Page 16

Danny smiled at her phone and went about preparing for bed.

By the time she crawled into bed, it was past midnight. Exhausted by the long day and a little sore from her tussle with Bobby Ray, she lay staring at the ceiling, illuminated by the light she left on in the bathroom. Since the assault, she hadn’t been able to sleep at night without a light shining nearby. It was just enough light to see if anyone else was in the room with her.

As soon as she’d moved to Louisiana, she’d purchased a handgun and spent several months at a gun range, learning how to use it effectively. She’d taken the course and obtained her concealed carry license.

In the army, she’d trained with a variety of weapons, but she wanted to know her personal handgun inside and out. If she had to use it, she didn’t want to fumble around trying to figure out how to release the safety. And if she had to shoot someone, she wanted to make sure it would stop him before he could hurt her.

The gun lay on the nightstand at night. She carried it in her purse when she left her apartment. So far, she hadn’t felt threatened enough to use it. Her self-defense training had been enough.

As she lay in bed, she thought about her conversation with Jacques, about his relationship with his family and hers with her brother. Though she worked in a busy environment, surrounded by people at the bar, there were times she got lonely.

She turned on her side, stared at the empty pillow beside hers and wondered what it would be like to have someone share her bed. Someone she chose and who chose her. Someone who would be patient with her and just hold her until she felt safe enough to go further.

Someone like Jacques?

Her heartbeat fluttered and warmth spread through her, coiling low in her belly.

No. He wasn’t interested in her like that. He’d called her a friend. After she’d spilled her guts about being raped, he would likely stick with the friend premise.

Knowing he thought of her only as a friend didn’t keep her from imagining what it would be like to lie in bed, cocooned in his arms. Naked might be even better. Maybe he’d be the kind of man who’d take it slowly, and ease into making love at her pace.

And what pace was that? She hadn’t had sex with anyone since being raped. Feeling awkward was a given. Even worse was the potential of a panic attack.

She rolled away from the empty pillow and punched her own into submission before closing her eyes.

Maybe she’d feel different if her attacker were caught and sentenced to prison. Only then could she relax and build a real life, free of fear.

CHAPTER 4

Light filtering through the edges of the curtains pulled her from a troubled sleep, hazy with fog, where a beast stalked her from the shadows. She glanced at her phone and realized it was already near noon.

Danny flung back the sheets and rose, tired but determined. Today was the first day of the rest of her life. A life she chose to pursue, not one she trudged through, afraid of her own dreams and shadows in the dark.

She dressed in jeans and debated between the moss-green top that brought out the green in her eyes and the T-shirt with the Crawdad Hole ad printed on the front and back.

She chose the green top. Not that she was dressing to impress anyone. She’d carry her work T-shirt to change into before she went on shift.

After brushing her curls into submission and leaving them to fall around her shoulders, she applied dark mascara to her red eyelashes and dabbed lipstick on her lips.

Normally, she didn’t bother with makeup. Ranger School had taught her the only makeup that mattered was the camouflage sticks that helped her disguise her pale skin, allowing her to blend into the background.

You’re not trying to impress anyone, she reminded herself.

A quick glance in the mirror made her laugh. “Who would I impress with this red hair, freckles and tired eyes?”

For the next half hour, she sat at the small dinette table, going through her file of Army records, extracting her medical record and jotting notes on a fresh sheet of paper. She worked through the timeline of her assignment and performance in Ranger School and her subsequent release from active duty.

She wrote down what she could remember of that night up to the point when she’d blacked out and woken up again in a drug-induced haze. She detailed what she could recall of going to the hospital and the day she’d left the military.

When she finished, she glanced down at the skeleton timeline. It seemed so inadequate. A few dates and skimpy notes to reflect an event that had altered the course of her life and changed who she was.

Anger rushed up inside her. Danny crumpled the paper and threw it across the room. She pushed to her feet and paced the small apartment. What good would it do? Fort Benning had thousands of people on post. Most of them men.

How could anyone narrow down the list of suspects when there were so many to choose from? On top of the sheer number of men, time had passed. Many of those men had shipped out to other duty stations.

“Who am I kidding?” she murmured. “It’s impossible.”

Danny tipped her head back and closed her eyes, willing herself to be calm and reminding herself this wasn’t only about her.