Descended (The Red Blindfold Book 3) (3 page)

Stunned into silence, I
stared at him. How had a man like this come into my life? Knife-sharp
jaw, etched cheekbones – he was almost too good-looking to believe.
After the wackos I’d run into over the last seventy-two hours, it
was like being rescued by a god.

If only he didn’t
want to dump me at the nearest police station. If only I could tell
him what he wanted to hear.

I looked down at my
lap. “All of that stuff you just said? I’m sorry. I – I can’t
do it.”

“You have to give me
something,” he insisted. “At least explain why you don’t like
the police.”

Well, that I could do.

Not that I wanted to.
But if I didn’t explain fast, he was going to take matters – and
me – into his own hands.

“You really want to
know?” I asked.

Oh, that cocky grin.
“I’m on the edge of my seat, Blue Eyes.”

I sighed. “Two days
ago, I was walking through a small town, maybe thirty miles from
here. An unmarked squad car pulled up and an officer got out. He
asked me if I was okay. Something about him made me nervous.”

“Why?”

“He was alone. He
looked like he was off-duty. I think…he’d been drinking.”

Drex’s gaze was so
intense, I felt it like a shimmer of heat on my face.

I swallowed and forced
myself to continue. “He pushed me into the back seat and tried to
get on top of me. I fought but he held me down. Somehow I got an arm
out and elbowed him in the throat. That’s how I got away.”

“Jesus,” he said.
“Is that what happened to your clothes?”

I shook my head. “No,
that was…another time. The next day, at a motel.” It was all I
could do not to wince. “I’d rather not talk about it, if that’s
all right.”

I turned my head toward
the passenger window. I’d cried only one tear since this whole
nightmare started, and I wouldn’t cry more than that. No matter how
much I wanted to.

After a minute, I felt
Drex’s hand on my shoulder.

I let my eyes close.
Crazy as everything was right now, I couldn’t help but respond to a
gentle touch. His warmth seemed to slither through my chest and into
my belly, sparking a flame in my core. My nipples stood up, hard as
diamonds against my shirt. And I was wet, with only a thin piece of
silk between me and the hot truck seat. The pleasure of it was so
strong and so new, I almost moaned out loud.

I must have felt it
before. I was a grown woman, and if the ring on my left hand was any
indication, I might be a married one, too.

“How did this all
start?” he asked.

I took a long breath
and forced myself to look at him. “I couldn’t tell you.”

“Okay,” he said
evenly. “What
can
you
tell me?”

I could tell him quite
a lot, actually, though none of it made any sense. “I woke up on a
park bench in a town I’ve never seen before,” I said. “No
money, no phone, just the clothes I had on. That’s all I know.”

For the first time
since he’d sweet-talked me out of a tight spot with the bikers,
Drex was speechless.

“That was three days
ago,” I said.

“Three
days?
Okay…uh, what did you do after you woke up?”

The memory had blurred
into a hazy dream of dust, hot sun, and empty roads. “I started
walking. It was the only thing I could of.” I took a deep breath
and told him what I hated to admit even to myself. “Walk and try to
figure out who I am.”

His brow creased. “What
do you mean, who you are?”

“When I woke up, I
couldn’t remember anything. Who I was or how I got there.”

The look in his eyes
chilled me. “Holy Christ,” he said, shaking his head slowly.

“Yeah,” I said. “I
know.”

At first, I hadn’t
known anything was wrong. But then everybody I met started asking the
same questions. What’s your name? Where are you going? Don’t you
remember?

Remember.
I heard that word a hundred times, but hard as I tried I couldn’t
seem to do it.

For all I knew, my life
had always been this way. I’d been wandering from place to place by
myself, forever.

“You’re telling the
truth?” Drex asked.

“Yes. I wish I
weren’t.”

My cheeks burned as he
raked my face and body with his eyes. Even walking around in public
half-naked, I hadn’t felt as exposed as I did right now.

“There must be some
clue,” he said. “Something about you that will tell us who you
are.”

“There isn’t.”

I’d already examined
myself obsessively, inspecting every inch of skin in the fluorescent
bathrooms of bus stations and cheap motels. I’d hoped for a tattoo,
a scar, anything that could point me toward my past, but all I had
was my ring, a t-shirt, and a pair of tight, cutoff shorts. Before
I’d had to leave the shorts behind and run for my life at night
across a busy highway.

