Page 27 of Rescued By Midnight

Didn’t that mean he wouldn’t let me go? Because if he let me go, now I’d be a witness. So what was the plan? Take me all the way up here to kill me? He could’ve done that an hour ago. Heck, he could have done that in the park.

“Put it on,” he repeated. “Take off your other clothes, first.”

“Then…aren’t you going to turn around?” If I could get him to appeal to my modesty, I could dart over to the little kitchen space. I thought I saw a fork on the counter. I could stab him with it and run. If I got him in the eye, it would buy me extra time.

He folded his arms across his expansive torso. “Do you want to live?”

Angrily, I started yanking off my clothes. It was hard to be scared and embarrassed when I was mad, so I embraced that. He was mad, and so was I. We could hate each other and be miserable together.

He watched me dispassionately as every item of clothing came off. I stripped down to my underwear and kept my gaze on his. Let him look, I didn’t care. It was just a body.

“Bra, too. And underwear.”

Asshole.

But my anger fell away with my undergarments, and it was replaced with fear. I shivered under his scrutiny and folded my arms across my chest, trying to hide myself. Would the sight of my naked body cause him to attack me, to take away the purity I’d so closely guarded throughout my adolescence and into marriage?

He continued watching, dispassionate. I yanked on the nightgown, tugging it into place as fast as I could, hiding myself away.

“Don’t move.” He didn’t comment on my discomfort, merely gathered my running clothes, underwear, and shoes. He took them outside.

I risked walking to the open doorway. His back was to me, and he held a shovel.

He was burying my clothes.

To the side was a chicken coop. The hens clucked at him, protesting when I could not.

Shovelful after shovelful of dirt fell over my clothes until the man was satisfied. He spun around before I could move. His eyes narrowed, probably because I had moved when he told me not to.

My old clothes, my old life, dead and buried. And me all in white, like I’d been baptized anew.

Or worse—like I’d died. Like I was a ghost.

11

CODY - NOW

Keeping a hand on Alice’s shoulder, I meet Landon’s eyes. She fainted, and her upper body is propped against my chest and legs. We can’t rouse her. If she doesn’t snap out of it soon, we’ll have to take her to a hospital.

When I look at her like this, a brick in the wall around my heart crumbles. She’s defenseless, her forehead pinched as if she’s in pain. I’ll do whatever it takes to soothe that pain, to help her feel better. Where are her demons? I will fight them.

“Alice, baby, wake up.” I shake her shoulder. “You’re safe, okay?”

Landon holds her hand, stroking the top of it. “We’re here with you. We’re both here with you.”

Her eyes flutter open. In the shade from the pines, her irises look bluer than usual. “Oh, no.”

“Oh no?” Landon sounds amused. “Are you okay, Wonderland?”

“Yeah. I’m so sorry, I don’t know what happened.”

“You fainted,” I say bluntly. She’s half in my lap, so I start to move her to a sitting position. We can’t stay like this forever, and I don’t want to keep shoving aside thoughts of how good she feels against my body.

Landon gives me a dirty look, but he helps her sit up. He moves her against him instead. Good call. He obviously feels much closer to her than I do, so he should be the one to hold her.

At my frown, he grins, his eyes wordlessly asking me if I’m jealous. An old game, and one we haven’t played with Alice. One we will never play with Alice.

“What triggered this?” I turn my attention back to her, trying to sound as gentle as possible when all I want to do is race into the forest, find her kidnapper, and introduce him to my fists.