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The atmosphere in the room changed when they walked back into the living room, Jenna clinging to Connor’s hand. Hadley sat up straighter, curiosity in his eyes as he studied her. “You’ve lost your little, Connor.”
Connor snagged a blanket from behind the couch, draped it over the recliner before he sat as Jenna flushed, then pulled her onto his knee again. She leaned into him rather than curled this time, the woman using him as a crutch to brace herself on as opposed to a wall to cower behind.
“She’s not lost.” Jenna bent and picked up Moose from the floor, settled him in the chair beside her. The child might have been hidden away from the ugliness to come, but the woman found solace in the soft plushie as much as the little girl. “She just can’t help you. I can.”
“Are you okay to continue, Jenna?” Hadley watched her as though she might break apart again, and she couldn’t blame him. “I know this is a lot to ask.”
“No, I’d like to get it over with, actually.” She blew out a breath when Connor’s arm curled around her waist. “Are your…things ready?”
The agent checked his phone, picked up the tablet. “If you are, yes.”
Jenna breathed deep, prayed her heart would stop its manic beat so she could calm down enough to think, and waited until Hadley hit the button on his phone that would start her long, painful ride back to hell.
“I spent most of my time in the shed,” she began slowly. Speech still came hard after so long a time without it. Her throat was already showing signs of overuse, and her tongue felt thick and uncooperative. “Normal shed size, I guess. Not very wide but long enough for me to lie down. The boards were weathered, had gaps between them. In winter, it was cold. The wind came straight through; snow and rain as well. I had a scrap of cloth for a blanket if I’d been good. Summertime, it was awful. Hot and stifling, and the bugs were…there were a lot.”
Hadley nodded. “You mentioned before there were others?”
“Other women, yes. S-Sire,” she stuttered over his name, “always has at least one to do his bidding. Cooking, cleaning, whatever he wants doing. I was Twenty-One’s replacement. She trained me. When I was proficient at my duties, Sire killed her. He brought two replacements home to take my place—not at the same time—but they disappointed him. They died instead of me.”
Connor ran a hand down her arm. “Take your time, baby.”
“There was a third who came. She learned quickly, and I knew my time was up. When Sire tires of his current…slave,” she said after struggling for the right word, “he disposes of us. He brands us, beats us, gives us numbers instead of names. We work ourselves bloody, then he kills us.”
“How?” Hadley tapped quickly on the tablet.
Her body turned to stone. This part of her memories was one she hated. Not only because of the deaths she’d witnessed, but because it was a stark reminder of what her fate had dwindled down to. “He takes us—the current one and the next one—into the woods. He ties the replacement to a chain grown into a tree, then rapes the girl he’s going to kill. Some of them scream, some of them plead. Others are so grateful to be escaping him, they’re happy no matter what it means when he tightens his hands around their throat and throttles them to death.”
Connor’s big hand fisted in her lap; Jenna took it in both of hers and held on.
“You escaped before he could kill you.”
“Barely. The night I escaped, Sire told me I’d served him well, he was pleased with me. He gave me a crust of bread—I hardly ever got food—and said he would be sorry to see me go, but that our goodbye would…our goodbye would be exciting. He’d been waiting for it a long time.” Sickness rose in her throat, adding sourness to the growing ache. “I knew it was my last night in that shed. He’d taken my replacement into the house for the branding. I hadn’t heard her scream, so he hadn’t done it yet.”
“So you ran.”
She nodded. “He beat me with anything and everything he could find from the day I woke there. Hammered every rule, every boundary line into me until breaking one of those rules was akin to ripping my own flesh off with my fingernails. We weren’t allowed to talk; talking meant losing your tongue. Running away came with a punishment I’d never dared risk, until that night.”
Exhausted, she slumped against Connor, closed her eyes. “The shed was ramshackle, falling apart. The door was rotten, the locks set in dead wood. I tried pushing at it, but I couldn’t move it. I tried to stand. Got to my feet, staggered and fell. Hit the door, smashed it open, ended up sprawled in the mud outside.”
Connor’s body was rigid beneath her, but his hands were moving now, stroking and petting in that way she’d come to rely on. She opened her eyes, blinked slowly.
“Do you know how long you were with him, Jenna?”
She sighed. “I lost track of time. There was no time there. Day rolled into night, into day. An eternal cycle of pain and misery, cleaning and degradation. I know there were twenty-six full moons. I remember because full moons made the night lighter, and I’m afraid of the dark.”
Hadley’s eyes lifted, dark and turbulent, meeting Connor’s above her head. They flashed with fury. “Twenty-six months. Two years and two months of torture, and you survived it.”
“In the beginning, when you’re still a person, you hold on because there’s hope someone will come find you and take you back to your life. After a few days, the hope dwindles, and you start to forget you were ever a person. A couple of weeks…there is no person left, and any life that might have been waiting would never be the same again anyway.”
“Jesus Christ.” Hadley reached out and hit the phone. “Take a break, sweetheart. Have a drink, settle yourself. You’re shaking like a leaf, and you’re ashen.” He looked at Connor again. “You want to take a quick walk, air it out?”
Voice thick and tight, Connor said, “I’ll deal with it later.” He picked up the glass of juice, wrapped Jenna’s jerky hands around it and guided it to her mouth.
Sweet, cool orange hit her tongue, soothed the burn in her throat. She drank deep, slow. “This is hard for you, Agent?”
“Yeah. Yeah, this is hard. I want to beat the shit out of this guy. I want to gather you up and bundle you into cotton wool. You’ve not given me a fraction of the details of your incarceration, and I’m already reeling from the cruelty one man possesses.”
