Page 17 of Sackett (Demented Souls #17)

S ackett found himself watching her as she laughed at his remark. He didn’t mean it, at least not entirely. The people in the commune might not be the savviest or world wise people around, but they weren’t all crazy.

But Donna’s ex, Noah, and the man she called Brother Jonah, who she said was in charge of the place, they were either smarter than the average person, and forward thinking, well planning conmen, which Sackett didn’t believe for even a moment.

Or they were bug nuts. That he did believe.

Even the bug nuts could be charismatic and well liked.

It had happened so many times, and not even all that long ago.

He glanced up at Colt, wondering what was taking so long with getting her feet bandaged.

The Corpsman met his gaze, mouthed the word glass then went back to work.

Sackett went back to talking to Selena. He did his best to keep her distracted, but every now and then she’d flinch, as if something Colt was doing hurt.

But she didn’t look at him. She carefully kept her gaze on Sackett, as if she didn’t want to know how bad her feet were or see what the kid was doing to them.

“Ok, so they took you from the parking garage. I wonder if your rental is still there.”

“I don’t know.” She reached for the bag she’d found in the building where she’d been held but stopped. “Can you hand me my bag. I don’t want to move too much.”

Sackett pulled the bag from where Maverick had put it, the passenger’s seat, and handed it to her. She stuck her hand in one pocket and pulled out a single key on a coated cable ring, much like the one still in the ignition of the SUV they sat in.

“If they took it, they put the key back.” She looked up and met his gaze.

Sackett didn’t know if it was hope or what, but there was some glitter in her eye that hadn’t been there a moment before.

“Do you want to check and make sure everything else is in there?” He nodded to the bag. “I assume you’ve got a hotel room. Is the key still there? And I know they had your phone. That’s how they called Donna.” He didn’t tell her that he knew because he’d been sitting next to her client at the time.

She dug around in the bag for a moment, checking all the pockets, then going back and starting again, as if she thought she might have missed it the first time.

“Everything seems to be here, except my phone.” She took a deep breath. “Of all the things they could have taken, that’s actually the easiest to replace. I keep everything backed up, so all I need to do is get a new device and I can restore it.”

Sackett watched her, wondering what was going through her head.

She was oddly calm. Was she in shock or was she just uncommonly cool under stress?

Would she break down later or manage to hold it together always?

He usually hated to see women cry but something inside ached at the thought that she might not be comfortable showing them how she felt.

That she probably wouldn’t even let him see.

He wanted to be her safe space, the place she went when she needed to be taken care of.

Sackett blinked and did his best to keep the surprise washing through him off his face. Where the fuck had that thought come from?

“We’ll worry about replacing your phone in the morning. What hotel are you staying at? We need to see if we can get a room for the rest of tonight. We can worry about going home tomorrow.”

She told him the hotel, he glanced at Maverick who nodded then stepped away from the vehicle. He knew his brother would be investigating the place, possibly getting a reservation so Gizmo or Krissi could hack the system and put them in a room as close as possible to Selena.

“Going home? I can’t go back yet.” She scowled at him.

Sackett wanted to smooth the crease from her brow and tell her it would be okay. He would take care of everything, but he could tell she wouldn’t take that well.

Selena was fiercely independent. He liked that about her but at the same time, it was also immensely frustrating.

“Why not? We need to make sure you’re safe and that they can’t come after you again,” Sackett said, unable to keep the frown from his own face.

“I have things I have to do.” She shook her head then continued.

“I have to meet with a client tomorrow, or rather, later today. Then I have court on Wednesday. I can’t go home.

But the upside is that they have no way of knowing where I’m staying and that visit to the judge was the only thing I had in Fort Collins.

” She looked up and gave him a small smile.

“There’s no reason to think they’ll still be after me, much less that they could find me, even if they tried.

” She let her gaze drop back to the bag that still sat in her lap.

“No. I have business here and I’ve got to see it through. I’m here and I’ll get the job done.”

