Tomas had enough equipment in this house to restrain and torture the woman for months.
“Okay, so next steps…” Cole exhaled into the phone. “I don’t condone the kidnapping of innocent—”
“She trespassed on my property, willingly walked into my house, and she’s far from innocent.”
“She’s guilty of invading your privacy. She hasn’t killed anyone.”
“That we know of. She has a cheating ex-husband.” He updated Cole on everything she’d said when she walked in. “I don’t know why she disclosed the details of the affair.”
“I’ll find out. Just stay put and keep her restrained.”
“Where are you?”
“Almost there.”
“What the fuck? No, turn back. You don’t need to be here.” Goddammit, he should’ve known Cole would show up. “I don’t need a babysitter or anyone to clean up my mess. I just need information, and you can dig that up at the headquarters.”
“I’ve been working with Luke and Tate for the past week trying to do just that. We scoured the IP addresses of all the activity on the email account. There’s no forwarded mail. No suspicious logins. She knows how to erase her tracks.”
“She’s in law enforcement.”
“Her email implied that, but it’s not confirmed. I’ll stop in El Paso to do some digging before heading your way. Might take me a few days. In the meantime—”
“I’ll call you when she starts spilling secrets.” Tomas hung up, seething with frustration.
He couldn’t stop Cole from coming to the house. But it didn’t matter. His plan to break down Rylee piece by piece would begin out there. He turned toward the open door, sweating in the heat that blasted in from outside.
Four hours until sunset.
He spent the next few minutes unloading her truck. On his way back inside, he tore off his sweat-drenched shirt and checked her breathing.
The cuff on her wrist attached to a chain that restrained her to a post. But she wouldn’t be waking any time soon.
He sat back on his heels and let himself fully look at her for the first time.
Long brown hair framed a pixie face. A tiny turned-up nose, cupid lips, and symmetrical features rounded out her delicate bone structure. Flawless porcelain skin and a toned physique gave her the appearance of a woman in her twenties. But she married twenty-three years ago? If that were true, Tomas would’ve been four at the time.
That would put her in her forties now. Hard to believe.
Maybe she had laugh lines when she smiled or crow’s feet when she squinted. But with the muscles relaxed in her face, there were no wrinkles or sunspots. No indication that she was older than him.
Her tits sat high. Her waist tucked in, and her jeans molded to slender hips and legs, leaving little to the imagination. The woman was built. Easily fuckable. Insanely gorgeous.
That only made him hate her more.
Shifting away, he turned his attention to the denim jacket that lay near the door. He remembered it well—the soft texture beneath his hands, the scent of vanilla on the collar, and the small front pocket, where he watched Caroline slip the scrap of paper he’d given her the day she died.
If he hadn’t written down the account information, he wouldn’t be in this mess. Hell, he should’ve never written down any of his secrets.
Not just his secrets. He’d spewed an unedited, unfiltered stream of consciousness in those emails. He’d detailed his fears, his regrets, every internal battle, every ridiculous notion in his head, every terrible thing that happened to him, and his desires… Fucking hell, she knew his darkest cravings, his filthy fantasies, his obsession with fucking and dominating and his inability to emotionally connect to sex.
He’d confessed every shameful thought to his girl. Because she was dead. He never imagined anyone reading it. Why would they want to?
What a dumb fucking asshole.
Except the writing had helped him. It had given him a sense of control over a life that had spiraled wildly and dangerously into chaos.
He lifted the jacket to his nose and inhaled deeply. Caroline’s vanilla scent was long gone. In its place lingered the aroma of an unfamiliar woman. Undertones of lavender drowned in years of deceit.
He hated her with a blinding passion.
Fury burned anew as he stored the jacket safely in his old bedroom.
Then he loaded the woman into the truck and drove her into the desert.
Rylee woke with a hangover.
In the middle of the godforsaken desert.
The sun’s unblinking eye glared down at her, scorching her from the inside out. Nausea, headache, crushing heat… She rolled to her stomach and retched precious fluid, groaning miserably.
Fresh pain seeped into her palms, where she’d planted them on the ground.
“Ow, ow, fuck!” She pushed to her knees and shook out her blazing hands.
The sand was the sky’s co-conspirator, cooking her as viciously as the sun. And there were miles of it in every direction.
He hadn’t just dumped her in this desolate wasteland alone.
He’d shackled her.
A thick leather cuff clamped around her wrist, secured with a tiny padlock. The ring connected to a chain that snaked through the sand and circled the base of an old telephone pole.
From one horizon to the other, that pole was the only sign of human civilization.
Deep cracks forked through the parched earth beneath her, burnt into a hard crust, no more hospitable than a sunbaked rock. If Tommy had driven her here in her truck, the tires had made no impression on the ground.
She felt sick. Aside from her churning stomach, dusty throat, pounding headache, achy muscles, and feverish flu-like symptoms, she was frying in this heat, and that worried her more than anything.
How far would he take this?
She remembered dying. Suffocating beneath his hand. Had he killed her and revived her?
Would he kill her again?
Consumed with panic, she stumbled to her feet and jerked uselessly on the chain. The desert stretched out around her, tufted with shrubs and punctuated with small boulders and tall columns of cacti.
Black vultures circled overhead, eying her like carrion. Reptiles sought shelter in the shadows of the rocks where the sand wouldn’t roast them. There was no shade close enough nor large enough to protect her. No water. No breeze. Not a cloud in the sky to filter the harsh rays.
Each searing breath sank into her lungs, drowning her chest in lava.
“You fucking prick! Where are you?” Her scream echoed across the barren terrain. “This isn’t how an adult faces his problems. You’re a goddamn coward!”
She didn’t believe that. A coward would’ve left her for dead. While he seemed to be doing precisely that, he wouldn’t have gone through this trouble after asphyxiating her. What was his plan?
The rule of threes.
She cast her mind back to their ominous conversation, recalling the first and only words he’d spoken to her.
Three seconds to make a life-or-death decision.
Three minutes without air.
Three hours in extreme heat.
Three days without water.
Three weeks without food.
Three months without hope.
Dread swelled, as thick and hot as the air.
He’d already enacted the first two. And now…