Page 64 of Cain

I was already in too deep to see a way out anymore.

And, what’s more, I didn’t want to.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Georgia

I’d been kicking myself for letting Cain drive me back to my car for two days.

I could have stayed there.

Stayed trapped in the warm, gooey warmth we’d been sharing after cuddling, crafting, and eating.

But no.

I let him drop me off, then watch me drive away.

After I was home, I had to really focus on getting more work done, since I lost a day.

So it had been two days of working twelve-hour shifts to try to get the extra money I needed for another meeting my attorney had to have with Perry’s attorney after I got my lawyer on the phone and reiterated that the marriage was over and I wanted nothing belonging to Perry.

But it would all be worth it when this was done. And I was free. Free to stop thinking of Perry. Free to be with Cain without feeling like I was doing something wrong.

Just… free.

For the first time since I was a teenager.

I’d just dropped off my final order for the night to a reasonably creepy house on a dead-end street that a smarter woman than me would not have been approaching at nearly eleven at night.

I drove down the dark backroad, my ancient, foggy headlights barely putting up a fight against the moonless night sky.

My car eased over a large bump, some buried part of my mind reminding me of some story I’d heard in high school about a school bus full of children who crashed in the thirties and haunted the road to this day.

It was certainly a creepy enough area to make you think that could be possible.

But they were just ghost stories.

There were no creepy children, no women in white, no headless policemen, no hell dogs, and no bodies buried by the mob.

Well.

Knowing what I knew about the town now, I guess bodies buried by the mob were entirely plausible. Though any good Jersey-based criminal would likely cart the body an hour south to bury it deep in the preserved seven-hundred-thousand acres in the Pine Barrens.

Alone in my car, I laughed at the direction of my thoughts.

Who would have thought that me, a woman who had been groomed right out of high school to be the perfect, quiet, skinny, obedient, biddable, upper-class business’s wife would be thinking about things like where local criminals might hide a dead body?

I used to fret over silverware, thank-you notes, and hostess gifts.

Now I wondered what the members of the local mafia were like. If they had as interesting a moral code as the bikers did. If they really wore suits all the time. What their family get-togethers must be like.

I was so lost in my thoughts that I didn’t notice the headlights rushing toward my car until they were practically right behind my bumper, blinding me through the rearview mirrors.

“What are you riding my ass for?” I grumbled, channeling my mom and her famous road rage. “I’m doing the speed limit,” I added, as if they could hear me.

My foot hit the pedal and pressed, making my little car shoot forward, then slamming on the brakes—a very Jersey way of saying ‘back the hell off or you’ll owe me a new car.’

But this car just braked with me, then followed my pace as I picked it up again.