Page 94 of Rook

Figuring the home must be behind them, I pulled around them.

Sure enough, set back a ways from the main road was what had to be the oldest mobile home in the park, looking like something straight out of the seventies with what had to be a white-with-brown-trim color scheme back when it was new. Time had muddied and sun-bleached it. A mysterious green was creeping up the side and I worried about the occupants since I was pretty sure that was some kind of mold.

One of the windows was boarded up.

It didn’t occur to me that anything might be weird about that window at first.

I would be beating myself up about that in no time, though.

As it was, I took the bags of groceries out of the passenger seat, thinking about nothing but getting home. And avoiding the swarming hornets coming from an alarmingly large nest hanging under the eave a few feet from the front door.

I was having a flashback to stepping on one of the damn things when I was a little kid and how my foot had swelled up so badly that I couldn’t walk on it for two days. And since my mother was on the outs with her dealer, she’d been too busy detoxing to do anything for me. I’d needed to crawl to the bathroom and the kitchen to get myself anything to eat.

Even if I had Rook to take care of me now—and I knew down to my bones that he would—I really didn’t want a repeat of that pain.

I was so distracted by trying not to get stung by the notoriously ornery flying beasts that I didn’t realize I’d forgotten my phone until I’d put the bags down on the front step and reached for it to take the proof of delivery photo.

“Damnit,” I grumbled, annoyed that I would have to pass the hornets not just one, but two, more times before I could leave.

I didn’t even hear the door.

Nor the footsteps on the steps.

I didn’t have time to try to run.

Or even scream.

A hand wrapped around my waist as another slapped down on my mouth.

I was lifted up off my feet, leaving me to do nothing but pedal my legs in the air helplessly.

“Did you really think I’d let you leave me?”

That voice.

God, that voice.

I’d prayed I would never hear it again, that he would never find me.

I should have known better.

No one knew this man as well as I did. The woman whom he’d claimed as his own.

Randy “Rubble” Jones.

President of the Iron Wolves bike club.

A man who made me so miserable that I’d packed a few things while he’d been asleep one night, stole all the money in his wallet, then snuck out of the club in the wee hours of the morning.

My heart had been pounding so fast, my stomach sloshing so hard, that I only got about a block away before I had to stop to throw up.

That same feeling rose up my throat as I felt the hot breath in my ear as Randy dragged me backward.

The old me never would have fought, would have tried to cower and beg and placate.

The new me didn’t even know that woman anymore.

I dug my nails in as hard as I could, raking them across his hands and forearms, getting a sick sort of satisfaction in the way he yowled in pain.

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