He was glad he didn’t know the deputies in Wildwood, not the way he knew them here locally in his home jurisdiction of Ocala, or Gainesville, where he’d done undercover work, before the incident that marked him for life. He could just picture himself escorting Abigail into his home station and explaining he’d been stupid enough to leave his truck running and the door standing open like an engraved invitation, and this sweet-faced woman with the capable hands had waltzed off with it.
It would be joke fodder for months. Years. He’d hear about it at every stolen vehicle report, every poker night, fishing trip, birthday parties for their kids, weddings, funerals, K-9 training sessions. The ragging would never end. Even the administrative staff and the dispatchers would get in on the fun.
No. If he took her in, and that was looking like a more remote
if
all the time, it wouldn’t be to any station where he was known, either currently or in the past.
She spoke again. “Does it hurt when I press, or are you just stoic?”
“It hurts a little, but I’ve had worse.”
“Really? Hmm.” She wetted yet another cotton ball and dabbed some more. “This may leave a scar. I’m sorry about that.”
The idea was ludicrous. Compared with the ugly raw meat that was the left side of his face, a half-inch nick in his scalp, easily concealed by hair, was nothing. He tried to hold in his laughter, and ended up shaking silently.
Abigail drew back and stared at Cade. “What’s so funny?”
“It might
scar?
” He thrust the left side of his face toward her and said, “Like I said, I’ve had worse.”
She blushed, darkly, and it made her gray eyes sparkle. He couldn’t tell whether she was holding back tears or laughter. One knee was up on the bench to balance her, and Cade knew a sudden urge to cup her hips, stroke the long line of her thigh.
What the hell, Latimer? Get a grip, and not on your suspect.
“Oh. I...see what you mean.”
“Yeah.”
“Chemical burn? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“That old standby...acid.”
“Did something blow up in your face?”
Yeah...a meth bust went bad. They’d made me and I never knew it. That little twerp and his goon of a buddy... The little twerp was smarter than I thought. I got cocky, and he got lucky, and then I got scarred.
“You could say that.” He hoped his tone would discourage more questions, but Abigail just went back to dabbing at the wound as if acid burns were something completely normal.
“It will bleed just a little more, I think. I’m going to put some of this ointment with anesthetic and antibiotics on it. It’ll be hard to bandage unless we shave the area.”
“No shaving. Does it need stitches?”
“I...don’t think so, but I’m going to try a couple of these butterfly bandages on it and see if those help close the gap.”
He felt a slight sting as she applied the cream, then it numbed the area of the cut. It was as Abigail was leaning to reach the kit again for the butterfly bandages that her much-washed chambray shirt, minus a button at bra level, gaped open. Where the plackets separated he saw the purple and yellow of bruises, both fresh and fading, on the upper curves of her breasts, where they swelled from the cups of a practical white cotton bra.
Bruises with a definite outline of the too-firm grip of a hand. She hadn’t done that to herself.
Cop reflex took over. He gripped her upper arms and brought her upright again where he could review the evidence. She gasped and paled in pain.
“Sit down,” he said roughly, rising. He hadn’t grabbed her that hard, which only meant she had more bruises elsewhere, as instinct and experience had told him she must. He slackened his grip, but only slightly.
What happened next twisted his gut.
“Please. Please don’t. Please. Please. I’ll do whatever you want, just please. Don’t.” The woman was
begging,
scrabbling backward, trying her damnedest to get away, and her voice was filled with the most pathetic dread Cade had ever heard. Cade released her upper arms since it was clear he was causing her pain, and let his hands slip down to her wrists, where he locked his fingers in a grip she would not be able to break easily, even though she had more leverage. She flailed and thrashed, continuing to beg for release, until he caught both wrists in one hand and got close enough to thread the fingers of his free hand into her ponytail and immobilize her. She froze, gazing up with terrified, tear-filled eyes and half-open mouth, breathing as though she’d sprinted a mile.
“Stop. Abigail. Calm down. I don’t want anything from you but the truth. That’s all.”
Her breath came in sobbing, hitching gasps, but she remained still. Holding her gaze, Cade dropped her ponytail and carefully, slowly, turned back the front of her shirt before he looked at the uncovered area he’d glimpsed.
Oh, yes, finger bruises. Someone liked to squeeze her small, pretty breasts to the point of pain and beyond. He bet himself he’d find matching bruises in rings around her upper arms, too. God knew where else. Anywhere they could be easily hidden, no doubt. He knew how abusers worked. Their private, sadistic indulgences were just that, and there would be hell to pay when their victims couldn’t conceal the evidence any longer.
Or in Abigail’s case,
wouldn’t.
This was why she’d stolen his truck. She was running, running like hell.
She bent her head and her ponytail slithered forward over her chest, shielding herself from his gaze.
