“James,” he barked. “James Monroe. You oughta remember his name—you’re the same whore who talked his wife into leaving him after he smacked her around a bit.”
Elle’s breath left her on a gasp. Dear God—that was one of her first counseling cases at the foundation. The woman had been horribly brutalized. “Smacked around” was an understatement. She’d had to have her jaw wired shut. But she’d been too afraid to press charges. That time. Elle had been glad to hear when the woman had at last left him and moved on—hopefully to a better situation.
“And the cleaning lady in your office?” he sneered. “That’s my wife. I’ll bet you never even knew my Terri’s last name. But she certainly knew everything about you. You really shouldn’t leave so many personal notes to yourself lying around on top of your desk. We could tell you when you last saw your gynecologist, what you ate for lunch, how your boyfriend screwed you in your office just last night…”
Elle felt her knees grow weak and had to force herself to remain standing. There was no way in hell she was going to let this asshole know he was getting to her, that the knowledge of having her most intimate secrets known to these bastards made her want to hurl in revulsion.
She settled for glaring at him, her lips pressed together in angry silence.
He chuckled and backed out of the room. “You think on that,” he told her. “And then when Jeb gets home, you tell him he’s not the brilliant leader we think he is.”
The man closed the door behind him and Elle heard him put a key in the door to lock it. As if that wasn’t enough, it sounded like there was also some kind of latch sliding into place. The second his footsteps receded, she pivoted and went to the bedroom window, but the heavy, double-paned window was nailed shut. She looked around for something to use to smash it, but her eyes went wide as she realized she was standing in a debris field.
Clothes were strewn all over the floor, torn to shreds. Shards of glass and ceramic littered the floor, as if everything of value in the room had been smashed in a fit of rage. But most disturbing was the blood on the frilly, pink bedspread, the splatters upon the wall. And bloody smears were on the door along with deep grooves, as if someone had been trying desperately to claw her way out.
“Sweet Jesus,” Elle breathed, her hand going to her mouth to keep the bile down.
This had to be Sandra’s room. This must’ve been where she’d been beaten by her father. And that was just the treatment they knew about. God knows what else she’d been put through. Elle tried not to imagine what other unspeakable horrors she’d endured.
Her determination to escape taking on an even greater urgency, she searched frantically for something big enough to break the window. She finally found what looked like a thick, wooden curtain rod, but was now broken in half, splintered and jagged at one end. The undamaged end had a knob that might be just the thing she needed.
She grabbed a scrap of blanket, wrapped it around the sharp end, and peered through the window, checking to see if anyone was outside. A large maple tree partially obscured her view, but also helped partially hide the window from anyone looking at the house. Seeing no one outside and praying the sound of the glass breaking wouldn’t be heard too easily in the rest of the house, she drove the rod against the window. But it didn’t even crack.
She cursed roundly and tried again with the same result.
“Shit!” Elle rubbed her palms against her thighs, wiping the nervous perspiration from them, and reassessed the window. Maybe the bottom pane was the wrong way to go. She might be able to get more leverage and power if she went for the upper pane. Readjusting her grip on the curtain rod, she lifted it over her head and drove it toward the window. This time it cracked in just a tiny starburst only about the size of an eraser head.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” she hissed. “What the hell kind of glass is this?”
She took a closer look at the window, studying it for a moment. It didn’t appear to be ballistic glass—although she wouldn’t have put it past Monroe to have installed that in his house in case of an attack. But it definitely wasn’t just ordinary, run-of-the-mill glass. It was more the thickness of a car windshield. She realized she was going about breaking it all wrong.
She shook out her hands and turned the rod around to use the jagged end instead when she heard a vehicle approaching and craned to see who it was. She recognized the truck immediately as the one Jeremy Monroe had been driving when she’d seen him following her.