Page 31 of The Hanging Dolls
“Cruelty.” His finger grazed the side of her face before his eyes closed and the rest of him slackened on the bed.
Zoe covered his nude body with a blanket, her heart thundering against her chest. It was another night she had managed to get away from his touch. But it wasn’t the close call that had left her nerves crackling.
It was what he had said. How did he know? Her vision melted into Bruiser standing over her, sneering that a woman had got one up on him. As he began kicking her down, her body curvedinto a ball, absorbing the blows into her back. But when she peered at him, she didn’t see Bruiser—she sawhim.
She blinked. And her sight was bathed in hues of red. With a guttural grunt that sounded like an animal, she crawled out from between his legs, her arm smacking him right between the legs.
Someone yelled foul. It was against the rules. But there were no rules in the real world. The real world was unfair.
Bruiser dropped to his knees, holding his junk, his neck straining and turning red. Zoe fitted his fat head in a deadlock and dragged him down to the ground with her. The rage that had been simmering inside her all day now boiled over, and she gripped him tighter, despite the fact he could barely breathe.
It seared her how unfair everything was. How that man from the motel was driving an expensive car, minting money and getting action, all the while betraying his wife. How that man from the diner was walking free while potentially abusing that waitress. And how that monster she had slept next to for two years as part of her undercover assignment never got to see the inside of a prison cell.
Cold nights when the fear that the sedatives she slipped him wouldn’t work held her in a tight wrench.
Thwack.
When she felt his leery gaze sliding over her skin like snake.
Thwack.
The defeated and blank faces of the other innocent women she was unable to protect from him.
Thwack.
She carried the weight of the collateral damage inside her. Two years of an assignment to nail the bastard—he was dead, but he still infiltrated her mind, his voice andscentembedded deep inside her.
Thwack.
“It’s done! It’s done!” She felt arms loop around her, pulling her away from Bruiser who had tapped out and was fading away. “What’s wrong with you, Z? You wanna kill him?” Benny’s face was twisted in panic.
Her breath came in ragged grasps. “Sorry.”
“You’re not supposed to strike between the legs.” Benny gritted his teeth. “Now all these folks want their money back!”
The crowd was angry, looking at her in disgust.
“I’ll get you your money back.” Her body suddenly felt too heavy. A dull pain stretched on the side of her face where she had been struck. She dragged her feet away from the fighting arena, relishing the pain, feeling it course through every fiber of her being. There was a burning tightness that resided under every nerve, muscle, and organ. At least this sore, aching pain was better thanthat. She threw one last glance over her shoulder at Bruiser.
But she didn’t see Bruiser. She saw a thick, impenetrable, velvety mass of black that had killed Rachel.
EIGHTEEN
“Do you have any fears or phobias?” Aiden read from a booklet in his lap.
“Who cares if I’m scared of spiders?” Zoe asked, exasperated. “Does that mean I would fail my psych evaluation? Get kicked off the FBI?”
His brows furrowed. “Yes, of course. Fear of spiders is a dealbreaker.”
Zoe stared at him. “Oh, you were trying to make a joke. I didn’t catch it because of your dull delivery.”
The corners of his mouth twitched as he adjusted his glasses. “So? Phobias?”
“Darkness.”
“That’s a common one.”
“And shadows,” she blurted without thinking.
