ASHFORD (Gray Wolf Security #5)

by Glenna Sinclair

  That I’d be so normal I’d disappear.

  “I want to stay in New York,” I said. “I don’t want to be afraid anymore. I don’t want to hide. I want to face this. I … I don’t think I’ll be able to be normal until I do.”

  “I’m right here with you,” Levi said. “But you’re going to have to do some things you’re not comfortable with.”

  “What can be more uncomfortable than me telling you what happened?” I muttered.

  “Telling other people.”

  “Like who?”

  “The police.” Levi had been holding my hand the entire time. “You know more about Carl than anyone. That information might be useful in finding him before anything else can happen.”

  I knew that the “anything else” Levi was thinking about was Carl getting his hands on me again, and I shuddered. Even in my wreckage of a reality, I knew things would only be worse if that happened.

  “I can talk to the police,” I said weakly, the thought sickening me. How many people would have to know how weak I was before I could be strong again?

  “I think you should also talk to a licensed professional.”

  I frowned at Levi. “What, like that group I tried to go to?” Attending the sex addiction group meeting had been a disaster of near-epic proportions. I’d been propositioned after leaving, and had very nearly taken the guy up on his offer if only to drown my own despair. It would’ve been a terrible betrayal of Levi, of everything he’d done for me — and was still doing.

  “No,” he said. “One-on-one conversations with someone. Someone you trust.”

  “I only trust you.”

  He smiled at me. “I’m glad to hear that you trust me, but you’re going to have to let other people in, too. Other people can help you. We’ll shop around until you find someone you think you can open up to.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think that’s going to be possible.”

  “You know that I’m always going to be here for you, right?” Levi looked at me until I gave a short nod of understanding. “I will always be here for you — for whatever you need. If you need to talk. But you need professional help to continue to move forward with this, professional advice, and I don’t want to tell you the wrong thing.”

  I laughed at him, short, brittle. “Continuing to move forward? That’s kind of a stretch, don’t you think?”

  “You’re already moving forward, Meagan,” he said. “Just think about it. You left your home for New York City. You explained to me what’s going on, what happened. And you don’t want to run away, to ignore this new threat. You want to improve. Moving forward? I’d say it’s closer to hurtling forward.”

  I opened my mouth to argue, but closed it again. When he put it like that, it did make sense. I was leaps and bounds ahead of where I was around this time last year, when I did everything I could to distract myself from my torment, avoiding the house where the abuse had happened, sleeping with men I didn’t even know.

  If I wanted to survive this, if I wanted things to get better, I’d have to keep on taking steps forward — even if they were tiny, even if they were simply agreeing to a plan of action, sticking to it, getting up in the morning to go somewhere, opening my mouth, speaking.

  The first stop was the office of one of Levi’s contacts in the police force, a detective he’d known since before my brother’s killing. I told him what I knew about Carl, recounted the loathsome details of his physical appearance in the presence of a sketch artist, shuddering when she got it right enough to make my stomach clench. The name Carl Prentice didn’t ring any bells for them.

  “It could be an alias,” the detective suggested. “A name only you and your family knew him by. He could be known as many other names across the country. We’d have no real way of knowing unless we catch a lucky break.”

  I hoped he didn’t hold his breath. Nothing about my family’s relationship with Carl had ever been lucky.

  The next stop was to a therapist, and then another, and then another until I found a place where I felt safe.

  We set up meetings three times a week — “for now,” the man told me, smiling encouragingly.

  I left feeling strangely lighter, practically floating along beside Levi, looking forward to that normal I’d always craved.

  Chapter 17

  I didn’t expect normalcy after I told Levi my truth. Not even after he told me he still loved me, that things would be even better now that he understood me better, understood where I was coming from and why I reacted to certain things in certain ways.

  But normalcy is what we decided to strive for. If Carl had somehow ruined what I had with Levi just by the mention of his name, then he would’ve won. In fact, if I didn’t keep trying to be normal, to get on with my life, to be happy, Carl would win it all.