“Let me see, Abigail. I won’t hurt you, but I need to know bruises are the worst of it.”
“That...that
crummy
button!” The words came out in the most embarrassed, horrified tone Cade had ever heard a woman use.
He couldn’t tell whether the trembling that shook her entire body was laughter, tears, fear, pain or all of the above. She swayed on her feet like an exhausted toddler, and he realized she might fall if she remained standing. He sank back onto the picnic table bench and drew her down with him. She drooped like a flower with a crushed stem, and it was the most natural thing in the world to put an arm around her. In all his thug-tracking days he’d never comforted a criminal like this. How many of them had wept and gazed at him with pitiful, wet eyes? How easily had he withstood those bids for sympathy and lenience? How many of them ended up in the back of the patrol car on the way to jail, where they belonged?
But how quickly, in just moments, had Abigail McMurray and her gigantic problem become the thing he most needed to fix in the world. He felt her stiffness melting away like snow in the Florida sun, and shortly she was leaning against his chest, her hands creeping up to hang on to his shoulders as if he were the only solid thing left on the planet. He took his gun out of his waistband and set it on the ground out of her reach. No sense in being stupid, even if his gut and his crotch were trying so damned hard to overrule his brain.
Now I have the truth.
He had what he thought he wanted, yes. But knowing what had pushed Abigail to take his truck wasn’t enough. Now he wanted the man who had done the damage, wanted him fiercely, with a dark, chill fury that was more vendetta than justice. He shouldn’t feel this way—his law enforcement training should have kept him from the brink. He hardly knew Abigail, and the fact she’d stolen his truck didn’t make her domestic abuse issues his problem.
But somehow they were.
He felt her tears soaking his shirt, her sobs shaking her body, and stared over her head toward the tea-dark river where something had taken the lure on his fishing line and was merrily dragging his pole down the sandy bank into the water.
Aw, hell. You know it’s bad when I choose a sobbing woman over the best reel I own. Goodbye, pole. Hello, trouble.
Chapter 4
T
hat twice-damned button.
It had gotten her into this whole mess, rolling under Cade Latimer’s pickup in the convenience store’s parking lot. Now its lack had made things worse, revealing all the things she had struggled to keep hidden from this observant, determined, fierce man. In her urge to help right at least part of her wrongdoing by tending his head wound, she had unwittingly exposed herself, not to mention Marsh’s crimes.
The shame she had felt in all the months before was nothing compared with the burning furnace of shame she felt now as her weakness was revealed.
Yet, in that scorching shame burned the relief that someone else knew at last.
The tears flowed in earnest and she began to tremble.
She struggled not to give in to the comfort Cade Latimer was offering. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t
done
.... She couldn’t just weep on a stranger’s shoulder. Especially not a stranger whose truck she had stolen. She sank stiffly onto the bench when he tugged her to sit. She fought against his encircling arm—it was just another trap, another trick, another ploy to get her to tell more than she should. He only wanted the lurid details. He didn’t want to have to understand, or judge, or help.
It would give him power over her. She could never permit that again.
“Where’s your shadow?” Judy asked.
“Looking for a beer.”
“Nice of you to bring him.”
“Thanks for inviting me. Us. It’s good to get out of the house. I haven’t seen my friends enough lately.”
She felt rather than heard Marsh approach out of her line of sight. He stood behind her, a companionable hand over her left shoulder, squeezing gently.
“Good to see you smiling,” Marsh said.
The reminder of Gary made her smile falter. Marsh squeezed her shoulder again and spoke to Judy. “Abigail tells me your husband’s a mechanic. He any good with imports?”
“Japanese, mostly—but he’s right over there with the grill. You could just ask.” Judy turned her attention back to Abby. “We should do a girls’ night out. What are you doing next week?”
Abby opened her mouth to reply, but Marsh’s hand squeezed her shoulder again. “We’re working on that wheelchair ramp to the back patio,” he said.
“But that won’t take every night next week,” Judy said, smiling.
Abby smiled back. “We could maybe—”
“Things are tight,” Marsh interrupted, and this time Abby realized the pressure of his hand was meant to quiet her, to let Marsh take the lead in the conversation. Startled, she lapsed into silence and was rewarded with a gentle rub over her shoulder blade. “We probably should head out. Seven o’clock comes early.”
Abby ducked her head and nodded. She really hadn’t meant to let Judy know how things were with Gary gone. Marsh set down his beer and she knew he meant for them to leave now. With her evening suddenly soured, she wanted nothing more than to be at home with the covers pulled over her head and maybe the blessed oblivion of a sleeping pill. She gave Judy a quick, embarrassed hug, nodding when Judy said quietly, “Call me. I miss you.”
She had simply given the power into Marsh’s hands without a second thought.
