My Tye (9 page)

“He was here, wasn’t he?”

“Someone was,” Tye answered coolly.

A chill ran over Laine’s entire body. “What did you see?”

He rubbed the back of his neck and looked away, not saying a damn thing. It had to be bad if he couldn’t put to words whatever it was he saw inside. Her imagination ran the gamut, from him being upset over nothing more than a few overturned chairs all the way to him witnessing a scene of bloody violence. Despite that, or maybe because of it, she was torn between charging for the door behind him to see for herself and crouching on the floorboards of the truck to hide away. After all she’d been through in the last fifteen hours, the latter idea carried a bit more appeal. Besides, she needed to save her bravery for when she told Tye the truth. Lord knew she’d need a ton of courage then.

“Sir!” Deputy Tom Wyland shouted as he and Chuck Sayers jogged up the driveway toward them. Tom stopped in front of Tye, nodded, then peered over to where she sat in the truck. He cocked his head a little, like he was surprised to see her here. “Ma’am.”

“What have we got?” Sayers asked, coming up beside the two other men. He eyed her in much the same way Tom had.

Under the scrutiny of the two men, Laine rubbed her arms in an attempt to make her goose bumps go away. It didn’t work, and the up and down motion only jostled her head and made it hurt that much more.

“Break-in. I’ve already called for Steve to head back over to gather evidence. He should be here within the hour. In the meantime, I need the two of you to search the remainder of the house. I’m fairly certain our perp is gone, but I don’t want to make any assumptions.”

A call broke in from the radios the two deputies wore on their shoulders. “Sullivan here. ETA, three minutes.”

“Good,” Tye said, opening his truck door. Laine slid over just enough to make room for him. “Sully can aid in the search. Call me on my cell the second you’re finished.”

The two men glanced at each other before coming back to Tye. Their questioning expressions left her feeling more than a little uncomfortable.

“I’m getting her the hell out of here,” he explained. “You’ll understand once you see what’s inside.”

Laine didn’t like the sound of that, not at all. The chill she couldn’t shake was now joined by a fresh bout of queasiness. “Tye?”

He didn’t answer her, and she had a feeling she knew why. Men like Tye Carter didn’t like to be kept in the dark.

“Please, Tye. What did you see in there?”

Tye continued to ignore her as he slammed the truck door closed, started the truck and began backing out. When he finally spoke, his tone of voice had her trembling for an entirely different reason.

“There’s more to your story, Laine. If I’m going to help, I need to know it all.”

He looked toward her then, like he was waiting for her to blurt everything out.

“I know.” Not that knowing she had to went very far in her wanting to.

She sat so close to him that the heat radiating off his body seeped into her skin. But his warmth wasn’t enough. She was still shaking, and her head and eye joined in the fray by pounding in time with every beat of her heart.

She was exhausted. Exhausted and terrified and in a hell of a lot of pain. A horrible combination if there ever was one.

“When we get to the ranch,” was all he said. He let out an irritated sigh and turned his attention back to the road.

Perfect. She had twenty minutes max to figure out how to tell him what happened. And where.

On the seat next to her, she found one of Tye’s sweatshirts. She pulled it up and covered her arms, twisting the fabric in her hands underneath and lifting it to her face. She inhaled deeply and was met by a scent she intrinsically knew to be his. Sure, she’d caught drifts of his cologne before, in passing, but this came across as more. This was sweat mixed with his Armani mixed with something she couldn’t quite put a name to. It was a heady aroma that shouted pure man, and she loved it breathing it in.

She let her eyes drift closed to try to ease her aches, but her subconscious had other ideas. More images from last night bombarded her thoughts, one grisly scene after the other. Dressed all in black, her attacker wore a ski cap and had a scarf wrapped around his nose and mouth to conceal his identity. He was big, strong, and carried an odor about him, too. Unlike Tye’s strong and manly scent, this one had attacked her nose with an acrid, repugnant stench. The first time he backhanded her, she got a clear and strong whiff of it.

The punches landed hard, and with each and every one she tried to fight back—to kick, hit, claw at anything and everything she possibly could. Nothing worked. Her wrists and elbows were bound. Her ankles too. And with every move, the rope around her neck, the one holding her upright against the van wall, tightened like the choke collar restraining some out-of-control pit bull.

When shouting around the gag didn’t work, she took to screaming, which only incited the creep further. She screamed until she thought her throat would bleed, praying for someone to hear, for someone to find her.

But they didn’t. He kept coming at her and coming at her…

A hand grabbed her knee. Her entire body flinched. Despite the daggers in her throat, she screamed again, covering her face with her arms and drawing her knees up against her chest. She kicked out, fighting tooth and nail. No way would she let him get the better of her. No way, no how.

“Whoa, whoa! Hold up there. Laine…”

No. No, he wasn’t going to win this time.

“Laine! Jesus, not again.” Another hand held on to her arm. “It’s me. It’s Tye.”

As the words hit her ears, she opened her eyes to look at him, to make sure it was really him and not… Still, it took a second for what he was saying to sink in.

“Come on back. You’re okay. We’re here. We’re at the ranch.”

Shaky and breathing hard, she sat up further and looked out the windshield. “I… God, I must’ve dozed off.”

He shifted toward her, squeezing her knee gently and settling his arm across the back of the seat as he did. “You drifted off right after we left your house. I figured a little sleep would be good for you.”

“Yeah, well,” she said, leaning back against the seat and sucking in a deep breath. “I’m not so sure about that.”

“Nightmares.”

“Yeah.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “Nightmares are the last thing I need right now.”

“Talking about it helps.”

