Free Hunted by Capri Montgomery Page A

cover of darkness, he needed to make sure Debbie, Riggs and Victoria would be okay. They would have to move someplace else for now because he couldn’t chance Jason getting his hands on Debbie for even a second.
     

     
    “How are you holding up?” Riggs sat down on the soft beige couch beside her. He had been keeping watch over the home all day, making sure they didn’t get any surprise visitors. He stayed inside and kept the doors locked despite Victoria’s insistence that he at least open a window. She was going stir crazy and she hadn’t even been stuck inside for that long. Debbie was going crazy with worry for Keadon.
     
    “I’m worried about him,” she looked at the wall in front of her. Keadon had painted the living room a neutral ivory color and had hung a few mementoes from his travels, at least she presumed they were from his travels, nothing looked very Idaho inspired in this room. She liked it. It felt safe. It felt like a home in progress—like he was getting ready to settle in here—reluctantly so she would assume given it had taken him a while to really anchor to this little town. Although she wasn’t sure he was definitively anchored yet.
     
    “He’ll be fine. Kade knows how to protect himself.”
     
    Riggs sometimes called his brother Kade instead of Keadon. She liked the shortened version of his name, but she liked his full name better; there was just something in the way it sounded when it rolled off her tongue. “I know. But I know Jason too—and Corbin. I’m more worried about Corbin. He’s ruthless, and a big guy, and he has no trouble with taking anybody’s life. I’m worried for him. We haven’t heard from him and it’s getting late, Riggs. What if he’s hurt?”
     
    He placed one hand over the back of her hand that rested on her knee. “He’s okay. I can feel it. I know he’s okay.” She would suppose his words should have given her a modicum of comfort, but they hadn’t. She was still worried about him and she would be worried until he walked through that door.
     
    “My brother cares for you, Deb.”
     
    She winced. “Please don’t call me Deb?”
     
    “I’m sorry.” He looked at her with questions etched on his face.
     
    “It’s not you. I’m sorry. It’s just…he always called me that whenever…I just can’t have anybody call me that without thinking of all those nights.” She shook her head. Her name was Debbie. Debbie wasn’t short for Debra. Her mother was a bit eccentric sometimes, but Debbie seemed to fit her when she popped out, her mother had said, so she named her Debbie. Her friends had shortened her name to Deb and until Jason Porter came into her life the condensed version had never bothered her. But after he started calling her that, “a grown up name for a grown up girl,” he had said. And every time he came to her bed he wanted to be able to look at her and see a grown up girl instead of a teen trying to grow up, trying to be safe, trying to enjoy what was left of her childhood before taking on the world of adult problems. He hadn’t let her be that child. She had grown up fast, not because nature intended her to do it, but because Jason Porter had forced her into it.
     
    “I’m sorry, Debbie.”
     
    “Me too,” she sighed. “Do you ever just wish you could go back and tell yourself to run?”
     
    “Yeah, I wish I could go back and change some things. I wish I could go back and tell myself that kid’s gun isn’t real so don’t shoot, but I can’t do that.”
     
    She nodded. “I wish I could go back and tell a younger me to runaway before my mom even got with Jason. I wish I could tell the me that was excited to go on a business trip with my mom that I should just run now and save myself years of hell later.”
     
    “I understand that. But you can’t.”
     
    “No, I can’t. But I wish I could. I wish I could forget.” There were things that always brought her back to the memory of what happened to her.