Authors: Lisa Ladew
Tags: #General Fiction
Mica blushed again, shame filling her. She knew intellectually she had nothing to be ashamed of, but on a very deep level, she was ashamed. Ashamed she hadn't run away from Bailey long before Knox Rosesson had finally made it possible. At the same time, she breathed a sigh of relief. She wasn't imagining the threat. Someone else saw it.
"Yes," she said quietly. "There's another letter. Swipe right."
Knox did, and Mica watched him read the next letter, wondering what he would say about it.
Still waiting. Here's a suggestion. On Friday morning, between 8 and 9, make a cash donation to the church next to the motel I'm staying in. You know how much. Put it in a paper sack under the donation box by the rear doors. If you do this, I'll consider your debt to me paid free and clear and you'll never see me again.
Knox placed her phone gently on the table and looked up at her. "You paid him."
Mica felt her shock show on her face. But she would never lie to Knox Rosesson again. She decided that with a finality that slammed home in her brain before she realized what it meant. "I did."
"How much?"
"Seventy four thousand dollars."
Knox nodded. "But he didn't go away."
"He didn't. He left me a note at my house in Seattle that said
not enough
. I found it last night. That's why I came here. But when I got here I found another note that said ... " Mica's voiced dropped as she side-stepped more shame and pushed out the words. "
Predictable bitch
."
Mica could see anger stamped clearly across Knox Rosesson's face. She knew it wasn't directed at her, but it still felt scary to her. "I know I shouldn't have given him any money. I just hoped ..."
Knox shook his head and his expression softened. "I think it was perfectly fine that you gave him money. At least now you know one hundred percent for sure that it wasn't the answer. If you would have refused him from the beginning, you would have always wondered if you couldn't have just made him go away by giving him money. It would have eaten at you."
He looked around the room then back at Mica. "Did you really owe him money, or did he make that up?"
Mica froze, not knowing how to explain this part. It would put her much closer to admitting lies she had told when she was almost eighteen than she wanted to.
Knox noticed her distress and shook his head. "Answer that when you are ready." He picked up her phone again and held it facing her. "Why is your name in quotes in the first letter?"
Mica's deception shuddered at the base and threatened to topple. She bit her lip, feeling trapped. She was such an idiot! She had to do it now—had to come out and confess who she was. If he discovered it on his own, she would look even worse. There were so many ways he could discover it too! What if he had access to mug shots? Surely he would recognize Dick Bailey as the man he almost threw off the train a decade ago and know immediately who Mica really was.
Mica felt sick to her stomach at the lies staring her in the face. She would tell him. She just needed to get a handle on herself first, and then she would spill everything. She stood and pressed a hand to her midsection. "Excuse me," she whispered. "Bathroom."
She didn't wait to see his reaction. She turned and walked through her kitchen to the back hallway and into the bathroom, locking the door behind her. She splashed water on her face, then stared at herself in the mirror. "Time to come clean, babygirl," she whispered to herself, using her mother's special name for her. A name she hadn't heard in way too many years. "Time to tell him everything. Even if he yells at you and walks out. The lies are done. It's time to face the consequences of your actions."
Mica took a deep breath. She could do it. Now was the time. She was ready.
As Mica put her hand on the knob a tic, tic, tic noise caught her attention. She turned to the one tiny window at the top of the shower, thinking a bird must be picking bugs off the side of the building.
Dick Bailey's bearded face stared in at her, unkempt, dirty, a painter's cap topping straggly hair and bushy eyebrows and a terrifying leer twisting his lips.
Mica stared at him, her own mouth open for a long minute before she could scream.
"KNOX!"
Bailey laughed silently and raised his hands where she could see them. He spread them wide and stared at her with a questioning look. Mica felt bile rise in her throat. He was insane. That was the only explanation. He'd never been a stable man, but in the last ten years he'd crossed the line from functioning, to should-be-in-an-institution crazed.
Heavy footsteps slammed in the hallway behind her. Mica moved out of the way of the door in the last second before it slammed open as Knox rushed into the room.
She expected Bailey's face to disappear like a jack-in-the-box in reverse, expected to have to point and try to convince Knox she wasn't crazy. She really had seen him.
But Bailey didn't disappear. Knox rushed in, his body tensed for action, his hand groping under his sport coat for the gun Mica knew must be there. He took one look at her, then his eyes flew to the tiny window where she was staring.
Mica saw the immediate recognition on Bailey's face and she cursed herself for it. She was seven kinds of stupid, luring Knox Rosesson into her home where he could now join her in being targeted by a madman. Mica cursed herself up one side and down the other for not having the guts to get rid of Knox when he'd first showed up, even as Bailey's eyes widened and his expression spiraled out of the mean teasing look he'd had, into one of pure, flat, malevolent anger.
"You," Bailey spat, his voice muffled by the closed window.
Mica shuddered at the malice in it.
What had she done?
Knox
The scruffy-looking man at the window disappeared. He didn't look down or appear to step down a ladder, which he should have done since they were on the second floor. His face dropped so suddenly, Knox wondered if he'd fallen through a trap door. Mica uttered a small scream of surprise. Knox ran to her shower, climbed on the side of the tub, and hoisted himself to the window. He slid the window open violently, then punched the screen out. He stuck his head through the tiny opening and looked down.
"There's a ladder. He's already at the ground. He's running ... he's disappeared behind the next building. Damn." Knox stared out the window for a moment, then quietly said, "He must have slid down the ladder like a firefighter goes down a pole. That's crazy."
Knox stepped down from the tub and faced a trembling Mica. She looked so incredibly vulnerable and scared, and all Knox wanted to do was gather her into his arms and swear everything was going to be ok. He wanted to promise her he'd never let anyone touch her. Never let anyone near her. Never, ever let her be hurt in any way.
