The Promise He Made Her

Or be found.

She might be slow to see some things, but she was not stupid. Far from it.

“I have a plan.”

It wasn’t the look on Sam Larson’s face that stopped Bloom’s thoughts cold. Or even the words. It was the tone of his voice.

Like he wasn’t bullshitting her at all.

Like he was deadly serious.

“Will you at least give me a chance to lay it out for you before you decide?”

The choice was hers. To listen or not. To decide her course of action. Either with him or not.

It would be stupid not to avail herself of all the information.

“I’ll listen,” she told him. And she would.

But listening did not mean agreeing with what she heard.

It did not mean doing what she was told.

She was no longer a woman who could do that.

She’d rather die first.

CHAPTER FOUR

SAM HAD HER. He always knew when a subject he was interviewing was going to give him what he wanted. It was some kind of sixth sense he’d been given.

Sick sense, his ex-wife used to say. After she’d fallen out of love with him.

Whatever. He hadn’t asked for it. And he used it for good.

This wasn’t about having her. It had been. But now that he’d crossed that hurdle, he faced another.

How to make her think capitulation was her idea? How to make it her idea? Because the second he’d seen the spark of fear return to her eyes he’d known what he didn’t want to have to do. Control her. Manipulate her. Scare her back into the woman he’d met in that hospital emergency room.

“First, I have a place you can stay that will cost you nothing...”

“I’m not a charity case,” she interrupted, and he swore silently, giving her time to add, “I can afford to pay my own way. And then some.”

“I expect you can afford to pay my way, too,” he told her with complete honesty. “And then some. This isn’t about what you can afford. It’s about not letting that bastard take another thing from you. Or cost you more than the thousands you already spent on legal fees and counseling...”

She knew he knew the intimate details. So why did he feel as though he’d just knocked on the bathroom door while she was inside?

“And you think leaving my home won’t do that?”

He didn’t like feeling like a failure in an interview. Had no practice at it. “It also has to do with making you less easy to trace,” he said. “Hear me out, please?” Demanding was going to defeat his purpose.

The one where she was the one in charge and still chose his course of action.

“The place I have, it’s everything you told me you love about your house. It’s right on the ocean—closer than your house actually. It’s not as big—you’d said that you always thought that house was too much space just for you and the bastard. It’s higher up so you have the view you’d said was most important to you. And...it’s more private.”

She’d pictured a more peaceful setting for their beach home, but Ken had needed people around him. Rich people. All the time. At least that was what she’d told him close to three years before when he’d asked her permission to search her home without a warrant.

“You remember every word I ever said? Or have you been reading my case file?”

“My notes aren’t that good. Did you catch the part about this place being private, Bloom? It’s set up on a cliff, on private property. Fenced property. There’s a small trail down to the ocean. One that can be easily guarded. You’ll be safe there.”

Her expression softened. Everything in him pushed for the close. He gritted his teeth and sat there.

“I don’t like how easily you can play me,” she told him. And he started to look for angles again. Was much more comfortable doing so.

So...his angle was to get her to agree without losing any sense of the control she’d gained over her life.

“Are you telling me it doesn’t sound good to you?”

“It sounds heavenly.”

Good. Hopefully he could get her to agree before she actually saw the place.

“But I need to be right here in the city. I’ve got early morning appointments and sometimes I don’t get home until nine o’clock at night as it is...”

Hours he could relate to. And didn’t like to hear her keeping. As if she had no life...

“It is right here in the city.”

“A place like that, here in the city, and it’s available?” Her tone had lightened. He took that as a win.

“Yes.”

“That’s hard to believe.”

Not as hard as she thought. As she’d soon find out. He’d gotten the place for a steal, on foreclosure, after years of neglect and abuse.

The toilets had been replaced. And the faucets. Structurally it was fine. He’d added braces beneath the porch. Done some painting—so far only on the inside. And covered holes in the walls with cheap prints...

“So, do you think it’s a good idea for you to stay there where it’ll be easier to keep you safe? At least for the time being?”

