Page 36

T he vehicle slowed, then jolted over something. Reese’s head rapped smartly against the floor. She tried to raise her shoulders to brace herself. The car bumped over rough ground for a minute before pulling to a stop.

The engine shut off, and the blare of music abruptly halted. Her heart began to hammer in her chest. She lay on her back, legs bent in front of the center of the trunk. The predator would be wary and try to immobilize her lower limbs first.

She grasped the wrench horizontally with both hands, attempting to conceal it in her lap. If she were lucky, he wouldn’t see her weapon until too late. But luck could be a fickle bitch.

Minutes ticked by. What was he doing? She strained to hear. There were no sounds of traffic. Not complete silence, but the noises outside were faint. Where had he brought her?

A bang sounded on the outside of the trunk, and she started violently. Then the lid began to rise, and her body tensed.

“Oh, no, you don’t.” The driver yanked her legs straight and tried to pull her out feetfirst. When she struggled, he bent in closer to haul her out of the trunk.

Reese jackknifed her torso upright, driving the wrench toward his masked face with both hands.

She heard a sickening crunch. He howled, dropping her to clap his hands to his face.

Reese scrambled out and stood swaying on unsteady legs, trying to regain her equilibrium.

“You bitch!” The man lunged toward her, and she flipped the wrench vertically to ram him squarely in the groin. He dropped to his knees, and she used the moment to her advantage.

She ran.

Through the overgrown weeds, littered with trash and broken bottles.

Around the corner of the dilapidated structure looming ahead.

Because an alley bordered the property, she headed toward it.

She raced faster, every moment expecting to hear him thundering after her.

She dug into her pocket with her free hand as she fled, pulling out one of the jagged pieces from the broken taillight.

If he caught up to her—Reese’s breath sawed in and out of her lungs as she picked up speed—she’d aim for his eye.

There was a street ahead. A car passed by, its driver paying her no mind. Businesses lined the opposite sidewalk, many of them shuttered and boarded up. A few, though, had lights in the window. Interior doors open. If she could reach one…

A weight hit her low in the back, tumbling her to the ground.

The wrench flew out of her grasp. She struggled wildly as she was caught around the waist and dragged backward.

Reese brought up the plastic shard and jabbed it at the man’s inner wrist. When he screamed and let her go, she scrambled to her feet and fled, fueled by terror.

She looked over her shoulder and saw him dragging the blood-soaked bandana from his face to wad against the fresh wound. Reaching the street, she nearly fell down the curb and dodged an oncoming car to make it across to one of the businesses that appeared open.

Just another foot. Then another. Up the curb. Across the walk. She couldn’t halt her momentum, and she bounced off the entrance, staggered, before lurching forward to open the screen, nearly falling inside.

An older lady looked up from her magazine and screeched. A hairstylist whirled from a customer with her head in the shampoo bowl, snatching up a pair of scissors to face Reese, her arm cocked back threateningly.

“I…need…help.”

The hairstylist, a tall Black woman with pink dreads, took in her appearance. “Come inside and get away from the door. Hurry now.” She lowered the scissors but didn’t lay them down as she hastened to lock the door behind Reese, then drew the blinds on the windows. “Your man do that to you?”

She swung her head in negation, stopped when the motion had her wincing in pain. “No. Mugger. I just need to call…help. Can I…use…phone…”

“Let’s get the bleeding stopped first.”

The beautician took a moment to grab a towel for the customer’s hair and straightened her chair before bustling to the back.

She returned with a wet towel, which she put in Reese’s free hand.

The bloody fingers on her other hand still gripped the jagged shard so tightly she couldn’t have unbent them if she tried.

The woman guided the damp cloth upward, to press against her left temple.

“Are you dizzy? Nauseous? How’s your vision? ”

“A little blurry. Phone.”

The woman stared hard at her, unmoving. “Muggers smash and grab. You took a beating, girl. Sure you don’t know who did this to you? I got a safe place for you to stay, if you’ve got a violent boyfriend or something.”

Reese blinked rapidly to try to clear her eyes. She managed a tiny smile. The stylist wore a fierce expression worthy of a warrior. “I need to call a friend.”

She studied Reese for a moment before nodding slowly. “Okay. Come round the desk then. Phone’s over here. You want me to dial for you?”

