The store was silent as I counted through the bills I’d taken from the cash register. We’d done good business today. Alli would be pleased.

I kind of liked taking care of Alli’s Little Shop of Pleasure. I hadn’t been all that excited when she first suggested it, preferring the store over accompanying her to Memphis, but not thrilled with the mundane work. But I’d since discovered I had a sort of affinity for it.

Maybe in my next life, I’d be a store owner.

I’d sent everyone home an hour ago, just after the place closed, preferring to go through the inventory and clean up on my own. This was my last task, counting the bank deposit. Just over three thousand dollars for the day. Things were picking up now that the Guardians were gone, and life in Ellaville had gone back to something like normal.

That would please Alli, too.

Alli Collins had been our client since before I came out to Arizona to help Jack. She was being harassed by this militant group who disguised their harassment of Alli and the shop with the morality of the church they were associated with. They called themselves the Guardians, claiming they were protecting their parishioners from those who threatened their immortal souls. The truth was, however, they were just a group of bullies who thought they could rid this little town of the people they didn’t approve of. But they made the mistake of killing Jack Stone’s friend.

We took them out instead.

That was five months ago.

Alli had gone to Memphis to see her kid graduate from high school. She was supposed to be gone two weeks. She’d been gone nearly two months now. The operative I sent with her was stabbed, then shot, in a series of events I was still a little fuzzy about. But Jack was supposed to get back to town at the end of the week. Maybe he’d have a few answers.

Not that I was in a hurry to hand over the reins of the store or of Stone Security’s satellite office out here in the desert. I was having fun being the boss for once.

Maybe that was the secret to success: being in charge, answering only to the client and the accountant.

I finished counting the stack of bills and was writing out the final count on the deposit slip when the alarm system began to make its little whiny buzz. I glanced up, the monitors suddenly coming alive and showing me the camera feeds from outside the building. A van was speeding out of the parking lot, kicking up a hell of a lot of dust as it did.

Probably just kids doing donuts.

But…it was my job to keep the place secure. I stood and slipped my gun into the waistband of my jeans, stepping out into the cool night air to investigate. The van was long gone by the time I got out there, probably already speeding into town down the highway that ran out in front of the shop. They had made a mess of the rock and dust parking lot. It needed to be redone, a fresh supply of rocks delivered, but that was a long-term problem I’d allow Alli to worry about. I kicked a few rocks and turned to walk back to the store, my thoughts already back on the money that waited in a little bank bag on the desk.

“Help me!”

It was a weak cry. Female. I stopped and listened, trying to decide which direction it had come from. Then it came again.

“Please!”

I walked slowly around the side of the building, realizing the van could have come from that direction. It was in a direct line with the side of the parking lot they’d sped out of. If they had come in through the wide alley out back—

“Please!”

A woman in her mid-twenties lay on the ground, tucked back against the metal side of the building. She was curled into a ball, her arms wrapped around her legs like a child might do when frightened. She had long, thick, brown hair that hung in tangles around her face, a face I couldn’t quite see in the shadows created by the building and that impossibly long hair. But I could see the rips on her blouse, the scratches on her arm. I could see dirt—or something dark and dirty—smeared on her clothes, her legs. She was wearing a skirt, but it was ripped, too, barely hiding the long, shapely legs it was meant to cover.

I dropped onto my knees beside her, not quite sure what to do. I touched her arm, and she cried out, jerking away.

“I won’t hurt you,” I said in the softest, calmest voice I could conjure despite the anger and outrage that was building in my chest. “Can you tell me what happened?”

She shook her head violently.

“I’m sorry,” I said softly, fully aware of what had happened. It was evident in her condition, in her reaction to my touch.

She started to cry softly. I wanted to comfort her, to give her words or a gesture that would make this better. But there was nothing.

I rose to my feet and pulled my cell out of my pocket. I was about to touch the last “1” in 911 when she suddenly looked up, these incredible gray eyes staring at me.

“What are you doing?”

“You need a hospital. And the police should know—”

“No!” She started to stand, but her knees refused to hold her. “Please, don’t!”

I knelt beside her again, gripping her upper arms to keep her still, to stop her from trying to stand again. “You’re hurt. You need to be checked out.”

“But they’ll tell my family, and everyone will find out! My reputation will be destroyed!”

“This was not your fault. No one will blame you.”

“You don’t understand. My church—”

That’s when it clicked in my head. This church that dominated this little town. It was a church of deep values, of stringent rules that its followers had to abide by. Women were expected to remain pure until their wedding night, and then indulge in the pleasures of the flesh only with their husbands for the purpose of providing him with children. A woman who was sexually assaulted was no longer pure.

“Okay,” I said somewhat reluctantly. “Then let me take you home.”

She shook her head again. “My parents would know. I can’t.”

The wheels in my head were spinning. I didn’t know where else to take her.

“Come inside. At least let me help you get cleaned up.”

She looked up at me again, fear and pain in her eyes. She had bruises on her face, a cut that split both her top and bottom lips. Her nose was swollen, dried blood in her nostrils. There were bruises on her throat, too. It’d been a particularly violent attack, whatever had happened to her. I couldn’t just leave her.

She managed to get to her feet, but her knees buckled again. I swung her up into my arms, cradling her against my chest like she was a child, or my baby sister. She was shaking, tears again falling down her cheeks. I held her as loosely as I could without compromising support. I didn’t want her to think I had anything on my mind like what she’d gone through.

We went into the shop, and she paled when she saw the items on the shelves, the sex toys that were Alli’s bread and butter. She turned her head and pressed it into my shoulder. I walked as quickly as I could to the back of the shop and into a storeroom, where the items were hidden in unmarked boxes, heading to a small area where there was a bathroom with a decent-sized sink.

