“Oh God.”
“What’s going on, George? Is that man at your house right now?”
“No. No, he’s gone,” she said, hoping it was true.
“Look, I’m headed home, but I’m still an hour out. Don’t go anywhere. Don’t talk to anyone, okay?”
“Okay,” George said, glancing at the clinic door. “But, Jessie, I want you to know that the man I told you about, my patient? I trust him. I’d trust him with my life.”
“All right, well, I’d suggest you warn him. ’Cause I’ve got a feeling things are about to blow.”
Just as she hung up, the bell rang above the front door. George looked up, hoping, almost expecting it to be Clay, relieved that it might be.
The man who filled her waiting room gave her a disquieting sense of déjà vu. She stopped breathing.
His sleeveless leather vest, along with the tattoos covering both of his arms, told her he was probably a biker—but his expression, visible behind a layer of piercings so thick you could almost hear a metallic jingle, gave her the chills. This wasn’t Clay, or anyone even remotely like him. This man was a predator. The eyes, she thought. Where Clay’s were warm, this man’s gaze was dead. Calculating, but dead.
Clearing her throat, George stood up straight and asked, “Can I help you?”
The man’s eyes raked her body from head to toe and back. “Nope.”
“Well, we’re closing up for the night.” Her response came out on a shaky breath, sounding, to her ears, exactly like an excuse.
The man looked her over again. “You all get rid of tattoos in here, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You had a biker come in to see the doctor recently? Big guy like me? Only real ugly?” His smile was the creepiest thing she’d ever seen.
“I can’t discuss patients, sir,” she stammered. “The doctor wouldn’t like it.”
His eyes slid to meet hers, and his expression, if possible, hardened even further. “Yeah? You might want to reconsider.” He stood up taller, took up too much space in her tiny reception area.
“No. No, I have no patients that fit that description.”
After a breathless few seconds, the man grunted, slimed her with a narrow-eyed look, and turned to go. He pulled the door open so hard the bells came out angry rather than festive and then slammed it behind him.
George rushed to lock the door. The image of the back of that man’s jacket burned a hole in her mind—Sultans, it said, in its pretentious, curlicue writing, with an eagle, a triangle, arrows, and a river all topped by a laughing skull, the orbs of the eyes not half as empty as that man’s.
I have to warn Clay. Now. She raced for her cell phone, picked it up, and stared at it for a few, slow seconds. No number. They’d never exchanged them. When would they?
Desperate, she scrolled through her short list of numbers and saw none that made sense. She couldn’t call the cops—not unless her hand was forced—when Clay was doing so much to stay hidden. And rightly so, based on what Jessie had just told her.
Oh God, oh God, oh God. She had to find him. Was he at her house? Or at the motel? Maybe he’d gone back there. Fast, fast, before they found him. Outside, she fumbled the clinic key in the lock, then took a quick look around and started toward her car. Halfway there, she saw Clay’s truck, half a block down—old and rusty and shining under the streetlights like a beacon of hope. She ran in that direction as fast as she could.
She barely noticed the thunder that rumbled overhead or the flashes of lightning over the mountains. It was the motorcycles—two of them—parked in the road that stopped her in her tracks and had her moving to dial 911 as fast as she could.
But it was already too late.
A thick pair of arms circled her from behind and shoved her hard against the metal of the truck, glasses spinning off into the darkening evening. No. Oh no, please no. The words stumbled through her mind, over and over and over again like a mantra of denial. Like, if she’d just think it hard enough, she could wish herself back to five minutes ago. Or one. Even one.
“What’s the big hurry, huh?”
How strange the things she noticed, the details her brain took in. The way this man’s hand hurt around her neck, the bite of his forearm on her chest. Body odor, stale and unhealthy, the gritty grind of dirt on the pavement under their feet.
But clearest of all was the strange, choked-off silence of not being able to breathe or talk or scream. This was true impotence. Not being able to do anything as the world around you fell apart.
She lost her keys and purse somewhere in the scuffle, and her phone was wrenched from her hand. After that, the man who held her—the one from her waiting room—handed her off to another man. She could do nothing but fight for breath while the first big man picked up her purse and rifled through it for her wallet, letting it fall to the ground once he’d found what he was looking for.
