After Dr. V drove away, Shasta mustered up the courage to go outside and tell the men the pretty doctor had been lying and was using them to take vengeance out on a woman that Anthony cared about.

They laughed at her.

Andrew stood up and walked slowly toward her. "And we're supposed to take a drug addicted slut’s word over the woman that drove away in a fifty-thousand-dollar car?" he asked before slapping her hard across the face.

"Everybody knows Anthony don't care about no woman," one of the men added.

"Yes, I think he does. Weren't you here when X had everybody looking for her?" Shasta pleaded as she raised her hand to where her cheek stung.

The four men exchanged glances and one spoke up, "Ain't heard nothing about it."

Shasta knew they were probably telling the truth. They weren't regulars and only showed up occasionally to execute a drug deal, have sex with the women or to be included in some of the camp’s more unsavory business. She glanced over at Denny's charred hand.

"I'm telling you what I heard. Dr. V never got a phone call telling her to relay a message. I heard her call a woman and lie about Anthony being hurt and asking the girl to come to the camp." She was begging them to believe her.

That comment earned her a kick to the stomach. She fell back onto the hard brick and clutched her abdomen as she tried to catch her breath.

Andrew stood over her and said, "Don't matter anyhow. We'll be out of here tonight and don't plan on coming back."

When she was able to stand, she ran back to the office and paged Anthony. She looked down at the phone, her breathing heavy, and tried to remember Alexander's number. She tried twice, before she finally got it right.

She stood over the phone and willed it to ring. She knew Anthony would be heading back from Miami and she wasn’t sure he would be able to get a page if he was already crossing the Alley. When the phone rang she immediately snatched it up and accepted the collect call from X. She rattled off everything that had transpired. When she finally stopped to take a breath, X told her in no uncertain terms what she needed to do, and reassured her that Anthony would insist she do the same.

Her breathing back to normal, and with a newfound confidence, she picked up the phone and was ready to make the call when the office door flew open and the receiver was smacked out of her hand. She felt a hard punch to her face and staggered backward. She held up her hands to try and ward off the punches, but they were no match for Andrew's meaty fists. "I'm sorry," she whispered to no one who mattered. She thought about Anthony, X and the woman she'd never met. The woman named Christy. "I'm sorry," she said, once more before her world went black.

After meeting with his client, Anthony made the long lonely drive across the Alley and thought about the woman who was waiting for him at home. The woman who had changed his life completely in less than a month’s time. A change he'd first denied, then resisted and now embraced. He smiled when he thought about the weird facts she shared about herself, the naïve innocence in her vocabulary like the term “none of your beeswax,” and her addiction to pistachio nuts and peppermint patties. Not to mention her huge oversized blue eyes that matched the size of her heart.

He was certain he knew the reason why she'd refused his official marriage proposal, so he had no regrets about taking things into his own hands days earlier. He would ask her again tonight and explain that this second proposal was only a formality. As far as he was concerned, they were already married. But first, he would make love to her. Just the thought gave him an erection. And since he didn’t want to drive the rest of the way home in agony, he put Christy out of his mind and concentrated on the business transaction he'd just made. It was going to be quite prosperous. For years, he'd been pouring money into the most impoverished Native American reservations in the country, doing his best to anonymously offer monetary assistance where it was needed. This deal would be lucrative enough to finance a school, clinic and community center at one particular reservation out west.

The sound of his pager broke his train of thought, and he unclipped it from his belt. His brow furrowed as he read the digital numbers. It was a code that said there was an emergency at the camp. He sighed, wondering what it might be. It could be anything from a fight over a woman or drugs, to a murder. He was ten minutes from the Alley's exit and another twenty minutes from the camp. And there were no pay phones in between. He'd have to go there. He pressed on the accelerator as he mourned the time that wouldn't be spent holding his woman in his arms.

His woman. Yes, Christy was his woman, and she would come to realize soon enough that she belonged to him.