Page 14 of Fearless
“Shoot,” Garreth said between bites.
“This bloke she ran away from…”
“Ethen.”
“Right. This bloke, is he the same fellow what was harassing your lady the night I attended your club?”
“Black Light, yeah. He’s been banned now, thank God.”
“She was his submissive too?”
“He had four at one time. He’d make them come to the club naked, except for the halters they wore and these black leather animal masks. Called them his ‘Menagerie.’ Each was a different creature.” Garreth wasn’t eating any more, and the sound of a tv commercial in the background grew abruptly fainter as, presumably, Garreth relocated himself to somewhere quieter to talk. Perhaps somewhere out of Hadlee’s earshot, although Noah only knew that because he would have done the same. “He had a pony, a puppy, and then Kitty.”
Leaning against a porch post, Noah stared into the growing amber and pale pink of the distant horizon. “And Hadlee?”
Garreth cleared his throat, but it wasn’t enough to hide the tight anger when he finally answered. “He called her his pig, and yes, we’re still working on that. The man’s a son of a bitch. I can almost guarantee, whatever you are imagining happened between her and Ethen, it’s not dark enough. Literally every inch of her body was a bruise or a welt the night we picked her up, damn near naked, in eighteen-degree weather. It’s a good thing he’s been banned. I don’t think I could stop myself from killing him if we ever met face-to-face again.”
The only clear image Noah had of Ethen’s face was that moment he’d stepped in to stop the man who had grabbed Hadlee and shoved her into a wall. The more he thought about it, the more he seemed to remember the man harassing them here and there throughout that evening. At the time, he’d thought it little more than an annoyance. The scale of the abuse, however, was clearly greater and deeper than he’d known.
“Did you ever take Kitty under your protection?”
“Yes, of course. That’s why I brought her into my ho… wait a minute.” Noah heard the arch of incredulous eyebrows in Garreth’s voice as he said, “Do you mean as my submissive? No. Hell no. I would have thought that the last thing she’d either want or need.”
After what he’d seen last night, every gut instinct Noah had was screaming the opposite. Or was that simply wishful thinking? He rubbed his eyes, scrubbing a restless hand down his face. His palm rasped across last night’s beard growth, seeming obscenely loud in the quiet of a morning only otherwise broken by the waking of local insects and the birds that would soon be hunting them.
“All right,” he said, more for Garreth’s benefit than anything else. “In any case, she’s here. She’s doing well.” He paused a moment, but even before he finished his own inner debate on the wisdom of not keeping his next comment to himself, his mouth was open and moving. “How long has she been sick for, do you know?”
“Sick?” Garreth didn’t sound so much startled as he did carefully neutral.
“Yeah.” Noah decided to specify. “Could be motion sickness, I suppose, but she spent most of yesterday unable to hold anything down until tucker time. Thin as she is, I reckon it’s been going on at least a while.”
Garreth was quiet for so long, Noah pulled his cellphone back far enough to check that they were still connected. “Jesus, you don’t think she’s pregnant, do you?”
“Nah,” Noah said, with far more certainty than he currently felt. “Like I said, could be motion sickness. She had just got off a plane after more than a day’s travel, layovers included. Could be a summer-flu or stress, or any half a dozen other things. Give her a couple days to relax and no worries. She’ll be right, mate. Have a g’night, you and your lady love.”
“Keep us updated,” Garreth replied, not at all sounding comforted.
“You know me, blokey.” Noah let his tone grin, but all hint of it was gone when he ended the call.
Watching the sun creep over the horizon, he thought for a long time on what he wanted to do, on what a responsible bloke would do, and longest of all, he thought on what he probably would do. Maybe it was a good thing Garreth really didn’t know him well. Oh, they were friends, the way two mates got to be after playing with the same submissive for a night, followed by months’ worth of affable conversation on the cello. But how well did one bloke really know another after that sort of subtle socialization?
Maybe that was for the best. Because if Garreth had any inkling the plans now taking root in the back of Noah’s head, he had a feeling his American friend would be on the first plane to Oz and he’d be coming to punch Noah square in the nose.
Before this day was out, Noah suspected he might actually earn every cartilage-crunching ounce of force behind that up-and-coming blow.
* * *
Australia made its third attempt on Kitty’s life before she even had a chance to get out of bed. The morning sun was high, shining squarely in through the crack in her bedroom curtains and across her closed eyelids. Her hands, still clutching the strap she’d stolen from the closet last night were cramped from the grip she’d held on it all night long. But as the brightness across her eyelids began to pry her from her sleep, and the ache in her knuckles filtered in beneath the retreating hazy of her dreams, it was that seductive scent of old leather as she breathed in and started to stretch that, for the first time in months, lent her comfort. She’d always loved the smell of leather.
She rolled sleepily onto her back and at last opened her eyes. She felt peaceful. Relaxed. Right up until her blinking, slow-to-focus eyes fixed on the large black thing crawling slowly across the ceiling directly above her. It had eight legs. Widening, her eyes locked on it. A spider! The biggest spider she had ever seen!
Whether it was by accident or by evil fucking design, the spider lost its grip. Kitty didn’t even have time to sit up before it landed with a plop directly on her chest.
Kitty exploded out of bed, throwing spider, blankets, strap and pillows everywhere. She first fell on the floor and then crab-scrambled to get as much distance from her and the wildly fleeing spider as she could. She lost sight of it under the bed. She didn’t care. She bolted from the room. The bathroom was open. So was Noah’s door. Not seeing or hearing any hint of him, she ducked through the open door and slammed it shut behind her.
Hands pressed over the battering ram that her heart had become, she backed all the way to the tub. Her eyes cast nervous glances all over the room, but nothing in here was big, black or crawling. Everything was brightly lit. Morning sunshine poured in through the high and narrow window above the toilet. Everything was clean and peaceful, and slightly dated. Like her grandmother’s house, back when G-ma had been alive. Blue stripes on white floral wallpaper reminded her strongly of the 1950s. So did the matching peach-pink tub, toilet, and sink.
But, at least there were no spiders.
