The Asset (15 page)

Chapter Ten

Mario’s bustled Friday evening, buzzing like a frantic hive, jammed with people from wall to wall, loud with conversation and laughter. Jimmy Martin kept the dance floor crowded, belting out his folksy version of “Some Nights.” An accident had closed the interstate, kept the gas crews in town and brought in the employees seeking to escape the resort’s expensive bubble.

I was busy. The night promised aching feet but good tips. The money would be good. Maybe I could help pay for the cottage’s internet after all. My heart tripped when Charlie Nowak showed up with some of his friends. He’d been staying away lately. I took their order and served them a few pitchers of beer without suffering for it. Maybe he’d gotten the message and learned a good lesson.

As always, I kept my eyes on the door and my senses on alert. Jordan came in, a little later than usual. He smiled at me as he walked toward the bar. I poured for him and plunked down the mug in front of him.

“Thanks.” He took a sip of his beer. “Listen, I just wanted to tell you—he’s not so bad.”

“Who?” I said.

“Ash,” Jordan said. “I might have been a little tough on him. The guy’s got his shortcomings, but he’s not an ungrateful fool. And since I’ve gotten to know him, I like him.”

“You’ve gotten to know him?” Really? “When?”

“He stopped by my office a few weeks ago to pay his bill,” Jordan said. “I’d never had a human for a patient before. I charged him as if he was his dog. He got a kick out of that. We’ve had a few beers since. I’ve gone out to the ranch a couple of times to help with the cleanup. He’s a good one, Lia.”

A few beers
? Ash and Jordan had struck a friendship without my knowledge. Why did the association feel subversive? And why on earth was Jordan telling me that Ash was ‘a good one?’

Jordan’s jaw tightened. “You could’ve given me a chance.”

“Huh?” I was really having trouble following.

“You could’ve at least considered me,” Jordan said. “You know, pre-Ash?”

“Pre-Ash?”

Jordan just stared at me.

“Oh, no.” My stomach squeezed with fear. I would’ve never considered endangering Jordan like that, just as I couldn’t endanger Ash now. “I couldn’t... I can’t...” Panic. I swallowed around the lump in my throat. I had to dispel the dangerous notion on the spot. “You think that Ash and I...?” My snort sounded as fake as it was. “No way. You’ve gotten the wrong impression.”

Jordan’s mouth twisted into a smirk. “Ash said that’s exactly what you would say. He said you’d deny everything. You really are a lot like his great-grandfather’s mare.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s a good story.” Jordan’s smirk shifted into a genuine smile. “Hasn’t he told it to you?”

“Nope.”

“One day, Ash’s great-grandfather found this wild mare grazing in his pastures,” Jordan said. “She was a beauty, but she wouldn’t let him come close, biting and kicking whenever he tried to approach her, except when he brought her apples.”

“Apples?”

“She liked apples,” Jordan said. “So for three years, Ash’s great-grandfather brought the skittish mare apples every afternoon, until one day, after all that time, the mare followed him to the stables and took up residence.”

A skittish mare? I gritted my teeth. The gall of that man.

“Hey, Jordan,” the sheriff called from his perch at the VIP table. “Come settle a bet. What’s the difference between an ass and a mule?”

“I’m coming.” Jordan chugged down his beer then smirked at me. “All this time, I thought you just weren’t interested in me. Now I know better. You’re oblivious, not to mention skittish as hell. But I suppose that’s Ash’s problem now. Got to go.” Jordan offered his hand. “Are we cool?”

We shook. “We’re cool.”

Jordan went to set aright the nuances of the equine world. My mind was going in circles and my belly churned. How was I going to keep Ash safe when he went around telling people we were together?

I couldn’t think of a thing, probably because I’d grown so comfortable with Ash’s presence in my life. Sure, he drove out to the ranch every day, where he and the guys worked to clear the fire’s debris, but he always returned to take a late lunch with me by the lake before he went to rehab. My car was off-limits, so he insisted on driving me to work and picking me up every night. Dinner was a late-night meal—Ash’s best efforts to meld my limited palate with his lofty nutritional expectations.

It was the best life I’d ever lived and it seemed to work well for Ash, who was getting better by leaps and bounds. My only regret was that it had to end and soon. The problem wasn’t Ash, who kept his word at every turn. The problem was me.

