Page 143 of I'm Watching You

Lindsay swallowed her rising terror. ‘Why are you doing this? Who are you?’

‘I’m someone who doesn’t appreciate you sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong.’

‘Who are you?’

‘Christina’s husband.’

Christina. Nicole. ‘Richard Braxton.’

‘So she’s talked about me?’ Hate and resentment laced the words.

‘Yes.’

Braxton kicked open the rickety barn door and pulled her inside across the dirt floor. When they were in the center, he let go of her. She crumpled face-first into a heap. She tasted dirt and tried to spit it out of her mouth as she rolled onto her back. Above, she saw sunshine peeking through the slats of a room. In the distance she heard birds.

Lindsay moistened her lips. She felt so dry. There was little doubt that Richard planned an awful death for her. She remembered what Zack had told her he’d done to Claire.

She opened her eyes. Her vision was blurred but she could make out dark hair and a square face. She tried to sit up but he roughly pushed her against the hard ground. He straddled her body. She felt his erection press against her belly and she thought he was going to rape her.

She wanted to fight but found her body drifting as if she were on a raft floating out to sea.

Instead, he pounded two stakes into the ground aboveher head and then roughly grabbed her hands and lashed them tightly to the stakes. His weight lifted and he moved to her legs. He yanked her legs open wide and tied them to more stakes, then hammered them into the ground.

She tried to pull her hands free of the stakes, but they didn’t budge. The hemp cut into the tender flesh of her wrist.

Through the haze, Lindsay understood that she needed to do something to save herself. She drew in a lungful of air and screamed as loud as she could.

Richard cursed, drew back, and slapped her hard across the face. ‘Shut up, bitch. I don’t have time for this.’

Pain rattled through her head.

He slid his hand to the flat of her belly and up under her shirt. He squeezed her breast painfully. She struggled in vain against her restraints as her stomach heaved at the thought of what was to come.

Richard put his lips next to her ear. ‘I don’t have time for you right now. I have to go get Christina. I want her to watch what I’m going to do.’

Abruptly he got up and left the barn. She heard the engine of his car fire up and gravel kick up under the tires as he drove off.

Tears burned in her eyes.

She was not going to die like this. She started to work on the restraints on her hands and ignored the way the rope sliced into her wrists.

Nicole was lost in thought as she sat at the kitchen table across from Eleanor and Mr Kier. The pregnancy testshe’d taken this morning had been positive. She was carrying Richard’s baby.

At first she’d been so numb that she’d not been able to leave the bathroom. She’d sat on the floor and cried.

And then Eleanor had called out to her. So she’d dried her tears and come downstairs.

She laid down her hand of cards on the kitchen table. ‘Gin.’

Eleanor frowned and leaned forward to study the hand. ‘You don’t have gin.’

Absentmindedly, Nicole glanced down. ‘I don’t?’

‘No. You can’t have a straight with mismatched suits.’

‘Oh.’

‘Geez. Can’t anyone play a decent game?’

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