I'm blowing on the tea, testing the temperature, when I hear it.
Engine sound coming up the gravel road.
I set the mug down. Are the men back already? That was fast. But Jace was racing so maybe they made good time. I go to the door because that has become my habit. Going to the porch to welcome them home, the small domestic ritual that I adopted without noticing.
I step onto the porch. The air is late March cold, with a softness underneath it that promises spring. I wrap my arms around myself and watch the road.
The truck that comes around the bend is white.
Not Reid's truck.
I don't recognize it, but I don't think much of it. People come by sometimes. Deliveries. A neighbor checking on the property. Once, a hiker who got turned around on the ridge trail and needed directions.
I go down the steps.
The truck parks. The engine cuts.
The driver's door opens.
Boots hit the gravel. I see jeans. A dark jacket. A ball cap pulled low.
The passenger door opens. Then the back door. Two more men get out. The three of them standing by the white truck in the morning light and I'm looking at them trying to remember if I have met them before.
He lifts his head.
The ball cap. The jaw underneath it. The smile.
My blood stops moving.
I know that face. I know it from the bar. From the hand on my arm. From the voice too close to my ear sayingI definitely know you.From the moment I told myself it was nothing, he was wrong, it was a mistake, I'm too far from LA, enough time has passed.
He's here. With two friends.
The cold is inside me now. I can't move. My feet are on the gravel and I can't move.
"Told you," the man says to his friends. He's walking toward me. Not rushing. The pace of someone who has all the time in the world. "Told you I wasn't wrong."
His friends follow. One is shorter, heavier, hands in his jacket pockets. The other is tall and thin and watching me with an expression that fills me with dread.
"I know who you are," the man says. He stops three feet from me. Close enough that I can smell him, stale beer and tobacco. His eyes move down my body and back up with the slow, assessing scan of someone browsing a catalog. "I'm here to see if you live up to your profile."
The wordprofileenters my body like a blade.
He steps closer. His hand comes up and catches my arm, and his other hand reaches for my jaw and he's trying to pull me toward him, trying to bring his mouth to mine, and the contact breaks the freeze.
I wrench backward. His fingers scrape across my arm as I tear free and I stumble, two steps back. And then hands from behind. The shorter man has his arms around my waist, pulling me against him, his breath hot on the back of my neck.
"So it's true what the profile says." His voice is excited. "You like it rough. Like being forced."
"No." My voice comes out thin. "You're making a mistake. You have the wrong person."
The man tsks.
I twist. Pull. The arms around my waist tighten, then loosen when I drive my elbow backward. He swears. I stumble forward and free and my legs are moving, taking me toward the porch steps, toward the door, toward inside where there are locks and walls and a phone.
They follow. All three. Not running. Walking. The leading man has his hands up, palms out, the gesture of a man who considers himself reasonable.
"Come on," he says. "We drove all the way up here. Don't be like that."
