Cold Hearted (Cold Justice Book 6) (27 page)

“Unless you’d known I was married.”

His gaze held hers even as he kept driving her upwards on that elusive hunt for release. “You’re not married anymore.” He let her hair go and shifted them again so she was on her back and he was on his knees. His movements became faster, deeper. A fine layer of sweat formed on his forehead.

“I can’t wait much longer,” he gritted out.

“What are you waiting for?” she gasped. It felt so good.
So
good.

His eyes heated. “You.”

He hit the spot that made her cry out again in panicked pleasure. Suddenly she was flooded by sensation, each nerve bursting like a firework through her body as white light exploded behind her eyes. His shout of completion chased her as she catapulted through some alternative dimension before landing right back in his arms.

He gathered her to him, holding her close for a few heartbeats while the world righted itself. Then he gently extricated himself, got rid of the condom, and came back to bed, pulling her tight against his body to combat the sudden chill in the room.

“You should sleep in the other room,” she murmured, but she snuggled closer anyway.

He kissed her ear, spooning her body like he’d been made to fit. The pulse in his wrist throbbed against her ribs as he cupped her breast.

“Go to sleep, Erin.” He nuzzled her ear. The heat of his body soothed her, and exhaustion swept over her like a calming wave before dragging her beneath the surface.

R
achel crept out
of the front door, careful not to make a sound. Her car was right there, and she started the engine, all the while checking the windows of her home to make sure her parents hadn’t woken up. She doubted they’d heard her leave. They slept in separate bedrooms at the back of the house. Pretended it was because of Dad’s snoring, but no one was fooled.

Their marriage was another victim of her rape.

Her throat knotted as she drove away. What had happened to her had destroyed them. So much remorse. So much shame. She wished she could go back and do something differently—not moved from home into a dorm, screamed louder, fought him off—or maybe just never told anyone…

The secret might have destroyed her, but so had the truth. She never went out except to the crisis center or classes. She didn’t sleep. She was scared all the time. She saw his face above her every night. Hurting her. Every night. Like a devil in her dreams torturing her all the way from the depths of hell.

She’d felt empowered when the verdict had been read. After Hawke was sent to prison. After the jury told her and Mary that they believed them. That they believed they weren’t lying to get some boy’s attention. The town said otherwise, and the wall of hatred had driven her off social media and made her change her accounts to ones she only shared with her closest friends.

She wiped at the tears. She hated how weak she’d become. How untrusting.

Snow drifted out of the sky in indolent spirals. Another big fall was forecast for today. She loved snow—or rather, she loved being tucked up beside a roaring fire surrounded by her parents, and their house. Safe. She shuddered. What did that even mean? Safety was an illusion for the foolish. And the fact she was arguing with herself about it showed exactly how crazy she’d become.

They said two-to-eight percent of rape allegations were possibly false. The figure was low, but who in the world would lie about being raped? Who’d make up that sort of vicious desecration just to get noticed? Certainly not someone who’d been raped. Forget the pain and terror of the attack itself, the aftermath was worse. It was like stripping away everything you thought you knew about yourself and reducing it to ashes, lies, illusion.

Rachel knew she was considered one of the “lucky” ones. She’d studied the stats. Eighty percent of rapes were never reported to the cops. Less than five percent of those were prosecuted, and of
those
, only 0.2-2.8 percent resulted in convictions where the attacker went to jail. Erin Donovan had made that happen with her belief in Rachel’s statement and dogged police work. It had made Rachel believe in miracles, made her believe that her community had triumphed, at least in legal terms. She’d hoped it had been a sign that the rest of the country was getting serious about the issue of rape on college campuses, but only time would tell.

And now these murders had brought back all the old fear and insecurity. She shuddered and pushed the uncertainty out of her mind.

The only positive thing was she’d discovered she could use her experience to help others. Sure she was scared to death, but she was also more empathetic than she used to be. She was damaged, but she had practical knowledge in how a victim could get help. If that was all she took with her from this awful chapter of her life, at least it was something.

She put on her blinker to head toward Fox Creek Park. She had classes at nine, but she had something very important to attend to first.

It was quiet, which she preferred. People were either spit-in-her-face hateful, or overly-friendly sympathetic. They all looked at her like they knew her. They didn’t
know
her.

Earlier, she’d received a call from one of the guys who helped out at the crisis center. She clenched her fingers around the wheel. Another girl had been attacked, but she was too scared to officially report it. The girl needed to go to the clinic and get checked out. The problem was she was so traumatized she was reluctant to seek treatment.

The woman needed to think about STDs. Pregnancy. UTIs. Physical damage. A rape kit in case she changed her mind about wanting to nail the bastard at some point in the future. It was important, or Rachel wouldn’t have agreed to get out of bed before the crack of dawn.

It scared her that this was happening again in her small town. Hawke was in prison. She should feel safe now, but she didn’t.

Maybe it was time to move away? Or for plastic surgery. The last made her laugh. People went through worse things, she reminded herself. That’s why she asked people to tell her the worst thing that had ever happened to them before she’d talk about her own experience. You couldn’t tell what people had gone through by looking at their faces, though Rachel tried. And no matter how terrible, at least she was still alive.

She clung to that.

She drove into the parking lot and found a space near the fence posts that marked the entrance to the footpath. She left the engine running as she tapped her bitten-to-the-quick fingernails against the steering wheel. He’d said they’d be here at six AM sharp.

Rachel checked her watch. Hopefully the clinic wouldn’t be busy at this time of day, but they still needed to hurry if they all wanted to make class.