  So when Levi asked me out on a date just a handful of days after I painfully spilled my guts to him, I agreed. I was eager to try to exorcise Carl’s grip on me. And maybe, if we worked on making new memories together, Levi and I could forget about the asshole, as well.

  “Where are we going?” I asked Levi as I peered into the closet I’d commandeered in his bedroom. I had so many clothes hanging up in there that I hadn’t even worn yet, tags still on them. I’d wear some of those clothes tonight, just to break them in. They were all garments Levi had bought me. I wanted to show him that I appreciated them.

  “It’s a surprise.” He pulled on a soft, charcoal gray sweater over a white button down shirt. Men had it so easy whenever they got ready. I hadn’t ever seen Levi so much as moisturize his face. And I doubted he cared about what he wore or the way his hair laid on his head.

  “Is it a formal surprise or a casual surprise?” I asked.

  “I’m wearing jeans and a sweater,” he said, smiling at me. “Pick something like that.”

  “Okay.” I eyed the fancy, floor-length dresses still encased in plastic and vowed to don one of them another day.

  Levi drove us across the city, the lights of all the surrounding buildings slowly winking on, giving off light long after the sun sank below the horizon. This was why they called it the city that never slept. It was daylight for all 24 hours.

  “Here,” Levi said suddenly, holding out a small box to me as we were held up at a traffic light.

  “What’s this?” I asked, taking it. It was heavy. “It’s not Christmas yet.”

  “Call it an early Christmas present, then. Open it.”

  I slid the lid off and inhaled sharply. It was a revolver — a sharp silver color, gleaming with every streetlight we passed. It was heavy for its size — much heavier than I would’ve imagined a gun would be. But maybe I thought it was just heavy because of what it meant.

  “It’s not actually what I’d get you for Christmas,” Levi said, patting my knee comfortingly, keeping one eye on the road. “But it’s the present I want you to have right now.”

  “What am I supposed to do with this?” I asked. “Kill somebody?”

  “No. You’re supposed to learn how to use it, keep it with you at all times, and use it to protect yourself.”

  “I’ve never fired a gun before, let alone owned one.”

  “Well, both of those things are about to change. Our date tonight? A shooting range.”

  “Very romantic,” I said, sarcastic. “I don’t know about this, Levi. Do I really need a gun?”

  “I would much rather you have it and not need it than the alternative.”

  All of this because Carl had somehow figured out I was in New York City and decided he wanted to make my life hell again. Hadn’t he taken enough from me already?

  “I really don’t want to do this,” I said. Doing this would mean that this was all too real. I would be accepting the fact that Carl was back.

  He’d told me, though, that he would be coming back for me. That had been real, too, but I’d somehow been able to pretend for an entire year that he’d been lying, or dead, or somehow just magically vanished off the face of the earth.
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  “Meagan.” He took the gun from me — I still hadn’t actually touched it — and replaced the lid on the box it had come in. “Take control of this situation. Don’t wait for something to happen and then react. Be ready. I know it’s not fun to think about.”

  “Not fun?” I blinked at him, dumbfounded. “This monster has ruined my life. I don’t think ‘not fun’ really quite describes it.”

  “I’m not trying to diminish what happened to you,” Levi said. “I just want you to be prepared for the eventuality that something else is going to happen.”

  I knew, in my bones, about that eventuality. I just wished I didn’t.

  “I think it’s time that you told me exactly what the threat said.”

  “I really don’t want to put that on your shoulders,” he said, wheeling the car into a parking garage. “It wasn’t nice.”

  “I don’t imagine it was nice. But I have to know. I have to know exactly what I’m dealing with.”

  “Why don’t you let me handle the threat? I don’t want you to worry about it.”

  “Levi, you gave me a gun for Christmas. You’re taking me to learn how to use it right now. Maybe I’ll take everything a little more seriously if I know exactly what’s at stake.”

