Chapter Twenty-Five
She woke to darkness.
No. That wasn’t it. Material scraped against her forehead and over her eyes. A blindfold. Her back ached as something sharp dug in. She tried to roll, but her arms were pinned beneath her. Flexing her fingers, Lettie noted the plastic digging into her wrists. He’d zip-tied her.
Her balance shot to one side then back, and her surroundings seemed to groan in response.
She was in some kind of vehicle. Large, from what she could tell.
Maybe a van. Gather information. Determine your location.
Rome’s voice in her head talked her down from the brink of crying.
Now isn’t the time for hysterics. Her intern had abducted her.
Again. Only this time he hadn’t worn a ski mask.
He’d worn a different kind, one she hadn’t thought to be a mask at all.
Her shoulder pinched as she tried to sit her upper body up, but she somehow managed to brace herself against what felt like a wheel well.
The blindfold wouldn’t budge, but from the almost rocky sound of gravel, it sounded as though they’d left smooth asphalt for rougher terrain. Going back into the park?
Her breathing stuttered. This wasn’t happening.
It had to be some kind of bad dream. She knew Shawn.
They’d spent hours in the lab together, working side by side, sharing jokes and learning about each other, becoming friends.
He’d been a small-town kid from Nebraska looking for lab experience before he started applying to graduate school programs. Zion National Park had an opening since they’d brought on a brand-new ecologist from up north.
It’d been the perfect opportunity for him to move out of his parents’ house and live on his own.
But in the seconds before Shawn had wrapped his hand around her neck and cut off her air supply until she passed out, she’d seen him for who he really was.
A killer.
Had it all been a lie? Had she really been that ignorant?
Just as she’d been oblivious to Rome’s past?
Her stomach churned at the thought. Shawn, whoever he was, had killed four people for getting too close to her.
He wanted Rome dead to make the way for himself in Lettie’s life.
The tears threatened to spill down her face, but she wouldn’t let them.
No. She had to think clearly. Use her damn brain to get herself out of this mess.
No one was coming for her.
She’d sent Rome away, and when she’d come back into the hotel room, he’d been gone. He wasn’t coming back, and he most likely didn’t even realize she was gone. Wouldn’t until Randy or the law enforcement rangers came back with more questions for their investigation.
Well, she had all the answers now, but they wouldn’t do any good.
She wasn’t getting out of this alive. Because no matter what Shawn believed, he didn’t love her. And she didn’t love him. Only one man owned her heart, and she’d practically spit in his face the moment Rome had dared to tell her the truth.
The van rolled over a bump, tossing her a couple inches off the hard metal floor. She slammed down onto one elbow, a moan escaping her control. So much for pretending unconsciousness until they got wherever he was taking her and making a break for it.
“Good. You’re awake.” His voice sounded far away but distinct. The same voice he’d used to taunt her in the wilderness. “We’re almost there.”
“Where are you taking me?” Lettie skimmed one foot across the van’s interior, but didn’t meet anything that might be used as a weapon or to cut through the zip ties at her wrists. Like Shawn had made sure to clean it out before stuffing her inside.
He must’ve planned this. Hunted her down with the intention of bringing her…
wherever they were going. If he brought her back into the woods, she might have a chance of outrunning him again.
Though she wasn’t thrilled with how she’d ended up the last time she’d escaped his clutches.
But if he took her somewhere else… Somewhere nobody knew about…
“Home.” The van bumped and glided at Shawn’s direction.
Home. She’d had that once. First, with her parents, though walking through the front door had taken a little piece of her soul each time.
Then with Rome. Where she’d learned the true meaning of the word.
Where she felt the tension melt off her shoulders every time she pulled into the driveway.
Where she’d felt loved and cared for, where she’d felt safest. But it wasn’t the house they’d bought together that had made her feel safe.
It wasn’t the van she’d built out and escaped to these past six months, or any physical structure at all.
It was Rome. He’d been the one to make her feel loved.
The one who helped her feel safe in her own body and mind.
Who’d gone out of his way to ensure she could rely on him to help her forget the world and the tension between her and her parents and the issues at work.
A new determination took hold as she realized wherever Rome was, that was home.
And she wanted it back.
That love and safety and relief she felt every time he was near. She wanted his terrible home-cooked meals, the half-assed attempts at washing her lacy undergarments and that look on his face when a pipe burst in their kitchen wall and covered them in frigid water.
She wanted her life back.
But the home Shawn spoke of pooled dread at the base of her spine.
Whatever a man like him considered home, she didn’t want to cross the threshold into it.
Lettie pressed her knuckles together, straining the zip ties at her low back.
While most of the training Rome had instilled in her over the years concerned outdoor survival, there were a few tricks he’d taught her in case she was ever attacked.
She just needed enough force and the right angle, but she wouldn’t find it crammed into this van.
The van stopped short, and she tipped to one side.
This was it. Either she fought for that life she’d taken for granted for so long or she became Shawn’s next victim.
No in-between. Because while she’d set out for Zion to give herself space to heal from the divorce and to start fresh, she’d only made the cracks in her heart worse by ignoring the pain.
By thinking distance could change anything.
