Beautifully Damaged (Contemporary Romantic Suspense)

by Faye, Amy

  Erin tried to draw her breaths evenly, but they came in unsteady waves.

  "Are you going to kill me?"

  "What are your intentions with my brother?"

  Erin blinked and screwed up her face.

  "Intentions? Brother?"

  He slapped her. It wasn't hot or fun. His hand came across her face like a club, and left her face feeling like someone had lit it on fire.

  "What are your intentions with my brother?"

  The question didn't make any more sense the second time. Erin tried to figure out what answer he wanted, but she couldn't answer a question she didn't understand.

  "Who is your brother? I don't underst—"

  The second hit was somehow harder than the first, and sent her sprawling down onto the bed, folded in half like a barbie doll. It took her a second to figure out which way 'up' was before she managed to get herself back into a seated position.

  "You goddamn bitches are all the same. You don't know the first thing about relationships, do you?"

  "What the fuck are you talking about?"

  "You don't know one God damned thing about decency or respect for other people. Nothing about morality."

  "What?"

  Part of her knew that she should be trying to placate him. Every thing she was saying was just making him angrier, and it was only a matter of time before things started going very bad. She needed to figure out what he wanted to hear. Morality? Decency and respect? Intentions?

  He sounded like he was straight out of the fifties, with this 'what are your intentions with my daughter' crap. But with my brother? She hadn't ever heard anyone even suggest it.

  He raised his hand again. "Wait! Wait, okay, please. One second. I just woke up."

  "Talk fast, girly."

  "Give me a second, please. I just need a minute."

  "You have ten seconds."

  She used them to rub her eyes clear. The guy wore his hair very short. It might have been to hide the fact that he was thinning on top. She was confident that she'd recognize him if she saw the guy again, and she was doubly confident that she had never seen the man before in her life. If she knew his brother, then there wasn't an incredible amount of family resemblance.

  "I'm sorry. Intentions, you said. Intentions. I mean—I don't know, do I? I've only been seeing him a couple of days."

  "Don't you bull-shit me, bitch."

  So much for decency and respect, Erin thought glumly.

  "I'm not! I only met him a week ago or so. It's not exactly time to start talking about marriage, right? We're still…"

  She trailed off when she saw exactly how little effect this argument was having on the man in front of her. He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her up out of bed. When he saw the clothes she was—or wasn't—wearing, he looked her up and down with increasing disgust.

  "Get dressed."

  He sat down in one of the hotel-room chairs watched her dress. Erin could feel his eyes on her every instant, as if he might see if she even thought about reaching for something. He didn't have to pay such close attention; she didn't have anything to reach for.

  Erin dressed quickly and tried to do her best not to put anything on display for him. Something about the way that he looked at her, like she was human filth, told her that he wouldn't have gotten much enjoyment out of it if she'd put on a proper show. That didn't change how she felt about it.

  "Let's go," he said. He tapped the blade of a knife against a chair. "And don't try anything, or you'll find out what happens."

  Erin didn't put up a fight. She couldn't afford to show any sort of resistance, not when he was holding that knife. And she knew better than to assume that he was going to put it down.

  They made their way side-by-side toward the elevator. Someone had to check on her, right? If the F.B.I. hadn't caught Craig by now, then things should have settled down enough to at least send someone by to make sure she was settled in alright. If they had, then Roy would come by any minute now. Roy, with his pistol.

  She took a deep breath and tried not to think about it. She could only jinx her chances, if she gave it too much hope. Just look for an opportunity to make a break for it. The guy has a knife, that limits his range pretty badly. Erin took a breath.

  The elevator doors opened on a cleaning lady who smiled at them in the way that service employees smile at someone who they won't remember the face of in ten minutes. There went another hope for getting out of here. She got into the elevator next to the guy because he told her to.

  The trip down was in silence. She was too afraid to break it, and he didn't seem that interested in talking. She didn't know where they were going, but she knew she wasn't going to like it.

  "We'll take your car," he said softly.

  "My keys—I mean, I didn't bring them. You didn't tell me to—"

  "Don't lie to me."

  She zipped her lips. She could feel her keys, suddenly heavier in her pocket, as if the weight of his knowing about them had just been added.

  "I'm sorry," she said. Soft, de-escalating. Demure, even. It was a struggle, with this asshole. On her home turf, in her city, and she was playing the mewling kitten with a guy who would normally have her pumps ankle-deep in his ass for treating her like this.

  Erin took a breath and started out across the lot. She looked around for a government car, looked for a motorcycle, looked for anything that was going to help her get out of this god damned situation unscathed. She couldn't take a good look without being conspicuous, but she didn't see anything.

  She slipped into the driver's seat of the Jeep, he slipped into the passenger side. He took the knife back out of his pocket, pressed the blade edge against her.

  "Drive real careful, now." He dug it a little into the thin fabric of her shirt, enough to let her feel the razor-edge burr on the blade. "And don't forget to wear your seatbelt."

  Thirty-Seven

  The thug beside her noticed the tail a few seconds after Erin did. She had tried not to notice, but that didn't change anything when he muttered, "We got someone following us. God damnit. Turn left here."