  He sighed and parked the car — right beneath a security camera, I noted, and near a light and other cars. Levi usually liked to try to park away from everyone else in lots and garages, but he was sacrificing his vehicle’s pristine flanks for increased safety. Reaching into his breast pocket, he withdrew a piece of paper that had been folded and refolded.

  “Do you seriously keep it with you all the time?” I asked, feeling sick as I took the paper.

  “To remind myself to be vigilant,” he explained, watching me as I unfolded the paper. “To remind me of what I’m unwilling to lose.”

  I felt a wave of dizziness as I realized Carl had touched this piece of paper, writing on it and sending it to Levi’s office. It repulsed me physically to touch it now, but I soldiered onward. I didn’t want to show Levi just how freaked out I was. It would make him worry, and I already worried him enough.

  “No one touches what’s mine,” it read, the letters written in a jagged, uneven script. “I’ve already taken something from you that you cared about. I’ll take your life, too, if you don’t give Meagan to me. She’s mine, not yours. I made her.” It was signed at the bottom, his full, real name, a man with nothing to hide.

  I read it again, one more time to make sure I understood every insane word, and handed it back to Levi wordlessly. He refolded it again and returned it to his pocket.

  “Tell me what you’re thinking,” he said quietly.

  “I’m thinking it’s about time I learned how to use my Christmas present,” I said, taking the box and getting out of the car.

  The shooting range was smaller than I’d envisioned, but I didn’t have much to work off of — just scenes in movies and TV shows. There were only a couple of lanes, and no one was using them. There was only one person behind the counter, there to give us eye and ear protection and sell us ammunition. Levi purchased a couple of boxes of bullets and we went into the range.

  “Not very popular, is it?” I asked quietly as we put on the protective glasses.

  “I rented it out for tonight,” Levi said, handing me the ear protectors. “Put those around your neck, for now. Let’s talk about your gun.”

  My gun. It was kind of surreal. Probably just as surreal as the fact that Levi could afford to rent out an entire establishment just because he wanted a little privacy.

  “Can we just keep calling it my Christmas present?” I asked. “I don’t know if I’m ready to admit that I’m locked and loaded just yet.”

  “Whatever you want.” Levi’s mouth remained in a straight line, but his eyes twinkled with humor. “Now, this model doesn’t jam. It’ll be easier for you to use because it’s more forgiving on those with smaller hands. And it’s simple to keep it clean, keep it loaded, and keep it in your purse — with you at all times.”

  “I don’t want to carry it with me,” I protested. “What if I drop my purse and it accidentally fires and kills someone?”

  “It won’t go off like that. And you read the threat. You have no idea when he’s going to choose to come after you. That’s why you have to have the gun all the time. You have to be ready in every moment. Now, let me help you load it.”

  My hands shook as I fumbled with slipping the bullets into the chambers.

  “Six bullets, six shots,” Levi said, spinning the cylinder and handing the revolver to me. “Hold it with both hands. Arms out. Legs spread, steady, supporting you.”

  He stood behind me, guiding me into the position he’d described. His breath on my cheek, his arms on my arms, his crotch to my rear. I shuddered at the exact time I felt a stir of awakening from beneath the fabric of his trousers.

  “Is this a turn-on for you?” I asked, turning to him and grinning. “You like strong women with weapons?”

  “I like you,” he said, stepping away and pressing a button to send the paper target to the other end of the range. “I get a boner every time I get near you. I can’t control it. So please excuse me.”

  “You’re not excused,” I said primly. “I know just what I’d like to do with that boner. And you just so happened to give us the privacy in order to make it happen.”

  “Not happening,” Levi said, giving me a brief but brilliant grin. “I don’t want to distract you from your education. Or your Christmas present.”

  I was dying for a distraction. The gun was even heavier with the bullets loaded into the chambers. And it made my mind heavy with anxiety.

