Hell Breaks Loose (Devil's Rock #2)(10)

He told himself he was doing this because he didn’t want to add to his trouble. Because he didn’t want to be an accessory to the rape of the president’s daughter. But what was the point in lying to himself? He was already in for a life sentence. He knew, inevitably, he would end up behind bars again. He hadn’t escaped Devil’s Rock to stay out of prison.

He escaped to take care of some long overdue shit. No, it wasn’t fear of reprisal that had him standing in Rowdy’s way and stopping him from going in that bedroom. It was the simple wrongness of it.

He’d seen the girl. He’d read the terror in her eyes . . . felt it. He couldn’t let any of them go back there and break her. He wasn’t that indifferent. He wasn’t that sadistic. And it bothered the shit out of him that his brother was. Zane didn’t use to be like these guys. He had failed, Reid thought. He’d let his kid brother become this.

He glanced over at Zane, still sitting on the couch, nursing his joint like it was any other day. Like girls got raped around him all the time.

“You really want to go to the mat over this?” Rowdy challenged. “You just got back. Pretty early to already be pissing me off, ain’t it?”

Reid faced him again and cocked his head. “Pissing you off has never been a big concern of mine.”

He and Rowdy had been in the same grade. They’d scrapped as much as they got along. Growing up with parents that didn’t give a shit about either one of them, there hadn’t been much for them to do except raise hell. Especially after his grandfather died. Fight and get into trouble. That had been his life. Unfortunately, that existence was what led him to Sullivan.

Rowdy snorted. “Some things don’t change, then.”

He jerked his chin up. “So we gonna do this or what?”

Rowdy smiled. “C’mon, man, not like we never shared a girl before.”

He suppressed a wince at the reminder and shook his head. “Not sharing.”

Rowdy’s smile slipped. “Now you’re just being a selfish bastard.”

Suddenly Zane was there, sliding between them. “Guys, go easy. It’s all good. We’re friends here. Remember? Family.” Some of Rowdy’s tension lessened. He didn’t look quite so eager to pounce.

Zane looked back and forth between them before settling his gaze on Rowdy. “C’mon, bro. The guy’s been in prison for years. He’s got a right to be a little selfish. Let him have her.”

Rowdy didn’t react at first. His granite jaw remained locked. Reid was starting to think there was no avoiding it. They were going to throw down. Then Rowdy grinned.

“What the hell? It’s been what . . . ten years or so? Shit, man, what have you been doing with yourself all that time?” He grimaced. “Never mind. I can imagine how you been getting off.” He mock shuddered and then laughed with a shake of his head.

It took everything in him not to slam his fist into Rowdy’s face. What Rowdy was thinking, what he was implying, had not happened, but it was no joke to him. He’d seen it happen to plenty of other guys at the Rock. When he closed his eyes he could still hear the grunts and cries echoing through the night. It wasn’t the kind of thing one ever forgot.

He shouldered past the two of them, ignoring Rowdy’s shout, “Have fun! We’re gonna grill some steaks. We’ll bring you one.”

He held up his hand in a backward wave as he headed down the hall, eager to leave their company. Being around them made him almost long for prison. There was a rhythm there. A norm. He knew who his friends were. Who he could and couldn’t trust.

It wasn’t until he stepped inside the bedroom that he realized being in here alone with her presented its own form of hell.





Four




In her second year of college, Grace took a zoology course. She remembered the professor talking about apex predators, also known as alpha predators. They ruled at the top of the food chain. They killed and felt no guilt. The weak fell beneath them and that’s just the way the world worked.

She was face-to-face with an apex predator. She knew this with surety. He stared at her for a long moment before moving forward—and that’s when she noticed the knife in his hand.

That glint of a blade in his fist seemed to fit him. Everything about him smacked of danger, and she knew she would feel that way even if she wasn’t crouching like prey on a bed before him, waiting to be devoured.

A tide of panic swamped her. She curled back as far as she could go on the bed, pushing into the headboard. She had nothing. No weapon of her own. Nowhere to go. No chance to run away. No chance at all. She was at his mercy. Vulnerable to him and whatever he was about to do, and it made her angry. Angry because she was always vulnerable, always subject to someone. Never free. Heat flushed through her. She twisted her wrists inside the cord binding, ignoring the pain.

Her stomach twisted sickly and a strange sense of calm descended. The kind of calm that comes with the realization that there was nothing left to do.

She remembered watching shows like Dateline and 48 Hours, when police officers rattled grim statistics about the likelihood of survival once the victim was taken from the site of abduction. Well, she’d been taken. She’d let them take her. Hell, she’d made it relatively easy for them, and that burned her up most of all. She had become one of those grim statistics.