11

by Kylie Brant

  “Chances were one in a thousand that those exact circumstances would ever occur again.” Her voice was a near whisper. “He’d carried in some…props…for the night ahead. The main door was usually barred, but that night he only locked it. Eight was two cells down. The women on either side of me and directly across were…” Their screams shrieked across her mind, supplied by a haunting snippet of memory. “…with him. I didn’t even think. Not really. I grabbed something from my cell and ran.” Across the shadowy building to the door he always entered through. She’d gone to the discipline room. Picked the lock with a bit of wire she’d hidden there. Then grabbed one of the slim plastic strips he sometimes used as whips. Worked it into the crease of the doorjamb on the main door and after several attempts managed to slip the lock.

  “I saw a YouTube video once.” Unconsciously she began to pleat the dress fabric in her fingers. “An animal rescue team unlocked a pen of dogs that had been horribly abused. Some of them growled and snapped at the rescuers. Others cowered in the corner of the pen. Wouldn’t leave the area even when the door was left wide open. I think Eight…it was like that.” He made a small sound but she didn’t turn toward him. Couldn’t. “Fear of the unknown can be crippling. The odds were insurmountable. I climbed a staircase, pushed open a door and found myself in darkness outside. Then I just…ran.”

  “Ran where?”

  She shook her head mutely. She hadn’t known. “It was terrifying to walk up that staircase. It was terrifying to be free. No one can understand. I expected him to catch me at any minute. I distrusted every decision. I stayed away from roads, tried to find wooded areas to hide in.” She’d lain all day in some weeds watching a farmhouse, Mia recalled. It had seemed empty, but it had taken night to fall before she’d gotten the courage to break into it. It had no phone, although people seemed to be living in it.

  “Every house I saw could have been his. I stole some clothes. Traveled only at night. And finally got brave enough to go up to a gas station. I was going to ask for help…but a sheriff’s car pulled in. He’d made us think that the law couldn’t touch him. I thought he might be law enforcement himself. So instead I jumped in the back of a semi. Rode for hours before finding another one and rode hours more…” She shook her head, finally chancing a look at him. “It didn’t occur to me that I needed to figure out where I was, because all I wanted was away. Fear…it takes over everything. Shuts down logic. I was operating on sheer animal instinct. You probably can’t understand.”

  “I do.” There was a storm brewing in his eyes, but something told her it wasn’t directed at her. “I understand what fear can do. What helplessness feels like.”

  She searched his expression, hardly believing his words. How could he know? How could anyone else really comprehend that kind of terror? Her gaze fixed on his cheek then. Someone tried to peel my face off… And she recalled his military service. An experience there maybe. She felt an odd sort of kinship.

  “I’ll never be helpless again,” she murmured hoarsely. She’d die before ever being at someone’s mercy.

  Some days, it didn’t seem like much of a sacrifice.

  * * * *

  Jude watched her enter the apartment and head directly to the bedroom she was using. The door shut behind her with a quiet note of finality. He stared at it, strangely torn.

  “Did you eat before coming back?” Caro turned from resecuring the front door. “I can order something.”

  “We had a late lunch.”

  “Well maybe she’ll be hungry later.” She shot him a curious glance when he made no move to leave. “Anything I need to be caught up on?”

  That managed to snag his attention. “What? No. Raiker is checking out some information Mia provided.”

  “I would think there would be police files he could access.” She smothered a yawn with one hand. “Wasn’t there some sort of investigation a few years back?”

  “Yeah.” An investigation that had yielded nothing to support Mia’s story. Proof hadn’t mattered to him at the time. Her security needs had been his priority. But even as recently as two days ago he’d given her little credibility. About her past, her roommate’s murder, the woman after her… Jude was unused to feeling guilt. A suspicious nature was a natural by-product of his experiences, and had saved his life more than once. But it’d take a harder heart than his to listen to her today and remain unmoved. If even a fraction of what she shared was true, she’d been let down continuously once she’d returned five and a half years ago. By the police. By her father. By the investigators she’d hired. Damned by public opinion in the rags that made celebrities their business. Damned in private by those who mattered most to her.

