“Three hours in extreme heat.” She gripped her lurching stomach and fought back tears. “Three fucking hours of this? Are you kidding me?”
She couldn’t even think about the remaining rules. First, she had to survive the relentless sun.
How long had she been out here?
Pressing a finger against her forearm, she watched the indentation flash from white to pink. Her skin didn’t appear to be burnt. Yet.
She’d arrived at his house with maybe four or five hours left of daylight. Would he leave her out here until dusk? Or all night? Shackled and unprotected?
Predators came out after dark. If she didn’t perish from sun-poisoning, she’d make an easy meal for a coyote or snake.
Tommy had done some stomach-turning shit over the years. He’d killed people. Evil people. But he wasn’t cruel enough to let her die like this.
The sun perched too high in the sky, but maybe it was an illusion. Maybe dusk was only an hour away. She could make it until then. She had no choice.
Sitting with her back to the pole, she lowered her head to her bent knees and adjusted her hair to cover her face, neck, and bare arms. Her jeans and boots should protect the rest of her.
The danger lurked in the unrelenting heat. What was the lethal temperature to the human body? How long could she survive out here?
Tommy seemed to think the limit was three hours. But she wasn’t a hardened, outdoorsy girl. She camped infrequently and always in campgrounds with shade and running water.
God, she needed water. Her throat felt so raw and sandy it hurt to swallow.
She hated him for this. It was unnecessarily cruel and inhumane. But her clinical mind tried to analyze his behavior from an unbiased angle.
He’d witnessed and experienced the worst of human depravity. The torture he’d endured and inflicted on others had desensitized him. She remembered a story about how his team had injected a man with Krokodil, a flesh-eating cocktail that rotted the skin off the bones while he was still alive.
In Tommy’s world, brutality and death were as common as nightfall.
He’d been separated from gentle affection and normalcy for so long he’d lost sight of what normal looked like. He could camouflage himself in society, but he would have to undergo a great deal of therapy and self-help to create a lasting positive change. Especially if he ever wanted to engage in a healthy romantic relationship.
She didn’t judge him for his psychological shortfalls. She had her own litany of issues. But she would never do something so ruthless as chaining a person in the desert, even if her issues were the reason she was in this predicament in the first place.
Time passed in a blistering haze. She held still within the dark curtain of her hair, sweating in the oven of her clothes. With each second, the withered shag of the earth blurred into a weird, dehumanized hue. Neither taupe nor gray nor sandy brown, the land was the color of death, reflecting back at her.
She tried to keep her spirits up, giving herself pep talks and tracking the descent of the sun. But her nemesis barely moved, its everlasting rays blasting down on her, diminishing her morale.
Salty sweat rolled off her brow and stung her eyes, her clothes unbearably hot and sticky. Gritty sand worked its way into her hair and mouth and coated her tongue with stiff fur. She avoided licking her lips, knowing it would only chap them further.
God, she ached for crystal, cold water. The thought tormented her until she became mad with the craving.
Unbidden, she wet her lips and tasted… Strange. She did it again, flooding her mouth with a chemical flavor.
Wiping at the perspiration around her eyes, she held up her hand and stared at a milky residue. Was her facial lotion melting? It should’ve rubbed off hours ago.
She raised an arm to her mouth and licked. Same chemical taste.
Her heart hammered as she ran her hands over her face and neck. She hadn’t noticed it before, but there was definitely a thick layer of cream on her skin.
He’d lathered her with sunscreen.
Oh, Tommy, you miserable, thoughtful, misguided man.
He’d probably done it as an afterthought, telling himself he didn’t want to deal with a blistered body. Misguided reasoning, to be sure.
But she remembered the outpouring of devotion and selflessness in the words of the teenage boy before his abduction. He loved a girl with all his heart. He loved his mother and respected the life she’d given him. Following their unimaginable deaths, he’d remained steadfast, never veering into substance abuse or self-destruction. That kind of inner strength didn’t just go away. It was innate, sewn into the fabric of his being.
It gave her hope.
A gentle breeze stirred up the wispy sand and brushed across her skin like drafts from a fire. There was no escape from the hellacious temperature. It sat heavily on her chest, making every breath an exhausting effort.
Gradually, the heat chased her into a fitful slumber. Each time she woke, she felt disoriented and confused. In and out of sleep, she fumbled between reality and hallucination until everything smeared together, plunging her into a nebulous hinterland.
At some point, the fog lifted, as did the torrential heat. She rubbed her eyes, drowsy and weak, squinting in the dark.
Twilight had arrived in the desert. The huge, pale moon rose over the edge of the desolate landscape, its beams falling on the murky outline of a vehicle.
Her truck.
It parked several yards away, pointed in the opposite direction.
Her heart pounded, and her skin shivered, for perched on the open tailgate was the silhouette of a man.
A cowboy hat angled low on his brow, casting his face in shadow. But it didn’t hide the bristling tension surrounding him nor the rage in his unmitigated stare, burning as hot as the Texan sun.
Tommy hadn’t left her for dead, but she might wish for that before he was done with her.
Rylee lay on her side, her hair stuck to her face and stiff with sand. As she slowly rose to sit, her head swam with fuzz. Dehydration. But her arm was free. Tommy had removed the cuff.
He lifted a water bottle to his lips and drank deeply, watching her, taunting her.
She followed the movement of his throat with longing, swishing her tongue in her mouth, trying to gather moisture where there was none.
“I need water,” she croaked, her voice covered in dust.
The plastic crinkled in his hand, and he tossed the empty bottle in the truck bed behind him.
“You think I can survive out here for three days without water?” Her anger fired on all cylinders as she attempted to stand. “Is this my punishment for reading your emails?” Her legs gave out, sending her back to the prickly earth. “Fucking harsh, don’t you think?”
He stretched out along the tailgate, crossed his cowboy boots at the ankles, and reclined against the side of the truck bed.
Hard to make out his form in the blackness of night, but there was something about his presence that intrigued and allured. Maybe it was his brooding silence. Or the cocksure tilt of his hat. Or the dark, intimidating confidence that radiated from his posture.
Whatever it was, she had no business admiring him with female appreciation. She wasn’t here for that. Besides, the motherfucker had just put her through ungodly hell, and he wasn’t finished.
“You’re going to regret this someday.” She ran her hands over her hair and clothes, attempting to put herself back together. “I know you’re ruthless, but you’ve never harmed an innocent woman. I’m no one, Tommy. I’m sure as hell not your enemy.”