She licked her lips and quickly glanced at him and away again. “Randall, like me.”
He tried to rein in the impatience that wanted to claw up his spine—because as long as she was there, a threat against her was a threat against everyone there, but he didn’t want to make her clam up by coming on too strong. “Haven.”
When she finally met his gaze, her eyes were filled with such fear that it kicked Dare in the stomach.
“You don’t have to be scared, that’s why I’m asking these questions. My people can’t protect you if they don’t know from which direction the threats might come.”
Just when he was sure she wasn’t gonna spill, she said, “His name’s Rhett Randall, from Hall County, Georgia.” Even after the words were out of her mouth, she wore a conflicted expression, like she wasn’t sure she’d done the right thing in sharing the information with him.
The name didn’t ring any immediate bells for Dare, but Georgia was far enough away that they had no regular business there. Which was one positive in all this. “Okay, and why did you have to run away?” he asked, not liking any of the reasons he could imagine.
She hugged herself. “My father was very controlling. He looked at me as his property, property that only he could decide what to do with. When that didn’t end when I turned eighteen, I worried it might never end. The more time that passed, that seemed more and more likely.”
“Wait, just how old are you?” he asked.
“I turn twenty-three in July,” she said, finally looking him in the eye.
Multiple reactions warred inside Dare, and most of them turned his blood hot with anger. “Are you saying he held you prisoner in your own home?”
“Pretty much, yeah,” she said in a soft voice. “I mean, I could leave the house sometimes, but never alone. I had a guard at all times.”
The ramifications of her admission stunned him. That likely meant Haven had very little experience out in the world, and the first time she’d gone out on her own she’d ended up in the hands of the Church Gang. Which shined a whole new light on her trust issues, didn’t it?
“For what purpose?” he asked, still trying to get a handle on the father’s motivation.
Haven rose and paced to the railing a few feet away. Notebook still in hand, she leaned against the railing and stared out at the view. Dare followed the direction of her gaze, finding the same solace in the dark green of the Blue Ridge that he always did. He rose and leaned his hip against the railing a few feet away from her, dread snaking through him the longer she didn’t talk.
“At first I really didn’t know,” she finally said, her gaze still distant. “Part of it was just because he wanted to control me, which was a big reason why he pulled me out of school. Once I was eighteen, I thought maybe he just needed someone to cook and clean for him, which had been my job for years. But I think it was also because my mother had run away from him when I was a baby, and he wanted to make sure I didn’t, too.”
Dare didn’t know what to react to first. “He pulled you out of school?” Her father was a real piece of work.
“Yeah. Awesome, huh?” She peered up at him.
“Not even a little, Haven. Why the hell did he think he needed to yank you from school?” Dare asked. This part of her history struck a real nerve with him, since being on the run from his father for his latter teen years meant he hadn’t had a typical education either. It wasn’t until he got settled with his grandfather at the age of seventeen that he buckled down to get his GED, even though by then he al ready had a fucking PhD in life experience. And, damnit, he suspected Haven did, too.
She dropped her gaze as her cheeks went pink. “I don’t know.”
Her reactions said that wasn’t true, but Dare had a lot more he needed to get from her that was likely more pertinent to her recent circumstances. He shook his head and forced his fisted hand to relax on the railing. “Okay, skip that for now. Why did Cora run with you? What kind of trouble was she in?”
“She wasn’t in trouble,” Haven said. “I mean, her dad sometimes worked for mine, so he wasn’t all on the up and up, but he just did things on the side. She came because she knew I wouldn’t be able to do this on my own.”
Dare nodded and thanked God that they weren’t dealing with two times the threats, at least. And he found himself feeling grateful to Cora, too—he respected the kind of loyalty and friendship the other woman had demonstrated. Without Cora, Dare never might’ve met Haven. Although, why that should matter . . . Dare shook the thought away. “Okay. So if things had been like that for all these years, why did you and Cora decide to run now?” Because no way was it as simple as she’d just woken up one morning and decided she’d had enough.