Her Only Salvation Read online

  She should have been told immediately, she argued. What did she pay him for anyway? If he couldn’t handle making one phone call, he wasn’t worth the fees she paid him. His only excuse was that he had a large case load and was planning to get around to it. Her response: When? When she was dead? Because that was what would probably end up happening if she hadn’t found out for certain that she needed to be extra cautious now. Randy could have sneaked up on her and killed her and all because she hadn’t been made aware that he was a free man. Still could, but the only difference was that she would see it coming.

  Maybe this way she stood a chance of defending herself.

  The first time she experienced any measure of peace today was when Luke came to pick her up. It was as if the cloud of distress hanging over her head had dissipated. She felt calm and relaxed and definitely safer now that she was no longer alone. She knew it had a lot to do with Luke’s masculine presence, and wished that she could somehow bottle him so she could carry him with her forever—a charm against anything, or anyone, that wished to harm her.

  Luke emerged from his office nearly two hours later looking downtrodden and a little ticked off. Terri had intended to ask what was bothering him when the rest of the wait staff started filing in through the back door. Instead of attempting a discussion that would get waylaid in an instant, Terri passed him an encouraging smile and set about doing the final preparations required to open the club to the line of patrons already growing outside the building.

  ***

  The night progressed as any other. Terri served drinks to her tables and filled orders at the bar between rounds. The women were catty as usual, sharing sordid tales of bathroom encounters that she tried desperately to block out. A part of her really wished Luke would do away with the practice of letting everyone do as they pleased, because she had trouble holding onto respect for these women each time she witnessed one slink into the back with another John.

  Holding respect for Luke should have been a problem too, but he had some redeeming qualities her coworkers lacked, like self-respect and strength of character. Luke did for others, and by allowing these women to sell themselves for an extra buck, he was giving them the opportunity to make a better life for themselves—if that’s what they could really call it—and to do it in a safe place, while putting himself on the line.

  She would never understand the allure, and she never wanted to. The only thing she could possibly say that she would like to share with the women was their ability to share the details of their lives with one another. Between them, there were no secrets. Terri was the odd man out here, for a couple of reasons: One, she was the newest member of the staff. No one wanted to open up to the newbie. There was no history, so there was no trust; two, Terri wasn’t exactly an open book. She liked to keep the details of her personal life personal. She didn’t talk much, and when she did it was usually about business.

  Unfortunately, Terri had never known the benefit of having a good girl friend to confide in, and it looked like she never would. The silver lining? You can’t miss what you never had.

  Terri kept telling herself just that while she worked the tables, cleaning up messes from spilled drinks and collecting empty glasses and bottles. It kept her mind busy, but never enough to completely banish all thoughts of her ruthless soon-to-be ex-husband running around as a free man. The very idea had her looking over her shoulder.

  When it came time for her break, Terri headed for the tiny break room that used to be a storage room. It was attached to Luke’s office by a thin paneled door with a large pane of glass in the middle. It offered no privacy whatsoever, and as Terri took a seat at the round bistro table provided them, she scooted her chair far enough away to be out of his direct line of sight. She didn’t feel exactly comfortable sitting there listening to a muted soap opera while he ranted at full volume about a lack of adequate supplies and whose ass he was going to fry if it wasn’t resolved immediately. She felt as if she was eavesdropping.

  Nibbling on her tuna and rye, she returned to her previous ongoing thought process. Had that kid who had been involved in the hit-and-run last night been an unfortunate victim of Randy’s temper? If, in fact, it had been him, it didn’t take a giant leap to figure out that he had probably been in the club watching her that evening, too. Just the thought of him being so close without her knowledge was enough to turn her into a nervous wreck.

  Terri leaned forward, folding her arms on the table and resting her head on top. She should be calling the police, telling them about her suspicions. That would be the right thing to do, wouldn’t it? The problem was, she didn’t have any proof that Randy was involved. She had no idea where he lived or if he was even in the area. He could be miles away for all she knew. With her luck, most likely not, but a girl could hope.

  The only thing she could grasp on to was the truck description. Luke had mentioned that it was an older blue pickup. If she could point the police in Randy’s direction, and it turned out that he owned a truck matching that description, then she would be doing everyone a favor. In her experience, however, the police didn’t usually take the worrywart of a wife very seriously and, with the exception of the last time, Randy never got more than a slap on the wrist. He could be very slippery when it came to the law.

  Maybe she could ask her lawyer instead. He might be willing to check into it. She didn’t have much confidence in the man after that stunt he pulled, but with the threat of taking her business elsewhere, she might be able to set a fire under him long enough to get some answers.

  The door to Luke’s office opened and Terri lifted her head to find Luke drawing up a chair beside her, a look of concern pinching his brows together.

  “You okay, Terri?”

  Sitting back, Terri sighed, knowing what she must have looked like to him. Her eyes felt tired, her body fatigued, and her heart heavy. She was a mess.

  “Nothing I can’t handle,” she offered as an explanation. Gathering her garbage, she was prepared to head back to work when Luke stopped her.

  “Is there anything you want to talk about? You look…I don’t know…troubled.” He frowned, as if those weren’t his first choice of words, but he didn’t know how else to explain himself.

