“I like it rough, too, baby. Just wait...until I...show you...” He was out of breath. Panting. And a hell of a lot stronger than she was.
She was not going to lose...
A dog barked. Loudly. It was followed by the shout of a man’s voice. The sounds were coming toward them.
And then she was free. She heard rustling in the brush to her left—trees that led to the parking lot and grew for miles down the beach.
Reaching to pull her sweater down, she attempted to sit up. She was shaking. Her wrist hurt. She could hardly get herself up on one elbow. Could hardly breathe.
And she was barely conscious when she heard a strange male voice say, “I need an ambulance. There’s a woman on the beach...”
* * *
MIKE WAS STILL at the office when Lacey Bridges’s number flashed on his caller ID. It wasn’t late. Not quite ten.
Why would Kacey’s sister be calling him?
Had she noticed something on her email account?
“Hello?”
“Mike?”
“Yeah?”
“Kacey calls you Michael.”
He shook his head. Frowning. What the heck? “Yes.”
“She’s asking for you. For Michael. That’s you.”
Standing up, he glanced around his office, as though assuring himself that he was where he thought he was. “Asking for me? Where is she?” Lacey was calling? Hand in his pocket, he strode to the other side of the room and stood in front of a loaded bookcase.
“I’m sorry to bother you, but you’re on her recent call list twice and she’s asking for you. I assume it’s something to do with the photo,” Lacey was saying, clearly upset.
There was that she’s asking for you again.
He rubbed his forehead as though he could get rid of the tension, the ache, with the tips of his fingers. Asking for you... Like she couldn’t call him herself...
“Where is she?” He enunciated clearly.
“We’re at the hospital,” Lacey said.
A car accident. It was the only thing it could be. Kacey was in perfect health. But like everything else she did, she got in a car and sped through life. Not that it would have been her fault. She was a great driver. Safe. Just fast...
“How bad is it?” He made himself ask the question. If she’d asked for him, it meant she was at least partially conscious. At least he hoped so. He figured it would be Bo’s name on her lips if she knew what she was saying.
“She mentioned the photo, Mike,” Lacey was saying.
The photo? “How bad is she?” he asked again.
“I’m not sure. They’re in with her now. But I think I’ll be able to bring her home tonight. She... Oh, God...” She started to cry.
Heart in his throat, Mike heard shuffling and then... “Hey, man, it’s Jem. Listen, Kacey was attacked on the beach. Some guy with a dog managed to interrupt things before she was raped, but she’s been badly assaulted. The guy with the dog stayed with her, called 911. Physically, I think she’s going to be fine...a broken wrist, maybe. Some bruises...”
A broken wrist? Bruises?
“Kacey keeps asking for you,” Jem said. So Lacey hadn’t been hearing wrong.
He shut things down as quickly as he could and grabbed his keys.
They’d managed to kill the virus attacking his clients’ computer system within minutes. Tracking the culprit could take days. His top staff could handle the rest of the night’s fallout.
He’d never walked out on a high-dollar client before but didn’t think twice about doing so now.
“She mentioned the photo,” Jem was saying. “Said one of her attackers mentioned the photo.”
And a little piece of the world started to make sense. Kacey needed him because of the job he was doing for her. She’d probably asked for Bo, too.
“Lacey wants to know if you can meet us at the house.”
“Of course.” Bo was probably already on his way. Together the four of them, Jem, Lacey, Bo and Mike, would be there for Kacey. They’d take care of her.
She’d be fine.
“We’ll call you as soon as we’re leaving here,” Jem said.
On his way to the outer office to speak with the men and women who’d given up their Friday night for him, he nodded before he realized Jem couldn’t see him. “Fine,” he said. And hung up.
His staff had orders in less than five minutes and then Mike was in his car. He managed to make a quick call to his sister, saying only that he had a second emergency that evening and would have to explain later. He asked Diane to head over to his place.
Leaving Willie alone for the evening was one thing. He didn’t feel good about doing so for an entire night.
Or into the night.
He called Willie, too, just to give his brother a heads-up.
And then, family all spoken to and situated, he tossed his phone to the seat beside him and broke the speed limit all the way to the hospital.
If Kacey was asking for him, he had to be there.
CHAPTER TWENTY
MORE THAN ANYTHING, the bright lights were bothering her. Glaringly bright. Like stage lights.
But she wasn’t on stage. She was lying in a hospital bed that was raised to a partially sitting up position.
“Where are my clothes?” she asked her sister. “I want to get dressed.” Jem had left to make a phone call—presumably to his friend Dillon, who’d been having the barbecue. They’d left Levi there.
They had to go get him, and she was going to leave with them.
They couldn’t keep her at the hospital. They’d said she’d be released that night. But she wanted to go right away.
“We’re just waiting on the X-rays they took of your wrist, Kace.”
Her wrist. It hurt like hell. She welcomed the pain. It gave her something immediate and physical to focus on other than the attack. Lacey stood beside the bed. She’d barely left her side, even when they’d been working on her.
