A Year of You (38 page)

With a snap that Mattie heard as much as felt, he broke her finger. She shrieked from the agony that radiated up her entire arm. He planted a knee in her back and pushed her face-first into the gritty cement.

Before the pain could get any better or any worse, K added to it by giving her pointer finger the same treatment. Adding insult to injury, he snatched the heirloom wedding band set off her ring finger and threw it into the shadows.

Nearly undone by the pain, Mattie sucked in deep, dusty breaths. Particles from the ancient carpet adhered to her wet face, to her teeth, her tongue. A nice little numbness began to sift through her veins. When K pushed her too hard and hurt her too bad, she slipped into a peaceful place. He couldn’t hurt her there. It didn’t matter what he did to her body, he couldn’t touch her mind, and it drove him insane.

As if watching from above, she watched him flip her on to her back and straddle her body. Silent tears ran down West’s face. He pulled at the eyebolt, his entire body bent forward. Em huddled on the floor at his side, her face buried in her hands. From far, far away, Mattie heard her screaming into her hands.

West surged against the zip ties holding him to the wall. Something snapped and he tumbled forward. He lunged, but Logan tackled him like a linebacker and knocked him into the wall. West slid down the drywall, leaving behind a thin bloody smear. Dazed, he shook his head, one hand going to his forehead. The broken zip tie hung from his wrist, wet with blood from a cut on his wrist. Logan kicked him in the gut, once, twice. Emeline kept screaming.

Finally Logan turned away from West. Emeline threw herself over his prone body. He struggled to get up, to move. His pained gaze met Mattie’s.

Don’t watch
, she tried to tell him. K clamped a hand over her mouth and reached for the button of her denim shorts.
Please don’t watch, West
.

Her pain got K hot. In the past, she’d tried not to scream or cry. But West was watching, and he knew he couldn’t do anything to help her. She started to weep. K smirked and used his knife to poke a hole in her shirt. He ripped it away. Bare, even more vulnerable, Mattie gave up.

It was easier. She floated up, away.

Her drifting self laughed at him. He couldn’t touch her here, and he knew it. Enraged, he smashed his fist down on her broken fingers. When it only worked the weakest cry out of her, he jerked her to her feet, her shorts sliding down her hips. Pushing her ahead of him, he called his thugs.

While he took her body outside, her soul stayed in the shed, next to West, stroking his hair and trying to soothe the forceful sobs that tore though his solid, familiar body.
This is how I survived
, she whispered to him. Outside, the parts of her that couldn’t escape screamed. Sometimes, the things he did to her were too awful to keep in silence.

                                                                                 ***

Mattie woke on the floor of the shed, half-naked, bruised and bleeding from places she shouldn’t be bleeding from. West and K were talking. Rather, K had a gun to Emeline’s head and West was frantically trying to talk him out of shooting her. The pain in her fingers made her want to scream. More pain cut through her mental haze. Cramps echoed around her belly. Her hands were still free. She cupped one hand over the worst of the pain. The baby…

She clenched her eyes shut. There wasn’t anyway she was making it through this. No time to dwell on what she was losing.

Familiar with what K was doing, Mattie knew it was just a game. Get one person to turn on the other. Use one lover against another. She just wasn’t sure who the players were, this time, or what the prize was. When K looked over at her and gave her a wicked grin, she knew.

He’s proving something to me. This is for my benefit
. Suddenly very clear to her, she realized the money was only part of K’s plan.
He’s doing this to break me.

Seeing West begging for Emeline’s life was doing a great job of it. No matter how hard she tried, Mattie couldn’t find her peaceful place, couldn’t separate herself from the agony of watching him play right into K’s game.

“It’s under the tree, under the heart,” West finally half-shouted, after K put his gun away and resorted to using his knife. He traced swirling patterns along Emeline’s slender white throat.

“The heart?” K asked, scowling. “Trees don’t have hearts.”


