I nod and she smiles, revealing a missing tooth just to the left of her front one. I mumble to try to get her to see I want to talk to her. But she looks away from me.
“I guess you and me are going to be like some kind of sister-wives or some shit. Rod just sprang this on me last night. I had no idea we were coming to this tiny town for anything more than a road trip. Guess we were coming for you, Jenna Foster. The Jenna Foster that I am constantly compared to. You must’ve done things so great for the man who I belong to.”
I shake my head and mumble again in an attempt to get her to at least set my mouth free. She looks at me with a lot of unanswered questions clouding her expression. Then she comes to me.
Taking a knife out of her tight leather jeans pocket, she runs it up behind my head. The gag goes loose, and I spit it out. “Thank you.”
“Don’t. I just want to hear you tell me I’ll be his number one woman. You can sit back and be quiet and stay the fuck out of my way and maybe we can co-exist with Rod.” She folds her arms in front of her and leans against the wall.
“I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be with him. I don’t know what he told you, but he left me. I wasn’t good enough for him, obviously, or he’d have taken me with him.”
She looks me all over and makes a face that has it all squished up. “You look like a damn teacher or something with that drab little hairstyle you got going on. And why in the hell does a woman your age wear old lady nightgowns?”
“This isn’t mine. I put it on last night when Rod caught me and his brother in the swimming pool naked. His mother gave it to me to cover myself. And I am going to be a school teacher. A kindergarten teacher, to be precise.”
Her eyes go narrow. “Fucking fantastic! So my sister-wife is a normal, boring woman. That’s just going to work out so great! Not!”
I try hard to think about what to say to get her to see it’s best to let me go. “Look, I need your help. What’s your name?”
“Rod nicknamed me Sweet-thing.” Her smile tells me she’s very proud of the fact he gave her that name.
“K. Sweet-thing, I need your help. If you could find it in your heart to just let me go, then I’ll disappear, and you can have your life with Rod,” I make sure to sound like I’m pleading with her.
But it does no good as her face is hard as a rock and she shakes her head. “He’d string me up and beat me nonstop for three or more hours if I did that. If you know the man like he claims you do, then you know I can’t do that. And I’m not a girl who goes around doing good deeds, anyway.”
“Yeah, you don’t look real helpful,” I find myself saying out loud, though I had no intention of doing that.
“Look, bitch!” She comes closer to me, shaking the knife near my face. “If it wasn’t for Rod and how he is about you then I would cut your ass up right now. But he will kill me if I harm a hair on your head. He told me that himself. But I won’t let you get away with talking about me at all.”
“Sorry. That was way out of line, Sweet-thing. It’s just that I really need to get out of here before he gets here. Once he does, I know he’ll make damn sure I don’t.”
“You got that right,” she says, then grabs an open, half-drunk beer off the small table in the little room.
I throw up a little in my mouth as she takes the rest of it in one long drink. She burps and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, then sets the empty brown bottle back down.
“I know you’re not liking this, Sweet-thing. And you have to realize that you will really hate it when you have to share Rod, if you get a chance to at all. He and I had a really hot connection. He’s going to want to have sex with me a lot. We used to have sex three and four times a day. It’s been over two years since he’s touched me. I’m sure he’s not going to come out of this room for days once he gets here,” I say, and watch her face fall.
“Fuck!” she says, then looks around the room. “The bed’s too small for the three of us. He’ll probably make me sleep out in the bar. Fuck! Why did he have to find your ass?”
“Let me go and you won’t have any problems. If you don’t, you will lose him to me. I can promise you that. He’ll make you a slave to both of us. I know he will. I don’t want to see that happen to you.” I watch her as she slides her back down the wall and lands on her ass.
She puts her face in her hands and shakes her head. “I know that too. But if I let you go …”
I interrupt her. “If you let my legs free and reposition the bungee cord holding my hands together, then hang me on that hook, I can see it’s low enough that I can use my feet to climb up the wall. I can get off the hook all on my own and escape. It won’t be your fault at all.”
“That’ll never work,” she says, as she keeps her head in her hands.
“It will. I heard him tell you to string me up. He told you to leave me in here alone after that. If you give me the heads up about a back door or window, then that would make it easier for me too. You know how things are going to work out if he gets me. I’m like his favorite toy and if I have to live with him then I will become all he wants. I did before. It helped me to be punished less and treated better. I know how to work the man now. It won’t take me anytime at all to have him eating out of the palm of my hand.”
She moves back up the wall until she’s standing. “There’s a back door. When you walk out of this room turn to the right and stay close to the wall and no one will see you. The door is behind a wall. You’ll have to only open it as far as you have to, to get out. It will let in some light, and somebody might notice that.”
“Is there any way you feel like telling me what direction will get me back to town?” I ask, and hope like crazy she wants to be a little more helpful.
“If you can get to the front of the bar without being seen, that’s the quickest way. But chances are that if you’re walking up that road, Rod will be coming down it. If any of the gang sees a woman walking down the road in a nightgown, chances are they will grab you and bring you right back here,” she says, then nods her head. “Yeah, you better just run out the back and keep going that direction. You’ll come upon some house, I’m sure. Eventually, anyway.”
