She grabbed her clothes, haphazardly jerked them on. When she finally looked up again, he’d tugged on his jeans.
“Emily.” He reached out to her, his voice low, soft.
She backed away. Allowing him to touch her right now with any sort of tenderness would be her second mistake of the day.
“I . . . have to go.”
She’d been wrong. He wasn’t a coward. She was.
She’d wanted him to take her this way ... brutally, crudely, to punish her.
Maybe, just maybe, if he’d been cruel, she could have lived with what she’d done to him. Instead, he’d made her care even more for him, and that was the most unbearable pain of all.
34
10:00 a.m.
He was cheating on her again.
Misty Briggs was certain of it. She couldn’t prove it yet, but she sensed it. She’d watched him. His wife had rushed off to church this morning with their two sons, but he was still home. She knew he wasn’t sick, not physically anyway. He was up to something.
And she intended to find out what.
Misty had tried to stop the momentum this time. She’d given plenty of warnings. But no one would listen to her. People were going to be hurt again ... just like before. It had to stop.
His expensive sports car rolled out of the garage. Black. Leather interior. Cost way over a hundred grand. Several times what her efficient little Corolla had cost. But all that money wouldn’t buy his way into heaven.
Men like Keith Turner went to hell.
She knew for sure because that was where her daddy had gone. Her mother had told her that every day of her life.
Misty,she’d said,don’t ever trust a man. Especially not a handsome one.
So she never had.
She tried to protect the people she cared about, but sometimes it seemed like she couldn’t do enough.
After sliding the gearshift into drive, she pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and followed him. Maybe if she could learn who he was screwing around with on the side,shewould finally understand that he was bad for her. Bad. Bad. Bad.
He’d sure been bad for Heather Baker.
Misty slowed as she passed the turn he’d taken into the quarry. Why would he go there? Didn’t seem like the kind of place for a secret romantic rendezvous. But then, they could do it in that swanky car of his. She turned her car around the first chance she got and drove back to the gravel road that led deep into the limestone quarry. It was Sunday; the place was closed. But that would be all the better. No one to disturb them.
She made the turn, took her time. She didn’t want to run into him or whoever he’d come there to meet. Creeping along, she decided to take the fork in the road that would lead her around to the back side of the site, the delivery entrance. The road the dump trucks used. She hoped he hadn’t made that same decision. Oh well, she’d take her chances. No one really ever thought anything about her skulking around. She was plain old Batty Briggs.
They just didn’t know.
She was far brighter than even her principal suspected.
She knew how to get things done when no one else could.
A large metal garage flanked this side of the excavation site. Dump trucks, backhoes, and other equipment were lined up next to the garage. The perfect place for her to hide.
She nosed up to one of the massive trucks and shut off her engine. She powered the windows down and listened.
He parked next to the office, windows up and the motor still running. She could see it clearly as she peered between the front end of one truck and the bed of another, but he would have to be looking specifically for her to see her, and even then it wouldn’t be easy to spot her position.
Anticipation started to hum inside her at the idea that he would get out soon. Though she didn’t trust handsome men, she liked looking at them occasionally. Especially when they were having sex.
