by Meli Raine
Revenge
The Coming Home series Book 2
Everything I know about my life is a lie. The more I dig into my father’s death the more I find myself in peril.
Mark turns out to be a liar, someone I thought I could trust. He’s not what he seems, and worst of all, a part of me can’t let go.
My boss might be an international drug lord disguised as a dean at one of the top five universities in the country.
Like anyone’s going to believe me if I try to out him?
But I can’t help myself. I should learn to keep my mouth shut.
Someone’s decided to do that for me.
Make me quiet once—
And for all.
Copyright © 2015 by Meli Raine
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.
Join my New Releases and Sales newsletter at: http://eepurl.com/beV0gf
Chapter One
I try driving my heel into his foot but he moves and laughs softly in my ear as I twist and struggle, my neck hurting. He’s pushing on the hollow between my collarbone and the base of my neck, the feeling making me gag.
“This isn’t a joke, you know,” he says. I’m pulled behind a car. He drags me as I rake his arm with my fingernails. He makes a sound of disgust in the back of his throat but says nothing.
Soon my feet are off the ground. I weigh nothing to him. What, exactly, is he doing?
As he pulls me around a pillar I get pissed. Red rage fills my eyes and I elbow him as I go limp. The backpack slides and gives me some leverage. Dead weight is hard no matter how strong you are, and my movement throws him off balance just as I kick backwards and up. My heel catches a thick, soft patch of skin and the air goes out of his lungs.
Aha.
Target hit.
“Mark!” I gasp.
He’s still got a death grip on me, but now I can see him. His eyes are frightening. Cold. Calculated.
The eyes of a killer.
“Shut up if you want to stay alive,” he hisses, yanking me to the ground under a set of metal stairs. Just as we crouch, I hear the clack clack clack of someone in dress shoes running. The sounds are hard and definitive. Not high heels.
Men’s dress shoes.
Mark’s breathing slows as he controls it. Soon he’s completely silent. His eyes cast around the parking garage. He’s like a robot.
A robot designed to protect me.
Great. No one bothered to tell me I’m secretly Sarah Connor and that I now have my own Terminator.
“What are you—” His fingers silence me, shoving in my mouth with so much force I feel the corner of my mouth tear. He covers my lips with his palm. I try to bite but he knows how to move his fingers just right. Somehow, he can gag me and keep me quiet without giving me any way to fight back.
How does he know how to do this?
My hair is pinned between my shoulder and the cold, dirty wall behind me. Mark’s hand tastes salty and thick in my mouth. My lips are dry and buzzing. Copper fills my senses as I taste blood. My heart pounds so hard in my chest it feels like my eyes move with each heartbeat. I close my eyes because everything starts to spin.
Is Mark the kidnapper from the video? Is Amy being held captive by...Mark?
The sound of men’s footsteps recedes slowly. I hear a metal door open, then the slow wheeze of it closing.
Click.
Mark lets go of my mouth. He gives me a fierce look. He doesn’t need to explain.
Be quiet.
I look down and realize why he didn’t use his other hand to make me be silent.
He’s holding a gun.
I make a squeaking sound. I can’t help it. My knee drops to the ground and I feel a sickening crack. I can’t take my eyes off that gun. My nose fills with the scent of sweat and panic. I can’t tell if it’s Mark’s or mine. One look at his face, though, tells me he’s not panicking.
It’s the opposite.
He’s in complete control.
“Are you going to kidnap me, too?” I hiss. I know I shouldn’t speak, but I can’t help it. “Like Amy?”
He tilts his head, jaw tight. His tongue goes between his cheek and teeth and he gives me a look. You know that look. Eyebrows raised, eyes angry and narrow, cheeks raised in disbelief.
“You think I kidnapped Amy?”
No.
The word No pops into my head without hesitation, the sound of it like someone clapping. Just once. It feels brutal, like a BB someone shot into my head, ricocheting around.
No no no no no.
But I don’t say that. I just stare at him.
And wait.
“Jesus, Carrie.” His voice is filled with so much hurt my stomach drops. “Christ,” he gasps, looking away. If I stabbed him through the spleen I don’t think I could hurt him more. “You think that of me?”
I let my other knee drop, my skirt catching on a piece of metal in the concrete behind me. The sickening sound of cloth tearing fills my ears. It feels like my heart being shredded by his tone of voice. There’s real anguish in the words he’s saying. What am I supposed to think right now?
What am I supposed to feel?
“I don’t know,” I finally say. Mark’s looking right at me and I can’t meet his eyes. I feel ashamed. I feel like I did something wrong. He’s the one who just grabbed me. He hurt me. He...I don’t even know what he’s about to do with me.
And I’m the one who has an apology in my throat? What?
“I’m trying to protect you,” he spits out.
“You have a funny way of showing that,” I say as I touch my cut lip gingerly.
“He was coming after you.”
“Who?”
“Eric.”
“Eric?” I laugh. “Eric wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
Mark looks pointedly at my wrist. Oh. Right. That. The bleeding stopped but the blood’s smeared all over. Then again, I have blood on my face, too.
It’s all mixed together, just like my thoughts. My fears. My feelings.