“That one does,” Mattie said. “He carved it into the trunk for Elaine when he was a kid.” She was nearly breathless from the agony from her hand, from her violated body.
No matter how much it hurt that he was begging for Emeline’s life, or how much her body hurt from K’s tortures, Mattie wouldn’t let anything happen to West.
The deal had been sex and money. No emotional crap, and with the expectation that after she left, he would go back to Emeline. That was the deal, and she’d shook on it. “K.”

He looked up when she said his name. Moving slowly so she wouldn’t start bleeding—
please, let that be from something they’ve done, and not something wrong with the baby
—she put her shorts back on, wincing from the rub of the denim against her brutalized flesh. Getting dressed with one hand was complicated, but through the haze, she felt a little spark of pride. She pulled the ripped halves of her shirt together as best she could.

“What?”


“I need to talk to you.”


“So, talk.”


“Stop hurting her and I will.”


Reluctantly, K let go of Emeline’s hair. “Well?”


“I know where the money is now.”


“Finally done lying? Fine. Where is it?”


“It’s buried under the tree in a box with a lock on it. I know the combination. I’ll do whatever you want, give you whatever you want, but only if you let them go when you get the money.”
Emeline whimpered and began to edge across the floor toward West. K laughed.

“Look at her, Matilyn. Look at him. He’s only got eyes for her. You should have heard the things he was promising me if I left her alone.”

Mattie shrugged. “I don’t care.”

“My favorite was, ‘You can have Mattie, take that bitch back where she came from, but don’t hurt Emeline.’”

Mattie used another shrug to hide the shattering of her heart. Oh, God, the peaceful place was finally coming back to her. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, the drifting part of her was curled up in the corner of the room, sobbing, blind and helpless. Another part of her stood next to her body, a hand on the cold upper arm, lending strength. It was this part of her she was looking for. This part of her could take anything anybody handed to her. She took a deep breath, and the strong part of her became the air she was breathing in.

Good. It was her ritual, the visualization. If she separated the parts of her, then she could survive. When the soft parts, the emotions, the weakness, the vulnerable bits, were all gone, she could take whatever K dealt.

“Me and him made a deal, K. It was all sex and money.”

K threw his head back and laughed. “You are quite the whore, Mattie. I always thought you were a little too mushy-gushy and lovey-dovey to handle something like that.”

Her seductive approach turned into a limping hobble, but she made it. With her uninjured hand, she stroked his too-smooth cheek. “After all you’ve done to me, nobody’s ever going to want me. Especially when there’s somebody like Emeline ready and willing.”

“Damn right.” K kissed her, plunging his tongue deep into her mouth with no finesse. She resisted the urge to gag. “You’re all mine.”

“I’ll make sure you get all the money in the box, and I know how we can get even more,” she purred, hating herself for moving so close to him, for touching him.

“How’s that?” His hands moved down to squeeze her buttocks. Mattie was pretty sure she was going to puke.
“The body of that kid is worth millions to my grandmother,” she told him. “Three times what Emeline is worth to her own father. If Ruth Ellen finds out he killed Elaine, then he won’t inherit anything when she dies. Money means as much to him as it does to you. The body is right there, with the cash. All we have to do is send him a picture and let him know we know his dirty little secret.”


K grabbed her hair and yanked her head back. She winced. “Are you lying to me? Mattie, if you’re lying to me, I swear I’ll hurt you so bad you won’t ever forget it.”


Mattie forced a bittersweet smile. “K, honey, I’ve never forgotten a single thing you’ve ever done to me, and I never will.”
He took it like a compliment, goosing her behind once more.


For an hour or so, everything seemed defused. K didn’t torment West and Emeline any more, and they were left alone, together, in the shadows by the wall.
K and Mattie worked together in the deepening twilight of the shed, finally turning on another lamp to make up for the lack of natural daylight shining in the high narrow windows. He wanted every detail of the McKendrick family. When Mattie had made up enough crap to satisfy him, he lounged back and pulled Mattie against his shoulder, a terrible parody of the way she and West used to sit on the couch back home.

