Kathi S Barton - [Aaron's Kiss 04] (6 page)

Tucker had never meant to take her like that. What he had done was akin to rape and he knew then that he had been no better than Marta when it came to taking what she had wanted. He felt guilty about it, felt as if he had betrayed her with what he had done. He promised himself that he would make it up to her. Tucker raised his head to see if she still slept and looked right into her beautiful eyes.

He didn’t move, didn’t even so much as breathe. When she turned her head on a heavy sigh, closing her eyes as she went, he pulled the shadows around himself and dematerialized from her room before it was too late. He was nearly to his lair when he thought maybe he was already too late.

~~~

Sam was downstairs the next morning when Betty and Sally showed up at five-thirty. Their voices and general moving around while they came in the back door together sounded like a herd of elephants and a bunch of chattering monkeys. She wondered if the two of them ever did anything quietly, then she smiled. She sincerely doubted it.

Sam hadn’t slept well after she woke sometime after four this morning and had gotten up to sit on the window seat and watch the street start to wake. She wondered about the man in her dream, a very erotic wet dream. She couldn’t shake the feeling of near complete satisfaction and wasn’t sure she wanted to. Her body was relaxed from the orgasm, but she was still tense and on edge. As if she hadn’t gotten enough of whatever had made her climax like that. She blushed at how hard she had come and how much the man in her dream had seemed so real. She tried to shake off the feeling of connection to him, the overwhelming need to find him. Silly, she thought. Just plain silly.

She showed the women what things to take up front and also let them know where any orders were that were to be picked up this morning. Sam told them that she had a few things to finish up but if they needed her for anything just to shout. She had missed working a full day yesterday and the day before and needed to make up for it. The timer went off for another tray of baked goods and she pulled them out to cool.

Sam was decorating a layer cake with pink roses when the hair on the back of her neck stood up. She put down the tube of pink frosting and went to the one-way mirror that looked into the main part of the shop. Something was…wrong. Someone was in a great deal of pain, both mentally and physically. She watched the people standing there waiting for their treats and baked goods, reached out to them, and found the one she was looking for. There, she thought, the woman in the blue top and spandex pants. She looked frightened. Then she realized it was terror the woman was feeling—terror and pain, immense pain. This woman was being beaten by someone close to her and quite frequently too.

Settling deeper into her mind, Sam could feel the woman’s pain and she took a quick inventory of her injuries. She had six bruised ribs and one broken one. Her jaw was also bruised and hurting, but she had tried to cover it with a good amount of makeup. Whoever the beater was had snatched this woman’s hair at one point and she had a large raw place on her scalp from it. Sam was sure that blood scabbed in the area and the woman was terrified that someone might notice. Blue top, as Sam called her in her mind, was wearing long sleeves and a sweater to cover the hand prints left there around her biceps. She was nervous and terrified. The heat and weather alone would be enough to alert most that she was hiding something.

Sam touched her mind deeper still. She wasn’t surprised what she saw there. The woman was going to kill herself when she returned home. Just a simple as that, something she had added to her list of things to do—make the beds, do the dishes, fold laundry, put gun to head, and pull the trigger. Of course this was after she saw that her husband’s meal was cooked perfectly for him and the whole house was spic and span.

Anger surged through Sam, hot and sharp.

Sam planted the urge for Blue-Top to call Sam before she made the beds. She would need to call not just think about it. When she got home, she was to go directly to the phone and call. Sam then gave her the phone number of the cell phone that no one knew about but a very select group of people. There were no small children involved.

The woman had a son, but he had long since written his mom off, the woman thought.

Sam wondered fleetingly if the son was like that father. But dismissed it almost immediately. That, Sam thought, was not her concern. Satisfied, Sam went back to work on the pink frosted cake.

