Beckett (Robinson Destruction #4) - Kathi S. Barton Page 0,12
matched.” Beckett thought about his next statement. “I understand your frustration, Allie. I really do. However, you just flat out telling me that it won’t work isn’t something I can live with. What is it you think you’re going to tell me, or I’ll find out, that is going to make me walk away? And so you know, I’m not a man who gives up easily.”
“I’ve killed a man.” He knew it was more than that. Beckett also knew she was hoping she’d say just enough that he’d be out the door. Instead of moving, he asked her what he’d done to her to make her have to kill him. “Just like that. You know I didn’t just kill him?”
“Yes. You’re not stupid. You’re also very straightforward. I doubt very much that you’d just murder someone without just cause. So, I ask you again, what did he do to you that made you have to kill him?” She looked at her brother, and he did as well. “Does she want you to tell me? I’m sure it’s not as cut and dried as she says.”
“It’s not. She killed him because he was…taking advantage of her. Not to rape her, as she had thought at first. But he wanted to experiment on her. Flaying her skin off her arms to see her pain level was just one of the many things he had planned for her when he took her. Allie, being a redhead, has been the subject of many speculations on things like her being soulless, her pain level being high, as well as how much she needs in the way of pain medication when she’s hurt. Things that are simply rumors. This man thought he’d prove to the world that it was a fact that redheads were special.” Beckett asked him how she’d killed him. “With the knife he had stuck into her arm. She slit his throat from ear to ear. He was dead even before she was able to pull out the other things he’d put into her to test her.”
Beckett looked at Allie. She wasn’t looking at anyone now, her head bowed and her body stiff with what he thought was anger. Getting up, he moved closer to her on the couch and asked if she’d show him the scars. It wasn’t until she pulled up her sleeve that he realized this had happened recently. There were still scabs on the wound at her bicep.
“This was recently.” She told him about three months ago, but some of the wounds were taking longer to heal because they were so deep. “Are there other wounds? What else did he do to you, love?”
She leaned forward on the couch and tried to lift her shirt. What he saw there made him slightly ill. Allie had been beaten. From the looks of some of the scarring and wounds, he’d say it had happened over a period of several days. He asked her how long she’d been captured.
“Eight days. I was headed to the airport to go and see my brother. I was told that there would be a limo to take me to the airport. But once I was in the sucker, he took me to his lair. Or whatever he called his place. No one bothered looking for me because they’d thought I was with Allen. All the time I was being a science project for some dick.” Without asking, Beckett leaned in and licked the worst of the wounds. The taste of infection hit his system, and he told her what he’d found. “I know that. It’s hard for me to put anything on the ones back there. But I’ll manage.”
“My brothers are doctors.” Beckett reached out to Thatcher since he knew that Dawson was on call and asked him to come to this house. He also told him that his mate had been beaten recently. He told him that he was bringing Rogen with him as they were in the car together. “Thatcher is coming to have a look at this. Didn’t the hospital treat these wounds?”
“They wouldn’t take me.” She glanced at her brother when he told him why. “See? That’s just one more thing I have stacked against me. I’m too broke to have insurance no matter what the laws say otherwise. Even the clinic that I went to yesterday told me that I’d have to wait on a background check before I could be seen by anyone.”