Into the Fire

by Anne Stuart

  “I’m sure I can manage it without any instruction.” She looked around her, but the people who’d greeted them had disappeared, and they were alone by Dillon’s battered yellow Cadillac. With no sign of Nate or Dillon anywhere around.

  “Where’d they all go?” she asked.

  Paul grinned down at her, sliding his hand up her arm. “Don’t worry about it, baby. I’ll keep you company.”

  In the end, maybe it was her fault. She’d taken one look at Paul’s handsome face and known he was drunk. He didn’t force her to put the bottle of tequila to her mouth and drink. And drink. He didn’t force her to climb in the back of Dillon’s parked car and let him put his hands all over her, kiss her with loose, rubbery lips, grinding his crotch against her as he shoved his hands under her shirt. So why should she have expected him to listen when she finally did say no?

  She lay pinned beneath him, no longer fighting, as he pumped away at her, cursing and grunting, his fingers pinching her breasts, his tongue running over her teeth. She should have had more to drink, enough to knock her out, enough, maybe, to make her like what he was doing. He’d told her she’d like it. He told her she was a frigid bitch and a cock tease. And then he stopped saying anything, stopped talking, just put his hand over her mouth and unfastened his pants.

  He ripped off her plain cotton underwear, and it hurt, but it was nothing compared to the pain of him pushing inside her, forcing her, and she tried to push him away. She felt like she was tearing inside, and then she was, as he ripped through her virginity without anything more than a grunt.

  The longer it took the better it was, or so she’d been told by her more experienced friends. They’d lied. He went on forever, hunching, grunting, and there was nothing she could do but lie still beneath him and cry.

  With a final string of obscenity he finished, collapsing on top of her for a brief moment. And then he sat back, fastening his pants again, looking at her out of hooded eyes.

  “Jesus, are you crying?” he demanded. “I hate girls who cry all the time. They’re just trying to get you to do what they want, but I’m not buying it. If you think just because you put out it means we’re dating then you’re wrong. Charlene will come back to me—she always does. And if she doesn’t, no offense, but I can do better than you.”

  She’d found her jeans on the floor of the car and managed to pull them back on, and she scuttled into the corner of the back seat. She could see her blood on Dillon’s leather seats. He wouldn’t like that.

  She looked at Paul, but she couldn’t see him very well, probably because she couldn’t stop crying. She was making embarrassing little hiccup noises, and he was looking even more disgusted.

  “For fuck’s sake, shut up!” he snapped. “You don’t want to be making a scene, do you? Here!” He shoved the bottle of tequila at her. “Have a drink and stop crying.”

  The smell of the tequila made her stomach roil. She shoved at the door, blindly, but it wouldn’t open beneath her desperate hands. She climbed over the side, tumbled out and made it into the woods just before she threw up.

  When she finished she collapsed in the dirt, crying silently. It was too late for tears, but she couldn’t stop. She just lay there, weeping, curled into a ball.

  And then she heard the voices. Drunken laughter. She sat up, trying to wipe the tears from her face in case someone decided to come in search of her.

  She should have known it would be her worst nightmare. Dillon and a woman had arrived back on the scene, probably to use the back seat of his car. Whether it was the same woman he’d been kissing earlier or a different one was immaterial.

  “Hey,” Dillon said. “We want a little privacy, man.”

  Paul hadn’t wandered off, after all—she heard him grunt in response. “Hey, I’m outta here. Next time you ask me to take care of someone you might pick someone who knows her way around. Virgins are a pain in the butt.”

  “What do you mean?” Dillon’s voice was casual.

  “Man, all she did was cry. Do you know how hard it is to ball someone when they’re crying all the time? Took me for-fucking-ever. And even then she wouldn’t stop crying. We made a mess of your back seat—you should have told me she was jailbait.”

  “Killer, you’re hurting me” came a plaintive female voice. “Let go.”

  “Hey, Dillon.” Nate’s voice carried into the woods.

