Chapter Eight

Maggie couldn’t remember a day when she had felt so relieved to finish work and begin the walk home in the cold evening air. She had forced herself to keep working today, despite her early morning ‘wobble’. Although she had kept half an eye on the door all day in case Aiden came back, she hadn’t seen anything of him, although she had received yet another message on her cell telling her how sorry he was. Yeah, right. He’d left plenty of those texts last night and had tried ringing her umpteen times, but she had switched her phone to silent mode and thrown it in a drawer as soon as she’d gotten home.

The fact was that he saw her as a subservient. He hadn’t invited her to dinner. He’d invited her to serve him dinner—him and all his toffee-nosed friends, including Robert fucking Rossington. What in hell was a guy like Aiden Fielding doing rubbing shoulders with the likes of her ex, anyway?

She was still seething when she rounded the corner into her little back street. Her fury had made her walk much faster than she would have normally, and she was pleased to notice it was still light enough to see when she got home. Pulling out her key, she jumped when she heard footsteps behind her.

“Don’t make a sound.”

She’d know his voice anywhere. It had plagued her nightmares for the past couple of years. The fact that it was accompanied by a strong stench of stale whiskey filled her with even more dread.

Her fingers trembled as she fumbled to turn the lock, silently praying for one of the neighbors to come to her rescue, but they were alone.

“W-What do you want?” she demanded as he pushed her through her own front door, causing her to sprawl across the thin hall carpet.

The door slammed behind them.

“So, this is what the place is like on the inside,” he sneered, switching on a light and taking a good look around. “I often wondered.”

Maggie clung to the wall where she pulled herself up, watching him lock the door behind himself then tuck the key into his pocket. Bastard. Her blood ran cold. “Y-you’ve been watching me?” It all made sense now, the footsteps, the feeling of being followed… It hadn’t been her imagination after all.

“I wanted to find out what you were up to these days,” he told her nonchalantly as he finally pulled his hand back out of his pocket.

“Up to?” She spat the words at him as he crossed the hall and took a peek into her tiny kitchen. “I haven’t been up to anything. I work for a living—good, honest work, something you know nothing about.”

He reached her with one stride, and pure evil stared back at her as she watched him raise his hand to strike her.

“Don’t you fucking dare!” Anger and indignation pooled with fear as she screamed at him.

“Or what?” He narrowed his eyes when he grabbed hold of her upper arms, pinning her roughly back against the wall. “You planning on stopping me, bitch?”

“You— You’re hurting me,” she wailed as he squeezed her soft flesh.

“So? It’s nothing to what I’ll do if I hear you’ve been making trouble for me. D’ya hear?” His voice was a feral growl and his teeth were gritted.

Pain seared through her arms. She struggled to free herself from his grip, but it was no use.

She shook her head. “Trouble? How?”

He stared into her face before pushing her one more time into the wall behind her and letting go of her as though she burned his fingers.

“What in hell were you doing at the Fielding Ranch last night?” he demanded.

She felt herself go hot when she recalled the scene in the hallway. “You know damn well. I was asked to work there,” she snapped.

He let out a hideous guffaw. “Is that why you were dressed up in that awful dress? The one I bought for you?”

“With my money!” she added.

She half expected him to yell at her again—hit her even—but he just burst out laughing. It was a taunting laugh, hollow and ugly.

“I chose it,” he told her matter–of-factly. “It showed a good bit of cleavage, which, in those days, was nice to look at.”

She felt an ache deep within her as she considered what he was saying. Had he tried to make her look stupid, or did he think it would impress his friends to see her dressed like that? Until last night she hadn’t thought it too revealing, but perhaps with the extra weight she had gained, her breasts had made the dress sag a little more than she’d imagined. Had she really looked awful each time she had worn the dress, including last night?

“Fuck you!” she yelled at him, fuming that he had managed, yet again, to make her doubt herself.

“You wish!” he taunted her. “I’ve got a much younger, slimmer model to fuck these days, or hadn’t you noticed? One with a lot more money than you ever had.”

“It didn’t stop you fleecing my family, though, did it?” she snapped.

This time she didn’t see his hand coming. It swiftly flew through the air and planted a loud slap across her cheek.

“Ah!” She tasted the iron tang of blood on her lip when she reeled backward, bumping her head hard against the wall as she slid down to her knees.

“Your family was only too happy to offload you onto me, and you know it, bitch,” he snarled vehemently. “They couldn’t wait to get rid of you.”

“That’s a lie!” she protested, her head pounding.

“Is that why they welcomed you back with open arms when you went crying home to Mommy, then?” His teeth were tightly clenched again, and she noticed that his fists were, too.

Bad memories that had never been far from her mind swamped her aching head, and misery engulfed her once again. Although desperate to stop him from tormenting her, she thought it would be better not to retaliate. She’d never been sure just how much he was capable of and she really didn’t want to find out right now. Instead, she just gawped up at him, awaiting his next move with dread. He was standing over her so she couldn’t get up, and she knew he had the advantage. Best not to antagonize him any further.

They stared at each other in silence for a few more minutes. Then her phone suddenly hummed as it vibrated in her purse, and he looked around for it.

“Who’s that?” he demanded.

