She couldn’t go home since Tommy knew where she lived.
When she’d spotted her duffel bag in his house, she’d only had seconds to go through it. Her ID, credit card, money, everything she needed was in there except her phone. Didn’t matter. Since someone was tracking her, she would’ve left the device behind anyway.
On her way out, she’d ransacked the kitchen, searching for a weapon. A large butcher knife was the best she’d found. That went into the duffel bag, along with some of her spare clothes she found in the laundry room.
“Where’s your truck?” Dean asked.
“May I?” She gestured at his phone, where it mounted on the dash, showing a map of their location and directions back to the nearest paved road. “I can’t remember the name of the town.”
She had no idea where to go. Somewhere with a motel, a cash machine, and food. Lots and lots of food.
At his nod, she zoomed out on the screen and started scrolling east, searching for the best place to lie low for a few days.
“Where’s your phone?” He veered the truck around a deep ravine.
“Out of batteries.” She paused the screen on a small town that showed a few restaurants, a gas station, and…bingo. A motel.
Pulling her attention away, she glanced at her surroundings. Sand, shrubs, more sand—all familiar but not recognizable. She didn’t remember driving in this way, but she’d been watching her GPS map the entire time.
It seemed strange that Dean would travel three hours to follow up on an anonymous tip. If she were anyone else, he would’ve called in local law enforcement to check it out. But he knew her. They’d worked together for a couple of years. Maybe that explained it.
Maybe she shouldn’t be trusting him.
“Is it slow at work?” She returned to the map, panning away from the town she’d decided on.
“Always.”
“Is that why you’re here? Nothing better to do?”
“I was worried, Rylee.” He ran a hand over his head, his gaze straight ahead, avoiding hers. “I don’t trust these local guys to do a thorough job, so I came to look for you myself.”
It was the right answer, but something niggled.
If someone was after Tommy and they were tracking her to get to him, how deep could they go? Deep enough to involve Dean?
She was in the middle of the desert with a man who showed up at Tommy’s house after Paul went missing. Dean could be on the same errand as Paul. He could be delivering her as a hostage to one of Tommy’s enemy cartels. Or planning to kill her himself as part of some blackmail scheme.
Jesus, Rylee. Stop.
She was fucking paranoid. That was Tommy’s fault. After reading about all the shit he and his team had been mixed up in over the past ten years, she’d developed a scary imagination.
Dean wasn’t part of some criminal organization, but that didn’t mean she could trust him with her whereabouts. If someone was monitoring his conversations, he could inadvertently mention where he dropped her off.
So she quickly scanned the map, searching for a different motel in the surrounding areas. A motel she wouldn’t be staying at.
“Here it is.” She announced the name of the desert town and set it as the destination on the map, rerouting the directions. “Thank you for coming for me.”
“I’m happy to do it.” He paused, eyes on the terrain, and dropped his voice. “What happened?”
“What do you mean?”
“I saw his chest. The scratches and… I don’t know. Sure looked like bite marks. Human bites.”
Heat rose to her cheeks. “We’re adults. It was consensual.”
And hateful and angry and so fucking hot she would never, ever experience anything as amazing or pleasureful again.
“He’s a little young for you.”
“Excuse me?” Her neck went taut.
“Hey, don’t get mad. I’m just making an observation.”
“That was an ageist insult, not an observation. If you have any more of those, keep them to yourself.”
Awkward tension filled the cab, producing a bitter taste on her tongue.
For the next thirty minutes, they drove in silence. She should’ve been thinking about what she was going to do without a car and a phone, but her focus kept pulling back to Tommy, to the fervent way he’d kissed her, touched her, and claimed every inch of her body. He hadn’t just physically branded her. He’d indelibly seared himself onto her soul.
His cruelty was unforgivable, but the sex was unforgettable. He was no longer in her sight, but she doubted he would ever leave her mind.
“I’m sorry.” Dean turned onto the main road, following the directions on the map. “I shouldn’t have said what I did.”
Sand turned into pavement, but the desolate surroundings remained unchanged.
She stared out the window at the vista of buttes. “How’s the Wagner case coming along?”
“We got a lead on the location of a meth lab.”
For the remainder of the drive, they talked about work. A neutral subject. Familiar ground.
When he pulled up to the motel, she looked around and panicked. There was nothing around. Not a car or a restaurant or another building in sight.
She didn’t intend to stay here. Not where Dean knew her location. She needed to get to the next town over, where she had options and could hide out for a few days.
He turned off the engine. “Are you sure this is where you left your truck?”
“It’s the closest motel to the mechanic.” She grabbed her bag and opened the door. “Thank you for the ride.”
“I’ll come in with you.”
“No need.” She stepped into the wretched heat.
He reached across the seat and caught her elbow, stopping her. “Let me take you to dinner. There’s nothing here—”
“No.” She wrenched her arm away. “I’ll see you in a month, Dean. Drive safe.”
She shut the door on his response and strode toward the motel office.
Inside, the scent of tobacco smoke attacked her nose. A young blonde woman sat behind the desk, flicking ash from a cigarette, her gaze glued to her phone.
Rylee turned toward the window and watched Dean pull out of the lot. She didn’t move until his truck vanished beyond the horizon.
“Need a room?” the girl asked.
“I need transportation to the next town.”
“Can’t help you there, babe.”
“You can’t call me a cab? Or a vehicle for hire?”
“Nothing like that comes out here.” The girl snorted without looking up from her phone. “You’ll have better luck using your thumb out on that road.”
Rylee glanced at the highway, which hadn’t seen another car since she’d arrived.
Shit.
Desperate, she grappled for options. “When do you get off work?”
“In six hours.”
Double shit.
She couldn’t wait that long. She needed food, a shower, a bed, and a million other things to formulate a plan, and she needed to do all of it in a place where no one could find her.
Tommy might’ve let her go because he didn’t want to shoot Dean. But he would come for her now that the detective was out of the way.