"A gun? What for?" I asked.
"She was really freaked out after all the stuff with the Midnight Murderer. When you were kidnapped and then in a coma, she was a wreck. That's when we started seeing each other. She was scared and needed someone to talk to."
I knew he was telling the truth, but it made my heart hurt that she was so scared and didn't tell me. I thought about what Gray had said about her journal entries. It all made sense, expect it didn't. Why was she hiding all this? Why was she hiding from me? I pinched the bridge of my nose as pain pushed into my eyes.
When I looked up, Ash was holding me on the ground and Jon looked concerned. They were both staring at me. "What happened? What's wrong?”
Ash frowned. "You don't remember? You blacked out."
I stood with Ash's help and took a deep breath. "I feel fine now. It was just a headache. I should get my medication. I left it in the car."
We said goodbye to Jon who apologized again and promised he'd tell us if he remembered anything else. Ash drove me home, to our home, a place that was in fact starting to feel more like ours and less like his. We'd even gone shopping for some new paintings and decorations to add some splashes of color and make it feel more like something we'd both contributed to.
I took my medication and logged what happened in my journal as per instructions from my doctor and therapist, then went up to our bedroom and undressed to take a bath.
Ash beat me to it, running the hot water for me and filling the bath with salts and oils. "Do you want to be alone, or could I join you?" he asked.
"Please join me. I've had enough of alone to last a lifetime."
I watched as he stripped to nothing. I took his hand as he helped me into the bath then got in behind me, wrapping his legs around mine.
I rested my head against his chest and closed my eyes, letting my mind drift as his hands rubbed a sponge over my body and between my legs. Letting go of the sponge, he moved his hands up, cupping my breasts and teasing my nipples. When he dropped one hand and slipped a finger between my legs, I rubbed my back against his hard cock, pushing my hips into his hand as I fought for the release I was so desperate for.
When I came, he massaged me, demanding nothing more despite his hard-on. He kissed my neck and we fell into silence, holding each other, enjoying the heat of the water.
"I'm scared, Ash," I confessed.
"I know, sweetheart, but I promise I will do everything in my considerable power to protect you."
"Someone's setting me up, aren't they?" I needed to hear him say it. Needed to know I wasn't imagining this.
"Yes, it looks like it. But we'll find out who and why."
"And Brig, in her diary, all her fear, and the gun. Why? It couldn't be her, could it? Why would she try to hurt me that way? I just can't imagine it."
"There's got to be an explanation that makes sense," he promised. When his cell phone rang on the shelf by the bath, he checked the number then answered it. After another mono-syllabic conversation, he hung up.
"That was Jim."
I turned around in the bath to face him. "What did he say? Did he find something?"
"Yes," he frowned. "A place was rented recently."
My heart skipped a beat in excited nerves. "By Bridgette?"
He shook his head. "No. By you."
Chapter Twenty Two
Don't Say A Word
WE TOOK ASH'S motorcycle at my insistence. I wanted to wrap my arms around him and feel the power of his bike thrumming underneath me. He fought me on it, worried about my head, but I assured him I'd be fine. I needed the adrenaline rush and didn't want to sit in a car.
My fingers dug into his flexed chest muscles as he drove to the edge of town. Finally, we arrived at a dilapidated motel by the side of the road, a rundown affair patiently waiting for weary travelers who were too tired or too desperate to find a place more suitable for safety and sleep. We walked into the main lobby.
An old man sat behind the check—in counter watching M*A*S*H reruns on a small black and white television. He vehemently sucked on a peppermint candy, a bowl of which lay by his hand. The whole room smelled like peppermint, a creepy smell in this dingy room with its peeling paint. The waiting room had one lonely chair with a small but growing hole in the center of its orange seat. I could imagine a rat gnawing through it, slowly growing the hole until the seat no longer remained.
"Excuse me," I said.
The man turned, his eyes bloodshot and coated with a milky, creamy film. He smiled a half-toothless smile. "You need a room?" he said through the peppermint on his tongue.