The way she stuck her out lower lip, as though she was considering, that was new. Drew attention to how full that lip was...

“So that’s your plan?” Her disapproving tone didn’t coincide with his thoughts at all. “To have me move to a safer place? Be guarded? Held hostage for the unforeseeable future, in case someday Ken decides to act on a threat that he might not even have made?”

He’d made it. Sam was 100 percent certain of that.

He just had no proof. Yet.

“You honestly expect me to believe if you aren’t guarded that you won’t be looking over your shoulder every second of every day, living in fear, in case someday the bastard decides to act on a threat that he might not even have made?” The words burst from him. He’d rather scare her than have her beat up again. Or worse.

She had to move. Within the next twenty-four hours. Period.

He’d made a promise to her to keep her safe and he was damn well going to keep it.

* * *

HER INSIDES MIGHT be clenching to the point of pain, but Bloom was not going to give in. Fear would not rule her life. Ever again.

Sure, she’d experience the emotion now and then. It was an inevitable part of the human experience. But that didn’t mean she had to live it.

Feel it. Breathe. Move on. And it would pass. Fact. Not just theory. Or wishful thinking.

Nor was she going to dumb herself down by refusing to see, or to think about, the fearful challenges that could be in front of her. Having once been robbed of that chance against her will, without even knowing that it was happening to her, she now cherished her ability to face situations and make her own choices in how to deal with them.

“I won’t be living in fear,” she said after a minute of careful thinking, in answer to the detective’s challenge. “And I already look over my shoulder. Unless my back is against the wall,” she added. A timeless “gift” from her past. An awareness that there is always that which is unseen acting upon you.

His expression didn’t change. Nor did his posture. But she knew he was changing tactics even before he spoke. Because she was trained to hear the things people didn’t or couldn’t say. To see the things that they didn’t know were there.

Except for where Kenneth Freelander was concerned. That’s what love had done to her. It had used her to prove the truth in the old adage “love is blind...”

“My plan doesn’t end with getting you to a safe house.”

She was listening.

“A batterer will batter if he’s met with the provocation that brings out that tendency in him,” he continued.

Now he was in her territory. “Unless he’s had counseling and learned how to redirect those tendencies,” she said. “Or to recognize the circumstances that prompt them and distance himself from them before they get out of hand.”

Not all abusers were destined to lives of abuse. Science told her that. And she believed it, too. On a professional level. Personally, she couldn’t be objective...

“Kenneth has had no counseling.”

He’d know what she’d had no way of finding out.

Bloom looked at his shoes. Those uneventful black loafers. And flashed back to a gray-and-white-tiled floor. Industrial tile. Hospital floor tile. She’d been in the emergency room. Unable to make herself look up from the floor. She’d been too drugged to care enough to try.

And too embarrassed by what had happened to her to face another human being eye to eye. She’d listened as medical personnel spoke to her. She’d heard the voices. The kindness in them had only made everything that much more difficult to bear. She hadn’t felt like she’d deserved their kindness. She’d been a fool. The worst kind. Because she’d had the intelligence to know better...

His shoes had been her indication that someone else had entered the room. He’d said something about being on call for the High Risk Team. It was the first she’d heard the term. And had thought he was a doctor. Called in either because she was suspected to have brain damage and could hemorrhage. Or because they’d thought she was a suicide risk.

“I’m Detective Larson,” he’d said then. “And I need you to look at me.” There’d been no kindness in his voice. No demand, either, really. She’d never understood why that voice had moved her. Why she’d raised her head.

Or why she’d instantly trusted him.

“Bloom?”

She looked at him.

“I’m going to see that Kenneth is met with the provocation that will force him to hang himself.”

“That’s entrapment.” She was in his territory, but she’d learned a lot since her debut in the court system. Knowledge was power. And inner power led to healing. With her IQ Bloom had had a head start to healthy living.

“Not if it’s done right,” he said. “I’ve already spoken with a detective who is also on the High Risk Team...”