Kacey looked into those beautiful blue eyes, identical to hers, and then turned her head so that Lacey’s hand was cupping her cheek rather than just fooling with her sand-and tear-mucked hair.
“We aren’t the same anymore,” she whispered, and closed her eyes against the tears that she wasn’t sure would ever completely stop. Lacey bent over, kissed her other cheek. “Of course we are. I feel you right now, Kace, just like I always do.”
When she felt a tear, not her own, drip to her cheek, Kacey looked up. “You always tell me not to walk on the beach alone at night.”
The blue eyes looking at her grew hard as stone. “This. Was. Not. Your. Fault.” Lacey’s teeth were gritted over every word.
She nodded. Because Lacey needed her to do so. But she knew differently. The teenagers were to blame. Hugely. But she’d put herself out there.
“I exude,” she said. They had to be clear here about everything. She couldn’t stand any more lies between them. Any more “not seeing” what was right in front of her.
“Those guys were one-hundred percent guilty, Kace. The police will find them. And they’re going to pay.”
She nodded. She’d given a pretty good description, or so the forensic artist who’d done the sketches had said. But it had been dark. She didn’t even know hair color for any of them.
“You said Michael’s coming?”
Lacey nodded. “He’s going to meet us at the house. We’ll call him as soon as we leave here.”
“What time is it?”
“Ten fifteen.”
She could look for the clock she knew was on the side wall, but she didn’t want to take her eyes off her sister’s face.
“They were going to gang-rape me.” She could feel the warmth of her own tears sliding down to her jaw.
/>
“But you fought back,” Lacey said, running her fingers through the hair at Kacey’s forehead. Her sister had already washed her face for her once all the photos had been taken. “You were fending them off, Kace. You already had one reeling on the ground.”
She could remember the groaning, scared to death the guy would recover enough to retaliate.
“I have no idea how long it lasts when you knee a guy...”
“Longer than you think,” Jem said, coming back into the room. “You were down to one, Kace, and I’m as certain as I can be that you’d have taken him down, too.”
He stood off to one side at the foot of the bed, opposite the side Lacey was guarding. Her two angels. There to stave off anyone who might attempt to get past them to her.
“I called your folks,” Jem said next. “Just in case something gets leaked to the media.” His voice was low, his expression concerned, as he looked between the two of them. “We couldn’t have them seeing it on the news.”
Lacey nodded. “Especially since the media has a tendency to exploit everything when it comes to Hollywood...”
The news. She’d thought of it, of course. But... “There was no one else there except for my rescuer...”
“Police records are public,” Jem told her. He wasn’t going to coddle her, and she was thankful for that.
“What’d Mom and Dad say?” she asked instead, thinking of the parents who’d always given more attention to her than to her twin—though it had taken her thirty-three years to admit it to herself. Or her sister.
“They’ll be here tomorrow.”
“No.” Both sisters spoke at once.
Jem spread his hands as he looked between the two of them. “Hey, I got you guys overnight,” he said. “Your parents were heading out right now and finally agreed to wait until morning.”
Kacey looked at Lacey, who nodded. “I’ll call them. When we get home.”
She couldn’t see her parents. Not yet. She didn’t want to see anyone else.
Except...Michael.
“What about Bo?” Jem asked next. “Someone should probably call him.”
“We have a date tomorrow night,” Kacey remembered. “I don’t want him here, either.” Bo wasn’t part of her Santa Raquel life.
And she certainly couldn’t deal with his emotions right now, too. Not until she got a handle on her own. She looked at Lacey. “Will you call him?”
Lacey had lived in her Beverly Hills world a long time. It had been her world, too, for most of their lives.
“Of course.” Lacey said.
“I want to get out of here.”
“I know, sweetie. But if your wrist is broken, they need to get a cast on it.”
“We can come back later for that.”
“No way, sis,” Jem sat on the bottom corner of her bed. “We aren’t going to risk any permanent physical damage here. No scars to remind you of this night. We wait here. Take care of the wrist. Stop on the way home to get arnica for the bruises. And get you out of this memory and into making the next.”
His words made her start to cry again. And then, with horror, she looked at Lacey. “I’ve got a call Monday morning.”
Lacey nodded. “And you’ll be fine,” she said. “Your face was dirty, but there’s no bruising there. Mostly it’s on your upper arms and torso. Some on your ankles. Wardrobe and makeup can take care of all of that.”
Right. Thank God they’d left her face alone. And... “We’ll need to call Steve as soon as we know about the wrist. The writers will have to take care of it.” They could write something in. A fall. A fight. A car accident. So many ways to fix that one.
Thinking about work was good for her. And Steve, her longtime director, was also a friend. But she didn’t want to talk to him yet.
“Will you call him, too?” she asked her twin.
Lacey was nodding when another voice said, “I think you should call him.”
Michael.
Thank God.
