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“I’m sorry!” she called out above the storm. She didn’t know why she apologized except that she was always apologizing.
The driver said nothing.
“Let me get my purse,” she said loudly. She turned and moved for the driver’s side door of her car, when suddenly she was grabbed from behind. Lightning flashed as one hand snatched her hair, and the other gripped her upper arm. She winced as she was pulled backward, angled toward the Mercedes, and propelled forward. The sound of thunder overhead muffled the sound of her face smacking into the frame of the car’s rear door. The hand tightened on her hair but let go of her arm.
“I’m sorry!” she cried out again, hoping to placate her attacker.
The hand in her hair tightened, making it impossible to move without excruciating pain. The other hand wrenched up the hem of her sundress. The thin material of her panties tore as they were ripped from her body.
Chapter 22
As Tildy waited until the end of the hour, she nervously tugged at her hair again, arranging it to cover the cut just above her eye. Most of her students were too busy working on their exam to pay much attention, but Mariposa had noticed the smaller cut on Tildy’s bottom lip and the dark circles under her eyes.
Tildy had offered the same explanation she’d given her parents that morning, that she’d fallen on the darkened pathway from the garage to the house. Her mother had dismissed it as Tildy’s ‘usual clumsiness’. Tildy had wondered if that excuse had been used so many times when people caught a glimpse of Tildy’s other injuries that her mother had started actually believing it herself.
Mariposa had been more difficult to convince, having long suspected that Tildy was unhappy at home. A different sort of thought had occurred to the older woman as well, and she’d asked, “Your older man?”
Tildy had simply shaken her head. She didn’t want to talk about it. “I fell,” she’d insisted. Mariposa had given her a stern look but taken her seat.
Now class was close to over, and Tildy could escape to the relative safety of her home for the rest of the weekend. As people brought their exams to her desk, she hurriedly stuffed them into her bag. She was always the last one out of the classroom, and so she stayed, smiling politely to her students as they exited. When the last one left, she practically bolted to the door but stopped up short, as she nearly ran into a tall man in an RCPD uniform.
“Whoa there,” he said as she skidded to a stop.
Tildy’s mouth dropped open, and she backed up a few steps. He entered the room, and on his heels was a man she did recognize, also wearing a uniform. She stared at Hawk’s friend Caleb, whose gaze was dark and unreadable. She watched him take in her damaged lip, and she licked it nervously. She looked to the other, older man, praying Caleb wouldn’t say he knew her.
“Tildy,” Caleb said, nodding at her.
She scowled. Well, there went that hope. She remained quiet.
“Miss Fletcher?” the older man asked.
Tildy looked at him again.
“Were you by any chance at Maria’s bar last night?” he asked. He said it politely, but there was a definite edge to his voice. Maybe that was just her imagination.
“Told you she was,” Caleb muttered.
The older man ignored him.
Tildy tightened the grip on her bag. “Yes,” she admitted. “Not for long though,” she added quickly. “I left early.”
The older man nodded. “Before or after you got that cut on your lip?”
Tildy swallowed and rubbed her mouth. “I tripped,” she told him. “At home.”
Both men’s eyes narrowed. It was obvious that neither one of them believed her. Tildy squared her shoulders. There was no way they prove anything, anything at all. If she just kept to her story, they would discover they’d hit a brick wall and leave. She couldn’t even figure out why they were here in the first place. Tildy hadn’t told anyone, not even Skylar.
“What’d you do at Maria’s?” the older one asked. “Have anything to drink?”
Tildy bristled. “No,” she snapped. The last thing she needed was to be accused of drinking and driving. “I did not.”
The other man, whose nametag Tildy noticed said “Rawlins,” glanced at Caleb, who nodded.
“Spend any time with anyone while you were there not drinking?”
Tildy shook her head. “No. Not really. I just… danced and then I went home.”
Rawlins nodded. “With one guy? Or more than one guy? Or one guy more than the others?” he pressed.
Tildy glared at him. His tone implied that dancing actually meant something else and then to ask if there had been more than one guy…
“I don’t remember,” she said curtly.
Rawlins raised an eyebrow at her. “Don’t remember? But you didn’t have anything to drink?”
