by M. O'Keefe
“I know about it all. So you need to stop lying. For your sake.”
He was going to kill her. A gasping sob cleared her throat.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he whispered. His face creased with agony. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
Annie nearly laughed. But terror had squeezed her body.
“I don’t like it, Annie, but I…I guess I understand.” He tilted his head like the old yellow lab they used to have. “What I did to you made you…act out like that. I know that’s not you. That picture, those notes. That’s not the Annie I know.”
The Annie he knew was a rag doll. A scarecrow. An animated reflection of him. The Annie he knew was gone.
But Hoyt was still talking. “We can go back home and just forget it. Forget this Dylan Daniels. Start over.”
That was impossible. There was no forgetting Dylan Daniels. He was burned under her skin. Into her bones.
Move, she told herself, keep moving, don’t just sit here and let him ruin you again. As long as she kept moving she was alive, and as long as she was alive, there was a chance.
Annie pulled a clean shirt out of the dresser. “You mind?” she asked, when he just kept standing there. That gun held so casually in his hand as if to mock her fear.
A muscle twitched in his jaw and he glanced down at the books on the bed and the phone in his hand, silently asking if she really thought she was deserving of modesty now. But then he bowed his head and walked out of her room as if granting Annie some privacy was a favor. A silly stupid wish by a silly stupid woman.
Once he was gone, she pulled off her dirty shirt and slipped on her clean one. The windows in here were all too small to climb through, but she pushed open her curtains hoping Ben was still in his garden, hoping she could catch his eye. But his garden was empty. Joan’s trailer was still dark.
As lightly as she could, she stepped to the door, listening for sounds from the rest of the trailer so she could try to tell where he was. But it was silent. Eerie and silent and awful.
Shaking, she cracked open the door to see Hoyt back in the captain’s chair. He was eating a cinnamon roll from the bag she’d brought down from Dylan’s. If Annie was careful and if she was quick, she might get to the door before he did.
Acting as if she was still dizzy, she made her way into the small kitchen with her hand along the wall. Four feet. Three. Two. The door was right there. She paused for a second, holding her head as if she could barely stand. She needed him to think she was weak.
“You want to pack up?” He asked. “I’d like to get home. We’ve been gone too long.” Like they’d been on a trip. A fun excursion.
“Can we have some food, first? I need something to eat. It will make me less dizzy, maybe.”
She turned herself around a little, getting her body between him and the door, and then made like she was reaching for the paper bag but instead of the bag she reached for the door, pushing it open, cold air rushing toward her as she threw her body down the steps, but Hoyt grabbed the back of her shirt and then a handful of her hair and yanked her back into the trailer.
And then slammed the door shut.
Annie screamed so loud and so hard her throat ached and he backhanded her, tossed her onto the floor of the trailer and got down on top of her, squeezing the air from her body. His hand closed over her mouth. His knife had slipped forward and the leather tip of the sheath touched the bare skin of her hip, where her shirt had ridden up.
She tried to flinch away from it, but he was too heavy.
With every breath she took that knife rubbed her. Scratched her.
“Look at me, Annie,” he said in that calm voice. “I found you and we’re together again. There’s nowhere for you to go. And you need to realize that.”
She shook her head, trying to buck him off with her hips.
“This Dylan man, he’s not for you. And you know what? I forgive you for having an affair with this man.” His voice said otherwise. His voice and his narrowed eye and the vicious disgusted curl to his lip, they told her she would be paying for these sins. “Some kind of dirty affair. Sending a man who is not your husband a picture of your naked body. You—”
He shifted over her and she felt, to her utter horror, that he was hard under his zipper. This man who had so rarely had sex with her was aroused. She closed her eyes against this new awful terror.
The sheathed knife and his erection dug into her.
“This man you were screwing, did he knew you were married?”
Annie did not respond. Would not. He was playing some sick game. He touched her hair just above her ear, and she could have screamed.
“You smell dirty. Like sweat and sex.” He sniffed her. Over and over again, his nose in her hair. Her neck. “I want you to spread your legs, Annie.”
Whimpering, she clenched them tighter together.
I am going to die this way.
There was a sudden knocking on the door and both of them stilled. She opened her eyes in time to see a momentary flash of panic on Hoyt’s face. But as soon as it was there it was gone, replaced by that terrifying vacancy.
“Annie!” It was Ben. Old frail Ben. “You all right? I heard screaming.”
“Who is that?” Hoyt asked.
“My neighbor.” Ben Daniels. Dylan’s father. And…quite possibly, her only friend.
“You don’t want that man to get hurt.” The menthol smell of Hoyt’s breath flowed over her face. He ate Halls cough drops like candy. “And if you say one word to him, give him one reason to think you aren’t okay, he’ll get hurt. We’ll still be going home together, Annie. You cannot change that. No matter what you do.”
This whole situation was made worse by the fact that Ben was a former motorcycle gang member and convicted felon. Cops would take one look at her face, and Ben’s record, and they’d believe whatever Hoyt said.
Hoyt was very believable.
Bit by bit Hoyt got off Annie, watching her every second to see what she would do. Annie had become unpredictable, and she took some strength from that, from no longer being underestimated.
Shaking, she slowly got to her feet, grabbed the pink washcloth from the table and held it to her head. Hoping Ben would believe the lies she was about to tell him.
Hoyt got out of sight and Annie pushed open the door to her trailer.
“You all right?” Ben asked, looking worried. He wore the familiar clean white shirt, pristinely ironed. He’d been sick recently, and he’d lost weight. No matter how tough he’d been years ago, now he was frail and he was old.
And he could not help her.
“Fine,” she lied with a smile. “There was a snake and I screamed and jumped and smacked my head on the cupboard.”
“I get those king snakes all the time,” he said. “You want me…”
She got in his way as he leaned to the side as if to see into the trailer, or, worse, try to come in. “I’m fine.”
That lie didn’t sound at all convincing, and he pointed up to his own eye. “You smack your eye, too? Your lip?”
“Please,” she breathed, unable to pretend anymore. “Please, Ben, just go.”
“Annie—”
“For fuck’s sake, old man. I’m fine. I’m exhausted and I just want to get to sleep. Leave me alone.”
His dark eyes missed nothing and she had no idea what he was thinking, but in the end he surrendered, holding up his hands and going back to his trailer. Taking all hope of rescue with him.
Annie was going to have to do this herself.
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