The Girl in the Mirror (Sand & Fog #3) (7 page)

eez, don’t the Manzones know their daughter at all? I’ve been around the girl only six months and I know she’s not a partier. No boyfriend. Home by ten every night. Christ, she doesn’t even go out on dates. She’s probably the only eighteen-year-old virgin in all of Southern California.

Dance, dance, dance.

That’s the ABC of Krystal.

A little intense underneath all the sunny smiles—yep, she’s that and for some reason that factoid bothers me—but not a wild girl.

After putting the wine back in the fridge, I check the trash can. One empty bag of chips. Hardly the makings of a rave. It’s past time to cut out and shut down this exercise of a paranoid mom. Chrissie’s intel was wrong.

After switching off the lights, I go into the great room. Brayden isn’t back from his grounds’ check. Jesus Christ, this is stupid, but he’s right, it’s our job and I definitely need the paycheck. My responsibilities taunt me that I’ve got to do my job as instructed even if sometimes the requests of my employers are totally off point.

Like coming here tonight.

Like being Krystal’s bodyguard in Manhattan.

The girl doesn’t need a bodyguard.

She needs a life.

Her life is about as boring as they come.

And I’m the winner who gets to live it with her for a monthly salary. Great, fucking great. When I was offered the assignment of going with her to New York, I refused, but my boss warned me that if I wanted to keep my job,
no
was not a winning option with Alan Manzone.

What Alan wants, we do—no ifs, ands, or buts.

How Jared said that snapped me out of my momentary rebellion because, shit, out of all of us, he knows Alan best. And keeping my job is my only priority. Janie can’t survive without the money I send her every month.

Whatever they ask, I’ve got to do.

Even lame shit like this.

I owe my sister that.

No choice.

Just like in the military.

I’ve got to suck it up and do, follow orders, not think or question.

I continue down the next hallway.

Another bank of bedrooms.

How big is this house?

Empty.

Empty.

Nope, Krystal isn’t even here.

Maybe she’s taken off for the evening with her friends.

Maybe we can get out of here before she knows her mother sent us here to spy on her.

Next week she’s my employer. I don’t need anything else to make her like me less and working for her harder. She already makes it a point to give me crap whenever she sees me.

Exhaling heavily, I open another door.

Everything inside me comes to a jarring halt.

I rapidly survey the scene in front of me—Krystal on the bed, the guy standing beside it—and I can’t figure out what I’m seeing.

“Damn it, Daryl, don’t you dare,” Krystal screams, her face red and her eyes wide with panic.

She’s flayed like a fish on the beach, and my alarm kicks up as my gaze widens enough to see
everything.

Naked.

Every delicate inch of her.

For a moment, I’m consumed by how tiny she is, the long lines of her body strong but so much more fragile than she looks with clothes on.

Beautiful and utterly defenseless.

Exposed.

Vulnerable.

That asshole tied her to the bed.

What the fuck is this?

Flash from a camera.

The guy leans over his cell phone. “I’m hitting send, Krystal.”

“If you don’t delete those pictures I swear—”

He continues tapping on his phone.

“Please, Daryl. No!”

Her voice makes everything inside me explode.

My brain shuts off as a tidal wave of emotion sends my body into overdrive.

Whatever this is, it stops now.

I’m across the room before the guy even notices me.

I can’t stop hitting him, even though this one was over after the first blow.

I hit him.

He hit the floor.

Fight done.

He only has his arms up to protect his face.

Pussy.

All guys who treat girls badly are pussies.

I punch him again.

“Who the fuck are you?” the guy growls, trying to dodge my blows.

“I’m your worst nightmare, asshole.”

“What are you doing?” Krystal cries in dismay. “Let him go. Get out of here.”

Time to stop before I seriously hurt the little asswipe, but I plant my fist in his face one last time because he deserves it.

He tries to squirm out from under me. I hold him in place with a hand clutched around his throat. “Stay down. Don’t move until I tell you to or I’ll hit you again. You got that, jerkoff?”

The kid’s eyes widen—yep, he understands—and I release my hold so he can nod.

“What the hell happened here?” Brayden asks in alarm from the doorway.

