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Taylor drew in a long, shaky breath. Her hand squeezed his painfully tightly, but he didn't pull away, just squeezed back, very aware of the fact that Chloe was watching his every move like a hawk. Fin didn't really know why she was suddenly sointerested in him. It had been five months since she left, and in that time, she hadn’t contacted him once. Now, all of a sudden, she didn't like another woman holding his hand? Well, that was too bad. She lost the right to care about who he spent time with when she dumped him and walked out the door.
“I was in a tiny room. Lying on a bed. There was a toilet, a small tub with a shower head attached to the wall beside it, a table with two chairs, and a weird looking bench type thing with a whole bunch of leather straps attached to it,” Taylor explained in a rush.
“Were you restrained?”
“No. I was just laid out on the bed wearing a dress like the one I was wearing when I ran.”
“Had he sexually assaulted you?” Tom asked tightly. Fin noticed the tremor in his jaw. Sexual assault was a sensitive topic for Tom, given what had happened to Hannah.
Taylor shook her head.
“You said that the man who took you called himself The Breaker, but do you know what his real name is?”
She tensed, and Fin assumed this was the cause of her fear that she couldn’t tell the agents what they wanted to know.
“Taylor?” Tom prompted.
“Just tell them what you can,” Fin told her, patting her shoulder with his free hand.
She drew in another deep breath. “I'm sorry. I don’t know his name. I'm sorry,” she said again. Her posture had gone defensive, and she sounded afraid, as though she wasn't altogether sure that Tom and Chloe wouldn’t punish her for not giving them the correct answer. The Breaker hadn’t kept her restrained, so he’d obviously had to use something else to keep her in line, no doubt threats. “I'm so sorry,” Taylor continued to babble, ignoring Tom when he tried to reassure her. “How can you find him when I don’t know his name?” She was crying now,quickly growing hysterical. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” she continued to repeat the words like a chant as she threw herself into his arms.
“I’ll go get Dr. Abbott,” Tom announced, hurrying out of the room.
Chloe didn't move.
Her gaze fixed firmly on him.
Fin felt odd holding another woman in his arms. Almost like he was cheating.
But he wasn't.
Chloe had ended their relationship.
So why was she looking at him like she still cared?
*****
5:16 P.M.
Why did she want to work with little kids again?
Right now, Avery couldn’t remember why the idea had ever been appealing.
She was exhausted. Ten hours with twenty three-year-olds and she felt like she needed to take the longest, hottest bubble bath, and then fall into bed and sleep for a day.
Too bad she couldn’t.
She had to be back at work at seven o’clock tomorrow morning.
Why did she do this to herself?
Avery set down her bag on the table by her apartment door and pulled out her cell. A sheet of paper came with it; on it was a brightly colored drawing of her that one of the little kids had done at day care today. Flowers and butterflies and big fat yellow and black bumblebees filled up almost every available bit of space.
She smiled.
Thiswas why she did this.
Working with children was what she had wanted to do for as long as she could remember. Pictures like this made the exhaustion more than worth it.