She knew the term now. Intimately. The team, comprised of industry professionals—if you could call intimate partner abuse an industry—was designed to prevent death due to domestic violence.

She’d been in danger of death. At Kenneth’s hands. The thought came with the same internal hiccup as always. It was possible her mind would never completely wrap around that truth. She could live with hiccups.

“...Chantel did some undercover work for the team a few months ago...” Sam was saying.

Bloom didn’t like that she’d missed part of what he’d been saying. A residual from her drugged days. Already he was sending her back.

Kenneth. And Sam, too.

“I read recently about this village in Northern Kenya,” she said, consciously switching focus, taking control of her thoughts. “Umoja, that’s the name of the village...”

She looked Sam Larson in the eye, challenging him to leave her alone.

“It’s fully inhabited by women and children, only. No men allowed.”

His eyes narrowed.

“And before you doubt its veracity, you should know that it’s thriving, as much as any village in that region thrives. It was founded in 1990 by fifteen women who’d been victims of rape. In Kenya, when a woman is raped, she is blamed, considered unclean and unfit for marriage. If she was unlucky enough to be married at the time of the rape, she is oftentimes subjected to beatings by her husband...”

Drawing a shaky breath, Bloom turned her head, focusing on the flowering bush several yards away. Filled with reds and oranges, the plants reminded her of the paintings in her office. Bold. Vibrant. Sunrise and sunset. The circle of life.

“Women are survivors, Detective,” she said when she could speak calmly. “Many of us have not yet learned our strengths. We aren’t raised to know about the core of steel inside of us. But it’s there. We nurture. We spread softness, and care for our own, but don’t mistake us as being incapable of taking care of ourselves.”

“When I first met you, you said there was no one I could call,” he responded immediately. “That you had no family close by. But I need to know if you have any family, period. Anyone Freelander might contact.”

The tiny voice crying out inside her had to be diminished. She would not crumble. Would not allow Kenneth to have squeezed the heart and soul out of her. She was smart, but she was so much more than a mind that made people curious. Her whole life people had concentrated on that part of her. Her own parents had shipped her off to a university to be raised as a lab rat.

No...she reined in her thoughts again. Those were Kenneth’s words, hurled at her in one of his many verbal attacks when she’d been to blame for something he’d done. Carl and Betty, as she’d always called her parents, had loved her to distraction. And had given her some of the best memories of her life during her summer vacations and holidays with them. Betty had sobbed every single time they’d had to say goodbye. And there’d always been moisture in Carl’s eyes, too, as he’d stood there with one hand on the big golden retriever they’d purchased the year after she left and who’d been a “child” more suited to the older couple, and the other hand at his wife’s waist.

Maybe, if they’d been younger when they’d had her...or prepared to ever have a child...

“My parents are both alive. And I have an aunt and uncle and some cousins. All older than me.”

She never talked to anyone anymore about who she’d been before she’d attracted the attention of the handsome and charming star of the university psych department.

“Are they local?”

She stared at him. Thinking of Ken contacting Betty and Carl. And knowing he wouldn’t.

“Because if they are, we need to make certain that they’re safe, too...”

“They live in Oklahoma,” she said now, still watching him. “They have a house, and a couple of acres on the farm my father’s family owns.”

Her father and father’s older brother jointly owned and worked the farm. The final decision to ship her off had been made by the two of them. She’d been six.

Sam nodded. “Good.”

She nodded, too. It was good. And maybe in the fall, if her schedule slowed a little bit, she’d make time to spend a week on the farm. To get back to her roots and know that, no matter what, she was okay. Because she mattered to them all.

They didn’t understand her. They were always afraid they were going to do or say the wrong thing. They were intimidated by her. At least her father and uncle were. But they did love her.

And she had to get to LA. Missing an evening out with her friends—most especially because of Ken—would be as unhealthy for her as a heart patient neglecting to take her beta-blocker.

She stood. “Tell me what time you’ll get me tomorrow and I will be packed and ready,” she said, facing the detective as he stood, as well. His shoulders were broad. She liked them, anyway. “But I will only go on one condition...”