I jerk away from the body beneath me, grab the cell phone from his hand, and then spring to my feet.

I plant my hands on Brayden’s chest trying to keep him from coming any farther into the room. “Stay clear. Go into the living room and wait.”

He maneuvers around me and drops down beside the groaning body on the floor. “Can’t do that, Jake. We’ve got to call this in. Who is this? You’ve fucked this kid up good.”

Call it in?

Brayden moves the boy’s face toward him to examine it. “Hey, kid, are you hurt bad? Do you need an ambulance?”

Ambulance? No, hell no. “Have you lost your mind? The kid doesn’t need an ambulance. You call an ambulance, the cops show up.”

Brayden shakes his head. “We’ve got to call this in, Jake.”

He fishes his phone from his pocket and I dart across the room to rip it from him.

“We are not calling this in. You call it in, everyone will know what happened here. The press. Her parents. No, not letting that happen, Bray. We’re cleaning up the scene on our own. Understand?”

His gaze flitters around the room, pausing on the bed then Krystal. “Oh fuck.”

“You want to be the one who tries to explain this to Alan Manzone?” I jerk my head toward the hallway. “Get out. If anyone else is here, keep them away until I’m out of here with him.”

Brayden rises. “No one is here but Madison Parker and her boyfriend. They’re out on the beach.”

My eyes bore into his. “Keep them out there. I’ll move the kid to my car, take him to the hospital if he wants to go, but keep this area clear until I text you that I’m outta here with this jerkoff.”

He nods and closes the door behind him.

I lean my head against the wood, inhaling and exhaling to steady myself. The kid groans again from the floor. Maybe I did hurt him. The picture flashes in my head of what he was doing to Krystal. Hurt or not, he can wait.

I need to untie Krystal.

Check the cell phone.

What if that bastard uploaded the photos already?

I shut down that thought.

Concentrate, Jake.

Work the problem.

I have to destroy the phone and the memory card, and get that guy out of here.

Don’t think of anything else.

Ignore all other variables.

Focus only on what’s in front of you.

“Please, untie me,” Krystal begs in anguish, pulling me from my thoughts.

Christ, what’s the matter with me? She’s still naked and tied up. The second I dropped that guy, I should have gotten her loose so she could dress in case anyone else stumbled in here.

I spot her clothes on the floor. I scoop them up and toss them to her as I rush to the bed, trying not to let my eyes wander
anywher
e, but it’s hard not to look at her. Seeing her like that is like passing a car accident or something. You gotta look even if you don’t want to.

I keep my face carefully averted. This wreck no one should ever see. It makes me sick, and the guy—there’s no way to adequately describe what that made me feel.

Red, blinding rage. Like in that alley with that fucker who hurt Janie. The kid lying on the carpet is lucky to be alive.

“What are you doing here?” Krystal hisses raggedly. “How could you barge in like that and beat up Daryl?”

“It’s my job. The security company does regular checks on the house,” I lie, because I really don’t want to ignite a shitstorm inside a shitstorm by letting her know her mother sent me here. “I heard a sound. I checked it out. It’s my job.”

“It’s your job to bust into people’s bedrooms?” she counters, distraught.

I ignore the question because now is not the time to inform her that, yes, it is part of my job if that’s what my employer asks me to do.

No, not getting into that discussion right now.

“Who’s the guy on the floor?”

She sniffs as she chokes back tears. “My boyfriend. Is he all right? How could you attack him that way?”

Boyfriend? I glance at the kid. No, never seen him at the main house. I didn’t even know Krystal dated. After meeting Daryl, it’s no longer a mystery why she didn’t bring that winner home. Alan would have seen through him before Daryl said
how do you do, sir?
in his snooty Orange County voice.

My gaze roams the room. Crop. Ropes. God, what’s that on her breasts? Something of unidentified use hanging from Krystal’s nipples that I really don’t want explained to me.

Daryl boy is too young to be this messed up.

Why would Krystal let a guy do this to her?

“Do you have any idea how much you humiliated me tonight?” She sobs quietly.

“He was hurting you,” I say as I finally get untied the ropes on her ankles. “I couldn’t just shut the door and walk away, Krystal.”