  Terri rolled her lips in a barely there smile. “I just have some things I need to work out right now, but thanks for the offer.”

  The silence stretched between them as Luke regarded her a moment longer. Finally, he nodded, seeming to accept her words. “All right, but you come to me if you need anything, okay?”

  “Sure, Luke.” Pulling the door open, Terri strode off, eager to get back to work.

  She wasn’t on the floor for more than five minutes when Cathie called her behind the bar.

  “You have a phone call, doll.” Passing off the receiver, she flashed a quick grin over her shoulder and said, “It’s a guy.”

  Not knowing anyone who would possibly be calling her, let alone a man, not to mention at work, puzzled Terri. With a dark frown, she lifted the receiver and pressed it to her ear.

  “Hello?”

  At first she didn’t hear a thing, the noise in the bar drowning everything out. Turning her back to the room, she cupped her hand over the phone and repeated the greeting.

  At first, she didn’t trust what her ears were hearing. The voice was too distinct, too familiar to be real. Her first inclination was to throw out the most obvious explanation and come up with something that she was better equipped to handle mentally. However, when his voice came down the line again, rough and laced with menace, reality slammed into her like a freight train.

  “Hi there, sweets,” Randy said smoothly. “Miss me?”

  Terri’s voice seemed to be caught in her throat, a lump that she had difficulty even getting her short breaths past.

  “Judging by your silence, I’ll take that as a yes. Don’t try to deny it,” he snapped, then quickly reigned in his temper.

  Terri didn’t realize she had been shaking her head. In that ins
tant, she knew he was watching her. Immediately, she spun on her heel and scanned the crowd. There were so many people tonight, she could barely make out their faces, let alone single one out. As he continued to talk, she slowed her visual inspection, breaking the room down into square foot sections, taking in every face methodically. Randy had distinct, pale blonde hair, and anyone who didn't fit that description, she tossed out of the equation, and those with similarly blonde hair she subjected to intense scrutiny.

  “You’re looking good, sweets,” he complimented her from his hidden vantage point. “Always knew you would live up to your full potential one day.”

  She could almost feel him moving through the room, his eyes pinned to her every step of the way. It made her skin crawl.

  “From housewife to barmaid,” he continued. “Wouldn’t your mother be proud.”

  “My mother was always proud of me,” she sneered into the phone. Bringing up her deceased mother had always been a sore spot for her, and he well knew it. She would not allow him to sully her memory any longer.

  Randy snickered, loving that he had managed a reaction out of her. “You always were easy to rile up, sweets.”

  “Don’t call me that,” she nearly shouted in return, but managed to lower her voice at the last minute to avoid attracting any unnecessary attention.

  “Not so fond of that nickname anymore?” He clicked his tongue thoughtfully. “How about love bug? Does that suit you better?”

  “I hate it,” Terri growled, hoping to sound as angry as she felt.

  “Good, love bug it is. Now,” he went on, uncaring of her growing temper. “I must be going, but before you beg me to stay, I want to assure you that I won’t be far.” Suddenly it was as if the sound coming through the other end of the phone had entered a vacuum.

  Eyes darting frantically across the sea of dancers, Terri honed in on a set of familiar wide shoulders set against a tall frame and a head of pale blonde hair cut short in an almost military fashion, exiting the club. It had to be Randy, she thought, but he was gone from view so quickly, she couldn’t be sure.

  Except that she would know him anywhere.

  With shaking hands, Terri replaced the phone on its station, and without saying where she was going, walked mindlessly down the narrow passage leading to the locker rooms. She needed to be alone. She couldn’t think. Her mind was too clouded with visions of her murder, of Randy strangling the life out of her once and for all.

  With panic setting in, Terri burst through the locker room doors and ran for the washroom where she proceeded to vomit her dinner into the toilet.

  Luke found her soon thereafter, worry and annoyance warring for dominance on his broad face.

  “The girls are wondering where you disappeared to,” he informed her, crossing his arms over his chest as if she were a child in need of reprimand. “You know you can’t just take off without telling someone where you’re going.”

  “I know,” Terri muttered, keeping her head low. She lacked the strength to hold it up, too weakened from the turmoil eating at her insides to do much else than sit there and ponder her fate. “I’m sorry. Tell them I’m sorry.”

  Luke was suddenly sitting beside her. She hadn’t even heard him move.

  Lifting her chin, he narrowed his deeply blue eyes on her and tilted his head. “Are you sick or something?”

  “I’m fine,” she managed, trying to find some strength to lie effectively and failing miserably.

  Tucking a chunk of hair that had escaped her ponytail behind her ear, he shook his head. “Talk to me, Terri. I know everything isn’t fine. I know there is something going on with you, and I want to know what it is.”

  “It’s nothing,” she insisted, forcing herself to meet his gaze.

  Dropping his hand, Luke’s expression changed from soft and understanding to a mix of anger and annoyance like a switch had been thrown.

  “That’s bull and we both know it. Now this…whatever this is,” he waved a hand through the air encompassing her, “is starting to affect your performance here. This is a business, Terri, and if you want me to be understanding, then you’re going to have to level with me.”

