Marked (Primal Obsessions #2) - Cara Wylde Page 0,1

was lowered and whose keys were in the ignition, marking two out of three things one should never do if they cared for their car.

“Shit, Rosalie, this is a new low!”

It was, but it also was my way out. She was an old lady, someone was surely going to help. I maintained a casual pace right until I was between this blue Chrysler and a black minivan, then rushed to throw the too heavy backpack onto the passenger seat. I honked the horn once, which prompted the lady to move away and check what the heck was going on. Her stepping aside was my cue to hit the pedals and get lost.

I knew I was going above the speed limit, but it felt as if my body was frozen. Frozen in fear. The only thing I could still control were my eyes, which I kept darting to look in the rearview mirror, to see if anyone was following me.

Once or twice, I thought I could see Jack’s blue Sedan tailing me, but every time I blinked back the tears that image kept bringing to the surface and had another look, the Sedan became a Buick, or Chevrolet, or any other car, or simply changed color.

I needed to get a grip. I was driving a stolen car. If anyone was to be tailing me, it would be a police car. I needed to get as far away from this place as I could, dump this in a lake or something, then carry on. Yes, that was what I was going to do.

I looked down at my hands for a moment. I was gripping the steering wheel so tight my knuckles had turned white.

I thought I would feel free, happy, safe – all the good feelings that I hadn’t felt once while married, because I had finally managed to get out. Instead, all I could still feel was fear, unbearable and suffocating. Fear that he was going to find me, or that one of his drunkard military wannabes that he called his crew and friends would find me instead, and then it would truly be over for me. They’d hand me over to him, calling me a whore, feeding his paranoia that I was cheating on him, that I had run away not to escape his brutality, but to meet up with a lover. His crew had always disgusted me. They were loud and rowdy, and could finish a beer in three gulps, which was why Jack made me keep enough to fuel a damn bar. His men could do no wrong. His men had war stories, they were fine, accomplished killers. They propped each other’s egos and trampled on mine.

As for my beloved Jack? My husband and the worst mistake of my life? He used to tell me that I was never going to leave him, and for the better part of my youth, I believed him. I thought it meant a promise to cherish me forever, I thought he would provide for me, spoil me, love me. I was nineteen when he trapped me in that house and this marriage, and these past five years, my life had turned into a nightmare, because what he had really meant was that I was his prisoner, his captive, his slave, and that if he caught me glancing at another, I would be dead.

I was still not sure how the heck I’d managed to run away now, but those words that kept echoing in my mind lately, that I was his forever, and then the nightmarish idea that his would be the last face I saw before I died, hopefully of old age, with the image of him laughing like a maniac, had kept poking and prodding at my core, and I’d had to make a firm decision.

And here I was.

I supposed this knowledge was what had finally driven me to escape now. I didn’t want to spend my life like that, then die like a dog, beaten and starved, at the feet of my uncaring master.

Another glance in the rearview mirror.

No more cars behind me.

Nothingness laid behind me.

I breathed a sigh of relief, then looked into that mirror again, this time to assess the damage. The eye socket seemed intact, despite the pain, and the foundation was trying its best to cover the traces of his latest jealousy attack.

I used to be such a pretty girl, a fashionable, modern vixen. I liked to wear makeup, I was even damn good at applying