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The whole place was.
His to guard, protect, patrol.
“Quin wouldn’t take too kindly to you burying bodies all over this place.”
To that, Ranger’s lips quirked up. “Usually doesn’t have to go that far.”
“Usually,” I qualified.
“There’s a lot of land here. Quiet land. Land where evil men think they can do evil things, and never be found out.”
I didn’t doubt that.
If you were looking for a place to torture, kill, and hide someone, there really was no better place. Especially in the off-season, when no one was hunting or camping.
“So you make sure they pay for it.”
“Nina could work as a cadaver dog if she didn’t try to rip your limbs off when around people,” he said, waving a hand toward one of his Rotties. “She sniffed out a fresh kill last year. Woman was abused in ways that even men like us,” he said, meaning ones who had served in the uglier areas of the service, “would feel sick to see. Body was barely even stiff. Deep in the woods. There was no way he got out that fast.”
“So you found him.”
“Found him,” Ranger agreed with a nod.
“Did you find him first, or did the dogs?” I asked, feeling my stomach roll at the idea of that pack of dogs coming at you with bloodthirst on their minds.
“A mix,” he told me, throwing back another round. “Let them play for a minute before I took him out of the world.”
“You come across a lot of bodies here?”
“Nah. I mean here and there. Had a suicide last year. Had to get the law involved on that one. But maybe every ten or twelve months.”
“That’s a lot,” I clarified.
“In one-point-one-million acres?” he shot back. “Not really. Murder rate isn’t exactly low in the States, Gunn.”
“Yeah, but in cities. In places where people are packed like sardines. A murder every ten months out here where no one lives is a lot.”
To that, I got a shrug.
Then no one spoke for another fifteen minutes as we both drank, got lost in our own heads, as men such as us were inclined to do.
“Kai said you got a farm out here now,” I broke the silence a while later when my thoughts took a turn I couldn’t let them.
“Yep,” he agreed, filling my glass. “And if you’re staying, you’re working,” he informed me.
Those were the rules.
So, the next morning, after way too many goddamn glasses of whiskey the night before, I helped feed, water, muck out, collect eggs, anything that had to be done.
Then I got up and did the same the next day.
And the next.
And the next.
By the time I was finally ready to leave, focused enough to hopefully be able to get back to the real world, back to work, back to my life, I had been there for ten days.
It wasn’t until I got back to my car, plugged in my phone to let it charge, and started driving that it happened.
A ding.
A voicemail.
Just one.
The office clearly hadn’t missed me.
And the number wasn’t one I had saved.
It wasn’t one I was familiar with at all.
But when I stopped in the middle of the backroad and hit the button to play it, the voice was one I sure as shit remembered. It was the voice I had been trying to forgetful the past ten days, throwing myself into hard manual labor, avoiding the world, trying to stay away from anything that might trigger the memories.
But it was her voice.
And it was not good.
It changed fucking… everything.
I had something I needed to handle.
TWELVE
Sloane
The plan was simple.
Take it, fold it up, compartmentalize it, don’t harp on it.
It was how I handled all the ugly bits in my life.
Locking it away.
Refusing to open it up.
I was good at it, too.
I’d had many years of practice.
And there were many things now to try to focus on. I had an apartment to make my own, shops to explore, restaurants to try, local attractions to see, work to find.
The first day, I’ll admit, that was rough.
I walked around with his touch still pressed into my skin, my lips still swollen and sensitive from his, my muscles aching in places I hadn’t used in far too long.
It was impossible for my brain not to go back to that bed, to the sensations and the feelings being with him had brought up.
Sometime around noon, I had forced myself to take a shower, convinced it would help to try to ‘wash him off’ of me.
It didn’t work, of course.
But it was worth the try anyway.
The file sat there on my counter taunting me until I thumbed through it, taking out the job ads Jules had found, then finding a single loose leaf page with a phone number scribbled across it.
His, I was sure.
The temptation was strong then, to dial it, to tell him to come back, to be that needy, pathetic woman that I didn’t want to be.
