Into Temptation

by Pam Godwin

  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 needed 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.

  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.

  But he’d left the small lantern and its solar-powered charger. She grabbed it, turned it on, and wobbled to her feet.

  Thirst was her loudest ache. It screamed from her stomach and clouded her head. Fatigue and fear followed closely behind, making every step to the truck feel like a mile.

  The lantern’s dim light helped her navigate the uneven terrain. She didn’t have a plan beyond the imperative to be in that vehicle when it left.

  Halfway there, a startling, ear-splitting bang ricocheted through her skull. Gravel sprayed beside her boots, and she screamed, staggering backward and falling on her butt.

  For a moment, she thought he’d shot her. But the sudden pain in her chest was just her heart ramming against her ribs.

  “Have you lost your mind?” she roared, swinging the lantern toward him. “If you don’t want me to approach, use your fucking words, not a—”

  The light snagged on a long, scaly body beside her. Four feet in length, a diamondback rattlesnake lay unmoving, bleeding from the head.

  “Oh, my God.” She scrambled to her feet, tripping over a deep crack to get away from it. “Fucking shit. Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  Her breathing rampaged as full-body tremors robbed her balance. That venomous thing had been right next to her! And he’d shot it with impossible accuracy.

  He’d saved her life.

  Maybe she should thank him.

  Should she thank him for chaining her in the desert, too?

  Fuck that.

  “Where’s my shotgun?” She thrust the lantern out before her.

  “Afraid of snakes?”

  “Well, I’m not fucking friends with them.”

  “Who are you friends with?”

  “Just you, as crazy as that sounds.” She staggered the remaining few paces to the tailgate.

  “You’re a stranger. That’s a long way from friend.”

  “Give me my shotgun.”

  “So you can shoot me?”

  “So I can defend myself against things like that.” She pointed at the dead snake.

  “No.” He hadn’t shifted from his sprawled position, the hat still dipping over his eyes. But a handgun now rested on his lap.

  He didn’t move the gun or the water out of her reach. But she wasn’t stupid. If she went for either, he would stop her, and he wouldn’t be gentle about it.

  Instead, she focused on the view.

  The lantern’s glow picked out the contoured muscles of his legs and accentuated his trim waist, V-shaped torso, and broad shoulders. Sun-bronzed skin sheathed his biceps and forearms, emphasizing the flex of sinewy strength.

  He wore snug jeans, a faded t-shirt, and the rugged hat and boots. The shirt rode up, and the denim rode low, drawing her gaze to the thin strip of brown hair that disappeared beneath
his fly.

  She swallowed hard and moved the light higher, capturing the arrogant cut of his jaw, the bold line of his nose, and the cruel taunt of chiseled lips.

  As fate would have it, he was astoundingly, inconceivably gorgeous. Even with his face etched in godlike fury, he was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. But she wasn’t besotted into thinking that was all he was.

  This virile, handsome devil was a dangerous vigilante and killer. He was also a sexual deviant, a kinky freak with an insatiable appetite, who’d lured hundreds of unsuspecting women into his bed.

  He’d written about his explorations, and she’d devoured the tantalizing words with flushed cheeks and quivering breaths. She’d also noticed a disturbing progression of depravity over the years, his cravings growing darker, bolder, more painful, veering into dubious territory.

  She wasn’t a guileless victim. But she was curious enough to slowly reach out and lift the brim of his cowboy hat.

  Their stares caught and held, transfixed as the atmosphere shuddered between them. Crackling energy. Red-hot voltage. She felt it everywhere, curling fingers of warmth into parts of her he would never physically touch. He would never try because what she saw in the depths of his gaze was enough to know that he despised her with every jagged shard of his soul.

  She’d always been told she had silver eyes. They just looked colorless and gray to her. But his eyes were like that of a tiger, shimmering in hues of molten metallic gold.

  They dipped, as though he couldn’t help himself, to chase the rise and fall of her breasts. When they returned, she was once again imprisoned in the magnetic beauty of his face.

  From the clean, soapy scent wafting off him and the spotless appearance of his clothes, she assumed he hadn’t spent the past few hours in the desert heat like she had. A small part of her had hoped he’d been watching her from afar, growing sick with guilt over what he’d done to her.

  But the formidable man who reclined on her tailgate didn’t care about her wellbeing. Instead, he glared at her like a stranger he wanted to murder.

  “Tell me who you are, and this ends now.” The dangerous, silky tone of his words cut through the dense night air.