There was nowhere to set her except on her feet beside the sink. She leaned back against the wall, her eyes partially closing as the effort to stay upright took the final bit of energy she had left. I wet a couple of paper towels under the faucet and dabbed at her face. It didn’t do much to clean up the blood in her nose, but the cut on her lip grew smaller with a few well-placed dabs.

I stepped back slightly to look her over. She was wearing a fitted dress shirt, one that had started the day as white, but was now a washed-out gray color. Her skirt was dark blue, with a simple waist and folds that fell clear to her ankles. Many of the girls in this town dressed that way, especially the teens and unmarried adult women. It was like a uniform of the church, a way to tell the difference between those who were members and those who weren’t. But the skirt was ripped, the waist torn so badly it was barely staying up around her hips. There was a split from the ankle clear up to her groin in the front that was clearly not part of the original design. And her tights were in tatters, practically falling off her as she stood there.

“I think I’m going to be sick!”

She moved more quickly than she had since the moment I spotted her, rushing to the toilet stall just in time to deposit whatever she’d last eaten into the porcelain bowl. I stayed back, trying to ignore the nausea that suddenly rushed through me at the sound of her retching, giving her the space to do what she needed to do. When the sounds stopped and I heard the toilet flush, I went to the stall. I waited a heartbeat before pushing open the stall door. She was passed out on the floor, her cheek resting on the edge of the toilet seat.

“Fuck,” I whispered under my breath.

Now what?

I hesitated only a moment or two before I gathered her back up into my arms. I moved around the store awkwardly, knocking over a rack or two of condoms, grabbing the bank deposit from the office before making my way outside. My car—or, more accurately, Stone Security’s car—was parked along the opposite side of the building from where my mystery girl had been dumped. I parked there to give the premium spots to the customers and rarely regretted it. I regretted it tonight.

I laid her in the backseat of the sedan, praying she wouldn’t vomit again. I’d just had the thing detailed! Then I climbed behind the wheel.

I considered taking her to a hospital for a hot minute, but decided I couldn’t violate her wishes after everything she’d clearly been through tonight. I didn’t know her name or her address, so I couldn’t take her home. It crossed my mind to call the pastor of the church and leave her with him, but I figured that would be a bigger violation than taking her home would have been. My only choice was to take her to my place.

I didn’t even have a place. I was staying at the local hotel on Stone Security’s dime.

They were supposed to provide barracks for us, but the office was still under construction. It’d probably be a year before the barracks were built and completed. That was a long time to live in a hotel, but I didn’t mind. I liked room service.

It was well after midnight in a town that rolled up the carpets at eight. No one saw me carry her into the hotel through a back door, or into my room on the second floor. I laid her carefully in the center of the king size bed that had been neatly made by the housekeeping staff sometime after I went to work. She was still unconscious, clearly exhausted by her ordeal. I wondered briefly if I should worry that she had a head trauma and was in a coma, but a quick exploration of her skull didn’t bear that out.

I studied her for a long moment, deciding she needed to be cleaned up. There was a smell coming from her that was unpleasant, not to mention all the cuts and bruises that needed to be addressed. I wet a cloth in the bathroom sink and sat beside her, carefully wiping the dark stains from her arms, her hands, noting that her nails were of a substantial length, but were unbroken. They must not have given her a chance to fight back.

Her clothing kept getting in my way. I once again had to engage in a debate with myself. Did I remove her ruined clothing and clean her properly, or did I leave it in place and put up with the smell and the possibility that she had an unseen injury that could lead to significant consequences for us both?

This debate was more difficult than the one before, but I finally decided I had no choice but to completely undress her.

What she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her, right?

My fingers shook as I unbuttoned her shirt. She wore a simple cotton bra underneath, her full breasts heavy against the thin material. I left it in place as long as I could, carefully washing the dark substance from her ribs, exposing bruises that had clearly come from someone’s fist. The bra got wet from the excess water and soap I was using on the rag, growing almost translucent. If I hadn’t known what she’d gone through tonight, I might have found the sight intensely erotic, especially as her nipples began to thicken and harden. She had beautiful nipples.

The bra slipped off easily. I quickly washed her breasts and then covered them with the cotton towel I’d taken from the bathroom. I turned my attention to her skirt then, finding it ridiculously easy to remove. It was so badly damaged that it only took a small tug to finish what had been started. Her panties, if she’d been wearing any, were long gone, the tights falling off as easily as the skirt had. I washed her legs, surprised not to find blood or other injuries to her thighs. Maybe she’d been subdued by the blows to her face and chest by the time her attackers got to this part. Or maybe they’d chickened out once they got her where they wanted her.

There was no understanding the mind of a man who would do something like this to a woman.

Once she was clean, I took her clothes out into the hallway and dumped them into the bottom of a large trashcan near the stairwell. Back in the room, I took a pair of boxers and a t-shirt from my own drawers. They were big for her. She was slender, her legs offering the suggestion that she liked her workouts, her flat belly and narrow arms suggesting those workouts were restricted to running or bicycling. There was a relatively new scar across her collar bone, another low on her abdomen. I touched them, wondering what had caused them. An accident? Another violent attack? An illness? There was no way to know without asking her.

I carefully dressed her and pulled the blankets up to her throat. She made a soft sound in her throat as I stepped away, the first sound she’d made since we left the store. I watched her for a long moment, hoping she would be okay.

If there was one thing I couldn’t stand, it was men who victimized women. I’d seen a lot of it in my youth, and it still made me sick.

This was America. That sort of thing wasn’t supposed to happen in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

But I supposed violence and cynicism were a virus that infected everyone and everything, even here in America.

I took a blanket and light pillow and stretched out on the narrow couch that was pushed up under the window. We both needed a little sleep. Maybe I’d get a few answers from her in the morning.