  Jamie couldn’t listen anymore. She pushed herself to her feet and started running. She could only hope she was headed toward the highway. Sooner or later she’d reach the road, and someone would pick her up. She’d already had enough bad things happen to her for one night—hitchhiking no longer held the same terrors it once had.

  The highway was farther than she realized, and for a few panicked moments she thought she’d been walking in circles. And then she heard the sound of a car moving fast, and she knew she was almost there.

  She stumbled out onto the highway just as a pair of bright headlights speared her way. She didn’t even have to put out her thumb, which was a good thing. She wasn’t sure she had the energy. The car pulled up beside her, and she recognized Nate in the driver’s seat.

  “Get in, precious,” he said, and his casual manner was oddly comforting. If he’d shown her any sympathy she would have fallen apart.

  She went around the car and climbed in. She didn’t recognize it, and for that matter Nate didn’t have his driver’s license yet, but Jamie didn’t question it. She put on her seat belt and closed her eyes.

  He drove very fast. She could smell the beer on his breath, and she almost wanted to vomit again. She was never going to drink anything for the rest of her life. And she was never going to make the mistake of thinking some bad boy like Dillon Gaynor was worth fantasizing about.

  Except that Paul Jameson had been even worse.

  Her fault, she reminded herself. She’d led him on. But she hadn’t realized that Dillon had told him to. Dillon had handed her over like a ripe peach and told Paul she was his for the taking. And she’d gotten half drunk. It was no wonder she hadn’t made it clear that she didn’t want him to.

  A little whimper escaped her, and Nate glanced over at her. One arm was draped along the back seat, the other on the steering wheel. “Cheer up, Jamie. Had to happen sooner or later, and now you’ve got it over with. Next time will be better.”

  “There won’t be a next time,” she said in a low, bitter voice.

  “Sure there will. All Dillon has to do is crook his finger and you’ll come running.”

  “With a gun,” she said.

  “Not his fault. As a matter of fact, you’d be surprised to know—” The flashing blue lights behind them shut him up midsentence. “Shit,” he said.

  Jamie glanced behind them. “Were you speeding?”

  “I was speeding, I’m loaded, and I didn’t bother to ask the owner whether I could use his car. I think we’re screwed, Jamie. In more ways than one.”

  She just stared at him in horror.

  “Come on, Jamie,” he said. “You gotta have a sense of humor about these things. Aunt Isobel will bail us out, and we probably won’t get anything more than a slap on the wrist. Don’t worry about it. Hell, they might even let us go with a warning.”

  They were sitting side by side in the police station an hour later, waiting for Victor Kincaid to come pick them up, when two police came in, dragging someone in handcuffs. Someone bloody, disheveled, barely walking.

  Dillon Gaynor.

  He looked at the two of them out of one swollen eye, and his mouth curved in that familiar, mocking smile. And then the police dragged him away.

  They shoved him up against the desk with unnecessary force, and Jamie winced, watching them. Not that she should have a moment’s sympathy for him, she reminded herself. But he looked so thrashed.

  “Dillon Gaynor,” said the desk sergeant in a resigned voice. “I should have known you’d be back. You’re going down for this one, you know. You were warned—one more fight and you’d be
spending time as a guest of the state. Looks like you’re about to reap the fruits of your labors.”

  “Worse than that,” one of the cops said. “He put a kid in the hospital.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me,” the sergeant said. “What does surprise me is that the other guy managed to make such a mess of his pretty face.”

  “The other kid barely touched him,” the cop said with a malevolent chuckle. “He…fell on the way to the patrol car.”

  “Nasty fall,” said the sergeant casually.

  “Very nasty.”

  “Nate! Jamie!” Isobel Kincaid appeared in the doorway of police station, in her high heels and her real pearls and her expression of horror and disdain. “Your father’s waiting for you in the car. I’ll take care of any papers—just leave.”

  “Mother…” Jamie began, but Isobel turned the full force of her disapproval on her.

  “Don’t start with me, Jamie. I’m extremely cross with you. With the both of you.” She turned her icy glare to Nate.

