Once my mouth is no longer dry, I become even more aware of his weight and all the places his body is pushing down on my body.
His knees have my knees squeezed together, trapped.
The hard vest he’s wearing is pressing hard into my breasts.
His face is so close to my face, I can feel his warm breath.
Opening my eyes, I find him still staring down at me with a strange, intense expression on his face.
An expression that makes me feel uneasy and excited at the same time.
It must be the drugs still lingering in my system….
“Who are you?” I finally manage to croak clearly.
“James,” he responds, as if his name alone explains anything, and I swear the fingers still gripping my wrist tighten.
“James who?” I press, turning his hard stare back on him.
The question seems to give him pause and he hesitates before stating, “I’m here to return you to your father.”
At the mention of my father, I feel a slight pang in my chest.
Did he really send this man?
I open my mouth again to challenge him, but before I get a chance, he says, “Chief Cronin.”
At first, I don’t want to believe him. I’ve been through so much, the fact that it’s over, it’s all finally over, is hard to accept.
He’s a complete stranger who just killed two men and chased me down… it would be utterly stupid to believe anything he says.
But after what the Russian man did to Lindsey when she said who her father was, I haven’t uttered my father’s name or title once.
Not once.
Because I knew as soon as I did, I was as good as dead.
How else would he know unless he’s telling the truth?
“Chief Cronin sent you for me?” I croak, needing to hear him say it one more time so I know my ears didn’t deceive me.
“Yes,” he confirms without hesitation. “He sent me for you, Sophia Cronin.”
Oh god, he’s telling the truth.
A tidal wave of emotions swells up inside me.
And like I’ve had to do so many times during this nightmare, I try to hold it back. Try to keep it all contained.
But there’s no containing this.
My body begins to shake as all the stuff I’ve been holding inside, all the fear, anger, and despair, combine, becoming a maelstrom.
Then it bursts free.
“Shit,” James mutters as I sob pathetically beneath him.
Try as I might, I can’t seem to stop.
I can’t stop the crushing, agonizing, pain of becoming a person who matters again.
James’s weight leaves me.
His warmth, his protection, gone.
For a fleeting second, I miss it.
Then it’s back.
Arms wrap around me, pulling me up, and blindly, I follow them.
“It’s okay… It’s okay…” James mumbles while awkwardly patting my back.
It’s not okay.
Nothing will ever be okay again.
But I’m safe.
Finally, I’m safe.
In the arms of yet another strange man.
That thought causes another explosion of uncontrollable sobs.
“Fuck it,” James says and stops patting my back.
I watch him pull away through a blur of tears and feel even shittier for putting him in this position.
From the way he’s dressed, I’m pretty sure he works in some branch of law enforcement. It would explain how he knows my father, and why he was so hesitant to give me anything more than his name.
My father probably pulled some strings and got one of the bureaus involved in my disappearance.
Angrily, James rips the Velcro straps off his vest, pulls it off, and tosses it away.
Then he grabs me and pulls me close.
Crushing me against his warm chest.
“Shh, it’s okay. Everything’s okay now,” he breathes against my hair. “I’m here.”
His arms tighten around me.
“I promise you those motherfuckers will never hurt you again.”
I shake my head and mentally try to push away, but my damn fingers won’t stop grabbing at his shirt.
Grabbing at the only man who hasn’t tried to hurt me.
Yet.
Still trying to comfort me, he murmurs, “They’re fucking dead. I killed them. I fucking killed them.”
Not all of them, I think with dark despair.
He only killed two of them.
There’s still at least a dozen more who tortured and abused my friends and me.
Oh god…
“My friends!” I cry out and pull back enough to look up at him. “We have to save my friends!”
The moonlight catches James’s face as he looks down at me, highlighting his sharp bone-structure and solemn expression. “Already done.”
“What?” I gasp, confused and not sure I heard him right.
“There are men retrieving—I mean, rescuing the others as we speak.”
Are we talking about the same people?
Needing to know, I ask, “You’re rescuing Amanda and Beth?”
“Yes,” he answers, the expression on his face unwavering.
Hearing that, the pendulum of my emotions swings in the opposite direction.
My friends are safe. Beth and Amanda are safe.
So much relief and gratitude overwhelms me, I can’t handle it.
“Thank you!” I sob, but this time it’s a happy sob.
“You’re welcome.” James smiles sadly at me.