“We’ve got some other things to talk about, Mattie,” K said, twirling her hair between two of his fingers. She remained silent, concentrating on keeping her hand as still as possible. As long as she was moving, her fingers didn’t hurt so bad. The swelling and bruising made her nauseas. Her body didn’t ache so fiercely, if she didn’t think about it. The cramps had eased.

“You let some other asshole touch you.”
Mattie’s stomach dropped to her feet.

“Don’t hurt him, K.”


“It’s more fun to hurt you, Mattie. Besides, if he knew half the things we did to you outside, he won’t ever want to touch you again.”

Mattie flushed with shame, grateful she couldn’t recall any more than the most basic of events. The pain told her more than she needed to know. West hadn’t met her eyes once since she’d come to on the floor, hours earlier.

“You need to learn the lesson here, Matilyn. You should know better than to let some other dick touch you.” He twisted around on the couch until he was straddling her body, one arm against her throat. “This is going to be the last time I’m ever going to have to deal with you this harshly, isn’t it, Matilyn?”

“Yes, K. Please don’t.”

“You don’t even know what I’m going to do,” he chided. He called one of his thugs over. “Hold her hands.”

Logan captured her wrists with no regard to her broken fingers and pinned them to the top edge of the couch. Involuntary, terrified sobs rattled from Mattie’s chest when K flicked out his shiny silver knife. It was the most ridiculous weapon she’d ever seen since it lacked any sort of grip on the handle, but K loved it. He kept it razor sharp.

So sharp, that when it cut, the victim didn’t even know it until blood began to flow.

“I really didn’t want it to have to come to this. But you got pregnant by the asshole. I warned him not to touch you, so he’s going to have to live with the fact that I’m raising his kid. But you, Mattie, I’ve got to have insurance that you aren’t going to try a stunt like this again.”

He got right in her face. “You’re mine, and I’m making it official right now.” From behind the couch, the other thug clamped his hands around the sides of her head and held her down. The bright silver blade dipped toward her cheek.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Mattie woke up on the couch, the cushion under her head soaked with blood. She rose, nearly crying out from the pain when the upholstery stuck to the gashes on her right cheek.

He cut my face.

She tried to fight the tears, but they poured down her cheeks anyway. The salt stung the cuts, making her bite her lip to keep from crying out. With tentative fingers, she touched her face, lightly tracing the raised, clotted edges of the
K
. She probed the inside of her cheek with her tongue. It was huge, taking up most of her cheek, from just beneath her eye to her jaw, and from an inch or so from her nose to the hollow under her cheekbone.

“Bastard,” she whispered. Mattie could hear him talking somewhere behind her, probably over by the door. Logan and the other thug laughed at something he said.

He was going to pay. That soft, weak part of her wasn’t there anymore. She could be as cold and as cruel as he. The strength in her roared to life. She closed her eyes and visualized it.

Her breath caught in her throat.

West. It was his kisses and his caresses, his intoxicating violence when he made love to her. She found strength in the memory of the way he held her at night and sang the nightmares away. Strength came in the way he looked at her over a bag of potting soil while they worked in the nursery, and the way he always flashed her that little half-smile when they had to deal with James McKendrick.

You’re my strength, West. I don’t care if you hate me right now. You’re still my strength
.

Light blue, early morning light filtered through the high windows.
What a beautiful day to die.
The thought stalled out all her other thoughts.
Why the hell did I think that?


Because it’s true.
There was no way she could take on K and live. If she took him out, Logan and the other one would be right there to finish her.


It was worth the risk. West would be safe. He’d have Emeline to take care. Her sister was curled up at his side, her head on his thigh. She wished she’d taken more time to really get to know Em.
Mattie bowed her head and wondered if she should pray for something. The last conversation she’d had with God had been a one-sided yelling match when she found out she was pregnant with Molly.

I just need an opportunity to save West,
she asked silently.
If You can hear me, help me save him, please. You send me to hell, whatever. Just let me save West.

The strong part of her reminded her she was a warrior, standing silent and stoic, waiting for just the right moment.

Something skidded across the floor and stopped next to her foot. Squelching a yelp, Mattie looked down at the shiny black object.