Lane had always had a bleeding heart. It was one of the things that made him such a good sheriff. He especially had a soft spot for battered women—something me and my own ordeal at twenty no doubt influenced.
I tried to tell myself his anger wasn’t specific to me and this situation. He’d react the same even if I was a stranger sitting across from him.
“I realize it’s not much to go on,” I told Johns. “I’m sorry. My only thought was getting me and Boots out safely.”
Hearing his name, my cat appeared and wound his way through Johns’ legs. The deputy reached down and brushed his fingers along Boots’ back, and my little boy arched into his touch.
“There’s nothing to apologize for, Sutton. We’re just glad you’re safe.”
“Thanks.”
“I have a few more questions.”
“Okay…”
“So far, the intruder hasn’t hurt anyone?—”
“Because he broke into houses that were empty,” Lane pointed out.
His undersheriff cut him with a glare, then seemed to realize exactlywhohe’d leveled with the look and once again schooled his expression.
“Can you think of any reason why they’d target you specifically? I have to assume it was obvious you were home?”
“I mean, my car was outside, but the house was quiet. I was in my room with the lights off.”
Johns frowned. “But you said you were reading.”
“Her e-reader is backlit,” Lane provided. “When she reads before bed, she turns the lights off in case she falls asleep.”
Johns and I both blinked at him in surprise.Iknew how he knew that about me—because he’d witnessed it on multiple occasions when we were in college, but Johns was clearly confused, his interest sufficiently piqued.
“To answer your earlier question, no, I have no idea why anyone would target me specifically.”
Johns, changing tack, asked, “Why did you come here? It’s an awfully long walk under normal circumstances, but in the cold and dark? Didn’t you have a neighbor you could go to while you called nine-one-one?”
Why had I come here? Honestly, there was only one explanation that had driven me into the woods I knew would connect me to Lane’s house—even if it hadn’t been at the forefront of my consciousness at the time.
But how the hell did I explain that to a virtual stranger? As vaguely as possible, I supposed, not that I owed Johns anything.
“I have some…trauma,” I started slowly. “Someone hurt me very badly when I was twenty, and Lane was there for me then. I guess it was a trauma response when confronted with a similar situation.”
“Hurt me very badly” was, of course, a diplomatic way of saying I’d been raped.
During winter break of our sophomore year of college at Boise State, I’d gone to a party with some friends. Lane was working at the department here in Dusk Valley, so when myroommates begged me to go to a New Years’ Eve frat party with them, I’d agreed.
New Year’s Day also happened to be my birthday, and Lane or no Lane, I’d wanted to celebrate surviving my teens and entering the next decade of my life.
Back then, I sometimes worried I was spending too much time with Lane, that I’d lost sight of what life outside of him and the fresh bloom of our relationship was supposed to look like. While we’d only been together for three months at that point, he consumed all my waking thoughts, and I loved him more than anything. I knew—or rather,hoped—he felt the same about me.
Normally, I’d have contented myself with an evening curled up in bed, ringing in the new year and my birthday with my Kindle in hand, but that night was different. For once, I hadwantedto go out and have fun. To let loose. To remind myself I was more than Lane Lawless’s girlfriend—not that being attached to him was a bad thing. In fact, at that time, it had been thebestthing.
Unfortunately, everything changed after one spiked drink, being dragged into a random empty bedroom, held down, and assaulted.
My breathing increased with the memories, flashes of agony, of hoarse cries, of the world beyond that room oblivious to my drug-weakened struggles.
I’d fought like hell—of course I had. Or as best as I’d been able to with the roofie in my system.
In the end, it wasn’t enough.
