Page 3 of Savage Fire

“Today, you are of age. And…I know now…he only married me because he one day planned to marry you as well.”

In that moment, she remembered…todaywas her eighteenth birthday.

Oh…no….

“What?! You mean…he plans to turn me into one of the sister wives? Mom! I’m legally his step-daughter. He is legally married toyou. How would that even work?”

Condesa’s mother pushed Condesa toward the door, leaning down to grab the travel bag from the floor on her way out the bedroom door.

Her mother snorted derisively. “You think he’s actuallymarriedto Anna, Carin, Maureen, or Mina? He isn’t. He finds them, charms them, seduces them, then drags them here with promises of a good life. He targets lonely, battered teenaged girls, and traps them. He only targeted me, at the ripe of age of twenty-six, because he sawyou,mi tesoro. So you have to run!”

Hurrying from the tiny bedroom, Lisa grabbed Condesa’s hand and pulled her down the hallway of the small trailer Condesa had moved into when she’d turned sixteen. The trailer was a single-wide parked in a small clearing several hundred yards from the main house…where Lisa, all the other wives, and their kids lived. At the time, she’d believed Jacob had given her the trailer because he wanted her to have her own space outside of the loud, busy, overcrowded main house. She believed thathebelieved she was trustworthy and mature enough to have her own home—still under his direct supervision, of course. Now, she wondered if he hadn’t just culled her from the rest so he could keep a better eye on her. Keep her separate from her siblings and their mothers because he had something else planned for her.

“I overheard him speaking with Hank last night. He was only waiting until you turned eighteen, then he was going to make you wife number six.”

Condesa gasped. The man was nearing sixty! Why the hell did he want another eighteen-year-old wife? Weren’t five wives enough already? And to think that he thought she would beokaywith marrying her own mother’s husband.

“The man is out of his freaking mind if he think’s I’ll go along with this.” Condesa dug her heels in. “When he gets here, I’ll just tell him—”

Lisa growled, her eyes wild. “No! If you are here when he gets here, he won’t take no for an answer, Condesa. He willrapeyou—over and over again. He will hurt you until he breaks you, until you are nothing like the beautiful, kind, brave young woman you are right now. Jacob is a ruiner. A wicked, evil man who is so good at hiding his demons that he could entice five women to live in this fucked up life. That will not be you.I will not let that be you!”

Condesa stood stunned, staring in terrified agony at her mother’s grief-stricken face. Rape her? Hurt her? Is that what he’d done to her mother? To all the other teenaged girls he’d brought home?

“You have to go,mija. You have to escape. Take your bag. I tucked a few hundred dollars I was able to hide away into the side pocket.”

Condesa, numb, didn’t fight it when her mother handed her her own coat and told her to put it on. When the light in the main house flicked on, Condesa knew her time was up.

“Hurry!” Lisa implored.

Condesa tugged on her boots and grabbed her bag.

“But what about you? What will he do to you once he figures out you helped me escape?”

A small, sad smile formed on her beloved face.

“I will take whatever punishment he gives me…with a smile on my face. I am only sorry I allowed him into our lives,mi amor. And now…I am making things right the only way I can.”

Throwing open the creaking, spring-loaded trailer door, she pushed Condesa into the soft darkness of the pre-dawn morning.

“Go! Take the produce truck to the bus station. There’s a 5:30 bus to Casper. Take it. From there…run. Run until you can’t run any more. Then….”

Condesa turned toward her mother, a woman who’d been beaten down by life, a woman who’d thought she’d finally found her dream only to be gifted a nightmare. A sob rising in her chest, Condesa reached for her mother, needing to wrap her in her arms, to once again hold her while she fell apart, but the sounds of movement from the main house made her tense.

“No time for a long goodbye, Condesa.”

But when will I see you again?

Tears burning tracks down her cheeks, Condesa turned from her mother and hurried toward the pole barn where they parked the produce truck after trips into town for the produce market.

On the wind, at her back, above the pounding of her heart in her ears, she heard, “Via con Dios, mi tesoro.”

Las Vegas, Nevada

Present

Sucking in a lungful of dry as hell Las Vegas air, Tessa exited the rehab center, fighting back tears of goddamn joy.

Fuck. It really was over. Nine months of intense, painful yet necessary physical therapy. After getting the shit shot out of her knee and her leg broken during a kidnap and hostage nightmare a year ago, Tessa was thankful to be alive and able to walk at all.

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