The woman pulls my cell phone out of her pocket and sets it on the table. Then she comes and takes the cord off my ankles, then releases the cord around my wrists. “Thank you,” I say, as I shake my hands and wiggle my feet to get the blood flowing back into them.
“Take these with you. I don’t want him finding them and putting two and two together. I’m going to tell him I had you bound up and strung up and have no idea how you got free. He didn’t see me take your phone. So he won’t know about that.” She looks into my face and seems to be searching it. “How’d you take it when he left you like that?”
“Very badly. But I thank the Lord every single day that he did. I got myself back. And I don’t want to give myself back to him ever again. Not ever!” I look into her eyes and see the lost look she has, very much the way I looked when I was with him.
“Good luck,” she says, then turns away from me. “You’re going to need it.” Then she walks out of the small room and I get up, grab my cell phone, and peek out the door.
I find it dark, and no one is looking my way, so I slip out the door and stay close to the wall. Slinking against the wall I spot the door she told me about and, once I get to it, I slip out it and start hauling ass like I have never run before.
It’s just desert out here. Cactus and hot sand are all I see, and my bare feet are already burning. I keep running and look at my cell phone and see there’s no service.
Of course there isn’t; that would be too fucking easy!
Far away, I can hear the sound of motorcycles coming down the road and somehow increase my speed, as I have a feeling it’s Rod. When he finds me not in his room waiting for him to pour on the punishment for daring to leave his ass, he’s sure to come out that back door and come looking for me.
So I keep running, and it occurs to me th
at my footprints are left in the sandy soil, but there’s not a damn thing I can do about that. I just pray all those years of his cigarette smoking will have him not being able to run for as long as I can.
Chapter 25
JENNA
My body is past hot. I’m getting tired and can’t run anymore. If Rod is following me, he’s so far back that I can’t see or hear him. It’s been a whole hour since I got out of there, and still I’ve yet to see any signs of a house or civilization at all.
But in the distance, I can hear what sound like chickens. So I veer to the left a bit and go toward the sound that should mean someone lives near the chickens I’m hearing.
The sound of a small dog barking as I get closer to the chickens has me picking up speed as hope fills me. The little yapping dog comes out of nowhere, yipping at me.
It’s small and ugly as sin, but damn, I’m glad to see it!
I crouch down. “Here, puppy. Take me to your home, puppy.”
It slows down and comes timidly up to me with its tiny tail wagging away. I pick it up and pet him. “Oh, you’re so ferocious, aren’t you? Want to take me to your home, puppy?”
I put him down and follow him as he goes back toward where he came from. Suddenly I feel a lot better, and it occurs to me I might just make it out of here intact.
The chickens come into view and so does a rickety shack. But the old shack has a new satellite dish on the wavy roof and that’s good luck for me.
A screen door is about halfway off, but I knock on it anyway. “Hello,” I call out to whoever may be inside.
“What?” I hear the voice of an old woman.
I take six fast steps backward as a short, round, white-haired women with one eye shows up on the other side of the door. “Oh! Um, hello there. I need some help.”
“Why?” she says with a snarling sound in her old crotchety voice.
“I was kidnapped and need to make a call. Do you have any satellite reception in there?” I ask as I peek around her to see if I see anything that tells me the dish on the roof is working.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She turns around abruptly. “Stop pushing me, Roland!”
I don’t see anyone behind her. “Who?”
She spins back and throws the squeaking door open. “Come in! For goodness’ sake, it’s a hundred and eleven degrees out there!” She waddles off mumbling, “Not a brain in her head, it seems, Roland.”
Incredibly I see a small Wi-Fi router and hurry to see if my cell phone can pick it up. I find there’s a code I need for it. “Ma’am, what’s the code for your Wi-Fi?”
“My what?” she spins back and stops and I nearly run into her. “I don’t know what she’s talking about, Roland. So shut up!”
I look around to find who the hell she’s talking to and shake my head when I find no one. I point to the little router with the green blinking lights. “That machine has a code. Do you remember what it is?”
“Hells bells, where are my manners? You want some eggs, little girl?” She hops on one foot to a tiny kitchen.
“Are you hurt?” I ask, as she wasn’t hopping before.
“Land’s sake! Hurt! Do you need a bandage? I don’t have any, but if you need one I can ask Roland to get you one from the store.” She opens a little brown box, pulls out two eggs, cracks them into a cloudy glass, and hands it to me.
I take it and smile nervously. “Thank you.”
What is wrong with this woman?
Instead of asking her anything else, I go to the router and look at the bottom of it. Sure enough, someone has written a code there.
Thank God!
I put it into my phone and I have service. Quickly I swipe Reed’s name and his voice makes me fall to my knees. “Jenna?”
“Reed,” I say, and have to hold back the cries I want to set free. “Thank God.”
“Jenna, where are you?” he asks.
“I don’t know for sure. Right now I’m at a woman’s house. But he will find me soon, I know it. My footprints are in the sand, and all he has to do is follow them to me.”
“Ping your location and I’ll find you.”
My heart pounds, as I have real hope he’ll come and save me. “Okay. Reed, hurry.”
