Page 1 of Save Me
PROLOGUE
Darkness.
For a split second, panic overtook her. But then the rhythmic hum of a motor and the gentle sway of the car had her body relaxing.
Just as she was about to sink back into the abyss, memories surfaced. Bodies rubbing against one another, bumping and grinding. Loud music piercing her ears, drowning out voices, until all that was left was the beat of the song pounding in her head. The bitter alcohol that had warmed her and dulled her mind earlier now soured her tongue and unsettled her stomach. Her vision was blocked by the false lashes that she normally wore to work. Now they were glued together by her thick mascara and sealed her eyes shut.
Why had she allowed Carl to talk her into working at the club again? It had only been ten months since she’d given birth.
Carl always complained that he’d wanted to be married to a stripper. Only Crissy didn’t have what it took, upstairs at least, to dance on stage and make money. So she did what she’d been doing before she’d married him. What she’d done for all of her life, it seemed. She’d waited tables. She didn’t mind where she worked, a diner or a strip club, just as long as the tips were good.
And they were good enough to keep her working at Sunset Strip, one of the hottest strip clubs along the Miami coast.
She’d changed her looks over the year that she’d worked there, dying her dark hair a bright blonde and wearing skintight outfits to fit in with the rest of the girls working tables and dancing on the stages.
But then she’d gotten pregnant and had believed that her long hours of wearing heels and getting felt up by creepy men was over. But two weeks after she’d had Emma, Carl had lost his job, and she’d had to go back to work at the club.
Carl had talked her into going back, saying it was “easy money.” Easy for him, at least. The long hours, the sore feet and back, and having to constantly turn away unwanted advances wasn’t something her husband thought about or even cared to hear about.
She’d hoped that Carl would find another job. After all, Miami was full of bartending jobs, the only thing that he’d ever been good at. Instead, he’d turned to the bottle, and she suspected that wasn’t all.
To anyone looking from the outside, Carl had painted a picture of a caring husband and father. And at first, he had been. After losing his job, he’d slowly sunk lower and basically stopped trying. Oh, he still kept up the outward appearances to everyone they knew, but at home, he was different. He’d changed so much that she didn’t even recognize him any longer.
Days turned into weeks, and he’d sunk further into a darkness. She didn’t have the time to help pull him out of the funk. Since they were behind on their bills, she’d taken a second job working behind a counter at a bakery a few doors down from their one-bedroom apartment. Which meant she worked from seven at night until eleven in the morning, seven days a week.
After coming home more than once to find him passed out and Emma crying, she’d had to start paying for a babysitter. She’d even worried that Carl wasn’t feeding their daughter since she had started looking extremely underweight.
Of course, if she said anything, he would start an argument with her. He’d claim he’d been so busy that day trying to find work that he’d just needed one drink to soothe his nerves. Or he’d complain that with a crying kid hooked to him, there was no way he would be able to find work.
The fights with Carl filled up what precious time she had to herself or with Emma. Clinging to the baby, she’d listen while Carl explained his responsibilities away and laid them solely onto her shoulders.
After all, everything in life was Crissy’s fault, in the eyes of Carl. She supposed she’d walked right into the abusive relationship. After suffering at the hands of her father for all of her childhood, she had clung to the first man who’d smiled at her and promised to take her far away from her father’s fists.
Following up a physically abusive relationship with an emotionally abusive one had sucked out what little joy Crissy had left in life.
In the coming days, what she had to endure would take the rest of it until she was nothing more than a shell of a woman, determined to give her daughter everything she had never had. Happiness.
CHAPTER ONE
Crissy stopped and took a moment to breathe in the salty warm air. One second, two, three… Then the phone rang, breaking through the soft sound of the wind rustling the palm fronds, the bees buzzing around the flowers that she had planted a few weeks earlier, and the sounds of the gulls crying as they flew far overhead.
She rushed back across the pathway, set the basket full of laundry down on the table, and answered the phone.
“Paradise Place, how may I help you?” she answered cheerfully.
The caller sounded like an older woman, and after answering her questions about the rental house and walking her through the steps to book the place online, Crissy picked up the laundry basket and headed back across the pool courtyard into the main rental property.
The home—Paradise Place—was a six-bedroom, seven-bath, four-thousand-square-foot beauty. There was a massive swimming pool and patio between the main home and the pool house. Thick tropical foliage filled every nook and cranny of the property, secluding the residence from the homes on either side.
The place was owned by the chief of police in Key West, who used the property as a year-round rental and income property. They rented it out on a monthly basis, as local laws excluded short-term rentals on Key West. The business was run and operated solely by hers truly.
After what had happened to her, Reggie Miller and his wife, Kimberly, had contacted her and convinced her to run the place. At the time the Millers had contacted her for the job, she hadn’t had any other work opportunities. After an initial meeting with the couple, who lived on one of the other Keys, she and Emma had moved from Miami to Key West.
She’d needed work and a place to live, since Carl hadn’t paid their rent on the small one-bedroom apartment once she’d been kidnapped.
She’d left the hospital almost three months after she’d arrived there broken and almost dead and had been surprised to find out that Carl had sold all of her belongings, even her clothes. He’d been renting a small hotel room in the bad part of Miami and expected her and Emma to live there with him. The first night, there’d been a shooting just outside their room. The second, someone had tried to break in. She and Emma hadn’t stayed for a third night.
Instead, she’d talked her friends Emily and Rafe into letting her and Emma stay with them until she could get back on her feet. Less than a month later, she’d filed for divorce from Carl.
