Page 59 of Primal

“Jesus, women are a mess.”

It wasn’t Cody. It wasn’t Dad. It was… I didn’t knowwhoit was.

But he was sitting in Dad’s recliner with a gun in his hand. And it was aimed at me.

28

RILEY

My skin prickled from adrenaline.My heart rate was at stroke point. I stood frozen, one foot in front of the other as if I’d been hit by a stun gun. “Who….who…who’re you?”

He reached out and flicked on the reading lamp.

The light made me blink, but also made the man, and the gun he held, clearer.

I’d never seen him before. I couldn’t tell his height because he was lounging–very comfortably–in the recliner, but he was big. Perhaps the same size as Dad but wiry. Dark hair fell in lanky clumps to his chin. Brown eyes. Sallow cheeks. A mustache. A tattoopeeked out from the collar of his white t-shirt dedicated to a vintage heavy metal band. He wore jeans and sturdy work boots.

And an evil look that raked up and down my body.

“You must be the daughter. Got enough pictures of you on the walls.”

That look? It turned to something else. Seedy and gross.

I might’ve been drugged and kidnapped by Cody. Tied to a bed. I’d been freaked, sure. But nothing like this.

He was going to do bad things to me and use that gun.

“Even better.”

I swallowed hard, but my mouth was so dry it hurt.

“You want to know who I am, sweetheart?”

Did I? I wanted to hit rewind on the past few minutes and be in my car driving around town. Anywhere but here.

I nodded because I figured that was what he wanted.

“Neil Kobchek.”

I blinked. His name meant nothing to me.

He huffed. “Yeah, your daddy didn’t tell you about my brother, did he?”

I took a step back when he rocked forward in the recliner and stood. Loomed over me. I retreated again.

“Nope. Stay right there.”

As if I was going to run when he had a gun! Would he chase like Cody had?

Cody.I needed him right now. Hell, I needed the entire police force.

“My brother’s the one he put away for twenty years.”

Oh.Oh.

The trial in Bozeman. The shitshow he mentioned.

“I’m… sorry your brother is in jail.” My voice warbled. I wasn’t sorry. If he was convicted and spending two decades in prison, then he must’ve done something pretty bad. Like holding someone at gunpoint in their home. Why wasn’t this guy also in jail?

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