“I will. You do whatever you have to if he shows up. See if that person has a gun. Shoot the motherfucker if you have to, Jenna. I’ll be there soon,” he says. Then I end the call so I can send him my location.
“Ma’am, do you have a gun by any chance?”
She closes her one good eye and presses her thumb to her chin. Then she walks away and opens a door on the side of the one-room shack. “What kind do you need?”
I walk over and look in the room that’s full of things. Three of those things are guns.
Big shotguns!
Watching where I step, as there’s a lot of crap in the tiny room, I grab the guns and see one box of bullets. I pick them up too and go back to her.
She swats at the air and shouts, “Tarnation, Roland! Stop pulling my hair!”
With a shake of my head, I ask, “Is Roland your husband?”
“No! Are you blind?” She spins in a circle three times, then stops. “He’s my cat, goofy woman!”
She thinks I’m goofy?
“So it’s just you and your cat who live here?” I ask as I take a seat on a rickety old chair with a half-broken seat.
I’ve never shot a gun or loaded one, but I’m about to learn how really quickly. I’d ask the old woman, but I doubt she’d tell me the right way. She must be clinically insane.
“Me and what cat?” she asks as she sits Indian style on the old wood floor that has more than a few holes in it.
“Roland,” I say, and roll my eyes.
Reed, hurry up, before this woman takes me to crazy town with her!
“Scat!” she screams and throws her hands up in the air. They flail around her head.
“You okay?” I ask as I sit here and just watch her.
She stops and looks at me with her one eye squinted. She doesn’t say a word as she looks at me for a long time, then whispers, “I see dead people all the time. You don’t scare me.”
“I’m not trying to scare you,” I say, and finally figure out how to open the shotgun and find a shell already in the chamber. “I see you keep this one loaded.”
“Why does a ghost need a gun, anyway?” she whispers.
“I’m not a ghost. I’m a woman who is being sought after by a crazy motorcycle riding lunatic. That’s why I need a gun.” I put that one down very carefully on the floor and pick up the next one to find it’s loaded as well. And so is the third one.
She shivers and runs her hands over her chubby arms. “I had a dog one time.”
“You have a dog right now,” I remind her. “When was the last time you remembered to feed him?”
“Feed what?” She looks really confused, and that takes some doing with only one eye.
I sigh. “Your dog.”
“Dog? I have a cat. His name is Roland.”
“I know that. You also have a dog. One who needs to eat.” I hear the chickens going crazy outside, take the gun in my hand, and hurry to look out the back door.
My heart is pounding as I think I might have to shoot Rod or some other member of his gang. It slows a bit as I see it’s just the little dog killing one of the smaller chickens.
So that’s how he’s managing to stay alive!
Scanning the area I came from and seeing nothing, I think the dog will bark if it hears anyone coming. So I relax a little.
I turn when I feel tugging at the back of my nightgown. The woman is there pulling on it. “I like this snazzy dress. I sure do. Want to trade for something I got?”
“You’re a bit shorter than I am. I kind of need this.” I walk away and take a seat on the floor so she can have her one chair.
She perches on the broken chair and pulls her white hair up with her fists. It makes it stand straight up off her old wrinkled head. “
I think you and me look a lot alike.”
My eyebrows go up as I look at her. “You do?”
“I do,” she says, then licks her fingertip and runs it over one of her very bushy white eyebrows. “Once I was a showgirl.”
“You were?” I ask, and find myself smiling at the thought.
“Well, showgirl might be a little fancy for what I was.” She looks all around, then leans toward me as she whispers, “I used to take my clothes off for money, and I had sex and gave blow jobs for money too. I used to be rich.”
I’m kind of shocked and kind of not. “So what happened?”
“I bit this guy’s cock, and he hit me in the eye so hard he busted it. I was ugly then, and no one wanted me. I got thrown out of the whorehouse and all I could afford was this place. So I bought it and some chickens and took my cat, Roland, and found myself living in the Arizona desert. Alone.”
“That’s heartbreaking,” I say. “When my fiancé comes, we can take you to a woman’s shelter where you can get some help. And some nice people will come and get your chickens and your dog and make sure they all go to good homes. Won’t that be nice? You’ll sleep in a nice comfy bed and get to take a bath.”
“You’re a friendly ghost,” she says. “I like friendly ghosts. Scat!”
I jump as she screams the last word. “And you can get some help with your problems too. Maybe some nice drugs to help you not live in an alternate universe.” I give her a smile and don’t know if they make anything that would really help her not be crazy.
The dog starts barking. I jump up, run to the door, and see he’s running around the house to the front. I run to that door. As I throw open the door, I see Reed’s rented Mercedes pulling up and run out to him.
He skids to a stop in the sand and jumps out. His arms hold me tight and I let the tears loose. “Reed!”
“Jenna, I have you now. I have you, my angel!” His lips touch the side of my head as I cling tightly to him.
The sound of the shotgun going off has me letting him go. I turn and see the crazy woman pointing the gun up in the air. “Scat!” she screams. “You kids get in here before the vultures come back!”
“She’s not all there,” I say.
Rockstar Untamed: A Single Dad Virgin Romance Page 46