  Terri narrowed her eyes on him. “Are you saying you’ll fire me if I don’t confide in you?”

  Luke sighed deeply, pinching the bridge of his nose in exasperation. “No, I’m not going to fire you, Terri. I just need you to help me understand. I can’t help you if you don’t.”

  The pained expression he turned on her, one of utter defeat, somehow compelled Terri to open her mouth and admit this one person into her shrunken world.

  “My husband,” she began, and swallowed hard to tamp down the tremor in her voice, “he’s been released from prison.”

  Luke looked at her in a way that told her he was trying to be sympathetic but still didn’t grasp the gravity of the situation.

  She went on. “He was here tonight, and I think he was here last night too.” She grimaced, knowing in her heart of hearts that what she was about to say next was the truth. “I think he was the one who hit that boy in the parking lot.”

  Luke’s eyes widened, understanding mixed with equal parts anger and worry twisting through them until the blue seemed to swirl with his anger.

  “I’ll kill that asshole,” he seethed, his fingers curling to form tight fists against the bench they sat on.

  Terri shook her head. “You can’t. They would lock you up, and then who would watch out for me?”

  She didn’t want Luke to get himself into trouble. It was obvious he was a fighter, willing to go up to bat for any cause he deemed worthy, but she didn’t want to see him get caught up in the drama of her life. Not if she could help it.

  She hadn’t meant to, but she started to shake a little, almost as if the cold outside hadn’t fully left her.

  Seeing this, Luke wrapped her in his arms and squeezed her to him. “Hush,” he murmured. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  “Promise?” she asked, then sniffed back the start of a runny nose. Had she started crying too? Jesus, she really was a mess.

  “Promise. It will be a cold day in hell before I let that creep get anywhere close to you again.” He petted her hair absently. “Don’t you worry about a thing, I’ll work something out.”

  Closing her eyes, she leaned into his embrace. For the second time in her life, Terri decided to put her trust into a man. This time, she only hoped she wouldn’t get burned.

  Chapter Five

  Static filled the room of the 70s inspired motel room, creating the perfect backdrop to Randy’s life: dull, chaotic and intolerable. It lulled him into a false sense of security, a companion to keep watch over him while he slept. He had learned the necessity of relying on another person while you were at your most vulnerable the hard way, and old habits were hard to break.

  He was having a nightmare, transported back to the confines of a small cell, surrounded by hardened criminals and fearing for both his life and his sanity. Despite the state’s proud declaration that this was a state of the art facility, there was nothing artful about it. Bars were bars, criminals were criminals. The food was bad, the security worse, and you couldn’t get privacy unless you killed someone and got sent to solitary.

  Fingers gripped the sheets, mimicking his attempt to pry loose his bars and free himself. Feet scissored beneath the blankets, mirroring Randy’s attempts to flee his attacker. An entire year of this and Randy was nearly crawling out of his skin. His days may have been filled with thoughts of survival, but his nights were reserved for something else entirely: payback.

  The slamming of a car door jolted Randy out of his sleep, but hung over as he was, he couldn’t bring himself to move without a knife being driven through his skull. He lay there, staring at the dingy ceiling, watching the fan blades rotate lazily overhead. Tiny pale dust particles drifted through the air, caught in a beam of sunlight that sliced the room in half. An odor of onions and sweat permeated the air mixing with a distinct note of decay
.

  The motel was a hovel built before Randy was even a blip on the radar, and it showed in the tattered orange carpeting, the harvest gold patterned curtains and the olive green woven blankets crumpled on the bed. How the place still managed to do business would have been a mystery to him had he not witnessed the steady traffic of prostitutes and dealers slinking around the property day and night. Located just off the highway, it was a hot spot for less than honest business dealings.

  Scratching his fingers through his hair, Randy managed to pull himself up to sitting. He was still a little out of sorts, not fully awake yet and maybe a slight bit in denial about where he stood in life at the moment. So when he called out, “Terri! Get me a beer!” and was met with silence, he wanted to run his fist through the wall.

  So he did.

  Plaster rained down, coating everything around it in a fine layer of powder. And wasn’t that genius. His head pounded in protest of the sudden movement and the spike of anger, and Randy decided to ram another hole in the wall, because it felt good to let off a little steam.

  Only two things could make him feel better right now, and since Terri wasn’t available, he would need a drink to chase away the pulsing pain filling his head and clogging his thought process.

  Beer bottles littered every surface of the room. Clusters congregated on top of the ancient console TV, on the fold-out tray beside the bed, and on the floor. Three empty cases sat at the foot of the recliner. He needed to go for a beer run, but he would have to take the itch off now if he hoped to be functional behind the wheel.

  The last thing Randy needed was to get the attention of the cops.

  Picking up bottles, Randy gave each one a shake. Gathering the few that sloshed, he downed the last of their stale contents and licked his lips with a grimace. Warm and flat had never been his style.

  “How the mighty have fallen,” he muttered, tossing the last bottle back on the floor. The green glass shattered, the shards bouncing and finally settling where they glittered cheerily in the muted amber light.