  “It’s time, Meagan. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

  I extended my arms like he’d shown me, and stared down the barrel of the gun to the faraway target. Would I do this if I saw Carl walking down the sidewalk toward me somewhere in the city? The thought made me dizzy, and I lower my arms. Would I be able to cut him down like this? Part of me shouted “fuck yes.” I had no love for him, no regard for him as a human being. He had taken something precious away from me that I’d never be able to retrieve. It was my right to end his life if he threatened me again. I had a right to defend myself, and implicit in that right was the right to end him.

  And yet part of me was afraid. What if killing him made me … different? I didn’t want to suffer anymore mental angst because of that monster. I couldn’t take it back if I killed him. If it turned me into something else, there was no going back. I would have taken a life for him, and that was difficult to fathom.

  I glanced over at Levi for comfort, but his face was set in a grim line. Exhaling heavily, I refocused on my target — a large piece of paper with a black silhouette of a torso. It wouldn’t be like this, if it really happened. There wouldn’t be an abstract human shape in front of me, and it probably wouldn’t be so far away, either. It would be Carl, my de facto stepfather, the bald spot on his head gleaming, his eyes watching me, always watching.

  I pulled the trigger.

  “Try to keep your eyes open,” Levi coached me. “It’s hard, but you’ll aim better. Again.”

  The act of firing the bullet was so loud. Even though I was the one pulling the trigger, it never failed to surprise me. The target was so far away that I wasn’t sure if I was even hitting the torso area.

  “That’s better,” Levi encouraged me. “But don’t flinch.”

  “That’s like telling me not to breathe,” I muttered.

  “You’re doing well,” he said, changing tack. “You’ve never fired a gun before. You’re doing very well.”

  “You don’t have to patronize me,” I sighed. “Okay. Let’s do this for real.”

  I widened my stance, looked down the barrel of the gun, and visualized each one of my bullets hitting the target. Bang — bang — bang — bang — click. That was it. No more bullets.

  If this was really happening, if Carl had been coming at me, threatening my life or my sani
ty, I needed to have it taken care of by now. Six shots. That’s all I’d have.

  “Let’s see how you did,” Levi said, pressing the button to return the target to us.

  “I thought you said I did well,” I said, not caring that I sounded petulant. I felt much worse. The gun felt too heavy in my hands as I examined it, the barrel still hot from the shots I’d fired. Would this little thing really protect me? No, it wouldn’t protect me on its own, but it would help me protect myself.

  “You did do well. Look.” Levi unclipped the paper target and handed it to me. I ran my fingers over the holes my bullets had made in the black silhouette area. He covered my hand, made my finger touch a hole near the center of the shape.

  “This one would be fatal,” he said. “Straight through the heart.”

  I turned that over in my head a few times. If it really had been Carl instead of this paper target on the other end of my gun, he’d be dead. I’d be standing over him, just like this, touching the hole I’d put in him.

  Sort of like the maw he’d put in me.

  Something about that exchange seemed almost fair, and I made my peace with it.

  If I had my gun with me, like I was supposed to, and Carl tried to fuck with me again, I’d end him. It seemed to be just as simple as that.

  Chapter 18

  The gun in my purse never got lighter. I tried to put it in perspective, tried to convince myself that the extra weight was the added security Levi had touted. I would be ready for anything with this gun in my purse, kept with me at all times, per his request, and now that I knew how to use it, I’d be able to deal with any threat that came my way.

  But if I thought about it for too long, the gun in my bag felt like a ball and chain, a weighty promise that I would be forced to do something I couldn’t take back, forced into action even if all I wanted to do was hide.

  It was with me at all times, heavy at my side while eating lunch, heavy on my arm while out running errands, heavy on my lap as I clutched my purse while talking with my doctor during one of my various appointments. They’d been going well, as difficult as it was to open up. He was a good man, and I often found myself empowered to talk about the sessions afterward with Levi, who always waited outside the office for me to finish.