Into the Fire - Anne Stuart [83]
Because he would. He’d keep on, inexorable. Until Nate got what he wanted.
Dillon.
Jamie drove blindly, concentrating on the snowy roads and the poor visibility. The interstate system was better once she reached it, and the heavy morning traffic managed to snag the one part of her brain that was holding on to Dillon. Killer. Who had killed Mouser?
It couldn’t be Dillon. Please God, it couldn’t be Dillon.
She stopped for breakfast at McDonald’s, almost taking off part of the drive-through as she tried to navigate the huge car. The Egg McMuffin didn’t sit well in the pit of her stomach, but the coffee was warm and full of caffeine, giving her enough energy for another two hours. She was almost at the Indiana border, she had to pee and the car was running on empty. She pulled into a gas station and reached for the wallet Dillon had dumped in her lap.
Credit cards. Who would have thought a bad boy like Dillon Gaynor would end up with credit cards? She pulled out the gas one and paid at the pump, watching with horror as the Caddy sucked up thirty dollars’ worth of fuel.
Fortunately the bathroom was inside the minimart and reasonably clean. As she washed her hands she stared at her reflection in the mirror.
She looked like holy hell. Like a ghost. Or someone who’d seen one.
Slowly, carefully, she peeled Dillon’s sweatshirt over her head to get her first good look at her chest.
It was little wonder it had felt like fire. The tracings across her pale skin were red and angry, though the bleeding had stopped. It could have been worse, she thought. Whoever had done this to her hadn’t gone near her breasts. He’d cut and scratched every part of her chest but her small breasts, and she couldn’t help but feel that was deliberate. That whoever had done this to her didn’t want to touch her breasts. Didn’t want to touch anything about her that made her a woman.
She had no idea where that thought came from, but it was clear and solid. And then she peered closer at the marks.
There were letters, words there. She couldn’t read them in the mirror—they were both scrawled and backward. She squinted, trying to mentally reverse them. The first one was easy enough. Whore was a simple word, though it had to be the first time in her sheltered life she’d been called that. It almost felt like a badge of honor, when she thought she was going to die frigid and untouched. At least she got one thing out of her sojourn in Wisconsin. She most definitely wasn’t frigid. Nor was there any part of her that was untouched.
She couldn’t read the word across the top of her stomach. The D stood out, as well as a bunch of vowels, but it was nothing she could understand. She squinted her eyes, trying to reverse the image. It looked like Dungeon, but why in the world would someone write that into her skin? But then, why would someone scratch anything into her flesh? She pulled the shirt back down over her, shutting out the questions.
She bought a six-pack of Diet Coke and a box of doughnuts and headed back to the car. Dillon’s wallet held more than credit cards—there was a thick wad of money. His driver’s license.
She stared down at the small plastic card. The picture didn’t do him justice, but it was still the first photograph she’d ever seen of him. He’d been scowling at the camera, he hadn’t shaved, and his hair was too long. And she stared at it, long and hard, and knew she wasn’t going to give it back.
She flipped through the rest of the cards that were tucked in the plastic windows, then stopped. Why the hell would Dillon have the Serenity Prayer in his wallet? She looked further and found the answer to that question. A meeting list for south-central Wisconsin. The bad boy had reformed.
At first she thought there was nothing else in the wallet, until she noticed an extra flap in the leather. She pulled it up, and then wished to God she hadn’t.
It was a picture of her, one she’d never seen before, hadn’t even known had been taken.