  “But you’ll forgive me, Aunt Isobel,” he said sweetly. “You always do.”

  Her mother gave him a rueful smile. “Out of here, the both of you. The less time you spend in the company of trash like Dillon Gaynor, the better off you are. I warned you, Nate.”

  “Yes’m. You did.”

  Nate put his arm around Jamie and led her out into the warm spring night. “You know, you gotta admire Dillon. There he is, in the midst of a drama, and he forgets all about it and gets in a fistfight with one of his buddies. The man doesn’t think of anyone but himself. It must have been Jimmy Canton—they’ve been gunning for each other for weeks, ever since Dillon ran off with Jimmy’s girl. I wonder if he killed Jimmy.” He sounded no more than vaguely curious.

  Jamie shivered.

  “Cheer up, Jamie,” Nate continued. “Don’t look so stricken. When we get home you’ll take a shower and forget anything ever happened.”

  She glanced up at him in surprise, wondering if he was serious. He was. “Don’t worry about it, kiddo. The only other person who knows about this is Dillon, and he’s too drunk to remember anything by tomorrow morning. Besides, he’ll have more important things on his mind, like how he’s going to get out of spending a couple of years in jail.”

  “What about Paul?”

  “Oh, he’s not about to go bragging about this to anyone. Charlene would kill him. And if he does, just say he’s lying. People would believe you. After all, why would a good girl like you give it up in the back of someone’s convertible?”

  She felt her stomach lurch at the memory. “Good point,” she said in a rusty voice.

  “A shower and a good night’s sleep will make everything better,” Nate said cheerfully. “Trust me.”

  “I always do.”

  9

  It would have been nice if she’d been able to sleep. She’d spent half the day zonked out, and now, when she really needed the oblivion of a good night’s sleep, it was eluding her, leaving her with nothing to do but replay that night, over and over again in her mind.

  She really thought she’d put it all behind her. After all, her mother had paid handsomely for the therapy Jamie had requested without even asking why, and she’d worked hard at getting past the memory of that night.

  And it wasn’t that bad, really. It wasn’t rape—he hadn’t hit her, hadn’t really hurt her. And she’d never had to see him again—when she’d surfaced from her bedroom two weeks later she heard that Paul had been in an accident and spent most of the summer in the hospital. He’d gone away to school for his senior year, and in a town the size of Marshfield, she’d never had to run into him again. She could pretend it had never happened.

  If Nate hadn’t kept bringing it up.

  She knew why he was doing it. He must have been trying to help her face it, deal with it, get past it. He didn’t understand that all she wanted to do was bury it. With Paul gone and Dillon in jail, there was nothing to remind her that that night had ever happened.

  Except for Nate. And her sudden distaste for being touched by anyone. Which wasn’t a problem in the Kincaid family—neither Victor nor Isobel were demonstrative parents, and if she was lucky she could go for weeks without anyone putting a hand on her.

  At least the subject of Dillon Gaynor had been completely off limits. She knew only the vaguest details—that he was in jail, that he was being sent away for nearly beating someone to death in a fight, but for once Nate wasn’t talking. Jamie had assumed that, for the first time, Killer had gone too far for Nate. Bad-boy misbehavior was one thing, felonious assault was a different matter.

  And in the end it all could have been fine. But it wasn’t. Nate was now dead, beaten to death in the home of a man who’d already been convicted of almost doing the same thing to someone else. And Jamie was still terrified to have a man touch her.

  The only one who seemed to be doing all right was Dillon. But then, he wasn’t troubled by scruples or second thoughts. He just moved through life without noticing the damage that lay around him, the ruined lives. The deaths.

  She sat up, leaning against the wall as the neon flashed over the thin mattress. It had to be very late. Even close to dawn, maybe, since they’d played cards well into the night. But there was no light in the sky—there was nothing but long, empty hours to remember that night over and over again.

  And the damnable thing was, she could still remember how good it felt, with Dillon’s hands and mouth on her. And how bad when it had been Paul.