But he knew he couldn't do that. In his mind he tried to memorize the face he had just seen. The man looked familiar enough that Knox wondered where he had seen him before.
"Was that him?" he asked Mica.
Mica nodded, her head bobbing jerkily. She looked stricken. Knox didn't know what to say to make her feel better. The situation was bad. The guy was obviously a first-class nut job and was liable to do anything. Crazy people were dangerous people.
Mica stared at him, her throat working convulsively. She reached out a trembling hand, like she wanted to touch him, then she dropped it. The expression on her face looked so hopeless, so despairing, that his heart went out to her. As he watched, a tear flowed out of one eye and tracked down her face.
"Oh hey, don't cry. I'm here. I'm not going to leave you alone," Knox said. Another tear followed the first and Knox couldn't help himself. He closed the distance between the two of them in an instant, and gathered her into his arms. She gave in to his embrace, totally surrendered to it, and Knox felt her tremble against him.
Her obvious pain and fear did something to him, made him hurt in ways he hadn't hurt in years. It opened pathways in him he didn't even know existed. Something about this woman made him feel extremely protective, even territorial of her. He had no doubt she could take care of herself, but an overwhelming desire to be the one to take care of her raised up inside him, shaking his knowledge of himself to his core.
Knox pulled her tight next to him, delighting in her warm, soft body. He could smell the scent of vanilla and lilacs in her hair. "Try not to worry. You did the right thing, calling me. This has progressed far enough that the police have to pay attention now. I'll make sure of it. You're going to be all right. I swear it."
Her hands came up and she shoved against his chest, pushing him away. Knox let her go with a feeling of sorrow as her body broke contact with his. She stared at him, all trace of tears gone from her face. Now her expression was stiff, determined, much like the one he saw in the mirror every morning.
"I have to tell you something, Knox, and I pray you won't hate me when you hear it."
Knox pulled back slightly, glad to hear his first name on her lips, but trying to process what she had said. Why would he hate her?
But instead of saying anything, Mica reached up to her right eye, then with a practiced blink, flipped a tiny blue disc into her open hand. Knox stared at it, suddenly knowing what he would see when he raised his gaze to her eyes. Emotions flooded through him, drowning him in feeling.
Knox looked up to see one blue eye and one green staring back at him. The set of her face looked forlorn, like she thought she knew how he was going to react and she wasn't going to like it.
"Rachel?" he asked, his voice cracking.
She nodded, once, slowly.
Knox felt too many things at once. Overwhelm threatened him. Relief, anger, confusion, disbelief, sadness at all the lost years. Questions swirled through his brain. She lived right here in his city, yet had never contacted him? Why had she left the train in the first place? Basically ran from him? He'd felt so many things for her, had promised to take care of her, and still she'd taken off, disappeared for a decade.
Knox stared into her eyes and saw partial truth there. She'd felt just as he had. She'd been just as taken with him as he had with her. She was just as shaken right now as he was. But did she feel the storm in his soul? Could she read the disturbance inside him right now? Did she know what she had done to him? How she had touched him in a way no one ever had, and then smeared the fledgling trust he'd felt into the dirt? What that had done to him?
Knox's fists clenched and all the muscles in his body tensed as he remembered those stolen moments. He'd been her first time, and she'd been his first love. His only love.
Pain ate at him, clawed at him, a pain he'd denied by working too much, by keeping his emotional distance from women, by hating his father, by caring for his brothers, by searching for her for a decade, and never letting himself think too hard about it. Distraction had been his watchword.
In his mind, he heard her stifled cries of lust and pleasure as he took her in the cramped but private train compartment while the creaky movements of the wheels on the track below them masked the noise of their lovemaking. He'd never forgotten the way she sounded, the way she smelled, the way she tasted, the curve of her breasts, or the way she called his name through clenched teeth when she came.
Rachel
. He'd found her. She'd found him. She was here, in front of him, trembling like a trapped animal, certain of his coming hate.
Knox closed the distance between them in an instant again and acted without thinking. His hands came up on their own accord and plunged into her blonde hair, cradling her face. He pulled her to him, staring into her eyes, instantly lost in her. He felt his cock throb in time with his heartbeat, dismayed as he realized it was rock hard and straining at his pants, but completely unable to care, because Rachel was here, he was touching Rachel, they were together again and he was kissing her, his lips on hers, his tongue pushing into her mouth, greedy and eager. She was stiff in his arms for a moment, then softened into him, her own hands tracing a hot path around his waist, her mouth responsive and open to him. He took her mouth like he wanted to take her body, hard and unrelenting, then traced the tip of her tongue lightly, imagining it was her clit, wanting nothing more than to hear her scream his name, to make her his once and for all. To fuck her until she acquiesced, swore she was his for eternity, promised to never leave again.
Knox forgot who he was and where he was as the kiss he had imagined for a decade finally happened. The real thing destroyed him, it was so much better than the fantasy. He threaded his fingers in her hair and tugged her head back, kissing his way down her chin to her neck.
"I could never hate you," he rasped, even as a new truth welled up inside him. He couldn't hate her, but was he angry at her? Maybe. Knox pulled her head back harder, suddenly wanting to demand to know what had happened. He kissed a trail to her neck loving her soft moan, but hating what he was afraid she had done. Abandoned him. Left on purpose. Ignored him for ten years. She obviously had known who he was when he showed up at her apartment.
Anger spread through him unbidden. He'd been so worried about her. He'd spent months looking for her, ignoring his work, his family, his life, causing his father to finally fire him, changing his life forever. The changes had been good, leading him to his own company, and his own success, but that didn't make the months following her disappearance any less heartbreaking for him.