Abby fought against the bliss of comfort for another minute, but the softening of Latimer’s hold was confusing. If he meant to control her, he’d have taken a firmer grip on her. The reservoir of hurt was simply too deep to stem now that the dam had been breached. It was as if the supply of tears was bottomless, salty and hot. She would never be cried out, even after months of mourning Gary and hours of late-night weeping into pillows to stifle her noise so Marsh wouldn’t hear. But these tears weren’t for Gary. Instead, she was mourning the loss of herself.
Her fingers clenched in his shirt. One by one her hands crept over his shoulders and caught there as if she were clinging to the side of a building, trying desperately not to fall.
Fifteen months with Marsh hadn’t erased every scrap of trust, though they’d taken their toll. Every action she took had to be examined and reexamined, for fear it would trigger an unpleasant reaction from Marsh. Now she drowned in the torrent of tears, and Latimer said nothing. Did nothing, except allow her to thoroughly wet his shirt, and keep warm palms cupped at her back. She could feel their heat even past the humid sweatiness of her skin in the heat of the late afternoon. No matter how she gave in to her sobs, some part of her kept guard, alert to any hint of tension in Latimer’s body, the telegraphy of imminent violence.
Long minutes later, head throbbing, nose thoroughly stuffed, eyes burning, Abby pulled a scrap of pride from somewhere deep and used it to push back from Latimer. She scrubbed at her face with the sleeves of her shirt, snuffling hard. He made a single quick move and scooped something from the ground as he left the bench—his gun.
When he walked to his truck, Abby sat staring at him. He’d gone from holding a gun on her to turning his back. He no longer considered her a threat.
Of course not, why would he? He’s the one with a dog and a gun and the keys.
Her stomach lurched. What would he do with her now? Would his new knowledge change anything? She was still a car thief, no matter how she looked at it.
He came back with a roll of paper towels and put them in front of her. She tore one from the roll and blew her nose. “Thank you.” Her voice was thick. Tears were still too near. She knew if she thought even a little about what had happened she would dissolve again.
Latimer set a bottle of water in front of her. “You’ll be thirsty after all that bawling.”
Abby’s glance flicked upward.
He was
smiling.
She searched his face for mockery, cruelty, for the blankness she had come to associate with Marsh’s concealment of anger, and found none. Instead, there was amusement, and a wry kindness she hadn’t expected to see. “You’re laughing at me.”
“No.” He made a short gesture and the dog came to sit at his left. “I don’t laugh at women running from domestic violence. Though I have to admit I’ve never seen it taken to the extreme of stealing a vehicle.”
“I’m not—” Abby began the habitual denial, the all-too-familiar lie, and caught herself. Or, rather, was caught by the incisive blue of Latimer’s eyes. She looked away, guiltily, and then looked back.
Why am I lying? I never used to lie. I never had a need to lie.
It was part of the way Marsh had broken her, changed her, made her over to fit him.
It was what she hated most about herself, even more than the cowardice that made her second-guess every single word or gesture made where Marsh could hear or see. Even more than the way she cringed away from his physicality. More than the way he controlled every aspect of their lives together. She was relieved her parents were dead and she had no siblings to see what she’d become since Gary’s death. She was a nonperson, existing only within the context of Marsh’s rigid parameters for approval and acceptance. In her grief, she had distanced herself even from her friends, and they had respected her wishes, letting her be. Her solitude was the perfect environment for Marsh.
“You can’t tell me you walked into a door in the middle of the night. Doors don’t leave finger marks on your breasts.”
Abby looked toward the river, dimpled and purling, glinting in the sun’s glare, eddies that spun downstream and faded, the expanding rings of a fish gulping an insect from the surface. She covered her mouth with her hand, drawing a shaky breath through her stuffy nose. Latimer didn’t stop her when she got to her feet and moved into the shade of the cypresses at the river’s edge.
It was cooler there, with a moistness more pleasant than the sticky humidity of her own sweat in the sunny clearing of the campsite. Her head pounded with the heat and her tear-stuffed sinuses. The breath of the river moved over her skin, luring her closer. She toed off her sneakers and edged her sockless feet into the wet, buff-colored sand at its edge. A foot or two from the shore, she saw a fishing pole beneath the water, its tip bent and caught by a cypress root a few feet out. It must be Latimer’s—she didn’t see his near the camp stool, and he hadn’t brought it back to the picnic table. Abby moved forward two steps, the water rising to her ankles and wetting the slim legs of her jeans.
It felt like heaven, cool and soft and better than iced tea on a hot day. She thought about wading even deeper, diving in and submerging her whole, overheated, exhausted body. She would let the current take her slowly downstream. The tannic water would wash away the salt of tears and sweat, leaching the heat from her shame. She could float wherever the river took her, for miles and days, through the chain of lakes, maybe even on to the Gulf of Mexico. Instead, she rolled up the cuff of her sleeve and plunged her arm into the water to grasp the butt of the rod.
