I’d dismembered the last guy who’d hurt the people I loved.
The lying little beast had infiltrated my family, and I’d just let her go.
Hell, no.
I stepped out of the car and cracked my neck. Drawing a deep breath, I stared at the dark sky and welcomed the blackness that closed around me.
The black sky closed around me like a collapsing tunnel, burying me under its filthy rubble. I pushed forward, unsure of my destination, knowing only that I had to keep moving. Away from Tito. Away from the images of blood and skin, Jonas’s blue eyes begging for help, the grunts and taunts of his masked assailants, and that terrifying voice panting in my ear, “You’re next, beauty. Gonna fuck that ass up real good. Then you can run home and tell Daddy this was all for him.”
Crushing shame consumed me. The ground passed below in a dizzying blur. Run. Run. Run.
A pair of arms enveloped me. My feet left the ground, the world spun, and I landed on my back in a patch of wet grass.
Angry eyes invaded my field of vision. Hot breaths heated my face.
“You don’t drop a bomb like that and run away. No fuckin’ way. You spew bullshit like that, you damn well stick around and face up to it. Hear me, little viper?”
A jackhammer battered my chest. Jonas’s screams grew louder, clanging in my head like loose change in a dryer. Tito was above me yet seemed a million miles away.
“Tell me what the fuck is going on.”
I gasped for breath, struggling to get back to my feet.
His heavy body fell across mine, smashing me into the wet ground. “Are you one of them? Were you trying to hurt my family?” He grabbed my wrists and pinned them above my head. “Tell me.”
I wanted to speak, purge my guilty conscience. He’d never forgive me. None of them would. I was crumbling under the weight of my deception. I wanted to confess, but the words wouldn’t come. I couldn’t find them through the screams in my head.
“Tito.” I choked on my plea. “Tito, please.”
“You fuckin’ little liar,” he groaned through gritted teeth. “You’ve been lying to us this whole time. Did Jonas put you up to it? He make you get a job at The Stop? What was the plan exactly?”
“Please,” I begged, choking on my tears. “I can’t.”
So much blood. So much screaming.
“What was your game, Tuuli?” His face hovered inches from mine. His voice vibrated with disgust and hate.
“I can’t. I can’t. He won’t stop screaming.” I tried desperately to shake the images, the noises, from my head. “Oh, God. Make it stop. Make them stop screaming.”
In a breath, his weight was gone. I rolled to my side, pounding at my skull, desperate to dull the noise. I shoved my palms into my eyes, a futile attempt to rub the images away. They wouldn’t go away.
I didn’t want to see them anymore. The blood. The knives. The bodies. The masked men.
Gonna fuck you up like your daddy fucked us up.
“Stop.”
You’re next, beauty.
“Tuuli. Stop.”
Jonas’s blue eyes, wide and lifeless, focused on me through his torture. His bloodied lips mouthing, Tuuli, I’m sorry. Tuuli, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
“Fuck.” Tito yanked my fingers from my face, holding them between us with one hand. His other hand locked like a vise around my jaw, squeezing hard and holding me still. “Breathe. Just fuckin’ breathe.”
Through the dark, I heard his words—rough, angry, and violent. Through blurry eyes, I registered the shape of his face, vibrations of rage the only barrier between us. Still, his touch grounded me. His presence soothed me. His strength pulled me back from the spinning abyss.
“Breathe with me. You can get through this. It’ll pass.”
I attempted a slow and steady inhale, only to choke on tears.
“Breathe in for three, out for three. I’ll do it with you.” He pressed his forehead to mine and started to count, “Inhale. One, two, three.”
I sucked in shaky breaths.
“Good. Now blow it out. One, two, three.”
I blew wet breaths at his face.
“Again,” he ordered. “Breathe in. One, two, three.”
I focused on his voice and my intake and output of air.
“That’s it, Bunny. One. Two. Three,” he repeated, over, and over, until the tears stopped falling, until the world stopped spinning, until Tito’s was the only voice I heard.
