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“I'll hop in the shower and start packing,” Kimberly announced but couldn't stop herself from wrapping her arms around Dean and giving him a kiss as luxuriously sweet as the maple still sticking to her skin. When she felt Sam against her back, his hands tenderly caressing her ass, and his lips feathered along her shoulder up her neck and to her ear, Kimberly knew a peace in her soul that she'd never dreamed possible.
On the heels of that came a worry that she was all too familiar with, unfortunately.
“Michiko.” She said it again the way she'd said it in their bed, her tone encased in worry and fear. A fear she'd felt while Shawna had been missing and that had lingered until they'd come home. Kimberly felt foolish for thinking she was free of that fear—fear for someone she cared for, fear for their safety, for their life. But it was there now, like a living cancerous troll in the center of her chest. It replaced the joy that had shone there only moments ago and filled her with an urgency that hurried her steps and had tears biting at the backs of her eyes.
There was something else simmering there too. Fury. Kimberly noticed her steps morphed into stomps the farther she made her way down the hall. When she got to their room, that fury had her opening the door with such force it slammed into the wall at her shove. Good, Kimberly fumed. Anger—anger felt a hell of a lot better than fear. As she stormed to her closet and yanked out Sam’s suitcase, she rode that wave like she was fucking Miwa at the rodeo.
“Yeehaw,” Kimberly muttered and tore undergarments from her drawer to throw them into the bottom of the case. “I cowboy!”
Epilogue
“Wake up.”
Michiko opened her bleary eyes to see the youngest of her captors leaning over her. His strawberry blond hair was shorn military close to his head. This close, she could see that he had a pale array of freckles over his entire face. They made him look sort of tan, and his boyish good looks plus his clean-cut appearance were at such odds with the situation that she thought she was dreaming until he shook her.
“You gotta wake up,” he told her, his voice just as childlike as his appearance. God, the kid couldn’t be old enough to drink yet. What the hell was he doing mixed up in this?
“Here. I brought you some water and a little bit of food.” Sure enough, a water bottle was in one hand, and he had a bag of fast food in the other. “It’s cold but I saved you two of my tacos.”
Michiko could’ve wept at his voice—his words were unimportant at the moment. His tone told her she wasn’t alone in this mess, that she had a friend in this. Someone that would help. That tone alone gave her something she’d thought was well out of her reach by now. For the first time since she’d seen that asshole Lee in Bradshaw’s office, Michiko felt something other than fear. She looked into the scared yet valiant eyes of the boy in front of her and she felt hope. Then the door opened behind him.
To be continued…