  She turned left, still unsure where in the hell they were going, except that she didn't want to go there with this guy no matter where it was.

  "Step on it."

  She put the power down in the car after her momentary hesitation led to another sharp poke in the belly that reminded her exactly what was at stake here. It was all fun and games, all playful pokes, until that knife slipped hilt-deep into her stomach. Because at that point, if she didn't make a hospital in a matter of minutes, the game would be over. It would be a slow death, but even the first stab would do it, if he gave it a good effort.

  The Jeep made the sort of unhappy roar that cars with their mufflers only-half-attached made, and sped off. She lifted when they hit the speed limit. He jabbed her again, and she broke it.

  The car behind them—that is, the truck behind them—sped up to match. Whoever was responsible for this tail, if they knew how to hide, they also knew when they were made. They came up hard and fast, but didn't try to overtake. Instead, they just slotted in behind her and waited.

  Why couldn't they get their god damned acts together and figure out what was happening here? Couldn't someone deal with this psychopath?

  She took a breath in that pressed her belly against the blade again, and her breath hitched in her lungs, not wanting to go in and not wanting to breathe out.

  She forced the air out of her lungs. With that knife there, she couldn't afford to take any risks with the car, not even if she wanted to. Not this far from a hospital. Not if she couldn't be absolutely certain that the guy was going to eat it.

  The truck was close enough now that when she looked into it she could see. Roy was sitting in the driver's seat, his expression almost bored. Someone was behind him in the extended cab, but she couldn't make him out besides that he was big. She had her guesses, though.

  "Faster," the man with the knife growled, pushing hard enough to d
raw blood and stain her white shirt.

  "I can't go any faster. I'm already going as fast as it goes."

  He cursed and pulled the knife back a moment. Erin looked in the mirror at Roy, hoping that he would somehow pick up on her body language.

  "A right here." She jerked the wheel right. She could feel the car threatening to tip and roll over on its lid. This driving was a hundred times too aggressive for the already-ruined suspension on this Jeep, but if she really wanted to, she could have made damn sure it flipped. The truck blew past at seventy miles an hour.

  Erin's eyes dropped to the big man's waist, and she held back a curse. Wearing his seatbelt? What kind of psycho did that? She had been hoping that she could flip it and send him head-first into the concrete. But that wasn't going to happen now.

  Erin slowed the car, and noted that the guy didn't tell her to speed up.

  "Pull over here."

  She did what she was told. Not much else choice, after all. They weren't in the slums like her sister had been, or the other women. By itself, that helped, but somehow Erin didn't get the feeling that it mattered all that much to this guy.

  "Let's go."

  She slid out of the car. An industrial district, though. Nowhere to run, and nobody to run to. She could hope that she could outrun the guy, of course. She'd always been fit. But looking the guy up and down one more time told her that she would do well not to rely on his being in poor fitness.

  She did what she was told, followed where he directed.

  He fished a key out of his pocket and pushed it into a keyhole until it clicked home, and then unlocked the door. He grabbed her arm and pushed her in hard enough that Erin nearly stumbled over her own feet.

  "You should have stayed away," he growled.

  "I'm sorry. I didn't know."

  "No, you didn't. They raise you like this. Sluts and whores. They tell you that it's fine to fuck around until you're in your thirties, and you hear that for your entire life—you get to believing it. Well, not any more. Not around my family."

  Erin wasn't worried about dying any more. It was a strange sensation. She wasn't ready. There were a thousand things that she had left to do, people she needed to talk to, things she needed to correct.

  None of those things were going to convince this guy that she should live. None of them were going to change the fact that she was absolutely going to die, and her mind seemed to decide that that meant there wasn't much point in worrying after all.

  Instead, she looked around. There was a large section cleared here, but all around was glassware and folding tables. It didn't take a genius to recognize a meth lab in the halfway light.

  "Say your prayers. You can have sixty seconds to make your peace with God."

  Erin shifted to sit up and closed her eyes, folded her hands. She didn't have anything to say to God. It was God who took Mom away. Erin hadn't been inside a church since the funeral, and she wasn't planning on taking the practice back up.

  She prayed anyways, if only to get the man to give her just one more minute. Erin heard the noise of steps outside, and then everything exploded all around.

  A gunshot sounded, and an instant later she heard the door slam open. In the time it took for her brain to register what she was hearing she heard the noise of a grenade hitting the ground, heard the loud pop that made it so she wouldn't be able to hear anything else for the better part of half an hour.

  Her eyes were closed, but even that couldn't keep out the bright white flash of light that burned itself onto her retinas in spite of her closed eyes. A trillion miles away, someone shouted something about getting down. She didn't move. Arms scooped her up and set her on her feet.

  She opened her eyes, her vision swimming, on Roy Schafer. He was saying something, but she couldn't hear him. She blinked, hoping that would help her hearing, but it didn't.

  She shouted as loud as she could that she couldn't hear him. It sounded a little louder than a whisper over the sound of the ringing in her ears.

