A police car was waiting there in the small covered alley, as well as two police officers in their tan uniforms. Ren and Steve obviously already knew them both.
“Levell, Stutz, we need you to get Ren and Natalie back to the safe house and stay with them,” Steve instructed the twoyounger men before turning to Ren. “I’m going to stay here. They’ll need help with—”
A call came through loudly over Levell’s police radio. “We’ve got a confirmed sighting of Freihof on the north side of the building. Exit that leads out to the playground!”
Natalie felt bile rising in her throat.
“That’s Jensen,” Stutz said. Both men looked ready to burst into action.
“No.” Ren stopped them. “You two get her to the safe house. You don’t leave her under any circumstances, you got it?”
He turned to Natalie. “We’re going to catch him. Right now, okay? This is all going to be over soon.” He threaded his hands into her hair and kissed her hard and fast. “And then I will find some way to make you forgive me and give us another chance.”
Before she could say anything, he and Steve were gone. Sprinting in the direction of where Damien had been seen.
Desperate fear clawed up her belly. What if Damien killed Ren? She knew firsthand how diabolically brilliant her ex was.
“I can’t believe we’re this close to the action and have to be on babysitting detail instead,” Levell said as he opened the squad car door for Natalie. “No offense.”
“I think you’re quite a bit closer to the action than you think.”
Her whole world spun in a spiral of grayness as she heard the voice that haunted her nightmares. The one she hadn’t heard in six years.
Damien.
She spun in time to see him raise a gun with a silencer on it and shoot first Levell, then Stutz, in the chest. Both men fell to the ground, not even able to draw their weapons. “Allow me to take over babysitting duty of my wife.”
He turned to Natalie, smiling. “Hi, honey.”
She opened her mouth to scream, but he brought the gun and placed it close to her cheek. “One sound and you’ll be as dead as they are, wifey. Get in the car.”
She stood rooted in place. If she went with Damien, she knew her life was over.
His eyes narrowed, the promise of violence clear in them. “If you don’t get in the damn car right now, I will hunt down every single person in your beloved Omega Sector team and kill them slowly in front of you. You will do what I say, Natalie. You know what happens when you disobey.”
She could feel the past coming back to crash over her, drowning her. His rules. His command. The knowledge that she had to be perfect like he wanted her to be or the pain would come.
She had to avoid the pain at all costs.
“Yes, sir.” She got in the car; he followed, snatching her phone from her and keeping his gun trained on her.
“That’s more like my perfect beauty.”
They drove out of Westwater, Damien providing directions, Natalie following them. Once they were a few miles outside of town he had her pull over in a parking lot and change to a car he’d parked there. He put her in the passenger seat, zip-tying her wrists together, and got in behind the wheel.
She kept herself as far away from Damien as she could, huddled over against the door. Trying to get her mind to work through the fear that seemed to swallow her whole.
“Looking at you last night, I thought all our training, our attempt to make you into the perfect wife we always knew you could be, had gone to waste.” He reached over and stroked a finger down her arm. “But now I’m thinking maybe with some correction you can once again be trained to be perfect.”
He hadn’t touched her up to this point. The feel of his skin on hers tore something open in her.
“Do. Not. Touch. Me.” She spat the words, dragging her arm away from his fingers.
He didn’t even stop driving as he backhanded her. Natalie’s face slammed into the window and she tasted blood.
“Evidently it will take a good deal more training to get you back to where you were. The perfect wife. I daresay I am up for the challenge.”
“I was never your perfect wife. I left you. I ran away.”
