toward me with open arms and tears in her eyes. She’s a mess, and her wrists are cut up and bloody. The anger already brewing is in a full-blown boil right now, and there’s not much getting in the way of me hunting Landon down, then killing him slowly and in the most painful way.
I lift her up, and her legs wrap around my waist as she squeezes the life out of me. Her head is draped over my shoulder, and her arms are tight around my neck. I carry Sasha out of the diner and over to my car where I place her down on the hood. My hands find her face, forcing her to look at me. “Where’s the guy who picked you up?”
Her eyes grow wide, tears gathering in the corners. “He wasn’t a soldier,” she tells me.
“Where the hell is he?” I growl.
“I think I scared him off,” she says, looking away from me.
“How?”
“When a blonde girl is screaming rapist in the middle of a diner parking lot with a dozen truck drivers and bikers around, it doesn’t end well for the accused,” she explains through a crying laugh.
Holy…this girl. Wow. “I’m impressed, doll-face. You can obviously hold your own.”
Regardless of what she’s been through, she looks a little proud hearing that. “Thanks,” she says. “I had no choice.”
“What happened to your wrists?” I ask, inspecting the wounds.
“Landon had me in handcuffs the whole way here. One of the truck drivers at the diner helped me out of them.” Even the thought of someone helping her out of cuffs makes me want to kill someone, but I’ll try to keep that to myself.
“Wait, where is Landon now?” I was going to ease up but, Jesus, I just realized he’s still on the loose.
“I attacked him. I don’t know. He has his car, though.”
“You attacked him?” Miss Sasha, who’s all of five feet plus a few inches and a hundred and ten pounds, attacked some man? Besides the fact that I would pay to see something like that, I don’t see how it’s physically possible. Cali, I can see doing this, not Sasha.
“Well, I head butted him and kicked him more than a few times in the…”
“Baby, say it for me…” I press with a smile. I shouldn’t be smiling right now but I have my girl, and she’s safe, so I can’t control it.
“I kicked him in the dick at least three times,” she blurts out. “And it felt amazing.”
“Ouch,” I shudder. “Note to self: Don’t mess with this bombshell.” I try to imagine the beauty of this scene playing out and it’s just awesome. “So, do you know where you left him?”
“About twenty miles back that way,” she points toward the highway. “His car was on the side of the road.” I didn’t see any car on the side of the road when I drove by. Fuck.
I pull my phone out and send Tango a quick message, letting him know I have Sasha but that Landon is still on the loose. God knows where the loser is now but at this point, he’s got to be taken out.
“I’m sorry,” Sasha says.
“You had no idea this was going to happen. We don’t know how he gained access to their house still, but this guy knows what he’s doing, which makes him a little more dangerous than we thought.”
“He didn’t show any hint of danger in the years I spent with him. How does someone just turn out to be like this? I don’t understand,” she says. “Am I really that stupid that I didn’t notice any odd behavior all that time?”
I lightly press my finger under her chin and urge her to look at me. “There’s no way you could have known.” There’s also no way to make it sound less offensive so I’m not going to say it but she’s lived in a bubble her whole life, and people like her don’t look for the bad in people. Being friends with Cali for so long, I would think she’d be more suspicious of everyone, but I know a lot of people have the mentality that things don’t happen to them. “There are some screwed up people in this world.”
“I don’t want to be around this anymore,” she says quietly. “This isn’t the kind of life I want.”
“You’re kind of a badass now, though, you know?” I tell her, wrapping my arm around her shoulders and joining her on the hood of the car. “And the