I don’t know how long we stayed that way, heads together, eyes locked. I don’t remember walking back to his car or driving to his apartment. I remember the numbness thawed when Tito parked and said, “You’ll stay with me tonight. Tomorrow, you’re gonna tell me everything. Then, you’re on your own.”
On my own.
No job. No home. No money.
Everything I’d owned I’d left behind in Jonas’s trailer. I would never step foot inside that pit of death again.
On my own was too daunting a concept to process, considering the events of the day.
I followed my reluctant savior inside his home. He tossed his keys on the kitchen counter and led me down the hallway into the bathroom.
He stood in the doorway, pointed to the tub, and grunted, “Take a shower. You’re a mess.”
I brushed past him, closed the door behind me, and stood at the sink, taking stock of my reflection. Red-rimmed, swollen eyes mocked me—blue like my brother’s, our only common trait. Tangled hair. Muddy and ugly. Dirty. Ruined.
As much as I wanted to melt into a puddle on the floor, I stepped into the tub and washed away the bloody mess.
What a bloody fucking mess. I should’ve cut her loose. I should’ve driven her back to the hospital, handed her over to Roger, and washed my hands of her.
Perhaps I would have if she hadn’t started screaming about the voices.
I knew those damn voices all too well. Angry as I was, I could not leave her to fight those demons alone.
She’d just been through hell. A hell of her own making, most likely, but torment nonetheless, and I wouldn’t let her slip into the abyss until I had the answers I needed.
I waited to hear the shower run, then grabbed a T-shirt out of the bedroom and laid it on the sink. I scooped her soiled clothes off the bathroom floor, carried them outside, and tossed them in the trash. Then I parked my ass on the sofa and fired up my laptop.
I couldn’t fathom how Tuuli had slipped under Tango’s radar. He’d had every one of Slade’s employees screened after the attack outside the diner last year.
After a five-minute probe into Tuuli’s family, it became clear how she’d passed the background check. Like her mother, Tuuli didn’t share her father’s last name. No father listed on her birth certificate. Not one financial record existed that tied her to the bloated bastard. Bank. School. Dentist. Doctor. Nothing.
Her parents had never married. Had never shared an address.
If Jeremy Carver was her father, DNA would be the only way to prove it.
Tuuli’s mother, Ingrid Holt, however, had collected state assistance for the entirety of Tuuli’s childhood, worked as a cashier at several different large chain grocery stores over the years, and was currently collecting a decent monthly disability check that was mailed to an address that shared a property line with the Brotherhood Church.
A soft, shaky voice startled me.
“Thank you for the shirt.”
Pale, bare legs passed my field of vision. My crew neck hung like a burlap sack over her slight frame, falling off one shoulder, the hem reaching below her knees.
She curled into the armchair across from me, pulled the cotton over her legs, and rested her chin on her bent knees. “Are you Googling me?”
I huffed. There was Google. There was the deep web. Then there was my web. “Something like that.”
“That’s not necessary. I’ll tell you everything you need to know.”
“Little late for divulgence, sweetheart.” I waited for a
response, a pathetic apology, crocodile tears, hell, even a cringe or a lip quiver. Got nothin’.
“You’re a White Supremacist?”
“No. I told you. I left the church.”
“Jeremy Carver is your father?”
“Yes,” she answered, staring at the floor.
“You sure?”
“Yes. Why?”
“There isn’t a single lick of evidence stating that he’s related to you in any way.”
Her gaze lifted to mine, confused and wary. “I don’t understand.”
Liar.
“You don’t use his last name. Why?”
“My mother always said it was to protect us from my father’s enemies.”
Convenient.
“When you told me about your father’s church, why didn’t you mention it was The Christian Brotherhood of Faith?”
“That’s not exactly information I’m proud to share.” She reached down and picked at her toenail. “And I was afraid to tell you.”
As she should’ve been.
