Exhaustion. Had she ever been this tired before in her life? Those dark days where she hadn’t gotten out of bed for weeks at a time except to go pee…she’d been exhausted then.
But that had been a different type of exhaustion. Today…this came from hard work. From pushing herself to the limits and succeeding, not laying in bed and wishing the world would just leave her the hell alone already.
No, this was a very different kind of exhaustion indeed. This exhaustion felt good. Accomplished.
Gage had already left for the day – headed back to his place to start on dinner while she cleaned up her store. It was the end of her first full week of being an open and operating business owner and it had gone pretty damn well if she did say so herself. There’d been learning curves galore – overfilling of the blender; under-ordering of the frozen strawberries – but no one had died, and she figured that was an achievement in and of itself.
It was true that she was making smoothies and selling health food which didn’t tend to kill people off, but still…
She’d take the win.
She locked the back door of the Smoothie Queen, able to do it even in the dark without having to flick on the flashlight app on her phone. She wasn’t sure what this said about her – she was so comfortable leaving work after dark, was she turning into a workaholic? – but at least it meant that she wasn’t liable to trip and hurt herself—
“You bitch,” a malevolent voice growled in her ear as a gloved hand slid around her face and another around her waist. “Staying late, with him?”
But whatever else he was going to say was drowned out in Cady’s screams. She fought and thrashed against him, using every bit of muscle she had to go for his soft parts – his vulnerable spots – the places that would make a grown man cry.
He was holding her too tightly though, and she couldn’t get at his groin or his throat. Who was this man? Why was he attacking her? She was slamming her elbow against him as hard as she could, feeling like a tiny gnat struggling against the arms of a giant.
He shoved something foul and dirty into her mouth and then clamped his hand over her mouth again, keeping her from spitting the rag out onto the ground.
“Shut up!” he growled. “You cheating whore. You’d have his child and then still work for another man? You deserve this. If Jaxson won’t teach you your place in the world, I will.”
That got Cady’s attention and she stopped for a moment, suspended mostly off the ground as her attacker held her from behind.
Have a child? Work for a man? None of this…
Oh.
Ohhhhhhhh…
It didn’t help her escape to know who was holding her from behind, but still, it strangely made her feel better. It gave a reason for the otherwise inexplicable situation that she’d found herself in. It was Sugar’s ex – the town drunk. That asshole who’d crashed Sugar and Emma’s party. He thought she was Sugar and was trying to…kidnap? Kill her?
Her mind went spinning in a million different directions. It was dark, they both had brown hair, they were both petite, and the back door to the Smoothie Queen was just a couple of feet away from the back door to the Muffin Man.
Plus, Richard was drunk. Stinking drunk, based on the fumes rolling off him. As intoxicated as he was right now, he probably wouldn’t have been able to tell she wasn’t Sugar even in broad daylight. Sugar’s chest was larger than Cady’s, and then there were Cady’s curls compared to Sugar’s stick-straight hair, but apparently those weren’t the kinds of details that a drunk-off-his-ass Richard was capable of picking up on.
Bastard. Bastard. I’m going to kick you in the nuts, you bastard. You rat bastard.
Feet still dangling off the ground, he began carrying her like a wiggling sack of potatoes, his hand clamped hard over her mouth, keeping the disgusting rag in place. “You think you have every right to prance around in public. Everyone loves Sugar. Sweet as pie, they say. They don’t understand why I’d divorce you. But you made me. I can’t tell people that. They would laugh at me.”
She kicked backwards again and actually made contact this time, slamming her foot into his knee, the howl of pain in her ear almost deafening her. “You bitch!” he howled, but still, he didn’t drop her. She was suspended in mid-air, his arm pinning hers by her side. She wanted to get at him. She wanted to dig her fingers into his eye sockets like the self-defense coach had taught her but he was behind her and she couldn’t reach up and get at him. Her breath was short and choppy and black spots swirled in along the sides of her vision and she was going to pass out – she couldn’t breathe, he was holding her so tight and the nasty rag was in her mouth, forcing her to only breathe through her nose, and the stench of alcohol fumes rolling off him was going to choke her all by itself—
She couldn’t blackout. She had to concentrate. Where were they going?
She squinted through the darkness and spotted a fluorescent orange Jeep at the end of the employee-only parking lot, a vehicle she’d never seen before. It had to be his.
Good. She was fighting the blackness, fighting him. She knew where he was trying to take her. When he tried to push her inside of the Jeep, she’d throw her arms and legs wide. Keep him from shoving her in.
Fight him. Fight him. Every step will cost him. I won’t let him win. I won’t—
Beams of headlights turned into the parking lot, cutting through the darkness, and even above the panic pulsing through her veins, making it difficult to think clearly, she recognized the sound of the engine. It was Gage’s truck. She didn’t know how she knew; she couldn’t see him. But she knew it anyway. He’d come for her.