“How should I know?” She rolled her eyes at him before realizing what she was doing and prepared herself for another blow. With her eyes screwed shut, she felt her heart pounding as hard as her head, but he didn’t hit her. Instead, she heard him take a step past her and she opened her eyes to see him rifling through her purse.

She quickly stood up and took a step away from the wall. She’d read somewhere that it was always best not to have your back to the wall when being attacked, and, right now, she was definitely being attacked. He stared incredulously at the screen. “Aiden? As in Fielding?” He looked up at her, frowning. “Why’s he calling you?”

“M-Maybe he wants to offer me more work,” she stammered, thinking quickly.

The way he narrowed his eyes at her made her even more nervous.

“You haven’t got a thing going with your boss, have you? Is that why you were all tarted up like a Christmas tree last night? To impress him?” His voice was smarmy, and much as she would love to wipe the sneer from his face, she couldn’t risk him knowing her business, especially if he was doing some kind of deal with the Fieldings.

“Ha. As if!” She forced herself to scoff as she pulled a face.

“He didn’t look too happy last night.” He narrowed his eyes again, seemingly unconvinced.

“Yeah, right. That’ll be why he came running after me to take me home, I suppose?” She sneered, her mouth going dry.

He looked thoughtful for a second. “True,” he conceded, “and, let’s face it, he’s way out of your league nowadays, isn’t he?”

She licked blood from her lip as she forced herself to say nothing. Her whole body shook with a painful mixture of fear and anger.

Robert let out another derisive guffaw. “You won’t be doing any more work for them, do you hear? You’ll stay well away from the Fieldings from now on.”

She stared up at him in disbelief. She recalled his patronizing tone from when they had been together, and she’d hated it then, almost as much as she did now. How dare he?

Although every fiber of her being willed her to tell him exactly what she thought of his audacity, the cruel glint in his eye reminded her precisely what the consequences would be. It wasn’t worth it. He wasn’t worth it.

“I wasn’t planning on it anyway,” she mumbled.

“Good.” He sneered, evidently satisfied that she was complying with his wishes, clearly oblivious that she was just stating a fact.

With a grimace, he seemed to have difficulty pulling the key from his pocket as he headed back up her tiny hallway. Eventually he yanked it out, swung the front door open and threw the key across the hall. Giving a gloating snort, he glared at her once more before striding out.

It wasn’t until she heard the large door at the bottom of the stairs slam shut behind him that she dared to move, quickly rushing over to shut the cold draft from the apartment—to shut him out! She leaned back against the door then slid down into a heap on the floor, weeping uncontrollably at the helplessness of her situation. She wasn’t safe. She knew that. The pain in her face was already causing her head to ache even more, and the burn in her arms seared through her body. It was nothing, however, compared with the agony that ripped through her heart.

* * * *

Aiden was reeling with the events of the day. He and Frank had taken a trip to the local sheriff’s office where Dyson Shearer informed them that the sheriff at Almondine hadn’t changed in the past ten years.

“I don’t know him all that well,” Dyson explained to them. “Seems to keep himself to himself quite a bit, if you know what I mean. Not the friendliest of guys, either, if I’m honest, but maybe that’s just me.”

“No, I can imagine,” Frank responded. “Can you do me a favor and look up a matter he would have dealt with a couple of years ago over there? I just need a case number at this stage.”

Dyson nodded. “Of course, Frank. What’s it all about?”

They sat around the wooden desk and explained the whole story to him, and he frowned as he checked out the details on his computer. “If it’s been reported, it’ll be on here,” the deputy explained. “All the computers in Cavern County are linked up. That way we can tell if a job is connected to another one nearby or whatever.”

“So you’ll be able to get any intel on the incident?” Aiden’s heart was in his mouth as they stared at the whirring screen.

“Yup. Whatever was reported and what happened about it. Mind you, this information’s all confidential, you understand? I can’t just go and—”

“We understand that, son,” Frank assured him with a pacifying gesture of his hand. “We don’t want to get you into any trouble. We just want the case number so we can verify first-off that it was definitely reported. We’ll take it from there.”

“Can’t you ask the lady in question? I mean, if she went to the cops to ask for some kind of verification that this Rossington guy had actually reported a robbery, they would have given her the case number.” Dyson frowned.

“She doesn’t know we’re here,” Aiden blurted out.

Dyson looked up in surprise.

“What we mean is… We don’t want to go dragging up bad memories for her if we don’t have to,” Frank interjected. “If the case is genuine, then we’ll follow it up, but if the case was never even filed, we’re looking at a whole different ball game.”

“Have you got a date or an address where this took place?” Dyson asked doubtfully.

“Nope,” Aiden said him with a grimace.

“It’s going to take some time to track down a burglary without the details,” Dyson warned them, sighing.

“I know, son. But it’s not impossible, though, eh?” The older guy winked at Aiden.

Dyson chuckled. “Well, Frank, I can always rely on you to keep me busy in this job,” he told him. “Let me run a few reports to see what I can come up with. The fact that we’ve got the victim’s name should help, and that it was Rossington who reported it. Why don’t you guys go grab a coffee down the road, and I’ll shout as soon as I find something?”

“You’re a good man, Sheriff,” Frank said as they got up to go.

“Yeah, and I’ll be an old one before I get to the bottom of this, no doubt,” Dyson sniggered.