She drew the rod from the water, immediately finding resistance at the far end, where the line had been snarled among the stumps and knees of cypresses and ti-ti shrubs, so she pressed the button on the reel to release the tension, and backed out of the water.
Latimer, who had joined her on the shore, stood at the edge of the water and received the pole from her with a rueful smile. He used his pocketknife to clip the nylon line.
“Sorry, again,” Abby said lamely.
“Stuff happens.” Latimer shrugged and tilted the rod to empty the water from the reel’s spool. “But bruises like yours—that’s not the sort of stuff that should happen.”
Tears welled and Abby jutted her chin out to stem the flow. “I really, really don’t want to talk about it.” She picked up her shoes, letting them dangle from two fingers hooked beneath their tongues. No sense trying to jam wet, sandy feet into them.
“I get that, believe me.” Latimer followed her to the picnic table, where Abby opened the bottle of water and drank half of it. He closed the blade of the pocketknife and opened another, a screwdriver tip, and began removing the reel from the pole. “But I’m not letting go of the topic for long.” His blue gaze flicked up and trapped her. “You can have a break while you build a fire in that grill over there. I want a steak for dinner, since I’m not going to get a chance at a bass or bluegill.” His chin jerked toward the truck, where Mort the shepherd lay panting in the shade of the tailgate. “Sack of charcoal back there. Matches in the toolbox.”
Abby stared at him, watching as a bead of sweat trickled slowly from his hairline to lose itself in the red, raised maze of his scar. He was disassembling the reel, using paper towels to dry its mechanisms. His hands were quick and deft, with long fingers. They were strong fingers, and gold hairs glittered at the knuckles and along the outer edge of his hands. She set what little she knew about him against the idea of those fingers curling into fists, and found she could not visualize Latimer doing something brutal out of sheer perversity. Unbidden, an image of Marsh’s fists came to mind, his strong, stocky fingers and muddy hazel eyes always ready to teach her a lesson.
When she hadn’t moved, Latimer looked up at her. “Abigail.”
Jolted from her thoughts, she blinked rapidly, scrambling to respond. “What about your dog?”
“He won’t bother you unless I give the word. Or you make a sudden move. So don’t try something stupid like running away, and you won’t have any trouble.”
Abby moved slowly toward the truck. Mort was all attention, ears pricked forward, dark eyes unblinking, head turning as she moved. She kept her eyes on him, even as she stretched to reach the bag of charcoal and drag it out onto the tailgate. The matches were a different issue, however, since the toolbox was all the way to the front of the truck bed. She would have to climb in to get them.
She looked over her shoulder at Latimer, who stood at the picnic table with the reel in his hands, grinning. The small jerk of his head indicated she might as well get on with it, so she crept into the truck bed and opened the toolbox.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” he asked, when she walked past him, still barefoot on the campsite sand.
Abby said nothing, shaking the charcoal into the cement fire ring, slipping a few twigs and dried, crackling live-oak leaves into the pile to catch the flame of the match and hold it long enough to light the briquettes. When a couple of the black squares began to glow at their edges, she got to her feet and went stolidly back to the table. At least the sun was getting low enough to put the table in the shadow of the scrub oaks.
Before an hour had passed, Latimer was cooking a steak on the iron mesh grill of the fire ring, using a fork and his pocketknife to turn and trim the meat. Mort received the tossed trimmings, catching them deftly and snuffling for more. Latimer gave Abby tomatoes to slice on a paper plate, and handed her a can opener and a can of green beans to heat on the grill. When she had finished slicing, he pointedly held his hand out for the return of the steak knife she’d been using.
She wondered if he planned to let her join him in the meal. She shook her head at herself.
Don’t be stupid. This isn’t a date, Abigail. It’s house arrest.
Perhaps he wouldn’t make her feel guilty if she fetched her sack of groceries, and opened the chips and chili. Now that she was calmer after the storm of tears, she was hungry. She sat on the picnic bench with the bottle of water, desultorily shooing flies and the occasional wasp from the tomatoes, watching Latimer grilling meat. The label on the green beans slowly charred and flaked away, and steam rose from the can’s open mouth. He pushed the can to a cooler spot on the grill.
With Latimer, minding the grill was almost an art form, a choreographed dance. He half squatted, his haunches firm in their blue jeans. She could see the strength in his legs when he rose or crab-walked to stay out of the smoke. In the dance of the grill, there was the bend, the prod of the meat with a fork, the quick flip, the test of the thick part of the steak with the tip of a hunting knife he’d pulled from somewhere on his person. Abby had never even known it was there. Knives, gun. Attack-trained dog. Fishing pole. Camping gear. If she didn’t know better, she’d have said Latimer was running away from something himself. The irony made her lips quirk.