Page 125 of Stripping Bare

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said in a low voice, walking forward slowly to kneel near the bed and keeping his gaze averted from anything but her feet. “Let me help you get dressed andthen—”

“No!” She lurched forward clumsily, and hit him in the side of the head with her fist. It barely hurt, as weak as she was, but it momentarily stunned him. Enough so that she was able to get in another blow and rake her fingernails down hischeek.

He fell on his ass and crab-walked backward until he hit the wall. “I am not going to hurt you,” he repeated. “I need help to get you out of here. I’m going to get my sister. Then we’ll get you out of here. Can you stay here for five minutes? Can you do that?” He wasbabbling.

“I… Where amI?”

“You’re safe. I’ll lock you in when Ileave.”

Her eyes flared with fear again. “Lockme—”

“Just for a few minutes. Then we’ll be back and get you tosafety.”

“Home. I wanna gohome.”

“Okay.” Jonah pushed himself from the floor with a jerky shove and wrenched open the door before he thought better of it. Thank Jesus, no one was out there. He locked the door. Just a flimsy bedroom lock, but it was all he had. It would have to do fornow.

Once he brought Micki back, it would take her all of ten seconds to pick thething.

He stumbled his way downstairs and rushed into the crowd of gyrating bodies that smelled of booze, sweat, and something else—desperate lust—that turned hisstomach.

“Micki,” he called. It felt like one of those nightmares where you were running down the hallway, but it just kept getting longer and longerand…

There she was. Jonah shoved another guy aside and grabbed Micki’s arm. “Micki, I need your help. Rightnow.”

“What have you done? Did you find their computersand—”

Unable to control himself, he dragged her along behind him until they made it to the hallway. “She’s backhere.”

“Who?”

“The girl Harrison Shaw and his friends have been gang-raping.”

Jonah and Micki raced toward the wing of the house where he’d left the girl. The hallway was still empty and Jonah started to release the breath he’d been holding. But then the bedroom dooropened.

A guy came out, still doing his fly.Motherfucker.He must’ve jimmied the flimsy lock. Jonah lunged at him, but Micki clung to hisarm.

The guy looked up and Jonah recognized him as Andy Bledsoe. Son of a bitch had the balls to grin. “Guess you were supposed to be next, huh? Sorry ’bout that.” He scanned Micki up and down. “But since you brought another date, maybe we couldboth—”

Jonah wrenched away from Micki’s hold and punched him in the nose. Blood gushed, and the guy tried to protect his face with his hands, but Jonah caught him again high on the cheekbone, knocking him into the hall wall. “I’m going to killyou.”

Micki pulled Jonah off and nodded toward the open door. “We need to take care ofher.”

The guy scurriedaway.

Inside the bedroom, the girl’s clothes were still rucked up around her body, but now she was curled in a fetal position. When she looked up to find him standing there with Micki, her eyes were dead. Flat as water in a stagnantpond.

She whispered, “Youpromised.”

Yeah. All those years ago, he’d made Tessa a promise he hadn’tkept.

And now, it could happen all overagain.

“Jonah, what thehellis going on out there?” Maggie’s voice boomed through his second earpiece, jolting him from the sickening memory of Tessa at her weakest, her most broken. “You haven’t checked in since you left yourcar.”

He covered the mic attached to his goggles and spoke into the other mic. “Sorry,” he huffed as he ran. “Things got a little surreal there for awhile.”

“Did you get eyes on your mom andTessa?”