  And he had an inkling of what that must feel like.

  Involuntarily, his gaze went to her closed bedroom door again. Without conscious volition he crossed to it. Knocked. “Mia.” He half expected her not to answer. When she did he opened the door and slipped inside, closing it behind him.

  He found her at the window, looking out between the slatted blinds. The glass was bullet proof and the blinds were selected with privacy in mind. She turned as he entered, her face composed in that blank mask he was really coming to hate.

  “Have you heard something already?”

  “No.” She’d mean from Raiker, but Jude wasn’t there for the other man. He’d come for himself.

  He jammed his fingertips into the pockets of his jeans. Now that he was here he felt oddly uneasy. “I lived with my dad when I was little.” The words were unplanned. Unprepared. And offered to few others in his life. “Never knew my mom. It was just the two of us, but we did okay. At least to a little kid it seemed that way. He went to prison when I was five for manufacturing and distributing meth. I still remember when my grandfather came for me in foster care. I’d never known I had a grandfather. But there he was. Big booming voice. Charismatic. He was a minister in his town. Respected. Well-liked. I was lucky. Everyone said so.”

  She took a single step in his direction. Stopped.

  “There were social worker visits.” He propped himself against the wall. “More at the beginning, but they began to taper off. I was just so lucky, see. Nice house. A doting grandfather who was thrilled to discover he had a grandson. I’d get a good Christian upbringing. I was one of the few fortunate ones.”

  He recognized something in the tone he heard himself using. Recalled that it was much like Mia’s in her recounting earlier today. And he knew the reason for that purposeful disengagement.

  “I was six when he began sexually abusing me.” He watched her face for shock. Pity. Finding neither made the rest easier. “I told the social workers each time it happened. But he was so believable.” Long concerned talks with the school counselor about his penchant for wild stories. Serious discussions with the police officers that brought him home each time he ran away. I don’t know what gets into the boy. I’m afraid he takes after his father. You know Chris was never quite right.

  “With each subsequent report there was less and less follow up. And after every time I ran off, I just gave his story more credence. When he started raping me, there was no one left who believed me. No one who listened. He’d drag me into his closet and take his fishing knife off the shelf. Hold it up to my face and told me he’d fillet me if I didn’t keep my mouth shut about him.” Sometimes, in the middle of the night he woke up and swore he could still feel the steel biting into his face.

  “He started loaning me out to ‘friends.’ His mistake was showing me where the knife was. I took it with me one day when I was sent with another man. Sliced him with it before running away. My grandfather found me. He was as furious as I’d ever seen him for embarrassing him. He dragged me down to the basement and proceeded to follow through on his threat. A neighbor heard my screams and came running.” His mouth twisted. “All through rehabilitation and countless surgeries I was told over and over by doctors, counselors, social workers. ‘You have to tell someone, son. Tell someone if you’re being hurt.
”

  He looked at Mia then. Gut-wrenchingly beautiful on the outside. Unimaginably damaged inside. “I know what it’s like to be helpless. At someone’s mercy. I know what it’s like to have no one believe you. I hate that it happened to you.”

  His words hung in the air for a moment. She tilted her head a fraction, as if unsure she’d heard correctly. Then she walked slowly toward him. Her heels were in a pile at the foot of the bed and her bare feet were soundless on the carpet. Reaching out a hand, she pressed her palm gently against his ruined cheek, her touch as gentle as butterfly wings. “No one has ever said that to me. No one.”

  His hand went to her wrist, intending to move it away. At least that’s what he told himself. But instead it lingered there, his thumb brushing once over the delicate blue veins beneath cameo skin. The moment spun out. Became fraught with emotion.