“What about your
ring?” he asked. “Is there an inscription?”

“No.”

“Is it a wedding
ring?”

I looked at the
scratched-up piece of silvery metal and wished it could speak. “I
have no idea.”

“I don’t hear an
accent when you talk,” he said. “Even if I did, I’m not sure
what that would tell me.”

He rubbed a hand over
his forehead. In the last half hour, that strong hand had grabbed me,
dragged me, and hurled me into a truck. Who knew what it could do if
I really pissed him off?

“How did you get to
Chimayo?” he asked.

“I found twenty
dollars in my pocket. It was damp but I was able to buy a bus ticket
with it. I rode to the end of the line, hoping to see something
familiar. But nothing meant anything to me.”

He let out a hard sigh.
“You should go to a hospital. Maybe you were injured. They might be
able to help.”

“I went to an
emergency room yesterday.”

His eyes brightened.
“And?”

“And, I’ve got a
little bump on my head and I can’t remember anything. Nothing’s
wrong with me as far as they can tell.”

“And what, they just
let you go?”

“They couldn’t hold
me against my will. My tests were normal. That’s it.”

He arched his eyebrows
at me. “No, that’s
not
it. Somebody’s looking for you, sweetheart. Women like you don’t
just walk off without anybody knowing.”

I frowned. “Women
like me?”

He rolled his eyes.
“Beautiful, okay? Relax.”

Beautiful? Had he taken
a hard look at me? Or was this a ploy to keep me talking? Hard as I
tried not to, I felt a hot rush of pleasure that he’d said it, no
matter what the reason.

“If somebody’s
looking for me, I’d be on the news,” I said.

“How do you know
you’re not?”

“Because I know. Look
it up. I’ll wait.”

He pulled out his
phone, typed something, and scrolled down. “Missing woman, Texas,”
he muttered. “Blue eyes.” After five minutes of looking, he
hadn’t found any results that matched my description.

“That was just a
quick search,” he said, pocketing his phone. “It doesn’t mean a
thing.”

“Sure, it does,” I
said. “I’ve watched every TV and read every newspaper I could
find, and no one’s mentioned me. I asked at the hospital, too.”

“The police’ll have
a missing person’s report. I promise you that.”

I clutched a hand to my
chest. “Don’t make me walk into a police station like this.
Please. After these last few days – I can’t. I’ll go tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” He
shook his head like I just wasn’t getting it. “Don’t you want
your family to find you?”

“If I had a family,
wouldn’t I know by now?”

“Everybody has a
family.”

“Really? Why didn’t
they go to the press? You know what it’s like when somebody
disappears. It’s all over the news.”

“They might not
realize you’re gone yet. It’s only been three days.”

“Only? Three days is
a long time. Believe me, I know.”

I could hardly breathe
when he stared at me like that, as if he were dismantling me with his
eyes. “A bump on the head means you were hurt,” he said, his
patience clearly running low. “Something happened. You need to find
out what the hell it was.”

I was way ahead of him,
finally. “I’ve already seen a doctor. In fact, I saw three at the
same hospital. All I need is a good night’s sleep.”

He leveled a look at
me. “A woman with amnesia needs a lot more than a good night’s
sleep.”

Suddenly exhausted from
talking, I marshaled my last shred of humility. “I’m begging you,
and I don’t like to beg. If you could lend me a hundred dollars for
a motel room…” I felt queasy asking. In my former life, I
probably didn’t hit up gorgeous strangers for handouts very often.

He snorted. “No way.”

“Why not? I promise
I’ll pay you back.” Everything about him said money, power,
privilege. He couldn’t spare a few bucks?

He responded with a
harsh huff. “You’re not staying in a motel, not after what you
pulled at that bar,” he said, waving a hand. “If you won’t go
to the police, you’re coming with me.”

His tone was
commanding, as if he were used to giving orders and having them
followed.

“What do you mean,
coming with you? Where am I going?”

“Does it matter? It’s
better than wherever you spent last night, I guarantee you that.”

Considering I’d slept
three fitful hours on a bunch of quilting scraps behind a fabric
store, I couldn’t argue. “I can’t pay you for anything.”