My everything.
“All I know, Mark,” I say with an exhaustion that feels thousands of years old, “is that you seem to know exactly who took Amy. You know a lot more than you’re telling anyone, including the police chief. And so help me God, if you hurt Amy after what you did to my dad—”
Mark’s hand goes over my mouth again. I shove it away.
“Carrie, you’re in dangerous territory here—”
“Fuck you, Mark.”
His head snaps back in horror. It would be comical if we weren’t crouching in a parking garage under a set of stairs while I bleed all over and he holds a gun.
“What?” He knows I don’t like to say curse words. In fact, he’s never heard them out of my mouth. Dad always said that just because I was raised by a bar owner didn’t mean I couldn’t be a lady.
It’s time to stop worrying about being a lady when my ex-boyfriend may have kidnapped my best friend and might be kidnapping me, too.
“Fuck. You,” I say with an icy clarity. It makes my skin go cold and my racing heart come to a screeching halt. All the blood in his face drains out. Haunted eyes look at me. He starts to say something, then stops himself, looking around the garage suddenly.
I stand. He grabs my injured wrist and yanks, hard. I jerk back (fuck you) and my hip whacks against a pillar. He loses his balance but hangs on and I fall forward, cracking my head on a concrete-covered metal stair befor
e landing on his body.
And the world goes black.
Chapter Two
The first thing I feel is dryness. My mouth is the sahara. I pry my lips apart. It’s like pulling a wax strip off your shin in a do-it-yourself home waxing kit.
“Carrie?” says a man’s voice.
“Daddy?” I whisper.
“No.” The man’s voice comes out, so soft and shocked. “No.”
And then I fade out again. I dream of Daddy. I dream good dreams. When I wake up, my mouth is even more parched and my head throbs.
I smile, thinking about Daddy, and how—
Oh. That’s right. He’s dead.
And Amy’s gone.
Amy. Mark. My head. The parking garage—
I scream and sit up. I’m in a stranger’s bed, in a tiny room with lace curtains on a small window. The walls are cheap wood paneling, painted with flat off-white paint that is smudged and streaked.
I scream louder and try to get up.
My vision pinpoints. I reach up to touch my head and feel thick, matted hair. Strong hands touch my shoulders and I writhe to get away. The pain in my head becomes unbearable and—
I’m out.
* * *
I wake up in complete darkness. The moon makes little shadows against the wall. Its light streams through the lacy patterns of the sheers hanging in the window. The sound of someone stirring catches my ear. My jaw feels wired. My eye socket is a crater of pain.
I try to sit up. I catch some hair with my elbow. A chunk pulls out, the tearing feeling in my scalp so gritty. Nausea pours through me.
A man’s voice murmurs in the distance. It pauses. It starts again. A telephone conversation? I see someone in the other room. The door to this room—bedroom?—is wide open.
If I’m being held captive, they aren’t doing a very good job.
My fingers play with the thin, soft cotton of the blanket I’m under. My legs are bare. My knees push against the fabric. I feel small bands of pain in them, a rawness. I pull back the covers.
My knees are bright red, like ulcers. My skirt is torn, and if it’s nighttime, I definitely missed the rest of the work day.
And my head feels like an overstuffed balloon filled with marshmallows.
In a microwave.
“I’m close to taking her to the emergency room, but...” That’s all I hear the man say. Where am I? I look slowly to my left as I sit up. My hip screams. I see a glass of water on the nightstand. I reach for it. To my surprise, my arm and hand are fine.
I start drinking greedily from the glass and then gag, but resume drinking. I sniff and look around. The pain in my head is less, but my vision is weird. Not blurry. Not double. Just...off.
Footsteps fill the air and then the doorway is blocked by a man’s body.
My eyes adjust in the darkness.
Mark.
“Where’s Amy?” I croak out. My voice sounds like broken glass mixed with jawbreakers and running chainsaws.
“If I knew, she’d be here,” Mark says solemnly. “Trust me.” He steps forward and I can see his face. He’s worried about me.
He just kidnapped me—why the look of worry?
I snort. Blood flies out of my nose. He rushes to hand me a box of tissue and I stuff one oh-so elegantly up my nostril to stem the flow of blood.
“You toog me,” I say. “How do I doe you didn dake her?”
“What?” He’s trying not to laugh.
I pull the tissue plug out of my nose and glare at him. “You took me. How do I know you didn’t take her?”
“I didn’t take you. I rescued you.”
I touch the wound on my head gingerly, then look down at my knees and feel my mouth with my fingertips. “You have a very, very painful way of doing that.”
His face falls. He sits on the edge of the bed and leans forward with his elbows on his knees. Thick, strong hands—with no gun in them now—rake his hair.
“This is not how I was supposed to do this,” he says slowly. A long sigh escapes him. “I’m so sorry you got hurt.” He pauses. “I’m sorry I hurt you.”
His words from this morning run through my head yet again:
I’m not who you think I am.
“What’s going on?” I drink more water, then rub some on the cut corner of my mouth. I don’t feel fear right now. Mark’s not acting like someone who kidnapped me for bad reasons. Then again, are there ever good reasons for being kidnapped? But I get the sense that I’m not in danger.