“That would have been better than this. You’ve practically killed my boyfriend. He was being a jerk. He would have never done anything to hurt me. Not ever.”

Is she fucking kidding?

I stare, stunned.

“He tied you to a bed,” I remind her harshly. “Took photos of you naked. Threatened you. I wouldn’t put anything past a guy who could do that to a girl. Where I’m from, when you stumble across someone doing something wrong, you stop them.” My eyes take in the room again. “And this is plain wrong.”

Her cheeks color and her trembling lips turn into a tight line. “He would have backed off the second he saw you. Given you the phone if you’d asked for it. You didn’t have to attack him. How could you go all Rambo on him? Daryl wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

Why is she defending him? “I didn’t expect a thank you, not from you, but you have no right to be pissed off at me. No guy should treat a girl the way he was treating you. Especially not you.”

She jerks her chin away. “I could have handled Daryl.”

“No, Krystal, you couldn’t have. That’s the first mistake girls make. Thinking they can handle things they can’t. I’ve known lots of Daryls. Good looking guys. Smart. Normal seeming. But those kinds of guys do bad things, too, Krystal. Never trust a guy who puts you in a position where you can’t keep yourself safe.”

A vision of Janie’s rapist rises in my memory. He was my friend and I thought he was a good guy when I brought him home to meet my sister. Kevin hadn’t looked evil, and worse, I’d liked him.

“Everything is going to be all right,” I add, fighting to keep my voice calm. “Daryl is going to be fine. And no one will find out about this. I promise.”

I tap Daryl with my shoe. He pauses in checking his jaw with his fingers, and when he looks at me I ask, “You’re not going to tell anyone about this, are you, kid?”

He anxiously shakes his head.

The kid got a beatdown.

Nope, he’s not telling anyone.

“See, Krystal, we’re all good here.”

Her stricken eyes tear at me. “You know. Brayden knows. Why should I trust either of you after you did this?”

OK, there’s a whole lot wrong with that statement, but I’m not tackling it now. And I’m certainly not prepared to deal with
this
after the night I’ve had—her being pissed off at me for helping her.

I shake off my annoyance and the voice inside my head reminding me my read on her was right—the girl is an IED. I need to clean this up and get out of here quickly.

“No one will ever find out about this from Brayden or me.”

Those wide blue eyes grow enormous as she rapidly studies my face. “You won’t tell my parents?”

What I hear in her voice makes everything I assumed when I entered the room turn upside down.

Oh fuck. That asshole hadn’t pressured her into doing something stupid. It was her. Krystal thought of this. Whatever had been going on here had been her idea. She has that girl, secretive, found out, and frantic expression to her. She wanted Daryl to tie her to the bed, let Daryl the dick do all this crazy-ass shit to her, and that’s what she’s afraid of: her parents finding out.

Jesus Fucking Christ.

Her gaze drops. “If you ever tell anyone about this I’ll die.”

Over the top.

Terrified.

Her expression taunts me that I should tell Chrissie everything that happened here tonight.

“Please,” she adds in a thin voice.

Fuck.

“They won’t hear it from me. I promise. Brayden either.”

Keeping my gaze carefully lowered, I move from the foot of the bed to free her wrists. First tie gone. Then the second rope and she scrambles away from me, back turned, and pulls on her clothes.

I push my fingers into my temples, trying to shut off everything threatening to erupt inside me. I wish she’d stop crying. I look at her. She’s dressed, huddled on the bed.

“Are you OK?”

She nods.

I remember the phone. I pick it up off the bed and rapidly tap. The pictures. I click through them. Now what the hell is this?

“Is this the only phone he used?”

“Yes. Did he text them or anything?” she asks brokenly.

I shrug.

I haven’t checked.

No point.

I turn the phone so she can see the screen.

“He only took pictures of himself.” The adrenaline leaves my body in one gush. My gaze locks on Daryl. “Fuck, kid, are you an idiot? What the hell is the matter with you, tormenting her that way? If the wrong guy had showed up here, he might have killed you for what he thought you were doing.”

His features tighten and redden but he doesn’t talk back. I stand up and hold out my hand to him. Daryl may not be as much of an asshole as I thought he was, but he’s a prick all the same.