I sat beside Rachel on the bed as she dialed the number she’d already shown me, a number I now knew belonged to the home of one of the pastors of the local church. It was the home where Briggs Thomas had been staying since he arrived in Ellaville.

Tension rolled off of Rachel’s shoulders as she pressed the receiver to her ear and waited for the call to be answered on the other end. I touched the small of her back, attempting to offer a little support. She glanced at me, but it was clear the tension wasn’t going anywhere.

“Briggs, it’s me,” she said suddenly, her spine going rigid. She listened for a moment, nodded almost imperceptibly. “I did. I looked through everything, but there’s nothing. Just all these expensive suits and a couple of file folders.” A pause. “Background checks on some local people. Nothing interesting.” Another pause. “I don’t know. He’s quiet. I try to get him to talk, but—”

I could hear Briggs’s voice, but couldn’t make out the words. His tone was harsh, though, suggesting he wasn’t pleased. I hadn’t expected him to be, but I didn’t like the way Rachel’s body sort of folded inward the longer she listened to him speak.

“I did…” she protested. And then she was quiet for a long time.

I ran my hand up her back, resting it between her shoulder blades. She got up and moved away from me, cowering in a corner by the bathroom door with her forehead pressed against the wall as she continued to listen to him.

“Briggs,” she finally said, “he’s taking me to the office today. Maybe I’ll see something there.” There was another pause. And then, “I will. I promise.” She hung up, but continued to stand there with her back to me for a long moment. I waited.

“He told me to look for any information on a man named Smythe. And he said I should try to find out when Jack Stone is due back to town.”

“Smythe? Why does he want to know about Smythe?”

Rachel rolled her head, taking a deep breath and turning to look at me. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about what’s going on, about what he wants. It’s all so…” She grunted, her hands balled into fists at her side. “I wish I’d never met him.”

I went to her, lifting her chin so that she had to look me in the eye. “You did good.”

She studied my face for a moment. “I don’t want to do this anymore. If it weren’t for the money he promised me, I would never have come here.”

“He must have promised a lot.” I traced a fingertip around the darkest bruise on her face, tracing the rough edges left by his knuckles. “I can’t imagine why else you’d allow him to do this to you.”

“I didn’t know he was going to do this. I was originally supposed to apply for a secretary job at your office.”

“We’re not hiring.”

“I know.”

She suddenly moved into me, pushing her face into my chest and snaking her arms around my waist. After just a slight hesitation, I slipped my arms around her, too. She felt perfect in my arms, fitting just right below my chin and against my angles. Almost like our bodies were meant to fit together this way.

We stood there for a long few minutes, just holding each other. Being around her, being aware in a general sort of way what her relationship with Briggs had been like, brought back memories I’d buried a long time ago. But I’d been here before, and it was impossible for my mind not to attempt to create parallels.

Kala hadn’t been a victim. She’d hate the idea of anyone thinking of her as a victim. She’d been a fighter.

She just lost the fight.

I closed my eyes, and I could see her, the way I’d found her that night. It wasn’t unlike the night I found Rachel, though Kala had been in much worse shape. The men who’d worked her over were more thorough, more precise in their actions. They knew what they wanted the end result to be. They wanted me to find her, wanted me to be the one to see what they had done. They got what they wanted.

And then they got more than they planned on.

Kala was strong, but what they did to her would have broken even God himself.

I should have seen it coming. I should have protected her.

Maybe that was why I had this overwhelming need to protect Rachel.

“He won’t hurt you,” I said softly.

She grunted against my chest. “He already has.”

“I won’t let him touch you again.”

She pulled back and looked up at me. “You have no idea what that man is capable of. He found me even after I moved. I was living off the grid, using a fake name. He still found me.”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

She blushed slightly. “I lied. I did teach in Van Nuys, but that’s not what I was doing when he found me.”

“He was stalking you?”

“I don’t know. He…sometimes he’d show up out of the blue, ask me to do things for him. I just…I couldn’t do it anymore. I felt like I was never going to escape him. I moved to Oregon and lived in a cabin in a remote area, worked at a little convenience store on the highway. Everyone thought I was this student named Charlotte. Even my parents didn’t know where I was. And then he showed up one night, knocking on my door like it’d only been a day since we saw each other instead of more than eight months. When I refused to open the door—”

The color drained from her face as a memory played out behind her eyes. I didn’t have to ask. “He did this.” I touched her side, her chest, above the spots where I saw the scars.

Rachel nodded, tears filling her eyes.

“The money?”

“I had no insurance, no money. And I lost my job. The hospital bills alone were enough to put me in debt for the next twenty years. I didn’t have rent money, couldn’t pay my car payment. I was about to be on the streets until he called and told me he’d pay all my bills, pay off my car and my hospital bills, if I’d come to Arizona and do a little job for him.” She shook her head, her eyes coming up to meet mine with naked desperation in them. “I had no choice.”

“You’re right.”

A single tear rolled down her cheek. “I can’t get away from him. He’s going to follow me for the rest of my life, forcing me to do things because he sets up these situations in which I have no other choice.”

“No, he’s not.”

“You don’t know him, Patrick. He’s ruthless.”

“He doesn’t know me or what I’m capable of.”

She shook her head, her hands moving over my chest like she was trying to keep me from doing something, even though I hadn’t moved. “You don’t understand. He’s already done his research. He knows all about you, about your life in Denver, about the background check Stone Security ran on you, about all the jobs you did for them. He knows everything about all of you.”

“Let me guess, he thinks I was born in Florida, grew up with my grandparents, and went to college at the University of Miami, right?”

Her full lips turned downward at the corners. “Yeah.”

I nodded. “And he thinks that I drifted from job to job after a stint in the Marines before settling in Memphis and joining Stone Security.”

“Why do you say it like it’s all a fabrication?”

“You said yourself, I’m not American.”

“I was just fishing. I didn’t think—” She backed away from me. “Who are you?”

There was such a lack of trust in her eyes, a sense of betrayal, that I almost felt bad. But she needed to know that Briggs Thomas had bitten off more than he could chew when he chose to come after me.

“My past isn’t important. What is important is that I’m more of a threat to Briggs than he could ever imagine. And I will not allow him to come near you again. Do you understand?”

Rachel stared at me for a long moment. “You scare me,” she said softly. But then she came back to me, moving into my arms again like it was her rightful place, and she should always be there.

I kind of liked that idea.