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My legs had fallen asleep. I straightened them out, the ginger ale tingles reminded me I was still alive. I thought through all the weird stuff that had happened. “The camper?”
He shrugged again. “Another attempt to show you how easily I could get to you and those you care about.”
I opened my mouth to tell him off, but knew it wasn’t worth it. This was not the time, nor the place to start practicing for the debate team. But I was getting the answers I needed to figure this whole mess out. Although I was sitting in a horse pen with a homicidal maniac who liked to chop people up for fun blocking my only exit. “Let’s not forget the derby,” I said.
Dex smiled. “I’d seen you with Ty again. You were mine!” He ran fingers over his mustache. “If you’re not going to be with me, you’re not going to be with anybody. And a hit and run with a derby car would never be linked to me.”
I mentally tallied all the crazy stuff. Morty on my front steps. Solved. Explosion. Solved. Derby car. Solved. Camper. Solved. Morty’s body. Solved. The more he talked, the less killing he could do. “What I don’t get is why you think I have anything to do with your um…meth?”
“You nosed around too much. You started to look at my ranch a little too closely. Meth is being made on a far corner of my land, near the national forest. Shipments are flown out of a hidden runway without any problems. In fact, since my property is big enough, no one knows the airstrip even exists. I can’t have you jeopardizing all I’ve built. Besides, the only loose end with Morty is you. With you dead, no one can tie Morty to me except as an employee, which is easily explained away as a man quitting a job. Problem solved.”
“I won’t tell anyone about your meth,” I assured him. “I can’t anyway. I don’t know anything about it.”
“You’ll be sampling some soon enough.”
Huh? That didn’t sound good. I felt green, like the first three months of pregnancy with Bobby. As if I ate a dozen oysters left out in the sun. The Ketamine and my stomach were not friends. I gulped in air, trying to ease the roiling.
“A horse ranch is a perfect cover for meth. Like I said, lots of land to hide a meth lab and a runway for small planes to carrymeth out of state. Shipping boxes of horse semen is the perfect front to move meth to my overseas distributors.”
Wow. I had to admit it was a pretty good setup. I burped up funky air.
“All that meth around town?”
“Mine,” Dex boasted. “Except for the lab in Churchill. That was a competitor, but he had a littleaccidentand the lab burned down.”
Sure, an accident.
“To remove the competition. The wildfire Ty’s fighting. Let me guess, you started that?” I asked.
“To remove the competition,” Dex repeated my words. “Permanently.”
What was his definition ofremove? “Um…” I swallowed down some bitter bile. “Why kill Ty?” Hot tears burned the back of my eyes. I blinked them away. If I started crying now, I’d never stop. I had to remain clearheaded to get out of this. To save Ty. Somehow.
Dex shrugged casually. “I hope you said your goodbyes.” He pushed off the rail, ignoring my question. Uh-oh. Now what? He’d run out of story and I still hadn’t figured out how to escape. My mind was spinning on a vision of Ty, lying hurt, flames fast approaching. Or was he already dead, chopped up into pieces to be burnt to a crisp? Dex opened the gate and stepped into the stall. I had to tilt my head back to look up at him. His body blocked most of the light. I crab walked away from him, sliding on the hay until I was forced into the corner. The cinder block was uncomfortable at my back.
He easily grabbed and lifted me painfully by the armpits. I wobbled on legs that were still unsteady. His cologne, which I used to find appealing, was now cloying and harsh. I saw the evil in his eyes up close. No warmth. The cold sweat returned. I felt the roots of my hair tingle.
“What…what are you going to do with me?” I asked, breathless with fear. I tasted bile again, acidic in the back of my throat.
“You saw the real side of me when we first met. I wanted you for a sub. I didn’t care you were inexperienced in the lifestyle. I would have trained you, taught you to please me. You’d have been too busy doing that to ever learn about the meth.” He gave me a little shake and my teeth clacked together. “I even tried a different approach, being a gentleman, courting you with dinner, words. You know where that led.”
Right into the arms of Ty. I thought something had been off about Dex that night. He was definitely not a gentleman.
“Now…instead of being my wife or even my sub, you’ll just be Jane, my little brood mare.”
Brood mare? I didn’t think so!
I didn’t think my stomach could hold out much longer. Even though I was scared out of my wits, I was angry. Smoke-coming-out-of-my-ears angry. Not just because he held me prisoner and had completely obscene plans for me, nor for the fact he’d either already killed Ty or was just waiting for the fire to finish doing his dirty work for him. It went even deeper than that. During my marriage to Nate, he’d molded me into what he wanted me to be. Of course, I let him. I figured doing exactly what he wanted would make him want me, love me. Need me. But I’d learned a lot since I kicked his sorry ass out, and that included never compromising for someone else. No one was going to boss me around again. I wasn’t going to give in to Dex without one hell of a fight.
I glared at him. “Is that what the horse is for since you can’t get it up?” I struggled against his grasp knowing I’d pissed him off. Good. I saw anger flare in his eyes before he quickly hid it. Direct hit.
“I had no idea how long you’d be unconscious. I was leading him to the corral when I heard you stirring.”
I laughed, directly in his face. “Excuses, excuses.”
Even though I was a little dizzy, I kneed him in his junk as hard as I could. Unfortunately, a woman must have tried this tactic before. His reflexes were quick and all I hit was his thigh, which did nothing but make him furious. Dex changed his grip into some kind of wrist lock. I winced, cried out. Any movement I made caused sharp pain.
“Don’t worry. Meth will make you do lots of things. All kinds of things. And when you’re so strung out and you’re no good to me anymore, well, an overdose is not hard to accomplish.”