He hadn’t been smiling. His expression still fell.

“What...”

“...I will be the provocation used to drive Kenneth Freelander to his rewards.”

There was no other option.

CHAPTER FIVE

SAM DIDN’T LIKE misleading her. And he damned straight wasn’t going to lie to her. He’d tell her the truth—that there was no way he was letting her get anywhere near that bastard ex-husband of hers again—as soon as he had her safely out of that house.

He made the promise to himself, and silently to her, Sunday afternoon during the entire fifteen minutes it took him to get from the foot of his dirt drive to the fancy winding street that housed the two-acre beach lots where Freelander had brought her to live. With a stop at the room he’d rented to drop off Lucy.

The girl had not been pleased with him. At all. Hadn’t cared a whit about the meaty bone he’d left her. No, she’d been 100 percent into the guilt. Giving him that big brown-eyed stare, the drooped ears and lips.

Just like a female...

Sam shook his head. Lucy was the best. Loyal. A great companion. And best of all...forgiving.

She might be displeased with him at the moment, but she’d be as thrilled as hell when he got back. And she didn’t hold a grudge.

Bloom was not outside waiting for him. Her car wasn’t in the driveway.

In his usual cotton dress pants, shirt and loafers, he stepped out of the car, straightening his tie as he prepared for battle.

When he knocked, she had to unlock the front door to let him in. But she did so. And stood there looking more gorgeous than ever with her long legs mostly covered by the calf-length, short-sleeved, multicolored T-shirt-style dress she was wearing. With sandals.

She’d pulled her hair back, loosely. Was wearing no earrings—though he noted a second piercing in both of her ears—and stepped back to let him in.

He’d have told her he liked what she’d done with the place, except that she’d thrown white sheets over everything minus the shiny wood floors.

“You have bags for me to carry?” He wanted to get this done. With as little conversation—and chance for something to go backward on him—as possible.

“They’re out in my car. And before you tell me I have to leave that, too, I’m telling you right now, I’m not going to.”

The damned Jaguar. “Why you hang on to a car he bought you, I have no idea.” Sam shut his mouth so fast he almost bit his tongue. See, these were the things that could go wrong, he reminded himself.

“Make no mistake, Detective...”

He didn’t like the formality one bit.

“...I paid for that car. Dearly.”

Still, who held on to anything that was a part of, or came from, someone who’d brutalized you so cruelly...

Unless, in spite of everything, she wasn’t really over Kenneth Freelander. Was possibly even still in love with him. It happened. He knew only too well from his work with the High Risk Team.

And if she did still hold feelings for her ex...his job just got that much more difficult.

“I didn’t ever intend for you to give up your car,” he said now, hoping he could backpedal enough to get her safely ensconced in his home.

His temporary ex-home. For as long as this took.

“I just figured you’d need to put some things in my SUV. It’s bigger.”

“I’ve got what I need.”

Had she understood? “You won’t be coming back here. Not even to pick things up.”

“Unless the laws have changed overnight, or I’m under arrest, I can go anywhere I please. Whenever I please.”

True. But...

“However, I’ve agreed to be under protection, with the understanding that I am your bait, dangled in front of my ex-husband under your auspices, not his. And I’m good for my word. I expect, if Kenneth really is out to get me, he’ll take our bait fairly quickly and this will all be over. If not, it will be over anyway because I won’t be in any danger.”

“I don’t expect him to jump on you the second he’s out, Bloom. You know him better than I do, but from what I’ve gleaned, he’s a man who plans carefully before he brushes his teeth in the morning.”

A bit of an exaggeration. But not much.

“That’s true,” she said, eyeing him with something that looked a little bit like respect. It was the first time she’d met his gaze since she’d let him in the door.

“So...if I find I need something I’ve left behind, I’ll let you know and you can come get it for me. How does that work?”

He could live with that. And wanted to leave it alone from there. But...