She opened her eyes and glanced over at him.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go inside.”

She was glad he didn’t push, but she really didn’t know how much longer he’d be patient with her. Even though he had the temperament of a saint, she recognized the controlled dominance he kept hidden just beneath the surface. But now, with him constantly helping her the way he was, all she felt capable of being to him was an invalid. And the fact that didn’t really bother her spoke to how much pain she was in and to how scared she really was. Whatever he saw inside her house, whatever that lunatic had done in there…

Her stomach heaved as they reached the first step of the wraparound porch. “Oh God,” she said, clutching her abdomen and bending forward slightly. She breathed slowly and steadily through her nose, calming herself enough to hold back her inevitable wretch. “I need to sit, or lie down. Something.”

“I’ve got you.”

He lifted her in his arms, effortlessly almost, and carried her over to a grouping of white wicker porch furniture. As he placed her in the closest chair, she smiled a little, despite the grave situation and the shitty way she felt. “I never took you for a wicker kind of guy.”

He stood back and folded his arms, which gave her a good glimpse of his rock-hard biceps. “I’m just one big surprise after another.”

She didn’t doubt it. She also didn’t trust herself to comment any further. Instead, she gazed out beyond the porch, to the dusty driveway, the small horse stable and paddock, and the good-sized pond right behind it. Past that was a pasture full of bluegrass, which gave way to a long line of evergreens at the edge of the property. The entire setting felt serene, classic, and it fit Tye to a tee.

“It’s so quiet out here,” she finally said.

He rested his hip against the porch railing. “For the most part. I guess that’s why I like living out here so much,” he said, following her gaze.

She just nodded and leaned back in her chair. The two of them stayed that way, gazing out at the landscape, avoiding pretty much everything that had transpired in the last few hours. They remained quiet, still, for a long while. Too still, for too long. It was too…weird. After a few deep breaths she decided—more like prayed—that now was as good a time as any to let it all out. She splayed her hands out over her thighs, turning the light blue of the scrubs to a darker shade as the fabric soaked up the sweat gathering over her palms.

“He…” She cleared her throat, drew in another deep breath and started over. “I already told you that he grabbed me from behind. That I never even saw him coming.”

With that, Tye uncrossed his arms and shoved his hands in his jeans pockets. He didn’t utter a single word. He just stood there, quietly waiting for her to go on.

Actually saying the words out loud made her reconsider the decision that now was the best time to tell him what she remembered. She was afraid to look at him, afraid of what she might see reflected back. But the flip side of her brain—the rational side that knew best—took over for her. She had to tell him, she had to get it all out in the open. Maybe, she thought, her need to do that was because she sucked at playing waiting games. The anxiety from doing so was oftentimes worse than going ahead and laying whatever it was you didn’t want to deal with out on the table in the first place. Like throwing your troubles out into the universe in one big chunk, hoping they might shatter somewhere up in the atmosphere and rain down on you in a spectacular display of easier to deal with pieces.

“He covered my mouth and nose,” she went on softly, “and then dragged me down the street to his van.”

“Do you remember anything else about the van? Did it have any windows? Either on the sides or in the back?”

She didn’t hesitate with her answer. There hadn’t been any windows, or light, or even a remote chance that someone might see or hear her. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “It was a panel van. Like a carpenter or handyman might drive.” She remembered thinking she was going to die there. “It was like a dungeon on wheels,” she whispered.

He didn’t take anything out to write down what she was saying. Instead, he remained motionless, listening to her every word with a cool yet compassionate intensity. She felt his concentration, felt his focus, through every inch of her body.

“Go on,” he encouraged.

“Don’t you want to know where I was?” she said instead. That he didn’t ask, that he wasn’t wondering where she’d been—well, it was odd.

“We’ll get to that. For now, I’d rather know what happened next.”

She didn’t take too much time to analyze his response, which was probably for the best. After another bolstering breath, she looked out to the pasture and continued on. “He… He smashed me against the door and told me that if I made a sound, if I tried to scream, that it would only make what he had to do to me that much worse.”

“He was still behind you?”

She nodded. “He was tall, at least half a foot taller than me, so he spoke more over the top of my head than in my ear. But his smell…” She stopped, swallowed. Shivered. “His smell was everywhere. God, I’ll never forget it.”

Tye shifted his rear on the railing, and when she took a chance and glanced at his face, she almost wished she hadn’t. The control he was so famous for had vanished. In its place was a ferocity, a barely restrained loathing that unexpectedly mirrored hers. She’d never seen him like this, so riled, so…
disturbed
. It was like he was inside her head, experiencing for himself everything she hadn’t dared let out just yet. He held his jaw tight, so fricking tight, and flexed his forearms over and over, as if he were clenching and unclenching his hands inside his pockets.

“He opened the slider with me still pinned against it,” she continued, “then shoved me in. My cheek…” she said, laying her fingertips over the skin there. “My cheek burned so bad where the metal had stretched and pulled my skin. I figured for a second that he was just going to leave me back there, but then he…” She looked away. “He followed in after me.”

“Jesus,” he muttered.

“Yeah,” was all she could say. “That was when he hit me the first time.”

He let out a weird combination of a growl mixed with a cough, and when she looked back at him, he’d closed his eyes.

“I’m pretty sure he knocked me out not long after that. The next thing I remember was him in the driver’s seat and me being tossed around in the back.”

“For how long?”

She lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know. Not very long after I woke up. I remember there were streetlights shining through the windshield, one after the other passing by, then darkness for a while after that. When I tried to lift up enough to see where we were going, he spotted me in the rearview mirror and pulled over.”