FOUR
Rebecca sat stiffly in the front seat, keeping her eyes forward and counting the street signs as they passed, trying to keep her mind focused on numbers instead of…everything else. It was an old trick she’d picked up in a therapy group she attended in high school. When she got too overwhelmed or anxious, she counted, or conjugated verbs, or recited the capitals of all the states. Seven street signs. Three stoplights. Ten trash cans.
She didn’t want to think about what had happened tonight.
Three taco restaurants.
Or how she’d reacted. How the fight had gone out of her.
Two drugstores.
She didn’t want to think about injured dogs and blood—or how for a moment she hadn’t been able to tell the present from the past, reality from the ghosts.
Two men.
One gun.
She closed her eyes.
To top it off, she really didn’t want to think about the man sitting next to her. When he’d first taken her hand in the clinic, she’d had a spark of Hello, sailor that was one hundred percent inappropriate considering the circumstances. Her body had flushed, her gaze had drifted where it shouldn’t, and her belly had gone tight at the view. She’d blamed the feeling on the high-stress night and him coming to her rescue—well, and the guy was exceptionally easy to look at. But then she’d heard his last name, and all those sparks had been snuffed out with one swift gust.
Wesley Garrett.
He didn’t recognize her yet. Last time he’d seen her, she’d been going through an unfortunate phase where she had thought a Michelle Williams pixie haircut and bleach job were good ideas. But when he did put the pieces together, he wasn’t going to be happy about it. He’d been part of one of her cases from a few years ago, one of her first victories at the firm. And he’d been on the other side of the table: the cheating husband. One with a fiery temper and a bad attitude, based on his antics in court.
Now she was alone in a van with him. She didn’t think he was a threat to her. He had come to her rescue tonight and helped her save the dog, but she needed him not to remember her or the fact that she’d helped his ex-wife get a hefty settlement. She didn’t have the energy for anything else tonight.
“You sure you’re okay?” Wes asked, his voice low and carrying a hint of what sounded like a West Texas drawl to her Austin ear. “You took a hard fall.”
She glanced over at him but in the darkness could only see his profile and the colorful tattoos on the arm he had draped over the steering wheel. She tried to remember what he did for a living. Maybe owned a business? Probably not an office job, with that kind of ink and hair long enough to touch his collar, but the details wouldn’t come to her. “I’m fine. The glass from the wine bottle cut me up a little, but the paramedics took care of it.”
“That adds insult to injury. You get mugged and have no wine to drink afterward.”
She smirked. “Or dinner.”
He frowned and peeked over at her. “Damn, I didn’t realize. You must be starving. I can run by a drive-through, or I know a guy who runs a food truck that serves great Indian food not far from here. He stays open late.”
She shifted in her seat, her body aching in more places than she’d expected. “It’s fine. I’m really not that hungry anymore.”
But as soon as she said it, her stomach growled loudly.
He laughed under his breath. “Your body betrays you. Come on, I really don’t mind. I didn’t get a chance to grab dinner either, so I’d need to stop for something anyway.”
Another no was poised on her lips, but then a terrifying thought hit her. “Shit.”
Wes pulled up to a stoplight and glanced over, brow furrowed. “What’s wrong?”
She pressed her fingers to the spot between her eyes where a headache was suddenly brewing. A headache and scary-ass images. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. It just hit me that those jerks took my purse, which has my house key.”
“You don’t have your keys?”
Shit. Shit. Shit. “I have a spare hidden that I can get to, but I wasn’t thinking. They have my key and my—”
“Your license with your address,” Wes said grimly.
Anxiety crept through her chest like thorny vines. “I have a house alarm, but I’m not sure if I set it this morning. I don’t always remember to do that.”
“You need to call a twenty-four-hour locksmith. Get everything changed tonight,” he said, already pulling his phone from the cup holder and passing it her way. “I doubt those guys are going to show up at your place, especially with one injured, but you can’t risk it.”