“Why did you come to work at The Stop?”
She shivered and tightened her arms around her shins. “I had to get away. From my father, the church, Erik. I begged my brother to help me. I’d thought it would be hard, that I would have to bribe him, but he’d told me I could stay at his trailer. He even promised to help get Erik off my back. All I had to do was get a job at The Stop and find out everything I could about the big blonde guy and the crazy pregnant chick who hung out there all the time.”
Aida and Tucker.
“Did he tell you why you were supposed to keep an eye on them?”
“I asked. He said it wasn’t my concern and that he’d let me know when the time was right.”
“Were you aware that he’d threatened to kill both Tucker and Aida?”
Tuuli blanched. “No.”
“Do you know why Jonas was arrested?”
Her eyes snapped to mine. “No.”
“You know nothing about the videos? The young girls?”
“Girls?” Her face crumpled, tears welling. “Oh, God. No.”
If she was bullshitting me, the girl was good. Her whole body trembled.
“You lived in that shithole with him for how long, and you want me to believe you didn’t have a clue what he was up to?” I closed my laptop and set it aside, giving her my full attention.
“He was never around. After a couple weeks, he stopped checking in with me. One day, he said he had business in Seattle and he’d be gone for a few days, but he never came back. I waited for a week. I thought maybe he forgot about our deal. I was going to look for another job, catch a bus out of town, maybe, but then that man attacked Aida. After that, I got a raise. A good raise, and I liked everyone at the diner so much, and you were there, and…”
“And what?”
She sucked in a breath. “You know.”
Yeah. I knew. She liked me. She had stayed because of me. Fucking little bunny.
Too bad I couldn’t stand the sight of her. Although, those damn pink toenails peeking out from under my shirt were distracting as hell and sending blood to places it had no right going. When had I developed a foot fetish?
“Tell me something.”
Her head lolled to the side, her cheek taking the place of her chin against her knees. Her swollen eyelids lifted, then closed, then lifted again. “Hmm?” she sighed.
“Why’d you make me believe you lived in that nice house?”
“I was embarrassed.” Her red-rimmed eyes fell closed again.
I watched her chest rise and fall, listened to the soft, raspy breaths expelling from her lungs. Jesus, she was small.
So breakable.
I watched, nauseous from the emotions battering my insides.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled, halfway to dreamland.
She was sorry? I was sorry. For letting her in. For letting the goddamn little bunny burrow her way under my skin.
I stared at her slight frame. Watched her body loosen. Her lips part. Her breaths deepen. Fuck, she smelled good. Fuck. I was pathetic.
Before long, she started to whimper, her face twisting in fear.
Fuck.
I pushed off the couch and scooped her up. She was so damn light, and damn me to hell, I liked that she smelled like my soap.
I carried her back into the guest room, stood bedside, holding my little obsession, wondering when I’d become such a sap. I’d never been soft with a woman. Never once had I let a girl stay the night in my private space. I sure as hell had never wanted to curl around another human being and protect them with everything I had.
For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why I wanted the girl in my arms. The fraud. The broken creature.
As I laid her down and she curled into a tight ball, it hit me.
She was damaged. I was damaged.
She was alone. I was alone.
I was so damn angry about her deception. But when we were together, something in my icy interior thawed. The dark abyss didn’t feel so hopeless. The voices kept their fucking mouths shut.
“Keep your fucking mouth shut.”
Jonas clamped a sweaty hand over my lips, squeezing so hard my jaw popped. “If he sees us, we’re dead,” he whisper-growled in my ear.
I wanted to ask why he was in my hiding spot—the small alcove above my father’s office. I wanted to ask why his camera was pointed through the hole in the ceiling. Instead, I shivered violently against him and watched the scene unfurl below me.
The boy’s face was red and wet, and snot bubbles swelled in and out of his nose. He could no longer scream, his voice having lost all steam, releasing nothing but a wheezy cry.