I woke up at night in his arms, yearning for more of him, longing for his affection and haunted by desires I hadn’t known I had until I landed in his bed. I craved his mouth like an addict, but as promised, he behaved like a gentleman, especially in bed, where every night, I wished he made an exception. His body called to mine. Or was it my body screaming for his?

A poke from Mario startled me.

“You look like you’re about to combust with worry,” he said. “Need a break?”

“Do I ever.” I made for the back door, fanning my face.

As soon as I stepped out, I breathed in great quantities of crisp air, but even the brisk Colorado breeze failed to cool down my anxiety. I paced back and forth in the alley, feeling restless, nervous and irritable, not unlike...a skittish mare.

Shoot.

A screech interrupted my thoughts. I recognized the sound immediately. Animal screams. They came from the huge dumpster parked under a flickering security light at the far end of the building. I looked up and down the blind alley. Nobody was about.

I dragged a crate over to the industrial-size garbage bin and climbed on it. The metal lid weighed a ton, but I managed to lift one of the halves. No critters shot out, so I peered inside. The light was tenuous at best, but what I saw broke my heart: a raccoon entangled in a mess of ropes struggling in the corner. One of the ropes was coiled tightly around its neck.

“You’re in a heap of trouble.”

I had no idea how the raccoon had gotten there, but it was obvious that the small bandit, probably a juvenile, was in distress. If he managed to survive the night, the garbage truck’s compactor would surely kill him in the morning.

“All right, buddy.” I straddled one leg over the edge of the dumpster and then the other. “I’m coming.” Hanging over the edge, I couldn’t reach the bottom. I let go, dropped down and landed on my feet. God almighty, this was a big-ass dumpster. It didn’t smell great either. Thank heavens that the weather was cool. The stench would have been unbearable in the summer. I stepped over only a few scattered trash bags and made my way to the corner. The frightened animal growled at me.

“I know,” I said. “You’re really scared. I’m going to try to help you, but can you please try not to bite me?”

I crouched out of striking distance. I pulled on the ropes, but the noose actually tightened around the raccoon’s neck. Perhaps if I pulled from the other side...

“Who do we have here?” A voice from above startled me.

I looked up. Charlie Nowak smirked down on me from his perch on the crate.

“Why, if it isn’t Lia,” he said. “What a surprise. It never occurred to me that you’d go out of your way to rescue a pest. No sir, never crossed my mind.”

My stare shifted between Charlie and the raccoon. The animal hadn’t gotten into the garbage bin all by itself. It had been trapped and transported here for one purpose only: revenge.

I rose to my feet slowly, keeping my eyes on the man looming above me.

“Charlie,” I said. “I don’t want any more trouble with you.”

“Then you shouldn’t have kneed me in the balls,” he said. “You should have skipped the pepper spray and accepted my invitation.”

“You were drunk. Go back to the bar and forget about it.”

“No fucking way,” he said. “You’re gonna pay your dues. My friends saw what happened. Beat by a fucking woman...”

Oh, my God. He was serious.

He pulled down on the lid. With a running start, I leaped, trying to keep it from closing, but my effort was for naught. It crashed down with a ground-rattling
boom
. Darkness and terror slammed on me at the same time. Confinement was one of my worst fears. The memories. All those hours spent trapped and alone came back to haunt me. My pulse broke out into a gallop. Don’t panic. Keep it together, even if my legs were reduced to rattling sticks.

I forced my voice out of my throat. “This is not funny, Charlie. Let me out.”

“No problem.” Charlie’s voice came muffled but clear. “I’ll come back in a few hours.”

A few hours
? My heart about gave out. I tried jumping to push out the lid, but it didn’t work. The sound of a chain rattling over metal chilled my blood.

“Hear that?” A rattle of keys came from the outside. “These keys are going in my pocket.”

The jackass had come prepared. I wanted to kick myself. Charlie had chosen his bait well, a defenseless animal calling for help, the one lure I couldn’t ignore.

“You need to let me out before I start screaming.” I tried to sound reasonable. “If you let me go now, I won’t press charges against you.”

“Scream all you want,” Charlie said. “I told Mario you went home for the night. Nobody is looking for you.”

The bad news kept coming. Charlie was determined to get his revenge. The darkness compressed all around me. The raccoon whinnied.