But she’d never felt more whole than she had the past few days.
With their bickering and apologies, with Rome’s determination to tend to her wounds and hers to make herself a victim of his cruelty, he’d unknowingly sutured her back together.
The van rocked a split second before the driver’s side door slammed shut.
Crunching gravel was the only indication of Shawn rounding toward the back of the vehicle.
She didn’t have much time, and she didn’t have any other choice than to use her underwhelming size to her advantage.
Lettie scrambled to aim her legs toward the back of the van, right where Shawn would open the doors.
Cool air breezed into the van as her intern wrenched the doors open.
Strong hands secured around her ankles and pulled. Something sharp scraped down her spine, cutting through her shirt and through skin. But she didn’t react. Couldn’t risk his reaction before she was ready.
And then she kicked.
Her heels connected with the soft tissues of Shawn’s stomach, just as Rome had taught her during all those hunting lessons years ago.
His grunt filled her ears, but he held on.
Tighter and tighter until her toes tingled.
“You caught me by surprise once, Arlette. I won’t make the same mistake twice. ”
He pressed her feet into the floor of the van. Just before securing another line of zip tie around her ankles. No. No, no, no. Her heart rate skyrocketed as the panic set in. Throwing everything she had into shoving him back, Lettie hauled her feet as close to her body as possible.
Forcing Shawn to overextend into the van. “I hate that name.”
She rammed her forehead into where she thought his nose might be.
Hitting her target. Bone cracked under the strike, his blood spurting all over her face and T-shirt.
Pain splintered into her skull and down her face, but she had to keep moving.
His roar echoed off the panels of the van, deafening in the enclosed space.
Shawn reared back, assumably to stop the bleeding.
This was her one opportunity. And she wasn’t going to waste it.
She scrambled to get her feet under her and vaulted for the door. The van’s floor dropped out from under her, and she hit the ground hard enough to dislodge the blindfold. It fell around her neck, exposing the vast wilderness surrounding a small cabin down the dirt driveway.
She wasn’t going in there. If she did, something deep down told her she wasn’t ever coming out.
Shawn ripped his hands from his face, turning all that rage he’d hidden behind the exterior of being her friend on her.
She didn’t give herself the time to wonder how that was possible—how he’d gone so long hiding the monster beneath all those smiles and nervous waves—and ran.
The soles of her feet felt as though they’d been scraped raw by the blisters still healing beneath the bandages, but she pushed through.
Hard breaths, steady footfalls. The adrenaline wouldn’t last, but she’d use it as long as possible.
Flashes of that night in the woods—of the predator right behind her—spurred her further.
She didn’t make it far.
A mass of muscle slammed into her from behind.
Lettie didn’t have any way to cushion her fall with her hands zip-tied.
Her face met sandy red dirt, and she slid, pieces of gravel tearing through thin skin across her chest and neck.
She sucked in a mouthful of dirt and choked.
Couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. Her lungs spasmed for that next breath, but it felt like it would never come.
Weight pinned her to the ground and sharpened the pain down her front.
A hand fisted in her hair, forcing her to arch.
“What did I tell you, Arlette?” Okay. Now he was just calling her that to piss her off. Shawn set his mouth against her ear. “You can’t run from me. I won’t let you. Besides, I know these woods better than anyone else. There’s no place you can run where I won’t find you.”
“Please.” Small cuts along the inside of her mouth intensified the pain. She’d bitten into her cheek when she’d hit the ground. Copper and salt coated her tongue. Blood. She didn’t have the courage to look at the state of the rest of her. She could feel it. “You don’t have to do this.”
“Ah, but I want to.” His low inhale right beside her ear skittered an unwelcome shiver across her shoulders. “I’ve been waiting a long time to make you mine.”
Her laugh was nothing but inappropriate and borderline hysterical.
It gave her too much courage in the face of her attacker as he hauled her to her feet.
Blood—sticky and warm—leaked from the corner of her mouth and spread across her T-shirt as she stared up at him.
A thousand little cuts with the potential to kill her before Shawn got what he wanted from her.
If she was lucky. “You’re kidding, right?
I’m married, and I’m in love with my husband. You know what that means?”
She waited a moment. Letting every ounce of hatred for this predator, for the time she’d spent pretending Rome didn’t matter, for not seeing the danger standing right in front of her to settle in her expression.
“I’ll never be yours.” She spit everything she had in her mouth directly at his face.
And hit her target. “No matter how long or how many times you try to force me, I won’t submit.
I will fight you every day and every night.
I will never stop trying to escape. Because what you feel for me?
It’s not love. It’s control, and I will never give you that. Ever.”
“What do you think is going to happen, Arlette? That Ranger Foster will track you down and rescue you from the dragon? That you’ll live happily ever after and ride off into the sunset together?
” Wiping the blood and saliva from his face with one hand, Shawn smiled.
“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but he’s not coming.
If my trap worked the way I planned, he’s already dead. ”
Cold leaked into her gut. “You’re lying.”
Rome wasn’t dead. He wasn’t.
“Shall we find out?” Her intern dragged her kicking and screaming—all too easily—toward the cabin. And slammed the door closed behind them.