She Can Hide (She Can #4)(59)

“Greedy bitch.” Joe stood over her. “I have to punish you for disobeying.”

“I promise I won’t say anything.”

“Oh, you won’t say anything.” Joe wrapped his hand in her hair and dragged her to her feet.

“Ow,” Krista cried.

Joe turned, anger gleaming from his dilated eyes. He’d been using without her. “You’ll do what you’re told, you fucking bitch.”

Fear slid through her bowels. He pulled a gun from the back of his pants and shoved the muzzle into her mouth. The metal tasted oily and sharp. “I will blow the back of your head onto the cinder blocks if you make one more sound. Do you understand?”

Krista’s head nodded like there weren’t any bones in her neck.

Joe took the muzzle from her mouth and ran it down her breasts to her crotch. “I wish I had time to punish you properly.”

Terror vibrated in her chest. Krista bit her tongue to hold back a moan.

“I have some cleaning up to do.” He stroked her cheek with the gun. The sight scraped her skin. “I wish I had time so we could have some fun. Or at least I could. But I have a delivery to make. Then you and I are going somewhere.”

No! She couldn’t leave. When would Derek be home? She thought it was afternoon, but time had been floaty that morning. School got out at three.

“Oh, you don’t like that idea?” Joe’s mouth split in a nasty grin.

“N-no.” She shook her head. The vibrating fear had amplified to trembles that shook her skeleton from her heels to her head.

“Well, I can’t leave you here. You know too much now.” Joe’s brows lowered as he considered something. “Would you rather wait until the kid gets home? Then he can come with us.”

A chill sprinted through Krista’s blood. The best thing she could do for Derek was get Joe out of the house. She shook her head again. “No. I’ll go with you.”

“That’s what I thought.” Joe produced a pair of handcuffs from one of the boxes. “I brought these especially for you. I’d intended to use them more for recreation. Hopefully we’ll have time for that later.” Light from the bare bulb on the ceiling joist glinted off silver. Joe snapped one cuff on her wrist. He dragged her to the wall and snapped the other ring around a pipe.

Joe opened an empty box and started loading it. “I won’t be much longer. I promise. Then it’s just you and me, baby.”




“Anything?” Ethan walked into the chief’s office and perched on the edge of a chair.

The chief took off a pair of frameless reading glasses and rubbed his eyes. “No. She didn’t recognize anyone. I tried to get some more information out of her, but she isn’t the easiest victim to interview.”

Ethan pictured Abby’s frustrated middle-of-the-night tears, and the calm that had followed the release of three years of pent-up emotion. “She doesn’t like to talk about it.”

“I guess not.” Mike leaned forward. He placed his elbows on his desk and pointed at the file with his reading glasses. “The case files on her kidnapping are awfully thin. Not much more information here than in the system. The hard evidence is in here, but most of that was compromised.”

“You think the Harris cops are holding out on us.”

“I doubt it. Sure, the scandal of a dirty cop wouldn’t help a department already skewered by the press. The prosecutor came in and cleaned house. I doubt he wants his new department soiled by an old crime.” The chief leaned back in his chair. He knew all about dirt and scandal. Westbury had its own political scandal of murder and deceit a few months back, and the fallout had almost cost the chief his life. Since then, the townspeople had elevated him to hero status. His support hefted a lot of weight. “But I think it’s more likely that Abrams didn’t put all of his notes in the file.”

“No sense incriminating himself.”

“Exactly.” The chief dropped his glasses on the blotter and rubbed his neck. “Stick close to her, Ethan.”

“I’d already planned on it.”

The chief nodded. “I thought so.”

“Do you have a problem with that?”

“I don’t want anything to happen to her, and there’s no indication she’s anything but a victim.” Chief O’Connell scraped a beefy hand across his ruddy face. The sound of beard stubble rasped. “You have my full support.” The chief gave him a wry frown. “It’s not like I can throw stones.”

The chief and his fiancée, who was the center of a big murder case, were getting married in a few weeks.

“Thanks.” Ethan stood. Even though it didn’t affect his decision to protect Abby, it was good to know the chief had his back. Not that Ethan expected anything else.

“Is she cooperating?” the chief asked.

“Yeah, but I don’t know for how long.” Ethan voiced his fear. “What if this drags out? What if she wants to go back to living like a normal person?”

“I don’t know.” The chief closed the file. “Let’s take it one day at a time for now. Tonight, you keep her safe. We’ll address tomorrow in the morning.”

Ethan collected Abby and Zeus from the conference room. The lack of sleep from the night before and a day spent looking at photos on the computer showed in her eyes. “You want takeout or something from my mother’s vast stores of leftovers?”