  An inner alarm shrilled. There was danger here of a kind he always avoided. Some long buried primitive instinct had him stepping back, breaking the contact. Turning on his heel, he went to the door. Pulled it open and shut it quietly behind him.

  And tried not to feel like he was running away from something he couldn’t even identify.

  * * * *

  When his cell sounded Jude sat straight up in bed and brought it to his ear in one smooth motion. “Bishop.”

  “We’ve got action in Deleon’s place.”

  He was already on his feet, reaching for his jeans. “The safe house?”

  “Nope.” His operative sounded wide-awake. He was paid to be. “Her apartment.”

  With the cell caught between his shoulder and his ear, Jude pulled on pants, grabbed a shirt and his holstered weapon. “Video?” Shoving his feet into his tennis shoes, he bolted from his dark bedroom.

  “Crystal clear picture. That camera you had us rig up is top of the line. Can’t make out if the figure is male or female. The silent alarm went off as soon as the entrance opened. And Jude—whoever it is has a key.”

  “Have Hunter and Blake meet me there. I want one of them stationed at her entrances. Have them text me when they get there.” He didn’t wait to hear the other man’s response before hanging up.

  Taking a moment to shrug into his shirt and strap on his weapon, he was heading out the door as he got Caro on the line. “Check on Mia. Make sure she’s still there.”

  The woman’s voice was startled. “Of course she’s here. Why wouldn’t she…” He heard a sound from her end. Then Caro came on again. “Yes, she’s asleep. What’s going on?”

  “Someone’s in her apartment. I’ll check in later.”

  Tucking the cell in his pocket he ran out the front door of his condo. And as his tennis shoes slapped down the stone steps, his operative’s words reverberated in his head.

  Whoever it is has a key…

  * * * *

  Jude’s home in Georgetown was twenty minutes from the brownstone housing Mia’s apartment in Old Alexandria. He made it there in fifteen and didn’t wait for his operatives. He’d given them their orders on the way over. There were multiple exits from the building, but the location of each apartment gave its owner access to only two. He was familiar with the place. It was where they’d provided security to Mia five and a half years ago.

  He had the keys she’d provided when they’d gotten back into the country. Jude hadn’t expected to use them again so soon. Unlocking the front entrance to the brownstone building, he let himself into the common foyer.

  Skirting the elevator, he used the stairs, taking them two at a time to her second floor apartment. Cracking the door of the exit, he scanned what he could see of the area. Two apartments took up the entire level, he recalled. There was no movement in front of either of them.

  Crossing soundlessly to Mia’s door, he pressed his ear to listen. Heard nothing. As quietly as possible he fit a key into the lock. The knob turned beneath his hand. The deadbolt hadn’t been engaged.

  Drawing his gun he pushed the door open. Swung inside, weapon ready. The place was dark, with an unoccupied air. Gleaming dark wood floors. Antiques whose price he wouldn’t even try to guess. But it was the blueprint he was trying to recall now. He stepped out of the foyer to the living area. Large dining room, bath and kitchen to the right. Three bedrooms and two baths to the left.

  He cleared the living, dining and kitchen spaces first. Saw no one. It wasn’t until he was heading for the hall leading to the bedrooms that he saw it. The camera he’d had installed near the ceiling was hanging askew. Shards of something—probably a heavy vase, lay in pieces beneath it. Jude stepped carefully to avoid walking on one and giving his presence away.

  Coat closet cleared, he moved down the hallway. Methodically he checked room by room. Two guest bedrooms across the hall from each other. The master bed and bath at the end of the hall. He took the one on the right first. Checked the closet.

  He never made it to the other two.

  There was a slight, nearly inaudible crunching sound. The shards in the living room. Jude ran back into the hall. “Hands in the air! Stop right there!”

  A dark figure bolted around the corner into the foyer. He heard the door opening. It was closed as he rounded the corner. He pounded over to it. Yanked it open.

