“Amber. My wife. My little angel girl. I know she came here. Her cellphone turned off just past the highway there. And I saw that bitch Zoey Cain drive that whore out here the other night. I get your fucking scheme, you bitch. Where did you take my wife?”
“She . . .” Lily tried to choke down her terror and think. He loosened his brutal hold a little. “She only came here to stay the night. That’s all. Then she left.”
“She slept in your apartment?”
“No.”
“Where, then? In a locker?”
She shook her head.
He laughed. “You’d better answer me, bitch, or we’ll go wake your boy and see if he remembers my wife.”
“No! No, he didn’t even see her. There’s a camper. An RV. She spent the night and then she left in the morning. I don’t know where she went. Please. I’m so sorry.”
“I want to see it.” He wrenched her arm up behind her back, and Lily did her best not to cry out. Everett was still asleep. He would sleep through this, whatever happened to her.
She’d brought this on them, brought danger to her door. She’d brought Amber here first, and then she’d practically invited Mendelson in this morning. She would accept the consequences all for herself. At least if she was taking him to the RV she was taking him away from her son.
She moved as quickly as she could without putting more pressure on her arm, her mind spinning, her stomach rolling. The most dangerous time for a woman was when she was trying to leave. The most dangerous time for any woman, apparently, even one who was just trying to help.
She realized suddenly that her free hand was tight against her side and still clutching the phone in her pocket. But there was nothing she could do with his arm curled so hard around her. If she tried pushing buttons, Siri was liable to wake up and ask her loudly what she wanted.
Could she jerk away and run? Just for a few seconds? Just for the time it would take to dial 911? She knew this place, after all, far better than he did.
Lightning tore through the sky ahead, and she took it as a sign. When the thunder clapped a few seconds later, she yanked herself to the side, hoping to twist her arm free and run. She twisted, she took two steps, she got the phone free of her pocket, and then he tackled her.
“You bitch,” he growled, rain or spittle landing on the side of her face. “You bitch.” When he kneed her in the ribs, she let the phone drop, tossing her arm as she opened her fingers. But that was something. At least he couldn’t take it from her. At least someone would find it, and they’d know she fought. Know she’d been grabbed and hadn’t just run away from her high-risk life out here on the edge of society. He kneed her again, forcing the air from her in a jolt of pain.
Zoey would take care of Everett, wouldn’t she? Zoey would take her boy and love him, because she loved everyone. Grief twisted through her, wanting to scream.
Mendelson climbed off, then yanked Lily to her feet by her hair. She scrambled up, trying to ease the searing fire across her scalp.
“You’ve got one more chance to show me, you whore. You’re not going to like your next punishment, I promise.”
Lily nodded and pointed her body in the right direction, hating the tight hold of his hands on both her arms as she walked him through the vehicles. Hating the sharp ache in her ribs and her shoulders. Afraid to imagine how much more pain was coming. She couldn’t think about that. She had to stay blank and focused on keeping him far from her son.
“This is it,” she finally gasped, slowing in front of the RV’s door. “Right there.”
He reached for the handle and pulled it open, then shoved her inside, banging her knees hard against the metal edge of the step. She scrambled in and cowered against the kitchenette.
Mendelson walked up the two steps, seeming to grow impossibly tall above Lily in the small space. A giant. A demon who’d lost his angel. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“You did know. You knew exactly what you were doing.”
He pulled the door shut behind him and withdrew a flashlight, then stepped toward the little bed that made up most of the room. When he reached out to reverently touch the bare mattress, Lily’s face crumpled because this man wasn’t in his right mind. Not at all. No wonder Amber had been so scared. His eyes looked too big, too wild, taking in everything and nothing. In the dimness of the RV, his irises looked black and bottomless.
“Where’s my girl?” he asked quietly, calmly, then in the next breath he let loose a terrifying roar. “Where’s my girl?”