Free Red Noon by Capri Montgomery Page A

your name, but it’s not your fault. You got to me as soon as you could. If it weren’t you and your team I know he would have killed me. The only thing that stopped him was that his boss wanted something else out of me.”
    “Something else?” Was this something more than two men just grabbing a woman and taking her hostage? Did she have something of theirs?
    “He wanted my body I think. The guy who beat me told me he was told not to mess up my face because boss man wouldn’t want to have to look at it while he…you know.”
    Oh hell his mind had gone out in left field and he had been wrong. But he still had to ask. “Did you know them?”
    “No. Never seen them before. I didn’t even see the other guy—the skinny one. He didn’t come down while I was awake. But the bigger guy I’ve never seen anywhere. I don’t know why they did this to me,” she started to tear up again. “I don’t know why.”
    “Sometimes you can’t know the why of evil, Shelia. Sometimes you’ll never know, and you’ll just have to realize that some evil can’t be fixed while it’s breathing.”
    Her eyes told him she knew what he meant. Some evils had to be eradicated the lethal way. While he wasn’t a trigger happy cop this incident was making him think of how great it would be if they could put more of these dogs to sleep and protect the citizens from them as much as possible.
    “So the other guy, you never heard his voice either?”
    “No. I don’t think so. When I was fighting them, before they took me, I don’t think he spoke at all. And then he hit me from behind.” Her palm went towards her head but her fingers didn’t touch it at all before returning to her side. “It hurt.”
    “He hit you with his gun to knock you out.”
    “I wish he had just killed me instead. Death would have been welcomed to what the other guy did to me.”
    “Don’t say that. Don’t think like that. Every day above ground is a good day.” He put the lotions on her softly trying to sooth her and keep her calm; maybe he was trying to help keep himself calm too.
    “Yesterday wasn’t a good day.”
    “We found you yesterday so that was a good thing.”
    She inhaled softly and exhaled just the same.
    “My name is Takahiro, by the way. Takahiro Nakamura.”
    “Takahiro,” her lips almost curved upward but didn’t quite make it. “I like that.” She nodded slowly before her somber look took completely over her face and eyes.
    “He hit me a lot. He left to take the garbage out. He left for breakfast but every time that door opened and I heard the thud of his shoes against the stairs I knew it was going to start again. He mostly hit me with the belt. But sometimes he got close to me and he would breathe in my face and his breath was so rancid. God it was rotten and it made me sick, but he never let me turn away from him. He punched me in the stomach a couple times. I um…they wouldn’t untie me and I urinated on myself.” Her lips quivered and he could see the embarrassment in her eyes.
    “It happens. It could happen to anybody under those circumstances.”
    She nodded before swiping a tear away from her cheek. “Then I broke. I broke and I begged him to stop hitting me. He laughed at me and he hit me harder. And when I threw up his face was there and it got on him,” her voice shook as she spoke softly. “He got so angry that he punched me and then he went back to beating me, but harder than he already was. I thought my skin was going to burn off my back. It felt like I was on fire,” she cried. “It felt like I was on fire.”
    He couldn’t resist placing a kiss on her forehead and leaving his forehead pressed against hers afterward. She was so fragile it was killing him. There was nothing he could do to take this away from her. There was nothing he could do to make the pain go away.
    She placed her palm over her mouth and he lifted his head enough to look in her eyes. “I won’t do to you what he did to me. I haven’t