Chapter 3
The rain had begun to fall on the drive back home, splashing across her windshield and triggering the sensors of the automatic wipers to clear them away.
Layne had done her best not to sink into her thoughts where she could drown trying to fix everything that was wrong with her life.
When she went to pull into her garage, some douchenozzle was blocking the driveway path that had plain as day signs that said, ‘Do Not Block Drive.’
“You’ve got to be shittin’ me,” she drove past her house and ended up finding an open spot around the corner. However, the storm appeared to match her current mood and picked up in intensity by the time she got out of her vehicle.
The skies opened up and unleashed a furious amount of rain that came down by the bucketful. Each raindrop stung as it pelted her flesh. Layne ran along the sidewalk, splashing in puddles that had formed in a matter of seconds as the storm drains attempted to relieve the flooding on the street.
When she did get inside her house, she looked no better than a drowned rat. Her long brunette locks were plastered to her fair skin, and there wasn’t a single dry spot on her clothes. She flipped on the lights now that her home was cast into darkness thanks to the powerful storm raging outside and had devoured any sunlight.
Layne peeled her jacket off her, dropping it to the floor with a heavy splat. She shook her arms off, her grey tee clung to her upper body’s every curve and swell. The drops of rainwater rolled down along her skin between the layers of clothing. She kicked off her shoes, flinging them off to the side in the main entrance’s foyer.
Lightning flashed outside her windows, followed by the crackle and boom of thunder shortly after. The increased pressure of the rain crashing against the windows indicated the strength of the storm was intensifying.
She sighed as she moved to her modestly sized laundry room, leaving a wet trail of footsteps behind her. Peering inside the top of the washer, she realized she had forgotten to move the laundry to the dryer yet again. Embracing a fuck it attitude, she figured she’d wash it all one more time with a few more articles of her clothing.
The first thing to get pitched in was her damp socks, followed by her shirt, tossing it straight into the partially full washing machine. Before she could remove anything else, the lights in her house flickered and the sound of the power cutting out caused her to curse.
Layne’s eyes fought to see through the darkness as her hands reached out in front of her to ensure she didn’t trip over something like a broom and die in a freak accident. She needed to find her flashlight which she thought was in one of the junk drawers in her kitchen, or maybe she had left one in the office. After a brief debate on where she had left it, she opted to check the kitchen first.
Before she reached the entrance to the kitchen, she stopped in the hallway when something caused her to freeze up. Her steps came to a halt when one of the floorboards at the other end of the hall creaked. Layne’s senses were all raised to high alert as she strained to sense any other movement or presence there in the darkness of her home.
The adrenaline prompted her heart to beat faster, delivering more oxygen to the rest of her body as she stood as still as a statue. The second she heard the rustle of clothing from someone else moving closer to her, she didn’t allow herself to think before she struck.
She lunged at the shadow, and when she made contact, she ended up shoving the large body harshly against a wall. The shadow’s hands grabbed for her arms, but she defensively evaded them.
Grabbing the tall shoulder of the shadow, she pulled down while simultaneously driving her knee upwards into its stomach. A set of hands grabbed the knee of that same leg and pulled her off balance, dropping her down onto her back on the floor. The impact of her back hitting the ground smacked the air right out of her lungs leaving her unable to even gasp for a brief moment.
The shadow’s considerable weight was soon down on top of her, attempting to pin her down, but she squirmed using the leverage of her feet against the floor to roll herself over on top of what was most certainly a male shadow.
Straddling her assailant, she threw an aggressive fist at the slight outline of his head as her eyes began to partially adjust to the darkness. Her knuckles made contact but it was a grazing strike while the size and strength of the shadow’s hands shielded himself.
He bucked her off him, which caused her to fall off to the side crashing into a small decorative table where she typically kept little odds and ends. As her body crashed into it, the table wobbled on its spindly legs and scratched across the wooden floor before it toppled over altogether.
Layne scrambled to her feet to create distance between her and the ominous shadow that hadn’t been invited into her home. A powerful hand grabbed her ankle which caused her to fall forward. Her hands broke her fall allowing her to continue the fight to escape the shadow’s hold on her.
It felt like an eternity that she had yanked and tugged to break the grasp on her ankle, but when she finally did, she broke out into a full sprint down the hall. The sound of heavy boots quickly followed behind.
Her hands outstretched in front of her ensured she didn’t run into a wall at full speed. The change of the floor underneath her bare feet from wood to an area rug as she rounded a corner indicated she had successfully made it into the living room.
The bad news? So did the shadow. Layne was jerked back by her waist against the steel body of the shadow that had been so persistent not to let her get away. She screamed out in a mixture of surprise and desperation.
The powerful arms fought with her as she made it challenging as hell to restrain her there. A hand finally clamped down over her mouth, muffling the screams tearing out of her throat. Unable to compete with strength alone, Layne got pulled across the living room and forced down into the softness of her sofa cushions.
A knee forcefully pressed into her back pinning her underneath the shadow’s weight as her hands were pulled behind her and a set of cold metal cuffs clicked shut around each of her wrists. With her hands now bound behind her, she was pulled upright to sit on the couch.
