Chapter 5
five
. . .
Mia
It was so warm. Warmer than an upstate New York summer. I couldn’t for the life of me figure why my body felt this hot. It had been a long winter and a frigid spring. Summer was supposed to have started a few weeks ago, but East Greenwich hadn’t figured that out yet.
When I first got here, I’d rented one of Harvey’s apartments and then moved to another when the ceiling collapsed. Neither one had a real HVAC. It was more like random scrap metal that led from the inside to the outside. Better for letting rats in than keeping cold air out.
I wasn’t at my apartment.
I worked hard to lift my head, but my neck wasn’t right. And it hurt like all hell.
Pain shot down my back and up into my skull all at once, and I groaned.
“Easy there.”
The warm and sturdy bed I lay on moved, shifted beneath me, and I moved with it, rolled and deposited lightly onto the real bed.
What the fuck was going on?
I fought like hell to sit up, to pry open my eyes. Nothing worked. Had Harvey drugged me?
It all came rushing back at once, the whole nightmare: the call to escort a client to a private event, the drive, that horrific cabin and the axe murderer within. My escape.
But it hadn’t been an escape at all. And this nightmare was real.
I forced my eyes open and shoved myself up into a seated position. The burning pain in my hip struck me so hard my vision swam. I clamped my lips shut to keep from screaming, clutching at the blanket around me to keep from passing out.
Those hands that had come for me through the water in my overturned car sat at my eye level, pulling on a pair of jeans, zipping, and buttoning them.
My client turned captor.
He sat down on a wooden chair next to the bed. My eyes adjusted, bleary, one swollen and obstructed, the other mostly clear. I fixed them both on him anyway, and glared.
He handed me a glass of water. “You must be thirsty,” he said.
I frantically searched my brain for memories after he pulled me from my car. But there were none.
If he’d assaulted me, I couldn’t remember it. Drugs, probably. Exactly what had happened to Sammy, down at the club. He’d drugged me.
He hadn’t chopped me into little pieces with that axe and dissolved me with his gallon of acid back in the living room, and I guess I had to thank my lucky stars for that.
Then again, maybe he liked to draw out his murders.
And my car was gone, my purse and phone in it. I had nothing, now. No way out.
No gun, either. The way my body barely responded to my attempts to move and screamed in pain every time I did, I was a poor candidate for survival against even a feeble murderer.
And this one wasn’t feeble. He had jeans on but no shirt, and the same powerful arms that had pulled me from my wrecked and flooding car were now coaxing me to take a glass of water from him.
I reached for it, and winced. My fingers were crusted in blood, and my palm had a cut that ran from top to bottom.
“I’m sorry I didn’t clean you up any. I was so worried about the hypothermia I didn’t get a chance.”
My hand shook holding the glass, until I was on the verge of dropping it, and he reached out to steady it for me.
I managed a sip. It was cool and crisp, and it soothed my dry, swollen tongue.
A bit of dried blood flaked off my hand and landed on the soft blue blanket.
I wondered what the rest of me looked like.
“I—I have to go,” I croaked.
“Of course,” he said. “Now that you’re okay—” He said this with incredulity, as if I wasn’t, and I had to agree.
Breathing was a struggle. I pressed the blanket against my chest to cover myself, and even this slight pressure made my nerve endings scream.
“—I can leave you to go start chopping up the tree that fell across the road, and we’ll get the tow up here to see about your vehicle.
” His sharp exhale turned into a whistle.
“That was some crash. I can’t say she’ll drive again after all that, but we’ll get the ambulance up here, or I can bring you to the hospital.
Let me get you some food and some ibuprofen first, if that’s alright. ”
Maybe I was too hurt and exhausted, and all my survival instinct had been squeezed out of me, but I wasn’t getting the same serial killer vibes now, in the light of day.
“My purse, and my phone…” This was too many words for me, without enough water, yet, and it sparked a coughing fit that clanged through my head something vicious. I pressed my hand to my forehead and squeezed my eyes shut, but it didn’t help.
“Don’t worry. I’ll get them,” he said softly. “Lay back and try to rest. I’ll bring some clothes you can wear, too. Once the sun comes out, I can put yours on the clothesline to dry.”
The pain subsided a bit, and I opened my eyes. He was still there, in the chair, his eyes full of concern.
I eyed his naked chest, and then my own naked body, and I stared him in the eyes.
“Oh, no,” he said. He shook his head. His eyes widened.
“God, no. Nothing happened, Mia. You were in an awful car accident, for Christ’s sake.
I’m not a…” He exhaled hard. “You went unconscious, and you were so damn cold, and I, um…you know, there’s really only skin-to-skin contact to safely revive a hypothermia victim.
So…” His cheeks turned a bright, screaming red.
I lay back against the pillows, my whole solar plexus wracked at being forced into this movement, and I considered what he said. Maybe it was an early onset Stockholm Syndrome talking, but I believed him.
“Hey,” he said. “I’m sorry. Really sorry about what happened.
” He looked down at the floor, as if pondering the floorboards.
He shook his head a little. “I don’t know why you left, and you don’t owe me an explanation.
I’m sure you had your reasons. You want to try another sip of water? I can help you.”
I nodded, and he sat next to me on the bed, careful not to jostle my broken body. He lifted my head up for me, slow and steady, and held the glass up to my lips.
It dawned on me: I’d stayed out all night, no contact, instead of doing the four hours and heading back to the club.
I was AWOL. The one rule none of us ever broke. Or they’d break you.
Harvey was going to murder me, if this guy didn’t take the initiative.
My dark thoughts were interrupted by a loud clap of thunder.