Sam had been helping people for nearly ten years. And contrary to popular belief, not all abused spouses were women. There were a great many men as well; women were just as mean as men when they wanted to be. While Sam didn’t have any direct contact with the underground system she used, she knew all of the participants by first name and voice. No one had been caught in all the time she had been a part of it and Sam never took risks with either the people she helped out of terrible situations, or the people she relied on to make it possible. Once they entered the system, they never made contact with anyone again. Their lives officially ended the day that Sam or one of the others got them out. Sam liked it that way.

She finished the cake she was working on and concentrated on the perfection of each tiny flower as she created it, not the job she was to do later. After it was boxed up and tagged, she went to tell Sally that she had an assignment tonight and to close up for her. Lieutenant Wolff was going to be there in half an hour to bring her the weapon and ammo he had taken for safe keeping. She wanted to be completely ready to go when he left. He was a typical male wolf when he finally showed up.

“This is a big gun for a woman, Sam, don’t you think? I don’t mean that you can’t handle it. Nope, not what I mean at all. In fact, I’ve no doubt that you are likely a better shot than me. But I would like to know what are you doing with it?” He wasn’t even trying to be clever about asking.

Sam knew that David was a good cop. Just like she knew he was a were. Recently, she had heard that his brother was the alpha of the pack in this area too. And she figured that he had already run ballistics on the weapon. She didn’t care; she knew that it would come up clean. All her weapons would. She got rid of the ones she used by ways that no one would ever find them.

“There is also some gun powder residue on it. Want to explain why that is? I know it’s not from yesterday. You said yourself you didn’t fire your weapon. Sara and Shade said the only shot had come from Andrew Ship’s gun.” Raising her brow at this tone, she decided to try and skirt around him. “Is there a problem with my permit, Lieutenant?” When in doubt, answer with a question. It was better to have them frustrated than to give away information she hadn’t meant to. She also knew she had never used this particular gun for anything other than target practice anyway.

“No, there isn’t a problem. I know you’re not stupid and you probably know your rights as well as anyone. If there was a problem, Sam, we’d be having this conversation at the station house and not here. Are you planning on having one anytime soon—a problem I mean?”

Sam grinned at him. He really was a good guy, she thought. “I don’t generally make plans that involve using a gun, sir. Unless it’s at the range. That would be just plain stupid, don’t you think?” She grinned when he frowned at her. “I have it for safety reasons. We make deposits here every day and the three of us are all women. You wouldn’t want us to not be able to protect ourselves, would you? I do, however, know how to use any and all guns I have ever used. Just like you do, I’m sure.”

“It’s not ‘
sir
,’ it’s David, just David. And I don’t make plans either, but sometimes things just happen.” He looked frustrated. And if he paced any harder, she was sure he would wear a nice path in the concrete long before it would wear from regular use.

“Well?”

She looked at him, confused; he hadn’t asked her a question, so she was not sure what he meant. She shrugged. “Well, what, sir, I mean, David?”

“Did anything happen?”

Sam wanted to laugh at his question, but thought it might be wiser to just have some fun for a bit. At least until he pissed her off. “When?” She tried to look innocent, but she couldn’t quite pull it off. Probably, she thought, because she was having a hard time controlling her laughter.

“With the gun, why you carry it. Did anything happen?” His voice took on a tone she was used to. A tone of someone who wanted answers but didn’t want to cause trouble to someone he liked. And she could sense that David did like her. Like her even though he thought of her as a pain in the ass.

“To the gun? Why would anything happen to the gun?” She was really trying to keep it light, to diffuse and confuse. She didn’t want to hurt David’s feelings, she liked, and well…she respected him too much. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t have some fun too.

“What?” He looked at her as he asked. Snapped would have been a better term, but it was still a good question.

“Huh?”

She just knew that this could go on for hours if she let it. She was sure whatever had been his original concern was now lost. As he rubbed his forehead between his eyes, she tried to hide a smile. He was getting a headache and it was her fault, she was sure.

He was clearly at his end of patience when he snapped at her.

“Have you killed anyone with this gun, Sam? Or shot anyone, or done anything that I should know about?”