* * *
HE’D BEEN SHOWN to Kacey’s room because a nurse he knew from the Lemonade Stand knew that Kacey had been asking for him. He’d come up in time to hear her turning over control of her life to her sister. And knew...instantly...that she’d regret doing so. She was traumatized. Shaken up. And she was falling back into an old pattern. He didn’t have to think about it. He just knew.
Knew, too, after years of his own counseling and his work at the Lemonade Stand, that in order for victims to reclaim the sense of self that had been violently stripped away, they needed to do as much as possible for themselves. To take control of their lives. He hadn’t intended to speak. He’d just blurted the words.
He stood in the doorway, staring at her beautiful blotchy face, her eyes red and swollen from crying, and he couldn’t speak at all.
Three sets of eyes were staring at him.
He only focused on one.
“Michael?” He wasn’t sure she even spoke aloud. He read her lips. She held out a hand, and he stepped forward, then stopped, remembering the other two people in the room. He took her hand from a spot behind Lacey.
“I thought you were meeting us at the house,” Kacey said. She sounded...okay. Not sick. Or even bereft and lost. She just sounded...like everyone else in his world. There was nothing larger-than-life about her as she lay there.
No light shining through her.
He swallowed. He wasn’t a man who cried, for himself or anyone. But he felt emotion building from deep down inside him. Tightening his throat.
“I just...” His mind spun. “Jem said you mentioned a photo,” he blurted again without giving his words full thought. “If it’s something I need to get on right away, or call the police...”
The idea had just occurred to him, which only proved how rattled he was. If she’d recognized one of her attackers, she’d have already told the police.
Kacey shook her head, still holding his hand. It was okay. She was a toucher.
“Not me. One of them mentioned a photo,” Kacey told him. “He said, ‘Just like the photo.’ It has to be from those recent posts. My agent hasn’t found any new mentions of me in months other than the last couple of weeks. I’m daytime TV. We don’t make headlines all that often.”
He agreed with her assessment. And was disappointed, too.
“Kace, millions of people could have seen those pictures.” He couldn’t possibly search the computers of private citizens to see who’d accessed that photo. Well, actually, he could do just that. But not legally.
“But won’t what happened tonight be enough to get us a warrant to look at the coffee shop security footage?” she asked. “You said if the photo caused harm...” There was a light of question in her eyes.
A light of hope?
It was gone almost immediately, but it had been there. A hint of the light that shone from her so brightly and covered the world around her in warmth.
When they’d talked about it earlier, he’d meant they’d have to prove that the photo had caused direct harm, like a loss of income or fandom, a loss of a job. Maybe if it could be proven that the falsified photo had given her attackers the idea that she was a party animal, and the direct result had been physical harm to her...
He wasn’t a lawyer or even a cop, though he’d been through law enforcement training in order to get some of his licenses. But he was an investigator. He knew how to get evidence that would stand up in court.
“I’ll make some calls,” he told her. It was a long shot at best.
The light in her eyes was driving him. He didn’t kid himself a whit about that.
He let go of her hand. “I guess I’ll go, then...”
“What?” Kacey sat forward, causing the gown to drop away from one of her shoulders, exposing the swollen skin and bruises that we
re already forming. Mike almost puked. His skin went cold. Lacey pulled the gown back up.
“You just got here,” Kacey said. “And you were coming over to the house.”
“Kace. Maybe he has someplace to be.” Lacey’s voice was soft and filled with compassion. She sent him an apologetic look.
He caught a glimpse out of the corner of his eye, but he was looking at Kacey, seeing the need in her eyes.
“Of course I can stay,” he said. “My sister’s spending the night with Willie. I didn’t know if I’d have to head back to work to handle something with the photos,” he improvised.
Lacey sent a glance to Jem and stepped back.
“Don’t go.” Kacey turned to her sister, grabbing Lacey’s hand. “I just... Michael and I are friends. From the Lemonade Stand. He’s there every Friday morning, too. And we...talk. Our victims...you guys know...”
Of course they did. Jem was still in private counseling with Sara Havens, though, from what Mike understood, not at the Lemonade Stand. Jem’s choice.
And just like that, because Kacey was now a victim, he gained access to her inner circle.
Not at all the way he’d have wanted it to happen.
But he was there.
And he would do whatever he could to be the friend Kacey Hamilton trusted him to be.
A friend who understood.
And nothing more.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
HER WRIST WAS badly bruised but not broken. Tendons and ligaments were intact. She was going to be sore. But physically, she’d be 100 percent recovered in a matter of days.
The doctor who delivered the good news also gave Kacey the card for a private therapist in town whose entire practice was pretty much made up of female victims of violence.
Kacey recognized the name. She’d never met Bloom Freelander, but had heard plenty about her. The woman had been a resident at the Lemonade Stand before Kacey’s time. She’d been a psychology professor at UC, married to another psychologist and the head of the department. He’d been her mentor at one time. And had slowly been drugging her, dumbing her down, to keep her from surpassing him.
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