How did he know? Thank God he did, but—
Richard let out a string of nasty curse words in Cady’s ear as he hobbled faster towards his Jeep, trying to reach it before Gage could reach them, and then they were in the path of the headlights. Screeching tires and a dog barking wildly; a door opening and boots pounding on the asphalt; a wall of muscle was hitting them, slamming them to the ground and Cady felt agony shoot up her arm, the pain so intense she lost track of the world as she just tried to breathe, curled up on the ground, the dirty rag still in her mouth and keeping her from breathing and she pushed at it with her tongue, wanting it out of the way, wanting a lungful of fresh air more than anything else but she couldn’t get the damn thing out; it was too limp and large and somehow clinging to her teeth like barnacles on a ship.
It finally registered somewhere in the back of her scattered mind that her arms were free now, and maybe she couldn’t use her right arm to pull out the rag, but she could use her left.
She rolled off her left arm that’d been pinned beneath her and tugged at the rag, throwing it as far as she could away from her, and her mouth, dry as the Sahara, had the most awful taste in it. She tried to spit but she couldn’t gather up enough moisture. Heaving, breathing, trying to push the darkness away, trying to focus on something other than the pain radiating through her upper arm.
The sounds started to register then – flesh striking flesh. The growls of a dog. “I’ll kill you,” Gage was roaring as the blows kept going. “Teach you to pick on women half your size. Kill you!”
Cady rolled to her knees and then to her feet, cradling her arm, trying to see through the darkness. The beams from the truck headlights almost made it more difficult to see what was going on, as the two men showed up in sharp relief in the light and then disappeared into the darkness under the beams, rolling on the ground.
Cady scrambled for her purse, digging through it for her phone. Hurry, hurry, hurry! You need to get help! Find the phone! Where’s the phone?! Adrenaline was making her shaky but finally, finally, her hand closed around the slim device and she pulled it out with a shout of triumph. Shaking, her vision intermittently clouding and then clearing from the panic shooting through her, she dialed 9-1-1.
“Sawyer City dispatch, how may I help you?” an old, querulous sounding man said on the second ring.
“Need help. Please, send someone. We’ve been attacked.” She could hear the fists and the yells and the barks and she thought she might throw up. “Please.”
“Where are you?” The grumpiness was gone from the man’s voice and he was all business. Calm. “What is around you?”
“Behind the smoothie shop. And the bakery. In the parking lot behind. Dickwad attacked me. Gage saved me.”
“Dickwad?” And now the man sounded slightly amused. “Don’t hang up,” he said, professional again. “Stay on the line with me. I’m dispatching officers right now. Gage who?”
“Gage Dyer. Owns the Muffin Man.”
“That must make you Cady Walcott,” the dispatcher said under his breath; a statement, not a question.
This cut through the panic and pain washing over her. What the hell… “How do you know that?” Cady demanded, shocked to her core.
“Small towns,” the dispatcher said dismissively. “Officer Miller is on her way. Can you see what’s going on? Talk to me – tell me the scene in front of you.”
Even as Cady turned, trying to focus through the bright lights and the inky midnight darkness, she could hear the faint wail of sirens. They’re coming. Thank God, the police are coming. A woman. Can she handle two grown men, though? They’re both so big.
“Cady, what’s happening in front of you?” the dispatcher snapped, bringing her attention back to the present. “Talk to me.”
“They’re fighting,” she said. “I think Gage is on top now. Our dog is biting Dickwad’s ankle. Good girl!” she called to Cream Puffs. “Bite him hard.”
The dispatcher let out a rusty laugh that sounded as if it hadn’t been used in years. “What’s your dog’s name?” he asked through his chuckles.
“Creamsicle. No, Cream Puffs,” she corrected herself. “Sometimes Gage calls her Creamsy or Puffers, though.”
She shouldn’t be telling him this – he didn’t care, and a part of her knew it – but her brain was so disconnected from the moment, she felt like an alien was possessing her body. Red and blue lights were flashing intermittently and the sirens were getting louder and then the police car screeched to a halt on the far side of Gage’s truck, another one pulling in behind.
“They’re here,” she said gratefully.
“Officer Miller and Officer Morland will take care of you. Be careful, honey,” and then the line went dead.
Honey? I just got called honey by an old man I don’t know.
Small towns. They’re a breed of their own.
A stoutly built woman was running past her, yelling, her service pistol pulled and trained on the men on the ground. “Hands up! Get your hands up! Move! Gage, I know he deserves it, but you gotta stop swinging now.”
A wet tongue swiped the palm of Cady’s right hand, jostling her broken arm, sending a sharp wave of pain through her body, an involuntary shout spilling from her lips. Cream Puffs whined uncertainly, and then a male officer was there, putting his arm around Cady. “You’re okay, ma’am, you’re going to be fine,” he said in a deep soothing voice. He spoke into his shoulder. “We will need an ambulance here. One hurt female. Two potentially hurt males. Send two buses – I don’t think we ought to cart them to the hospital together.” He let off on the button on the radio as it crackled to life, people calling back and forth as he turned back to her. “Where does it hurt?”
Cady shook her head, mute. There was a big man standing right there. His arm was around her. She knew he was there to help her – at least, the sane, calm side of her did. But still, underneath it all, it throbbed. What if, what if, what if…
She was shaking so hard she couldn’t stand any longer and she found she was on the ground, sitting on the dirty asphalt, Cream Puffs licking her face and whining, the cop trying to talk to her, the lights flashing, and then the darkness closed in and she knew no more.