“Do you at least have everything that means something to you?” he pressed. “As in, if this house were to burn down, you’d have everything that was irreplaceable?”

Freelander had threatened to burn down the place. But he could just as easily trash it, or anything that mattered to her, depending on his mood.

“Most of what I can’t live without, along with my will and all important papers, are locked in a safe in my office.” She’d surprised him again. Wasn’t nearly as naive as she’d been when he’d known her before. But then, she wasn’t drugged anymore, either.

He made a mental note not to underestimate her again.

“I’ve got the rest in the car.”

Picturing the backseat of the Jaguar, he wondered what she’d put there. Wanted to know what she couldn’t live without.

Crazy. Other than Lucy, he wasn’t even sure what he couldn’t live without.

“You ready, then?” He didn’t want to admit to a case of nerves. You had to have nerves to get nervous. But there was no kidding himself. Getting her out of there was the easy part of this day.

“I’ll follow you,” she told him. She had to follow him. She couldn’t very well lead when she didn’t know where he was going.

And she could turn off at any point, which was why Chantel was a half block down, waiting to follow Bloom in the old Mustang Chantel insisted on driving even now that she was engaged to a millionaire. Chantel was as adamant as Sam that Bloom get moved to a safe house.

Sam always had a backup plan. It was the only way to stay alive in his business.

* * *

BLOOM WASN’T AS unsettled as she probably should have been. Leaving the home she loved...

She’d return soon enough. And appreciate it all the more. Absence made the heart grow fonder.

“I’m having an adventure,” she said aloud to the Jaguar’s interior. And wondered if, in the spirit of adventure, when she got back, she should get a bird. Something that would talk back to her on occasion.

Probably not, though. A bird would need care and company and Bloom gave everything she had to her job.

Keeping the detective in sight was proving a bit more difficult than it could have been. There was no way she was going more than five miles above the speed limit—being led by a cop or not. The law was the law.

She’d have expected him to be a bit more thoughtful, though. To be aware that if the light was soon to turn yellow, he should stop, because she’d have to do so. Or wait until there was enough of a clearing in the traffic for both of them before making a turn.

He got better at it, though. After he’d twice had to pull over to wait for her. She almost smiled, but then worried that he’d see her in the rearview mirror and find her odd, smiling alone in her car.

She didn’t really care what he thought about her.

Ah...ah...ah. Her internal companion butted in. So yeah, okay, she cared a little bit. She was entrusting herself to his care for the next brief window in time. And would be trusting him with her life when she became Ken bait.

The idea didn’t scare her as she’d have assumed it would. Pausing in the thought, Bloom waited for the small voice inside of her to chime in. Surprised when she was met with only silence. She really wasn’t afraid of Ken as much as she was driven to take this step. To stand up to him. Free herself of any power he’d ever had over her, free her heart from that last vestige of tenderness for having once loved the man so completely.

With the help of Sam Larson. That internal voice of honesty that was what she placed her trust in now added to her thought.

And she knew it was right. Without Sam Larson’s backup, his protection, his willingness to do what it took to get Ken back in jail, his drive to make Ken pay for his crimes, she wouldn’t be able to face Ken and succeed.

Not because she thought she’d cave in. But because she wasn’t powerful enough. Ken had the superior physical strength. Friends in low places. And he had friends in high places where the court was concerned, as well.

Not high enough to defeat the law, though. Or a detective set on upholding the law. Especially not in Santa Raquel. While Ken was busy building an army of thugs in prison, the Santa Raquel police force had been cleaning up house. Some people with money had been getting favors, to the point of a privileged son getting away with rape and, with the help of an undercover beat cop, a way of life that had been going on for decades had been stopped. The commissioner had been exposed. A rapist was awaiting trial. And Chantel Harris, the cop, was now a detective.

Like everyone else in Santa Raquel, Bloom had followed the whole thing on the news. Perhaps not everyone had followed as closely as she had. The rape hadn’t been the only cover-up. A powerful man had been getting away with raping women within his society. One of them was now one of Bloom’s patients.