“Try not to be afraid,” I murmured.

Memories of Red’s dark cellar began to trickle out, rivulets seeping through the cracks of the dam I’d built in my mind. Oh, Lord. I strained to contain the horrors and yet the memories dribbled out in fickle spurts—bloodied fingers, scraping against thick concrete walls, wails resonating in the darkness, and screams too, my past’s terrifying echoes.

“Hola, querida.”
Red’s voice whispered in my ear.
“My naughty girl is back where she belongs.”

“Go away,” I said aloud. “You’re not here.”

“But I’m here, always here, always with you,”
the silky voice said.
“You can pretend all you want, but you belong to me.”

No. He wasn’t here. I wasn’t his. I broke out into a cold sweat. Once the flashbacks started, they were hard to stop. I needed to get out of the dumpster and fast.
Steady. Breathe. Cope.
I tried not to think about Red or his cellar.

“Charlie,” I called out. “What do you want from me?”

“Payback’s a bitch,” Charlie said.

“Fine,” I said. “You got me. You’re the man, Charlie. Now, please.” My voice cracked. “Let me out of here. Please?”

“I like to hear you beg,” Charlie said. “You wanna get out?”

“Yes.”

“Then say the magic words.”

“Please?”

“Not that,” he said. “Beg me to fuck you, Lia. Tell me you want my cock in your cunt.”

What a sick bastard. “That’s a lie and you know it.”

“It’s what you have to say if you want out.” Charlie snickered. “I’ll make you a deal. You take off your clothes and get down on your knees, naked as God put you on this earth. Then you call out to me, nice and sweet, and beg me to fuck you.”

A bastard like him would want to have the show on record. He’d film the whole thing on his cell so he could show it to his friends. He might even put it on the internet.

“Come on,” Charlie said. “You do that and I’ll let your ass out.”

He was enjoying this. The lust in his voice scared me as much as the darkness and the confinement. But I knew better. No deals with bullies and drunks. I piled a few bags of trash in the corner and tried climbing on top of them. The lid didn’t budge. The bags broke beneath my feet and trash spilled everywhere.

“Showtime.” Charlie taunted me. “Tell me you want me to ride you on all fours, like those animals you like so much.”

Helpless and trapped all over again. The walls closed in. The darkness and the smell conspired to make me sick. For a moment, I didn’t know where I was, stuck in the dumpster behind Mario’s or entombed in Red’s cellar for days at a time.

Don’t freak out. Breathe and cope.
I was about to lose it.

I kicked the walls and banged my fists against the metal wall until my knuckles hurt. “Let. Me. Out!”

“Querida, it’s for your own good.”
Red’s rumbling bass echoed in my head
. “Obedience is a hard lesson to learn. When I come back, you can beg me to forgive you.”

Pepe’s yelps filled the darkness, the sound of unspeakable violence. Red’s fingers slid over my face, smearing something hot and wet on my cheeks.

“You know what that is?”
Red asked.
“It’s Pepe’s blood, Lia. Poor puppy. You killed him with your carelessness. You should’ve never tried to run. Now poor Pepe’s gone and I have to punish you for your behavior.”

I couldn’t breathe anymore. Cope, just try to cope. A sob escaped my lips. My knees failed. I dropped to the floor, folded my legs against my chest and leaned my forehead on my knees. The raccoon’s shrieks chiseled at my brain. I pressed my hands over my ears and dug my nails into my scalp. Pain. I needed the pain to stay sane. It was the only way to remind myself that I wasn’t dead, buried and forgotten. It was my way of surviving the torture all over again.

Charlie pounded on the wall. “Are you naked yet?”

A blow. A grunt. A crash and a quake. Something big, something like a body, bounced off the dumpster.

“You should have never run from me.”
Red spoke in my head.
“Now you’re going to pay.”

A violent boom announced another crash. More grunting and lots of clanging and banging. Dread. A muffled voice called my name.

I made myself small in the corner and kept quiet. Maybe if I didn’t move he wouldn’t find me. Maybe if I didn’t make a peep he’d go away.

The jingle of keys. A rattle of chains. The groan of the lid opening. A sliver of light penetrated the darkness. The shadow of a figure’s outline rose against the night sky.

Oh, please, not him, not Red.

“Lia?” a familiar voice called out gently. “Are you okay?”