Nodding, she said, “His name is Hayes. His number…” She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to corral her scattered brain cells enough to recall it. After three failed attempts, she got the sequence right, and the hairdresser raised her brows when the call was answered.

“This Hayes? Never mind all that.” Her concerned gaze never left Reese. “Got someone here who wants to talk to you. And you better believe, I find out you did this to her, I’ll come for you myself.” She handed the phone to Reese, who put the compress on the desk to take it.

“Hayes.” Her voice sounded weak, even to her ears, and her knees felt shaky. Leaning more heavily against the desk, she said, “I’m going to need a ride.”

“You could have patched me up at home.”

Hayes stood beside her bed in the ER cubicle, arms folded across his chest. “You needed to get your head examined. Because of the wounds.” A grim smile crossed his lips. “And for leaving the apartment without me.”

It was hard to argue with that, so she dropped her gaze guiltily.

He wasn’t wrong. And she’d had plenty of time today to regret her choice.

Here, sitting on the edge of the bed engulfed in a too-large sweatshirt and sweatpants a nurse had found and her bare feet swathed in medical shoe covers, Reese had a disconcerting sense of déjà vu of the hospital scene eighteen months ago after being rescued from Thorne’s cellar.

She’d known the drill and changed out of her clothes so Hayes could bag them for the police while medical personnel snapped pictures of her injuries.

“A detective has been waiting since they took you up for your CT. Do you feel like talking to him?”

“I’ve already told you everything.”

“And now you can tell him.”

When Hayes had rapped at the door of Ebony Elegance, Destiny Westin peered out between two slats of the door’s blind and grunted. “Tall, dark, and handsome as hell?” She’d shot Reese a look. “Sure he’s not a pounder?”

It’d been difficult to convince Destiny that she wasn’t a victim of domestic violence. “No. He’ll help.”

Still, the stylist had watched suspiciously as Hayes probed gently at Reese’s head wound before pronouncing her well enough to ride to the hospital instead of calling an ambulance. “You did good,” he told the hairdresser, offering her a slight smile. “We appreciate it.”

“Uh-huh.” Destiny had snatched up one of her cards and pressed it into Reese’s hand. “You call me,” she said in an undertone, “if you need anything.”

The card sat on the stand next to the bed, smeared lightly with blood, a vivid reminder that sometimes you find heroes in the unlikeliest of places. Reese took a breath and battled back a wave of exhaustion. “Okay. Bring him in.”

He left for a moment, returning with a short, square man in a uniform with a graying buzz cut and heavy brows carrying a battered case that looked similar to a tackle box. “Reese Decody. Detective Sergeant Byron Jennings.”

“Ms. Decody.” The man set the case on the only chair.

“Hayes says you had a physical struggle with your attacker. I’m going to swab for possible DNA.

” He dug in the bag, withdrew a package of sterile swabs, and opened it, extracting one and moistening the tip with a small vial of water.

The detective swiped it under each nail on her left hand, then dropped the swab in an evidence bag and repeated the action with a fresh one.

He labeled each and repeated the process on her other hand before packing them in the case and taking a recorder from it.

Then he pulled a notebook and pen out of his sports coat pocket. “Just take me through what happened.”

Reese relayed the events that occurred after leaving Kervin, omitting what he’d told her about her brother. Jennings mostly let her talk, pausing to jot a few notes or to ask a question.

After she’d wound down, he asked, “And you’re sure you didn’t know the guy? Never seen him before?”

She caught herself as she would have shaken her throbbing head.

“Positive. At first I didn’t see him at all.

He hit me from behind. And when the trunk lid opened, I only got a glimpse of him.

He had his face covered in one of those…

” Her fuzzy brain failed her as she gestured ineffectually at her face.

“Like the bandits wore in those old Westerns.”

“A bandana?”

“Yeah. Red.” She rested her head against the pillow for a moment, worn out by the retelling. “But I think I broke his nose when I hit him with the wrench.”

The man’s mouth twitched. “Good for you.”

“Later…after I jabbed him with the piece of plastic…I was running and looked back over my shoulder to see how close he was. He’d pulled off the mask and was using it to stop the bleeding on his wrist. It was just for a few seconds, but I saw his face.”

His interest sharpened. “Describe him.”