The rain eased a bit on the drive, and it wasn’t long before I pulled up to the downed tree. I parked on the right side of the road, where the cell reception usually lit up best.
Best to get this over with first. My stomach clenched. I paged down to the lone call on last night’s call log and hit it.
“Club’s still closed,” the gravelly voice said. This was their regular greeting these days. Same as last night, anyway.
“Yeah, this is, uh, Jim. Again. I hired an escort last night for a gala. I’m gonna need another night. Two nights, actually.”
My face heated with the shame of it. Paying for a woman I loved by giving money to the man I hated most in this world.
“Yeah boss, sure thing. You’ve got our Venmo. You keep sending us the daily rate and you won’t hear shit from me. She’s a nice piece, huh? I bet you’re riding her hard and putting her away wet.”
I wanted to reach through the phone and strangle that trash to death. I’d be happy to do time if it meant Mia and all of Washington County would be free of these monsters who sold women.
I hung up the phone and sent the money, enough for the week.
I had no right to interfere. I needed to remind myself, I wasn’t even a sheriff anymore. This was her job, her livelihood, the way she kept a roof over her head and food on her table.
Youcould give her all that.
I could; I could do it now, today. If only she’d let me. Of course I would, no questions asked, no strings attached. It would be worth it to know she was safe.
Harvey, he was the real scumbag at hand, not this lackey who handled the phone calls. Only career criminal in East Greenwich, since we put his brother Marv away.
Areyouso different from him?
I was using my money to force a woman to spend time with me when otherwise she wouldn’t have given me the time of day. Mia wasn’t my date or my girlfriend. She was my escort, a sex worker I’d fallen in love with while I was rescuing her. I’d lost my whole heart to her at the goddamned sight and smell of her. While she couldn’t care about me any fucking less.
I saved her life that day at the club, and she still didn’t know who the hell I was.
And that’sexactlywho I was, a guy nobody remembered.
I slammed the axe into the felled tree, over and over, until my shoulders were ready to come apart at the seams.
The rain started up again, cold and driving, while I was hacking away and pitying myself, and soon I was soaked through.
I kept going.
I finally cleaved the old tree in two, but the halves were too big to move by myself. I’d have to bring the chains and hook it up to the truck to drag it. Could be a whole lot easier if I ran up the road and knocked on Pete’s door to get an extra pair of hands.
On to the next errand.
I got back in my truck and headed for Mia’s car, to collect her things.
That awful little deathtrap SUV of hers wasn’t much different from how I’d left it last night, except overnight the storm had claimed it as its own. It had a whole tree branch sticking up out of the window I’d broken to free her. I lifted out the branch,tossed it aside, and peered down into the tipped vehicle. A solid foot of muck was piled up on the passenger-side-turned-floor. There was no way this car was going to start again, let alone run.
I’d get her a new one. Something safer. Rugged but classy. Fine-looking. Like her.
I went and grabbed my shovel out of the back of my truck to dig around and find her stuff. I opened the door, pushed it upward and climbed in, my guts twisting inside me when I saw how close Mia had been to death. If I hadn’t come after her when I did, she could have suffocated in a matter of minutes.
Her phone was lodged between the dash and the windshield, clean and protected. Might even work. I slipped it into my pocket and continued the search. It took a little more mucking about with the shovel to find her purse, buried down deep. I plucked it out of the mud and banged off the stuck clumps of earth with the shovel.
A flash of purple caught my eye.
I wasn’t about to go through her purse. I didn’t want to invade her privacy. She didn’t owe me any info about her life, and I sure as hell wasn’t trying to extract any. My investigation and interrogation days were over, thank God.
Still, once it was slung over my side so I could climb up and out of the Trooper with both hands, I couldn’t stop the purse from flopping open. Full of mud.
And the cutest little purple-handled handgun.