The big SUV he sometimes drove pulled into the parking lot. He slid into the empty bay next to her and got out. She rolled down her window, and he leaned inside.

“She’s in the backseat.” He jerked his head toward the SUV. “She needs another woman to talk to. Someone she can trust.” Concern etched his features.

Rachel couldn’t see the young woman through the tinted-glass, but she had no doubt she’d be crying, replaying what had happened over and over in her head. Still, she sat there, paralyzed. Could she really listen to the details of another girl’s ordeal without imploding from misery?

“Look, maybe I should just take her home. Sorry I wasted your time—”

“No,” Rachel said softly, undoing her seatbelt. “Let me talk to her.”

He pressed his lips together and shrugged as she got out of the car. She went to the passenger door of his vehicle, and he followed, hands stuffed in his pockets.

She opened the door and looked inside, frowning in confusion as she stared at the empty seat. “I-I don’t understand.”

He grabbed her hair in one hand and slammed her head against the metal of the door. An explosion of white light was followed by blinding pain above her eye-socket. Something hard jabbed into her lower ribs. “You don’t have to understand, Rachel. You just have to do what I say.”

She cried out as he dragged her backward, shoved the door closed, and force-marched her toward the woods.

“What are you doing? Let go of me!” she yelled. She tried to get away, but he was so much stronger than she was. The pain in her scalp when he hauled her against him made her eyes bleed.

He laughed.

“Let go! I mean it.” She kicked out at him, but he shoved her onwards. She grabbed at his wrists to try and ease the pressure on her head, to reduce the searing pain in her skull. “Why are you doing this?” she screamed. It was hard to think. Hard to ignore the pain and panic to try and figure out what the hell was happening.

She’d trusted him. He shoved her onward. She screamed, but there was no one to hear, and her cries echoed uselessly through the forest.

“We’re just taking a walk. I need to tell you something.”

Bullshit
. “Tell me now.”

“In a few minutes. It’s important.” She didn’t believe him. Her heart raced so fast it felt like a buzz saw in her chest. Why was he doing this? He knew what she’d been through. Why had he lied to her about another victim?

It was so cold she started to shiver violently. Or maybe that was the fear taking hold and shutting down her function. Her eyes darted into the shadows of the trees. If she could get out of his grasp, she could run. She could run forever. The grip on her hair tightened as if he read her mind.

They kept walking into the heart of the park.

“Where are we going? This is stupid! You’re scaring me.” Her voice got small when she needed it to be strong. It was happening again—the utter loss of control, the overwhelming sense of powerlessness. They’d walked for ages off the path into the forest, trudging through snow that soaked her jeans. “I don’t understand,” she sobbed.

“Of course you don’t.” He gave her a violent shove, and she fell, face-first.

She scooted onto her back and started crab-crawling away from him, through the snow. “Why are you doing this to
me
!”

“Oh, please, Rachel.” His tone was condescending. “I’m putting you out of your misery.”

“W-what?” She could barely breathe she was so scared.

He eyed her with mock concern. “I’m giving you a choice.”

“W-what choice?”

“Take your clothes off and lie down on the ground.”

Her throat felt raw from clawing back emotion. “Or?” she rasped.

A smile touched his lips, so callous and evil it eased between her ribs and into her heart like a blade. “Or I’ll do to you what I did last time, except there won’t be any drugs to block the reality of what’s happening this time. No convenient black outs.”

Pain streaked through her chest, and it took a moment to realize she was hyperventilating. “It was
you
! But that’s impossible. I saw Drew Hawke—”

“You saw what I wanted you to see.” He glanced at his watch as if bored.

“I know what I saw!” But there were so many pieces of broken information that didn’t fit together.

He pulled something large from his jacket pocket and placed it over his face. Blue eyes glittered from behind small holes in a facemask.

“You made a mask of his face?” She flashed back to that night, and it suddenly made sense. The utter lack of emotion shown by her attacker. The fact he hadn’t said a word.

She was going to throw up. Hawke was innocent. She’d helped send an innocent man to prison, and no one knew. A high-pitched squeal sounded inside her head—like her sanity was escaping her skull. Her only hope was to outrun this monster who’d taken so much from so many people. Who’d convinced her so thoroughly it was Drew, she’d taken a polygraph to swear he was guilty.

She had to tell someone.

He put the mask carefully back in his pocket. “You should have seen the look on Cassie’s face when she saw it.”

Rachel’s stomach knotted. He’d killed Cassie, and now he was going to kill her.

“Hypothermia isn’t supposed to be a bad way to go. It doesn’t hurt—you just fall asleep.”

She bolted. She scrambled under a pine and around a silver birch. She was small, but fast, and she would not let this twisted creature win.

She dodged right, but her foot hit a root, and she sprawled into the snow. A heavy weight smashed into her back before she could get up, shoving the air from her lungs so she lay there wheezing desperately, trying to draw in oxygen.

The weight of him behind her brought back a myriad of powerful memories from that night last year. A barrage of emotions—fear, rage, confusion. When she was finally able to haul in a breath she saw he held a rope, blue rope, just like Erin Donovan had shown her in photographs. Terror beat out revulsion.

She bucked against his weight, but he didn’t budge. Tears welled at the unfairness of it all.

“You killed those girls, raped the others. Framed Hawke. Why?” She screamed as long and as loud as her lungs allowed. Only silence answered. She drew in another breath, but he shoved her face into the snow.

“Shut the fuck up. No one’s going to hear you out here, and you’re giving me a headache.” She almost choked. He grabbed her ankles and dragged her to a nearby tree. The icy ground scratched her face.