” She moves her hands up my arms and then she takes my face in them and kisses me.
It’s an easy kiss, and I can tell she’s gathering strength from our connection. It’s deep and magical and healing.
I run my hands over her back and pull her to me even more. Her mouth leaves mine, and she smiles. “I knew that would make me feel better. So what do you say? Want to take your fiancée to our bed?”
Without uttering a word, I get up and pull her up with me. Then I take her in my arms and get out of the deep jetted tub and wrap her in a fluffy white towel.
She is mine to protect now. And now that I know the extent my brother will go to hurt her, I’ll have to amp up just what all I need to do to protect this woman from him.
Lying her back on our bed, I look down at her and smile. “Ready to let the magic happen?”
“More than ready,” she says with a moan.
Normally, I would think sex was not the right thing to do after an ordeal like she’s had. But we never have just sex. We have amazing chemistry that defies explanation. So I think making love to her will help her.
Her arms open and I go into them. Her lips brush my shoulder as she says, “Make it all go away, Reed, like only you can.”
Her body fades into mine as we connect at our junctures. She and I become one and I send my energy to her to help her get through this. Her breathing is soft as I enter her. Her words come out quiet.
“Yes. There it is.”
I move slowly as I stroke her and hold my weight off her body. Her hands move over my pecs. Then her eyes meet mine. “Press your body to mine, Reed. I need to feel you entirely.”
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