CHAPTER ONE
ELEVEN YEARS LATER
Poppy stared into the full-length mirror with a critical eye, determined to look her best.
She couldn’t do anything about the curls her red hair held on to so stubbornly. The deep curls fell to her shoulders in abandon, one insisting on laying over her forehead, but tonight, they looked softer, less frizzy than normal. Her makeup was minimal, a light application of mascara, a soft gray shadow over her eyelids, making her emerald-green eyes seem brighter. Some gloss along her lips.
The flirty skirt she wore ended just above her knees, the blouse, a lighter shade of blue, barely covered the low band of the skirt. It was just low enough to hide the hilt of the little dagger, secured in its leather sheath and tucked inside the band of her skirt.
Her fingers glanced over the wooden hilt, her heart giving a hard beat of remembered excitement at its presence. The little knife was for her protection, since she couldn’t seem to keep her butt at home instead of sneaking out and attending parties she had no business going to, she’d been told.
Jack had looked so stern and disapproving that night he’d given her the dagger at one of those parties. He’d spent that evening in the relative solitude amid the vehicles parked at the edge of the clearing, instructing her on how best to use it to protect herself.
He wasn’t the boy she’d ordered into her parents’ home all those years ago. This Jack Bridger was harder, stronger, and even more handsome than he’d been as a boy. His black hair was cut military short and all she wanted to do was bury her fingers in it and test the feel of it. The gray-blue color of his eyes was mostly somber, but the color would darken whenever he saw her.
And when she saw him, her heart would trip. Race. She was in danger of stuttering and all she could think about was having him hold her against him, his lips moving on hers, kissing her with the same need for her that she felt for him.
She touched her lips with her fingers, her stomach tightening, heart racing. Tonight, she promised herself. He would kiss her tonight. She’d felt it coming the past few weekends. He was always at the parties this summer, hanging around until she arrived, watching her the entire time she was there.
He’d dance with her a few times, then if she didn’t walk back with her friends along the heavily traveled path that ended across from her home, she suspected he was the one who called her brother, or one of her friends’ brother’s.
Tonight, he could take her home himself, she decided. She belonged to him. She’d known that for years. She’d waited for him, dreamed of him. Tonight, he’d see that.
* * *
Jack was late arriving at the party. Every summer he, as well as Poppy’s brothers, Mac-Cole, John David, and Evan, along with Caine Crossfield and River Dawson, if they were home on leave, did their best to make certain five young women remained safe while allowing them to try their wings and test their freedom.
This summer, Jack’s attention had been fractured between keeping his hands off Poppy and tracking the bastard who had more than once made the claim that he was going to have Poppy that summer. Whether she wanted him or not.
That weekend, Jack was going to make certain Wayne Trencher understood how dangerous focusing on Poppy was to his health. Trencher was a known sexual predator, a monster. Jack had no problems making monsters disappear. The US government had actually trained him in doing just that.
Wayne Trencher had managed to slip away from him, though, and the next thing he knew, the little bastard had shown up at the party Poppy and her friends were attending. As he drove to the clearing where the party was held, he flipped open his mobile phone and called Mac-Cole.
“Leave a message,” Mac-Cole’s recorded voice requested.
“Get your ass to that party,” Jack snapped. “Trencher evaded me and I just received a call that he’s there and so is Poppy.”
He disconnected the call and pressed his foot heavier on the gas as he drove as fast as possible to the turnoff that led to the dirt road winding its way to the clearing.
Arriving at the party half an hour later, much later than he normally arrived, he parked the truck as close as possible and hurried to the music- and laughter-filled area where everyone met and socialized. Music throbbed through the clearing that had been lit up by a combination of work lights and vehicle lights.
Catching sight of Poppy’s friends, he noticed Poppy wasn’t with them and felt tension beginning to gather tighter inside him.
“Sasha, where’s Poppy?” He stepped to the young woman generally accepted as the leader of the small group.
He could feel a warning chill crawling up his back.
“She got tired of waiting for you,” Sasha informed him, flicking him a disgruntled look. “She texted a bit ago that she was walking home. Geeze, Jack, she only comes here to see you.”
She’d walked home.
He swung away from the group of young women and hurried across the clearing to the path that led to the street directly behind her parent’s home. As he hurried through the crowd, he didn’t see Wayne Trencher either.
The warning chill at his back became ice racing through his veins and he had a feeling the only person that meant anything to him was being hunted by a monster. A monster that may already have her in his grip.
* * *
Moving along the path he knew she often used when returning from one of the parties close to her home, Jack made it about halfway through the woods when he heard the scream, the sound coming from a shack hidden about ten feet from the path amid the overgrown brush.
Jack hadn’t felt fear since he was fourteen, let alone the terror that exploded in his gut and ripped through his mind. Within seconds he threw his body into the door of the shack, instinct and primal fury obliterating any thought at the sight of Poppy being held beneath Trencher’s much larger body.
Copyright © 2024 by Lora Leigh
