hands on me. He wouldn’t even allow me to mourn my father, as he had already taken Dad away from me. Fear took me over, and my head was once again spinning.
Just then the door opened and a sob escaped me as I scurried backward until my back slammed against the corner of the wall. Ignoring the pain in my hip, I began to tremble in fear.
Only it wasn’t Jase who filled the doorway, it was a younger guy. He was scrawny and his long, blond hair hung in his eyes. It looked greasy, as if it hadn’t been washed for days. His left eye twitched uncontrollably, making it obvious that he was on something.
“Richey, it’s about damn time. I was about to start digging a hole as plan B.” Adeline hurried to my side and took my elbow.
“That freak of a husband of hers wouldn’t take the hint. We had to pay Lisa extra to distract him until hotel security forced him to leave,” he said. “We have a small window here, Ad. Let’s get going.”
“Then stop holding us up,” she barked as she led me toward the door. I stumbled along hesitantly until she looked back and offered me a gentle smile. “Sweetheart, he’s not out there, but no one can determine how long it will be until he comes back. So we need to move.”
“Where are we going?” I asked as I gave in and allowed her to lead me from the bathroom.
“Richey here knows some people that can help you disappear,” she assured me, and I wasn’t quite sure what she meant by “disappear.” She must have noticed the confusion on my face. “I’ll explain once you’re out of this hotel and safely out of the hands of that man.”
I nodded as I continued to follow her and the scary little guy down the hallway that led in the opposite direction of the ballroom. I looked back over my shoulder what felt like every few seconds, fearful of Jase appearing. It couldn’t be this easy. Could it?
When I saw the exit sign in front of us, a huge sense of relief washed over me. It was so close.
“Kinsley!”
My body jerked as my name rang sharply through the hall. I looked back over my shoulder and saw Jase moving through the hallway, weaving around the people still scrambling around, attempting to get out of the building. But Adeline never gave me time to stall. She just continued to drag me along, and I had never in my life been more thankful.
Jase yelled out my name angrily one last time before the metal emergency exit door before us was pulled open, and within seconds I was pushed in to the backseat of a waiting SUV.
It all happened so fast, but as we drove away I got one last glimpse of my husband bursting through the same door we just left and immediately pulling out his phone as he fisted his hair in disbelief.
A gentle hand covered my own, and I turned my head to find Adeline looking at me, silently offering her support.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked.
She looked down toward our hands and mindlessly rubbed her thumb along mine. “Because you remind me a lot of myself when I was your age,” she confessed. A few silent moments passed before she looked up at me. This time there was no trace of a smile on her face. “And if it wasn’t for a woman I met by chance, I may not have lived through my marriage. I can’t walk away knowing you’ve been living the same kind of terror I did for years. You don’t deserve a life like that. No one does.”
This unbelievably kind woman saved me. She could have chosen to leave the bathroom and walk away without a second thought, but she stood up for me, and I would be forever grateful to her.
Present day
IN THE LAST SIX MONTHS, I’d been moved from one place to the next, spending days, even weeks with strangers. Most women would be terrified to be in the presence of the type of men I was, but those women hadn’t lived with Jase. I knew these scruffy, tattooed men were doing drugs and drinking to the point of oblivion, yet they were nothing but protective of me.
Richey was in a gang, and from the stories I heard at each place I went to, I learned he was mean and dangerous, despite his scrawny toothpick form. I owed him