I looked down. Dammit. A bit of blood showed, peeking out through the hem.
I turned my arm, hiding it, but it was too late.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Just a scratch,” I assured him.
He shut his eyes, and I could see his lips were quivering.
My poor, sensitive boy.
I’d given up on working at my ropes by then. Earl had noticed the condition of my wrists early on, and calmly threatened to hurt Raf if I continued.
Our situation felt more hopeless than ever. By taking both of us, he had all the leverage he needed to keep us obedient forever.
Just thinking the word had me glancing down at my bloody wrist. The cuts had leaked just enough to make out the neat OBEDIENT through my white sleeve.
That was the day something wonderful happened.
Earl didn’t come back.
Not that day, or the next, or the one after that.
The third day was the day when I began to gain the certainty that we were going to die like this, tied up to soiled chairs and starving.
Each time he’d left, Earl had given us each a large bottle of water, set between our legs. It was tricky, but we’d both picked up swiftly how to drink that way, twisting the cap off with our teeth, and taking small sips.
We each rationed our water as much as we could; taking the tiniest sips when we began to get an inkling that he wasn’t coming back anytime soon.
On day three, it was looking dire. Even with the rationing, we were down to the last drops, and soon, sucking at air.
How long could a person live without water? I thought three days. Raf swore it was five, since we were indoors.
I badly did not want to find out which one of us was right.
Another day passed, the water completely gone now.
I had the popcorn ceilings memorized, and I didn’t even notice the stench anymore.
We played games, quizzed each other with random trivia to pass the time, but I began to feel my mind getting more sluggish, and we slept longer and longer with each passing day.
Raf was sleeping when I got a sudden desperate burst of energy and began to struggle against my bonds.
I rubbed my wrists and ankles bloody, nearly knocked over my chair, and accomplished nothing at all. Earl’d known what he was doing. He left no weaknesses for us to exploit.
I cried, but no tears came. I was too dehydrated for that.
I woke with a start, and I didn’t know why. I sat still for a moment, thinking, listening intently, before I heard it, breaking the great, vast silence of the desert.
A car. A loud one or possibly a few cars.
My eyes met Raf’s. We stared at each other, both of us afraid to hope that this might be some improvement in our situation.
Perhaps it was Earl, and he’d just been using a new means to torture us.
His car had never been loud, though. But then it was possible he’d just brought a different one. The man was a stone cold murderer. I doubted he’d have any qualms about stealing a new car.
But no, as the sound grew, getting louder and louder until it felt like it was shaking the house, I became more certain that it wasn’t just one car or even a few. It was a lot of cars.
I jumped in my seat when I heard a loud bang on the door, not like a knock, but like a battering ram, accompanied by shouts of, “FBI! Open up!” and more loud bangs, followed by the unmistakable sound of the front door being smashed open.
I thought I might pass out cold, I was so relieved.
Heath was the first one in.
He looked insane. Deranged. He was covered in blood, from his neck to his feet, and his eyes were more animal than human.
I didn’t care. I’d take him like that. I’d take him any way at all.
He brought me water, eyes wary on me, but I refused to drink, telling him to get it to Raf first. He moved slightly, letting me see that Raf was being tended to just as quickly as I.
He held the bottle to my lips and as I drank, he bent to kiss the top of my head tenderly, letting me know that he wasn’t too far gone. My Heath was still inside there somewhere.
“Are you bleeding?” I asked him as he cut me loose, my eyes running over his bloody form. All of it was dry or nearly so.
“No. None of this is mine.”
“Earl’s?”
“Yes,” he bit out, tone savage. “He’s dead.”
“Good,” I said, just as savagely.
He picked me up and took me out of there.
I couldn’t help it, when the outside sun hit my face, I started to cry.
He was holding me to his bloody chest, stroking my hair, over and over, murmuring, “That’s my girl. You’re good now. Everyone is okay.”
His tone was reassuring, but his arms around me were shaking badly. He was trying to convince himself as much as me.
I wasn’t the only one that’d been damaged by this ordeal.
I got a few details out of him when we started to drive.
He’d surrendered himself to Earl days ago, but he’d managed to turn the tables. For days, he’d been torturing Earl, trying to get him to give up our whereabouts.
It had taken some time, but he’d broken the doctor. The second Heath laid eyes on me in the house, Mason had been informed, and Earl had been put out of his misery.
Somehow, we’d survived. We were alive. All of us. And Earl, the fucking psychopath doctor, was dead.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-SIX
There were some dark times then, while I recovered and wondered if I’d ever be the same. Ever feel the same.
And it was somehow enlightening, because it gave me an insight into what Heath was going through, when you looked around at people living their normal lives and wondered how the hell you’d ever be like them again.
Raf was going through the same. He was changed now, some of his soft spots hardened, some of his sweet traits broken.
But we were alive, and life went on.
Heath had tried his best to let me live a normal life while he protected his sister, but the incident with Earl took that choice out of all of our hands.
My safety was compromised, my connection to Heath had made me a target, and considering that Earl had been a hired hit, there was no reason to think that it wouldn’t happen again.
And so, though I wasn’t a witness, I went into the program and into hiding with Iris.
My sons came with me. They didn’t even complain. We were told upfront that it would likely last years, but none of us could conceive being separated with no contact for so long.
I didn’t get to say goodbye to my friends, or even my parents, for fear of putting them in danger, so all of that was handled for me.
I coped with it by telling myself that I’d see them all again in a few years, but it was rough coming to terms with that part of it.
I got some time with Heath after that, a few weeks, while I recovered, time where he didn’t leave my side.
I’d been examined by a doctor and put on bedrest for a time to be safe.
Things were strange between Heath and me. Both settled and unsettled.
He was happy about the baby, I could tell. It was obvious by the way he couldn’t keep his hands off my belly for more than a few minutes at a time.
Sometimes I’d wake to find him lips pressed to my stomach, a near peaceful look on his face.
But we didn’t talk about it much at first. We didn’t talk about a lot of things.
There was one thing, though, that Heath loved to talk about.
“We’re getting married,” he told me, bringing it up out of the blue.
“What?”
“You’re having my baby. We’re getting married.”
I couldn’t believe what he’d just said, or how he’d said it.
A few pounding heartbeats later, I managed to get out, “I’m forty-one years old, Heath. I don’t need to be married to have a baby. This isn’t the fucking fifties. We can co-parent without being husband and wife.”