  There was no one in the exterior hallway. The elevator had been activated. Had the intruder pushed the button to throw him off and then taken the stairs? He hesitated. If the stranger had managed to get into the elevator and chosen another floor, he or she would have access to different exits from the building.

  Playing the odds, Jude took the stairs. Caught a flash of dark clothing at the bottom of them. Hopefully by now his men would be stationed outside. With a burst of speed, he took several steps at a time and raced to the bottom. To the front door of the building.

  The landlord’s door cracked open the length the safety chain would allow. “I called the police when I heard that racket,” the older woman yelled shrilly. “They’ll be here any minute!” He ran out of the building, heard the woman’s door slam behind him.

  He reholstered his weapon, scanning from right to left. It was an exclusive historic neighborhood. The area was well lit, and there were few hiding places. Nearby porches on adjoining buildings. Behind or between the cars parked bumper to bumper at the curb.

  He bet on the street. Wondered where the hell his operatives were. Running to the driver’s side of the vehicles he looked up and down the road. Saw someone jump out from a porch two doors down and speed in the opposite direction.

  Shit. He took off after the figure, already hearing sirens coming toward him. The sound was followed by the appearance of two cruisers just as he got to the corner. Saw the person fleeing halfway down the block.

  “Stay where you are! Hands up!”

  Damning the fates all to hell, Jude halted and raised his hands, glad he’d had he foresight to put away his weapon. His eyes should have been on the officer who at this moment had him in his sights. But instead he watched the intruder run down the next block and turn the corner.

  Far from where his man should be stationed at the back apartment entrance.

  * * * *

  Mia was still. Her blood was chilling from the inside out. “Who was it?” This wasn’t a routine break in. She didn’t need to see Jude’s grim expression to realize it. When he raised a remote she followed the direction of his gaze to the laptop he’d set up.

  The feed showed the interior of her home. The one left to her in a trust from her grandmother. She’d barely lived in it, but her happiest childhood memories were the times she spent there with the only person who’d truly loved her.

  Her mouth flattened when she saw someone in dark clothes walking through the interior. “Since when do I have video surveillance in my home?”

  “Since we got back from Vietnam.” With one look Jude forestalled her objections. “I had someone monitoring the feed. If nothing showed up,” he shrugged shifting his gaze back to the computer, “it would have been taken away eventually.”

&nbs
p; The chill transferred to her skin. She rubbed her arms bared by the sleeveless blouse she wore. “But you thought something would show up.” A suspicion he hadn’t shared with her.

  He lifted a shoulder. “It was worth a shot. We had it alarmed so we’d get an alert when the door…” Leaning forward he said, “Here it is.”

  There wasn’t much to see at first. The figure was trying to be stealthy. It went in the direction of the bedrooms. Was out of sight for several minutes. “And now…” Jude murmured.

  “Damn you damn you damn fucking bitch!” The voice was low. Venomous. And indisputably female.

  Mia swallowed hard. Her gut clenched as she watched the woman pacing the apartment, first hidden in shadows and then out again. Saw the exact moment she caught sight of the camera. She approached it. Stood still watching it for a moment.

  Although her face was half in the interior’s gloom, Mia recognized Four’s vicious expression. “You fucking bitch. Are you watching me? I’m going to kill you, you cunt. When I find you I’m going to cut you into pieces. Look what you did to me. Look at it!” She turned and pulled up her sweatshirt. Two puckered fresh scars, stitches visible, marred the once flawless back. When she turned around again the woman was weeping. “He’ll reject me now. I’m no longer perfect. He can’t love me anymore. And it’s…” she dodged to the side to pick something up. “…all…your…fault!”

  Four heaved Gran’s eighteenth century vase at the camera. There was a crashing sound. Then the screen went dark.

  Stunned, Mia sat silently for a moment. She hadn’t killed the woman. Obviously. From the signs of the wounds, the help she’d received for them hadn’t been professional. How had she survived? How had she gotten out of the country?