  Roy pulled her in tight, held her there for what felt like an eternity, but when he pulled back she wanted that eternity back. As soon as her hearing came back, she would be back on her way to the hotel, and he would be getting the hell out of town.

  So the longer that her hearing stayed gone, the longer that they stood there together in that stinking meth-lab warehouse, the better, because as much as she didn't want to admit it to herself, she wasn't going to get another chance at it.

  Thirty-Eight

  The ride back to her apartment was silent. Not the least of which because she was alone. She could still see the absurdly large truck Roy had somehow come into possession of, following at the somewhat discreet distance of two cars back. As if she would have rebelled and started off again if he were too close.

  If anything she wanted to have his bumper pressed up against hers the whole way. As if the closeness would be enough to make sure that she never ran into trouble like this again. She let out an unsteady breath as she pulled into the hotel parking lot.

  Schafer's truck pulled in behind, found one of the dozens of empty spots around her, and he got out. Erin couldn't find it in herself to get out of the Jeep, but she at least managed to work up the energy to turn the engine off.

  She laid her head back and set her eyes on the sky, barely visible through the row of trees that blocked out the side of the hotel parking lot.

  "Are you okay?"

  "What happened?"

  "What do you mean? You were there."

  "How did you find me?"

  "It was a bit of luck, to be honest."

  "Figures."

  "We didn't take long finding Hutchinson. He's not a hard man to find, with his notoriety. We showed a few pictures around and found him with plenty of time to spare. At which point we threw him in the back. He starts the usual talk—you can't arrest me, you're making a mistake. I didn't do it. The usual shit, right?"

  "Sure."

  "Well, then he says he needs to go find you. There's gonna be trouble. I figured there was nothing to it. He's trying to bullshit me."

  "But you decided to come check on me anyways?"

  "He offers me a full confession to the Angels' various crimes—drug trafficking and a couple of murders down the coast—if we can just drive by and check on you. Just make sure you're okay. His club isn't any of my business, but that's not the usual spiel any more. So we went to check on you, and I see you driving with some guy in your passenger seat." Roy's face split into that pretty-boy grin. "I got a little jealous."

  "How sweet of you."

  "Are you hurt?"

  Erin looked down at her body. She hurt where she'd been thrown to the floor, a little scrape on her knee and a bruise on her hip. There was a red stain where he'd cut her belly open, just a bit, but it was going to be fine. Probably already closed.

  "Not really."

  "You want to go upstairs?"

  "Calm down, boy," she teased. "I'm a little tired for that."

  "I didn't mean—" he pursed his lips to stop his lips twisting into a sour smile. "Are you going to be alright?"

  "I don't know."

  He reached a hand through the open window and cupped the back of her head.

  "You're going to be fine, babe. I know it. You're a tough cookie."

  "You think so?"

  "I know it."

  "Thanks." She didn't feel tough, and she didn't particularly feel like she was going to be fine. How long would it be before the nightmares stopped? How long would it be before she could go to sleep without triple-checking the locks? How long before—

  Erin stopped that line of thought.

  "We're going to take a few days to question Craig. Get what he knows about the situation out. We'll get everything we need to know from him." He didn't add and then we're going to leave but she heard it anyways.

  "Yeah?"

  "I promise. We got the guy who did all of this, and we're going to put together proof enough to convince anyone. Maybe ev
en you."

  "Good."

  She was too tired to have any sort of feelings at all about it. The week had worn her out. It would be days before she felt anything but tired, she knew. If she could move on to the next case, maybe it would be a knock out of the park. Maybe she'd be able to hammer one, and then the next, and by the time she realized she wasn't ever going to feel right again, she wouldn't care any more.

  "Are you gonna be alright?"

  "I'm going to be fine." She finally found the energy to push the door open and stepped out onto an unsteady leg. "And I still don't need your help getting into bed, Romeo."

  "Look, I'm just saying, if you did, though—"

  She cut him off with a smile and a laugh. "I know, you're more than willing. Maybe some other time."

  She limped her way back to the elevator and hit her floor, unlocked her door with the keycard, and fell into bed.

  The next few days passed slowly. Agonizingly slow. Roy kept her updated on everything with his texts, but they were too busy pulling together evidence. Officially, they were just wrapping up loose ends.

  Back in '95, when Erin was first settling into her new west-coast life, Papa Hutchinson had found Jesus in all the wrong places, but apparently hadn't found out about the church's view on narcotics use.

  In his drug haze, he'd been more than a little critical of his eldest boy's dating habits. What started as cops getting called a few times turned into beatings, turned into a girl getting stabbed. That diary page came from Craig's father.

  He was, himself, on his third wife at the time, so the hypocrisy wasn't lost on any of them, but the eldest boy, Jared, had taken it hard. At some point, for reasons nobody cared to speculate, he'd decided that his girlfriend had absolutely deserved to get what she'd got.

  Now that his brothers had spread around the country, he found out that they were dating, and just like poor Chrissy, they were corrupting his innocent brothers. Craig had been dealing by then, and by the time he managed to find his brother, it was too late. He assured Craig that was the end of it, until he found out about Becca, and then all bets were off again.