I knew the kid—Riley. I’d seen him around school. He’d started coming to church three months ago. He had spiky black hair, pale skin, and never-fading dark circles under his eyes. He never smiled. He didn’t have any friends as far as I could tell. He started fights all the time.
He wasn’t fighting my father, though.
He couldn’t. He was stretched across my dad’s heavy oak desk, bare butt hanging over one edge, his hands pinned to the other in handcuffs that were secured with metal chains to the legs of the antique. His pants pooled on the floor at his ankles.
Dad held his favorite belt, one end wrapped around his wrist, the buckle end striking Riley’s broken skin over and over.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to tear through the ceiling and help the boy. I couldn’t move with Jonas’s full weight on top of me, pinning my face to the floor, where I couldn’t see anywhere but through the crack, couldn’t see anything but the brutality of a scene I’d lived over and over. The only difference was I’d never been chained, or half-naked. Dad had never hit me hard enough to leave permanent physical marks.
My father dropped the belt. His face was red, his eyes sleepy looking, his breaths shallow. He stared for a long time at the shaking boy before licking his lips, unbuttoning his pants, and rubbing his hand up and down his crotch. He stepped closer to Riley, then half-groaned, half-whispered, “Time to earn your place, boy,” and pulled the zipper of his fly down.
I tried to scream again, my whole body quaking with the force.
Jonas rolled onto his back, pulling me on top of him, spitting out, “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” into my ear. He pressed his face to my wet cheek, “Show’s over, brat. Cover your ears.”
I cried, and screamed silent, “No. No. No’s” into his hand.
“Tuuli. Shh. I’m here. You’re safe.”
I bolted into a sitting position, sweaty, crying, and about to vomit. I barely registered the fact that Tito was next to me. I threw the blankets off and stumbled down the dark hall to the toilet.
I didn’t puke. There wasn’t food in my stomach to purge. Instead, I braced my hands on the porcelain seat, arms locked, and stared into the bowl, tracking the little ringlets my tears made as they dropped into the water.
Tito’s bare feet passed my periphery. He sat on the edge of the t
ub, elbows to knees, head in his hands. “I’m going to ask you a tough question. I need the truth.”
I swiped a swelling tear from my eyelash and nodded, feeling every agonizing inch of distance between us.
“Did your father hurt you? Was he abusive?”
I retched, fighting another wave of nausea. “Why would you ask me that?”
“You were talking in your sleep. And it sounded like…” Tito huffed, stood straight, pounded the wall, then mumbled, “Never mind,” before pushing past me, retreating.
What I said next stopped him cold. “He was abusive. All the men were. But he never sexually abused me, if that’s what you’re asking. He never—” My voice broke. God. I hated revealing my ugly past, but once the bucket of truth had tipped, there was no stopping the runoff. “He never touched me because he likes boys.”
The air shifted. Every muscle of his bare torso rolled before going rigid. “The fuck’d you say?”
I didn’t elaborate. Deep down, I knew I was as guilty as my father for not telling anyone what I’d seen all those years ago. What I’d always known, even though I didn’t fully understand the depths of his abuse. Then again, I’d only been a child. Jonas had made me promise never to tell. He’d said my father would kill us. I had believed him.
I had never returned to my favorite hiding spot after witnessing what really happened during my father’s private meetings. I had never gone near my father’s office again.
Avoidance and denial—a warm, fuzzy blanket to a guilty soul.
Tito turned, and I could swear he trembled. A full-bodied, violent shiver. I hated the way he looked at me like I’d just admitted to killing kittens for pleasure.
I straightened, too, reflecting his glare. “Now, do you understand why I didn’t want anyone to know who I was or where I came from?”
I pushed past where he stood bone stiff and hunted for my clothes. I needed to leave. I needed to put the past twenty-four hours, hell, the past twenty years, behind me. Forget my family. Forget the Truck Stop. Forget Tito.
Start fresh. On my own terms.
“Where are my clothes?”
Truck Stop Tempest Page 11