“Can’t you get an extension on the court?” He thought that was the right word, but honestly, he wasn’t sure.

“I might be able to get a continuance, if I told the judge exactly what happened and why I want it. But I would need to report all of this, and I got the impression that wouldn’t be the best idea.” She looked up at him as if wanting confirmation.

“We were trespassing, yes. And that could go bad for us if we’d done anything other than rescue you.

But we didn’t cause any damage, we didn’t hurt anyone.

We can show that we had cause to believe you were in there.

” He didn’t tell her that Gizmo had hacked the phone company to track her phone or that they’d have to go through some back channels to get out of any issues, if any arose.

That was more than she needed to know. “I don’t want to have to deal with the authorities if we don’t have to.

But we knew we might have to. We knew that going in and were willing to risk it.

” He didn’t tell her that they’d also been prepared to take her to the emergency room, should that have been needed, and that would have meant telling everything, or nearly everything, to the police.

She looked back up at him and frowned again. “You’re willing to talk to the police?”

Sackett didn’t know if he should be worried or offended because she thought they wouldn’t be willing to deal with the authorities. What kind of people was she used to dealing with?

“We are.” He watched her for a moment longer, then continued.

“It might be better if we do anyway, even if they don’t end up filing charges of any kind.

It will at least be proof of their behavior.

Which can only be more in Donna’s column in the divorce.

” He had no doubt she was done with this group.

The only question was how long it would take for her to be free of them legally.

That would depend on what Selena had learned yesterday, and on the assholes that had taken her if they had to go through with the divorce.

She’d already evaded the question once, and he even understood it.

It wasn’t his business, it was Donna and Savage’s, though Sackett wasn’t sure Selena would agree on the latter.

Selena looked up at him. He wasn’t sure if he was watching for some reaction or thinking, either way, her gaze didn’t move for several seconds.

The sound of something spraying had him looking up. Colt had a can of something, Sackett couldn’t tell what and was spraying it at the bottoms of Selena’s feet.

“I think I got all the glass. Let’s give that a moment to dry then I’ll do another coat for more protection,” Colt said without looking away from where he was working.

When he deemed the first coat dry enough, he sprayed it again, then held out the can to Sackett.

“Do one more coat on the way to town, but after that she should be good. Check it after she’s walked and after her shower.

If there is more glass, you’ll have to peel the bandage off before you can dig out the glass.

If something happens and she ends up in the emergency room, let them know she’s got a liquid bandage on her feet. ”

Sackett took the can and tucked it into the calf pocket on his pants so he wouldn’t lose it.

“Thanks.”

“Do you hurt anywhere else?” Colt’s attention turned back to Selena.

“No. My head hurt when I first woke up, but they gave me a couple bottles of water and it’s better now.”

Alarm flashed through him. “Are you sure there wasn’t anything in the water? That they didn’t drug you somehow?”

“The idea occurred to me, and I didn’t eat the food they brought for that reason, but the water was sealed. I even put pressure on the bottle to make sure there wasn’t a pinhole where they’d punctured it.”

“Good thinking.” He didn’t tell her there were ways to re-seal a bottle after a pin hole. She didn’t seem drugged, but he’d keep an eye on her for a while to be sure, besides, it was done now and there was no reason to worry her when there was nothing she could do anyway.

Colt backed away. Sackett was aware of the others moving around, getting ready to mount up and leave.

“How are you doing?” he asked Selena, trying to gauge her state of mind.

“Better. My feet don’t hurt so bad. But I’m tired and hungry.”

“Not sure what we can do about hungry quite yet, but we’ll see if we can find something on the way back to the hotel.

” He took the bag from where it sat on her lap, her hands resting on top of it and moved it to the floorboard.

“You should be good to put your feet down if you’d like, otherwise just pull them in so we can close the door. ”

She blinked at him a moment, then shook her head.

“Oh!” she said, then twisted so her feet went to the floorboard, before sliding back to the seat where she’d been earlier, next to the door and putting her seatbelt back on.