Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 59199 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 296(@200wpm)___ 237(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59199 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 296(@200wpm)___ 237(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
“Tell me what happened,” I command, voice gravelly with simmering rage. “What were you doing out there all alone?”
She tips her chin back slightly, my imperious queen asserting her independence. “I went to the beach to take pictures for a series of paintings. It was meant to be a surprise.”
She blows out a sigh and relaxes her stiff posture. Her fingernails lightly scrape my scalp as she continues to touch me, as though she needs to feel me as much as I need to be reassured of her presence.
“You came,” she says softly.
“I will always come for you,” I swear roughly. “I should’ve been with you.”
She shakes her head. “You can’t be with me all the time.”
I would keep her on a leash at all times if I could, but I don’t admit that. She wouldn’t like it.
“You said it was Ron’s brother.” I shift the subject back to the danger she faced.
I have to know everything that happened so that I can formulate a plan to eliminate the threat.
She nods and swallows hard. “Billy must’ve followed me out there. He said I was a hard woman to pin down, so I’m not sure how long he’s been trying to get me alone. Probably since we came back from England.”
I force my gaze to break from hers so that I can continue treating her cuts. The shallow wounds are clean now, so I cover the worst of the damage with small bandages to stop the last of the bleeding.
“How does Billy even know who you are?” I struggle to keep my tone calm and even as I say the dead man’s name. He’ll suffer and scream before he dies.
I recall Abigail’s wild eyes when I’d found her in the woods, her cheeks flushed red from running for her life.
She sighs again. “I should’ve told you,” she confesses. “I thought he was Ron. They must be twins.”
“What should you have told me?” I can’t quite keep the bite from my tone this time. My pet withheld information that put her in danger. The urge to turn her over my knee is almost overwhelming.
Her punishment will come later. I’ll make sure she never does something like that again.
She considers me warily, and I blink the ruthless spark from my eyes. The last thing I want is to scare her now.
“I saw Ron—Billy—at my apartment building on the day we came back to Charleston,” she admits. “When we were going out for my bachelorette party, he was in the breezeway. He was just as creepy as always, but I had Franklin and Stacy to back me up. They told him that you would hurt him if he tried to come near me again.” She takes a deep breath. “And then today, Billy seemed to think that I must know something about Ron’s disappearance. He thinks you did something to his brother, and I’m responsible.”
“You are not responsible for what I did to Ron,” I growl. “No more than you were responsible for what happened to Stephen. They brought their fates upon themselves. If they hadn’t threatened you, they’d be fine now.”
Her eyes search mine. “So…Ron is dead?”
She says it like she doesn’t quite want to believe it, but she must have suspected. She doesn’t seem shocked.
“Yes,” I say, cold and unapologetic. “And I would kill him a thousand times over for what he did to you.”
His brother will be next. Billy will die screaming.
“What…” She trails off, then tries again. “What did you do to him?”
I keep the savage satisfaction from my expression, remaining carefully blank and unfeeling. “You don’t want to know.”
“That day when…” She takes a deep, shuddering breath. “You were covered in mud and blood.”
I flinch before I can stop the involuntary movement. She’s talking about the day she found out I’m her stalker, the masked man who attacked her. We’ve never discussed that dark altercation in detail, when I choked her out and then drugged her.
Thinking about it makes my stomach twist with a surge of nausea, and I swear I can feel her fingernails desperately raking my forearm as she struggles to breathe, to escape from me.
She shivers and then straightens her spine. Mercifully, she moves past the difficult subject.
“I need to know what happened. If you left any evidence, you’ll go to jail. Billy might be able to prove that you killed his brother.”
“I didn’t leave any evidence,” I reassure her.
The alligator took care of Ron’s body, and my ruined clothes are an ocean away, rotting in a landfill; I disposed of them in England.
“Dane.” She says my name like an admonishment. “I need you to talk to me.”
I narrow my eyes at her in warning. “I’m not going to tell you the details of what I did to Ron. What we’re going to discuss is the fact that you went off on your own and put yourself in danger.”