“No, si...no, I haven’t shot or killed anyone with that gun. Nor have I done anything you should be aware of involving this gun.”

He looked at her skeptically. She had worded it just as he had asked her about the gun. She could tell that he was trying to figure her out and that he was not sure right now about her strange answers. But he would figure it out, she was sure. She just hoped he did long after she had completed her assignment for the night.

David left the shop ten minutes later, no closer to understanding her need for the handgun than before he started talking to her. She noticed that David was pulling out his cell phone as he exited the building. She didn’t have time to try and figure out what he was doing. Mrs. Blue-Top, Elizabeth Siemens, was waiting for her.

Sam left the shop at four o’clock and headed to Mrs. Siemens’ house. Bethany had called just as she was supposed to and was right now gathering up a few personal belongings to take with her when she left. Sam planned to get to the house by four-thirty and was going into the house through the back of the garage, just as the two women had planned.

Sam felt the first tingle of magic when she got out of her car. She looked around the street where she was parked and didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. She locked up and started down the street. She opened herself up to find what her other senses couldn’t.

She didn’t like reaching out while she was on an assignment, but she was nervous after the Ship incident. She felt the first man about three blocks back on the opposite side of the street walking in the same direction she was. He was a wolf, pack wolf. The other one was also a wolf and was in front of her about two blocks on the same side of the street but walking toward her. She knew that they were only to follow her and not to harm nor to intercede. She also knew who had sent them. She could live with that, almost.

David and his brother Bradley had assigned them to her. She didn’t need or want a keeper and it pissed her off to no end to think that they thought she did. Sam had been taking care of herself for a long time and she wasn’t about to have an overgrown dog try to do so now. Especially when she had done nothing to warrant it.

The first man dropped to the ground in mid-step. He was asleep before his head hit the hard ground. She could have had him drop slowly, but was too mad to worry about niceties. The second man was a little more difficult as he was in a shop district and having him just drop might cause a ruckus. She laughed out loud when she thought how to take care of him. She gave him this sudden and overwhelming urge to use the bathroom—like right friggin’ now! And felt the moment his attention was elsewhere.

She would never humiliate anyone, so it was only an urge and not actually anything major. She was still smiling when she stepped into Bethany Siemen’s garage.

Beth, as she asked to be called, was so grateful to Sam that she didn’t think they were going to ever make it to the car. They had had to stop every ten feet so that Beth could hug Sam again. Normally not one to let people hug her, she felt this woman needed the soft physical contact more than Sam needed to make her stop doing it. It took them nearly twenty minutes to make what would normally be a three minute walk.

When Beth asked if she could stop at the bank and take out some funds, Sam had explained that if Beth didn’t normally do this, then the bank clerk may alert Beth’s husband that she was there. Beth didn’t know if her name was even on the account.

Sam made a few calls and found that not only was Beth’s name not on the account, but that if she used any of the household money or credit cards that the bank was to notify Mr. Siemens soon, if not immediately.

The bank assistant, a Tally Marsh, was a good friend to Mrs. Siemens’ grown daughter. And Sam also knew from her own dealings with the bank that Tally was a wolf—one of the few Sam trusted. Tally told Sam that if she would bring Beth in and her driver’s license, Tally would see what she could do for the woman. Tally apparently knew a little about the situation at the Siemens home and would do everything she could to help out.

Forty-five minutes later, Beth was nearly eight hundred dollars richer and on her way to a better life. She had tried several times to give Sam money, but Sam kept refusing her.

“This isn’t why I do this, and paying me isn’t an option. You keep your money, Beth. You are going to have to start a new life and money may be tight for a while. The people you are meeting will be very helpful and will do anything to keep you safe.

Listen to them and you’ll be safe. I promise.”

With tears in her eyes, Beth got out of the car and onto the second of many parts of her safe journey far away from an abusive husband. Some of the women they saved went back to the men who abused them, she knew this. But she couldn’t make them keep safe anymore than she could control the weather. That’s just the way it was. Some people didn’t understand or know any other way of life.