“I gathered that,”
he said, pulling back into traffic. He accelerated hard, pinning me
to the seat. Like it or not I was going with him, wherever he wanted
to go.

“I’ll make it up to
you,” I said. “I mean it.”

“Oh, don’t worry,
you’ll earn your keep,” he said without a hint of humor. “I’ve
been living the last two days without a housekeeper and I’m pretty
damn tired of it.”

For the rest of the
drive, Drex stayed silent.

I didn’t know where
we were going and almost didn’t care. At least I wasn’t on foot
anymore. I wasn’t walking down the street in my underwear. And I
wasn’t alone.

But every time I snuck
a look at the side of his face, I wished I were.

I had to stay sharp. I
couldn’t get distracted and lose the one thing that had kept me
going. My determination.

I didn’t like how I
reacted to him. The second he glanced my way, everything inside me
started to get stupid, and I couldn’t afford stupid. Not until I’d
figured out what was happening to me, and why.

To keep from looking at
him, I pinned my eyes to the scenery outside my window. It wasn’t
much to look at – run-down buildings and houses with barred windows
and dirt front yards. We left the city behind, then the suburbs, and
roared down an unpaved road with nothing around but cacti and a
sagging barbed-wire fence.

If he wanted to kill me and leave my
body in a ditch, this was the perfect setting for it.

Twilight fell, and the
sky turned dark purple. After a few miles of bouncing over rocks and
ruts, I spotted lights in the distance. As we got closer, I saw a
modern, single-story stucco house surrounded by lush gardens and tall
cottonwood trees.

“What is this place?”
I asked.

“I’m staying here
for the time being,” Drex said, pulling down a driveway lined with
short, thick palm trees. “It’s more private than a hotel in
town.”

I felt a stab of
anxiety. “It’s pretty isolated.”

“Yeah, well, isolated
is as close as you get to a vacation house around here.”

He parked and got out.
His boots crunched gravel as he walked around the truck. Out here,
anything could happen and I’d have no defense. I was completely
dependent on a stranger, and I didn’t like it a bit.

“Come on,” he said,
opening my door. “We’re the only ones here.”

“That’s the
problem,” I muttered.

Though the sun had just
slipped below the horizon, the crickets were already singing. There
wasn’t another sound. Cursing myself for getting in Drex’s truck
in the first place, I got out and followed him up a stone path. The
ground was covered by succulent plants bursting with pink and white
blooms.

“Things grow out
here?” I asked to break the awkward silence.

He shrugged. “Throw
enough water at them, they do.”

As soon as we reached
the front door, a broad, mottled face appeared at the window to the
right. A mangy, wild, barking dog. Half-Pitbull, half-demon.

“That’s Diesel,”
Drex said. “I’d say her bark is worse than her bite, but I don’t
know yet.”

“How can you not
know?” I asked, stepping behind him on instinct.

“She was stray until
a couple of days ago. We’re still getting to know each other. Good
news is, she hasn’t taken a chunk out of me yet.”

He opened the door,
nudged the dog back inside with his knee, and turned off the alarm.
“Come on, girl,” he said, taking her by the collar. “Let’s
get you fed. Then you can go rip the yard apart for a while.”

Stepping inside behind
him, I felt the cool draft of an air-conditioned oasis. In front of
me was a floor-to-ceiling wall of glass overlooking an infinity pool,
a long stretch of moonlit desert, and the lights of the distant city.
I gasped from surprise. It was the first truly beautiful sight I
could remember. Considering where I’d started this morning, I could
hardly believe it was real.

“Make yourself at
home,” Drex said, shutting the door and switching on recessed
lights. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Okay. Thanks.” At
home? What did those words mean in a home like this?

While he hauled the dog
down a hallway, I stood looking around, amazed at my luck. Not only
was I off the streets, but I was here, in what felt like a palace.

The room was vast and
open, with a river rock fireplace at each end and rough-hewn wood
beams overhead. The rugs were dark red, the sofas copper-brown
leather with gold rivets. The walls had been painted with traditional
Mayan-style murals of kings on horseback and elaborate stone temples.
I bent over to run my fingers across the travertine floor. It was
cool and glossy, amazingly smooth.