Page 93 of Snow in Texas

“I don’t understand,” he mumbled into his palms. “You two are-are-are married!”

Crying for them? Or for the loss of his comprehension, Jenny wondered. He couldn’t make sense of it, and that had reduced him to tears.

“Sit,” Riley ordered, and shoved her down onto the sofa beside Crockett’s chair. He had a roll of packing tape he’d taken from the kitchen and was pulling it from his pocket when she heard the gunshots. A volley of them, right behind the house.

Pup! Jenny’s stomach lurched and she pitched forward, fighting a sudden burst of nausea. “You bastard,” she gasped. “He wasn’t any threat to you.”

“Neither are you. Still gonna tie your ass up. Put your hands together.”

She did, too numb to resist.

Poor little Puppy, too sweet and decent for the outlaw world. Just a boy with nothing to his name, and he’d been mercilessly gunned down. Because of her.

Because of Riley.

“Yeah,” she said, as he wound the tape around her wrists. “I’m not a threat. Keep telling yourself that, Jud, and see how far that gets you.”

He secured the strip and glanced up at her. Was he wondering? Maybe a little. Wondering what she’d become capable of in their years apart.

He shrugged and went to fetch her purse, set it on the coffee table and began rifling through its contents.

Fear was beginning to take root, in a deep, physical way. In the initial excitement, the adrenaline had kept the terror away, but now it was spreading outward from her chest, crawling with cold fingers down her arms and legs, tightening her lungs. The idea of getting shot had been devastating. But now he had her captive; now he could make it slow and painful, and that was ten times worse.

“Looky here.” He withdrew the switchblade she kept stowed in the zippered pocket with her lipsticks. He grinned. “Would you have used that on me?”

“In a heartbeat,” she choked out.

He laughed. The crazy son of a bitchlaughed. He might know his name and remember his past, but he was just as compromised as Crockett, she realized. Probably always had been.

She closed her eyes and swallowed down her rising gorge. Images flashed across her mind, old memories of Riley’s little cruelties. For so long she’d chalked it up to a dark sense of humor. She’d lied to herself, to everyone, until that last night…

~*~

Then

“I’ll be there tomorrow,”Derek had said on the phone earlier.“Just hold it together ‘til then, and whatever you do, Jen, don’t let him know that you talked to me.”

She ran the words through her mind again and again, like fingering rosary beads, a silent prayer that the storm clouds kept from breaking until after Candy arrived. She wasn’t afraid to take on her tormentor…only to do so alone.

She poured another finger of bourbon into her glass and drank it down, eyes shut tight against the burn, gasping afterward.

Hurry, Derek. Hurry.

The clubhouse door opened and she fought down the urge to bolt. She touched the sore spot on her lip with her tongue. It hadn’t been so bad, the last hit. She could wait it out. Just one more day. One more day…

“Jenny, baby,” Riley called. He was happy tonight. He was drunk, too. She could hear it in his voice, smell it on his skin as she turned to face him.

He’d come in with a whole herd of people, his crew, the jackals. And he had one of the club sluts under one arm, a busty, barely-legal blonde thing with fishnets and a hot pink tube top.

Riley gave her a sloppy grin. “Your man’s back, baby, and I brought you a lil’ present.”

“Oh yeah?” Her voice sounded guarded, frightened. She swallowed down a wave of revulsion and stood up on her toes to kiss him, quickly, all too aware of the groupie staring at her. God, how old was the girl? And look at her unblemished face. Riley hadn’t hither, only Jen. His wife.

There’d been a time when the evidence of his cheating would have sent her spiraling into despair. That time had long since passed.

“Yeah. Karly here’s gonna come back in the back with us.”

“Yeah,” Karly chimed in, grinning and twirling a lock of her hair. She giggled, and Jenny thought she might be sick.

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