At least, not the same kind of danger Amy’s in.
He turns and his eyes focus on my now-empty glass of water. “Want more?” he asks, ignoring my question. The thin scar along his jaw stands out. He’s tense. He should be. He hurt me. Physically, this time.
My stomach growls like a ferocious beast.
He gives me a sad half smile. “Water and food coming up.”
“Are those prison provisions?” I ask.
“You’re no one’s prisoner,” he calls back.
I realize quite suddenly where I am. One look across the room is all it takes. Mark’s uniform, neatly pressed and hung, is in a closet on the other side of the small bedroom. The little closet door is open and a naked bulb illuminates the sparse set of clothes.
He always wore casual stuff, like t-shirts and jeans. And then there were his police officer uniforms. I never saw him wear anything but those two items.
I’m in his bedroom in the cabin behind Brian and Elaine’s house.
“What happened?” I ask again as he returns with a glass of what looks like apple juice and a tray of cheese and crackers. Hunger takes over and I eat two pieces of cheese and drink half the juice. It tastes divine.
“Go slow there, sweetie,” he says, voice filled with concern. “You haven’t eaten all day and you’re injured.”
Sweetie. That was his pet name for me years ago. One of the rescue dogs at the shelter had been named Sweetie. A big old bull mastiff. Mark had found that contradiction hilarious, and started calling me “sweetie.”
The term of endearment throws me off. I’m already unstable. Unsteady. Confused and unsure.
Adding “sweetie” to the mix isn’t helping.
“Quit stalling and quit calling me sweetie,” I bark. “Why did you attack me like that?”
He sighs. “I didn’t attack you.”
I try to arch an eyebrow but it hurts too much. Pain radiates out from my head.
“Are we going to argue, or are you going to explain before I go to the police chief and tell him you know who has Amy and were on the phone with some guy today about it, telling him to hide her?”
Mark pinches he bridge of his nose like he’s in pain.
“That’s not what’s going on here, Carrie.”
I pop a piece of cheese in my mouth and chew. I just stare at him. I pretend my mouth doesn’t hurt.
His phone buzzes. Then a second phone buzzes. He pulls both out and reads their screens.
“Two phones? What?” I ask, frowning. I stop mid-frown as I feel little cuts on my face open up.
He holds up one finger. “I’ll explain in a minute. Eat.” He says it like it’s an order.
I drop the food right then and there. He can’t tell me what to do. I may be injured (his fault) and half out of it (ditto), and I might even be in danger and maybe—just maybe—he was protecting me, but...
He can’t tell me what to do.
Mark walks out of the room. I watch him get swallowed by the dark hall, his ass cradled by jeans that wrap around him like they’re clinging for dear life. He’s so tall and strong, his shoulders hunched with concentration, the pale tan weave of his t-shirt stretched tight. His shoulder blades are surrounded by strong muscle leading across a cobra back, his biceps bulging against his shirt sleeves.
He’s grunting into the phone, clearly trying to answer with as few words as possible.
Is that because I’m here? What’s he hiding? I reach for the apple juice and drink the rest, trying to
make sense of all this.
Here’s what I know: at Minnie’s house he was on the phone talking about someone named Allie who looks like the kidnapped girls. Said this was like “a brew home.” Said so many confusing things.
I need to get out of here.
Sliding my legs down off the edge of the bed, I turn my ear toward the door. My knee practically groans as I bend it.
Mark’s muted voice is far away. He’s in the tiny cabin, but I can probably slip out and be in my trailer before he can catch me. He’s distracted. I need to go somewhere and hide from the world. Elaine must be wondering where I am. I disappeared from work, no-showed at Minnie’s, and now Mark’s twisting everything I know into a pretzel.
I did not come back to town so I could become more confused about my life.
I make it through the kitchen to the back door, barefoot and limping. As I turn the cold metal doorknob with my scratched hand, the sound of breathing fills my ear. Then my entire back alights as if someone struck it with a match.
All the heat is pouring off Mark’s chest as he reaches from behind and stops my hand.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he asks, his voice deep and alluring.
“Home.”
“Not safe.”
I start to snort, then stop myself. I don’t need more bleeding. “Like you’re safe? Give me a break.” I reach up and gingerly touch my bruised face.
I can feel his shoulders slump. He’s that close. He swallows. The click in his throat is audible.
“I deserve that,” he mumbles, pulling away. He holds his hands up, palms forward. I see them in my peripheral vision as he takes a step back. My eyes are fixed on the little window in the kitchen door. I take one breath at a time. Exhale. Shift my weight from one hip to the other.
“Go,” he says in a neutral voice. I can hear him holding back so much more. The million questions in my mind begin to swirl, starting with the first one.
The three-year-old question.
I whirl around and look up. I need to if I want to see his eyes.
“Why did you turn my father in?”
His eyes shift suddenly, as if he’s recalling a memory. I’m breathing hard. The edges of every wound on my wrist, my knees, my mouth feel like jagged glass dusted with saltwater. I’m tired. I’m drained. It’s been a long three years to carry so much pain around with me.