  She pushed herself up from the mattress, unable to stand being alone with her thoughts anymore. The huge old building was silent—Dillon would have gone to bed hours ago, and even the rats were asleep. There would still be alcohol downstairs, and she intended to find it and drink enough to put herself into a nice, lengthy stupor.

  The hall light was still on. She was wearing flannel boxers and a T-shirt—her usual sleeping attire—and she didn’t travel with a bathrobe. It didn’t matter—she wasn’t going to run into anyone. She could sneak down there stark naked and no one would notice.

  She moved carefully on the darkened staircase, not wanting another encounter with rodent corpses, but the way was clear, and when she stepped into the shadowy kitchen she saw with mingled relief and disgust that the table was still covered with glasses, ashtrays and poker chips. No money, though, which was a blessing. She wasn’t quite sure what she would have done if there’d been a nice pile of cash left there, promising her escape and freedom. She probably would have taken it, though Dillon was a dangerous man to cross.

  His half-full glass of whiskey was still there, and she reached for it, intending to drain it in one gulp. She almost choked on it.

  It wasn’t whiskey. It was unsweetened iced tea. She set the glass back down, disgusted. No wonder he was able to beat everyone else. They were cheerfully getting drunk, thinking he was matching them drink for drink, and instead he was staying completely sober just to win. She shouldn’t be surprised that he’d be that devious.

  She began a slow, methodical search of the kitchen. She’d been drinking beer, and there should have been some left, but there wasn’t a trace. Mouser and Henry must have taken the leftovers with them. There was no alcohol in the place at all.

  “Find anything interesting?” Dillon drawled from the open doorway.

  She hadn’t realized he was there, watching her, and she froze, but she had a moment to compose her expression before turning around to face him.

  Lucky thing. He was leaning against the doorjamb, his jeans riding low on his hips, his flannel shirt unfastened. He still had a beautiful body—she knew for a fact that he had to be very strong, but it didn’t show in his lean frame. Just the hint of muscle in his shoulders and arms. For some reason that deceptive strength was vaguely erotic.

  And what the hell was she doing even thinking of the word erotic? Especially in connection with this man.

  “I was looking for a drink. I couldn’t sleep.”

  He moved into t
he room, closing the garage door behind him. “Now, I know it isn’t a guilty conscience that’s keeping you awake. You haven’t lived enough to feel guilty about anything.”

  “But I imagine you make up for it.”

  “Make up for your lack of experience? Depends.” He shrugged. He started moving toward her, slowly, and without thinking she began backing away.

  “I mean, you more than make up for my lack of guilty conscience. You have plenty to feel guilty about.”

  “Yes, I do. Fortunately I think guilt’s a waste of time. What’s done is done, and all the whining in the world won’t change matters.”

  “I don’t whine.”

  “I didn’t say you did.” He was circling around the table, between her and the stairs. “What I’m saying is, sooner or later you just have to get over it.”

  “Fuck you!”

  “That’s one way to deal with the problem.” He’d gotten closer, with seemingly little effort, closing the distance between them.

  She stopped her retreat. “This is ridiculous. You can’t chase me around a table like we’re in some Road Runner cartoon.”

  “Then stay put.”

  She started backing away again. “I don’t think so. Just tell me where I can find something to help me sleep and I’ll go back to bed.”

  “Right here.” He caught up with her, shockingly close, and backed her up against the table.

  “Don’t touch me.” Her voice was very quiet, a plea and a warning. “I don’t like to be touched.”

  “Get over it,” he said again. He put his arm around her waist and lifted her, effortlessly. She heard the crash of glass and poker chips as he swept the table clean, and then she was lying in the middle of it and he was on top of her, looking down at her, pressing against her, his warm, smooth, naked chest, the unmistakable pressure of his erection against her thigh. She couldn’t move.

  He looked down into her face, resting on his elbows as he contemplated her obvious panic. “Nate forgot to mention this little goodie,” he said, half to himself.

  “What?” The sound that came from her mouth was nothing more than a terrified squeak. She was shivering, and she knew he could feel it, but he seemed totally unmoved.