She tried to stand up, only to have the pair of hands give her enough of a shove that she lost her footing and plopped right back down onto her ass again.
Layne glared at the dark figure in front of her. She hoped that he could see the dirty look she was giving.
She should have been afraid, but she wasn’t. Instead, she felt an odd sense of nothingness that if this was going to be her demise, then so be it. Everyone had their day.
“Just get it over with,” Layne impatiently spat the order out.
The figure crouched down in front of her, a hand came up under her chin and took hold of her jaw. Finally, the shadow spoke his first words to her.
“I need a favor.” Joey’s voice immediately became recognizable.
Some of the tension in her body released hearing the soothing sound of vocals she would recognize in any crowd. The relief was quickly replaced by anger as she attempted to lash out at him with her hands, only to have the cuffs working by design to prevent her from doing so.
“What in the actual fuck? Get the hell out of my house, I don’t care what you need!” She tried to get up off of the couch only to be easily knocked back down onto her ass yet again with a soft bounce against the seat cushion.
“You need to hear me out, Layney.” His voice reflected a sense of calm and was collected, something that Layne currently wasn’t having any of.
She shook her head in disbelief as he called her by her nickname which she used to be fond of hearing from him. “No! No, you do not get to call me that.” Layne pulled on her wrists, trying to squeeze them out of the steel restraints. “I told you that if I ever saw you again, I would put a bullet between your eyes.”
Joey had the nerve to let out a small chuckle. “That’s why you’ve got a pretty new set of bracelets on right now.”
The storm outside continued to progress with several flashes of light and booms of thunder. Briefly, she got a glimpse of Joey’s face there in front of her thanks to the lightning that caused a split second of illumination.
His hands settled on the tops of her knees. “I swear, I’m just here on business. If I had any other choice, believe me, I would have taken it. Just take a moment to stop being stubborn and listen.”
It may have been a little dramatic the way that she let out a sigh and sank back into the couch, not having much of a choice other than to listen to what he had to say.
Taking her decision to relax a little bit as a green light to continue, Joey began to explain his predicament, “A job came up?—”
Layne interrupted. “With your police pals?” The disdain etched over her words after recalling what had been the final straw that forced them apart a little less than a year ago. His total disregard for loyalty in assisting the boys in blue by providing them with valuable intel.
“No, I already told you that there were special circumstances with that, Layne. If you had given me the chance to explain, we could have moved beyond that.”
She rolled her eyes, though she would have been surprised if he could see it in the dark.
Joey stood up and took a step back so he could sit on the edge of the coffee table in front of her. “You know what? I wasn’t going to bring it up, but since I have you here, you’re going to sit there and listen.”
He rested his elbows on his knees as his eyes stared at her. “I was going to get pinned on some old charges that were teetering on the edge of the statute of limitations. My only options were to let them rake me over the coals for a lifetime or to find a way around it by scratching their backs. The information I fed to them when it came to anything even remotely tied to you was crafted to send them on a wild goose chase.”
The volume of his voice elevated slightly as he made his final point. “I kept your ass from getting raided and diverted their interests elsewhere. I’m not going to sit here and apologize for not only saving my ass but saving yours, too. I did what I had to do.”
“And I did what I had to do. I guess that makes us even.” Layne hated that his explanation even held the littlest bit of weight. Even knowing she would have likely done the same thing if she had been in his shoes, she was still angry. She was always angry these days.
He stood back up and leaned over, getting in her face so she couldn’t avoid what he was about to tell her. “Bullshit, you did what you always do. You shoved me away. You were the one who tossed in the towel and ran away like a scared little girl.”
Swallowing the lump in her throat, she turned her face away from him only to have his hand take her by the jaw and turn her head back to face him. “What’s the matter, Layne? Is the truth a little too fucking hard to hear?” His words brutally bore down on her, leaving her emotionally reeling in the downward spiral her fractured mental state was already in.
Joey had a way of making it feel impossible to hide behind her defenses and shut everything down inside of her. Layne squeezed her eyes shut, hoping to imagine he wasn’t back here in her house again. What she couldn’t escape was the telltale scent of the mixture of leather and sage cologne that lingered in the air between them.
Not willing to admit that he pegged the truth spot-on, she sat there silently trying to shrink down into a mental hiding place.
It was unclear how long they both stubbornly and silently stood their ground. Eventually, she felt his hand ease up off of her face. When she opened her eyes back up, his shadow was no longer there in front of her.
There was a click and a pop and suddenly the power was flicking back on throughout her house. Layne squinted as the lights erased the darkness and startled her vision.
Joey walked back into the room, shaking his head to himself as he griped, “You keep so much damn crap in front of your breaker box.”
Unsurprisingly, he was wearing his signature style of black cargo pants and a black shirt but this time he had added a black zip-up hoodie overtop of it. As she got a good look at him, she hated that she noticed her eyes drifting to the front of his pants first before roaming upward to visually consume the rest of him. Either she had really missed him or he had added a few more pounds of solid bulk at the gym over the past year, and it did him damn good.
Not only did it appear he had been working out more, but there were other noticeable differences. Joey’s dirty blonde hair had grown a little longer and shaggier. It suited him, and the way her body was beginning to react, it seemed it didn’t disagree.