And she’d say just that when she damn well felt like it. He could wait.
She left the music, the lights, the guests, and the staff behind and drove into the quiet. She could use some quiet, some thinking time. As she pulled up in front of Chelsea’s apartment in the Village, she half wished she’d asked Jessica for her key, too. A little quiet and thinking time there, then a friend to listen.
Maybe she’d pick up the samples, take them back to her office. Or take a drive along the river. Or go home and close herself up in her room.
All of which, she admitted, struck like avoidance when she laid them out.
Hell with it.
She unlocked the door, propped it open with her hip to slip the key under the mat. And stepping in, reached out to switch on the lights.
The arm around her throat cut off her air and turned her shout into a garbled gasp. Instinct had her stomping down with her boot, jabbing back with an elbow. The quick, sharp bite in her biceps turned panic into terror so she dragged uselessly at the arm around her neck.
And felt herself falling, falling down a tunnel, limbs limp. Everything slowed down. Then everything stopped.
*
Though it was close to midnight before she drove into the Village, Jessica found herself revved. Everything had gone perfectly, and now she could leave the cleanup portion to Chelsea’s—and Rory’s, as he’d shown up—supervision.
While she expected Chase would be asleep—ranch life started early—she thought she’d text him so he’d hear from her the minute he woke in the morning.
Text him, she thought, after she’d shed her work clothes and poured a glass of wine.
With a smile on her face—it still amazed her anyone could be so ridiculously happy—she parked her car, got out. She’d taken two steps to her building when she noticed the Kia parked at the curb rather than in a slot. And in front of Chelsea’s section.
Wondering why in the world Bodine would still be there more than an hour after she’d left, she wandered down, glanced in the car. Bodine’s briefcase sat on the passenger seat.
Unsure, uneasy, she went to Chelsea’s door, knocked. “Bo?”
Maybe she got caught up in the samples, she thought, but she couldn’t see a single light reflecting in a window.
She lifted a corner of the mat, saw the key.
Shoving aside innate courtesy, Jessica picked it up, unlocked the door. “Bodine?”
She reached for the light switch, flipped it, but the dark remained. When she took another step, her foot hit something. Bending down, she picked up Bodine’s hat.
*
The fact she made him wait didn’t trouble Callen. She wouldn’t be the woman he loved if she’d been biddable. Added to it, he liked knowing he’d knocked her off her stride some. The woman had damn good balance.
So he’d wait. A man could do worse than sit out on a pretty spring night, under that big red moon, waiting for his woman. He considered wandering back inside, getting a beer, maybe a book to while the time away.
Chase flew out of the house, and Callen surged to his feet. His heart had bounded straight into his throat before Chase said a word.
“Somebody’s got Bo.”
*
Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. Everything blurred, everything muffled. Her vision, her mind, her hearing. She wanted to call out, but couldn’t form any words.
She felt no pain, felt no fear. Felt nothing.
Gradually she became aware of light, like a lamp with a dirty shade. And sound, an indistinct clicking. No color, no color, but shapes behind the dirty light. She couldn’t think of names to go with the shapes. As she struggled to find them, the pain awoke with a vicious pounding in her head.
She felt the moan move in her throat as much as heard it. One of the shapes moved closer.
Man. Man. The shape was a man.
“You’re not the one! That’s not your house! It’s your own fault. It’s not my fault.”
He moved away again, and through the ugly pounding in her head, the too-rapid beat of her heart, she began to make out other shapes, the names for them.
Walls, sink, hot plate, floor, door. Locks. God, God.
She tried to move, to push up, and the world rocked.
“… for horses,” she heard him say. “I didn’t use too much. Just to keep you quiet, to get you here. But not you, wasn’t supposed to be you.”
Chelsea’s apartment. Key under the mat. Dark inside.
She concentrated on moving her fingers, then her hands, then her feet. Something weighed on her left foot—left foot—and when she heard the rattle of a chain, she knew.
The trembling started deep inside, shuddered its way out.
Alice. Like Alice.
“Gotta make the best of it.” He came back, sat on the cot beside her. “That’s what we gotta do. You’re young, and you’re pretty.”
She turned her head away when he rubbed her cheek.
“You got plenty of years of childbearing in you. We’ll make lots of sons. I know how to make you feel good while we’re making them.”
She pushed at him, still weak, when he trailed a hand over her breast.
“You don’t want to be that way. You’re my wife now, and you gotta please me.”
“No, can’t be your wife.”
“A man chooses, and makes it so. Once I get you planted, you’ll see. You’ll see how it is.”
“Can’t.” She pushed at his hands as he unbuttoned her jeans. “Sick. Water. Please. Can I have water?”
His hand stilled. On a heavy sigh he rose, went to the sink. “It’s the horse sedative, I expect, but it’ll pass. Either way, we’re getting this started tonight. I’ve been waiting long enough.”
She bore down, forced herself to think, think clearly through the fear and the pounding that made her sick, roiled in her belly, but she understood.
He had to lift her up so she could drink, and his touch revolted. But she drank, slowly.
“I can’t be your wife.”
He slapped her. “That’s back talk, and I won’t have it.”
The sting only helped clear the rest of the muddle from her brain. “I can’t be your wife because we’re cousins.” She used all she had to stay sitting up, to inch away from him. “Your mother and my mother are sisters. That makes us cousins, Easy.”
“I don’t want to hit you again, but I will if you keep lying and back talking.”
“I’m not lying. Your mother is Alice Bodine, my aunt.”
“My ma died giving me life. It’s Eve’s curse.”
“Is that what your father told you? You heard about Alice Bodine, how she came home after all those years. Years she spent right in this room.”
“It’s a house!”
“Right here, locked in, chained up just like you’ve got me. But you couldn’t have done it. You’re too young.”
But not too young to have killed two women, she thought. Not too young to kill her if she set him off the wrong way.
“She named you Rory, and she talks about you a lot. How she sang to you and rocked you to sleep. How she loved you.”
His eyes—hazel, she noted, just a hint of Bodine green in them—bore into hers.