she’d told him, or tell the truth about everything. Her heart banged against her ribs. “No.” The word whispered out of her on a wave of despair. She knew it was time to tell the truth. She had nothing to lose now and she wanted—needed—Dalton to know.
She grabbed a strand of her hair and twisted it around her finger. “There is no ex-boyfriend. The man who raped me, the man who killed my grandmother, is Sheriff Brandon Sinclair.”
Dalton’s eyes narrowed and he drew in a quick breath of surprise. “I think maybe you need to start at the beginning and tell me everything.”
She leaned back against the plump sofa cushion and closed her eyes, fighting the overwhelming grief that still reached out to smother her in its clutches. She opened her eyes and gazed down at Sammy, who in the midst of her heartbreak had fallen asleep.
Looking at Dalton, she fought against the tears and drew a deep, steadying breath. The beginning. “It happened one night when I was driving home from the classes I was taking to study for my GED. They took place at a community college about twenty-five miles from where I lived in Sandstone.”
She rose from the sofa, unable to sit as she fought against the panic that remembering that night always brought. It was a panic that constricted her lungs, closed up the back of her throat and quickened her heartbeat. It was the fear of having to remember and the additional stress of wondering if Dalton would believe her.
“Janette.” He reached out and took her hand. Holding it firmly he drew her back on the sofa next to him. “It’s okay, you’re safe for now.” He didn’t let go of her hand. It was as if he knew she needed support, something to cling to as she went back to that horrible night.
She nodded and swallowed hard. “The highway between the community college and Sandstone is pretty deserted after dark. I was about halfway between the college and home when I saw the lights of a patrol car in my rearview mirror. I knew I was speeding so I pulled over to the side of the road, figuring I was about to get a ticket.”
She paused and drew another deep breath, trying to still the frantic beat of her heart. Dalton squeezed her hand, as if to give her strength and she desperately needed it. She needed all the strength he could give her to get through the rest of it.
“I thought something was odd when he told me to turn off my headlights and get out of the car. He told me I had been speeding and asked if I was doing drugs. I’ve never touched drugs in my life,” she stated emphatically.
Dalton nodded, his expression giving nothing away of his inner thoughts. “Had you had run-ins with him before that night?”
“Never,” she replied. “I’d seen him around town, on the streets, but he’d never spoken to me before, never even noticed me that I knew of.”
“What happened next?” he asked.
A trembling began deep inside her. It was as if all the warmth of the room had been sucked out and an arctic chill had taken over the world. Tears blurred her vision once again and she blinked them away, angry that after all this time the memory of what happened still had the power to make her cry.
“He told me he needed to frisk me and he warned me that he’d hate to have to shoot me for resisting.” She looked down at Dalton’s hand around hers, unable to look him in the eyes.
“He raped me there on the side of the road.” The words didn’t begin to describe the horror, the violation of that night.
Her nose filled with the sweaty, ugly scent of Sinclair. Her skin wanted to crawl off her body as she thought of the way he’d touched her, the sounds he’d made as he pushed himself against her. “I won’t bore you with all the ugly details.”
She pulled her hand from Dalton’s, afraid he could feel the ugliness inside her. She couldn’t look at him, was afraid to see disbelief in his eyes. She’d fall completely to pieces if she saw doubt or condemnation there.
“What happened after?” His voice was soft, as if he understood the emotions blackening her soul. Thank God he didn’t press her for any of the details of the rape itself, for she’d shoved those particular memories deep inside her in a place where she wouldn’t easily retrieve them.
She looked up into those warm green eyes of his. “Nothing,” she said simply. She forced a smile of dark humor. “I guess I should be grateful that at least I didn’t get a speeding ticket.” The smile faltered and fell away as tears once again burned at her eyes.
He raised a dark eyebrow. “You didn’t tell anyone?”
She leaned back and stared at a point just over his shoulder. “Who was I going to tell? I couldn’t exactly report the crime to the sheriff.” There was more than a touch of bitterness in her voice.
She shook her head. “I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t want to tell Nana because I thought it might destroy her. It wasn’t until I realized I was pregnant that I finally told Nana and the man I’d been seeing at the time.” A shaft of pain stabbed through her. “He asked me what I’d been wearing that night, implying that it was somehow my fault. Needless to say that was the end of that relationship.”
“And you’re sure Sheriff Sinclair is Sammy’s biological father?” There was a faint note of apology in his voice.
She wanted to be offended by the question, but realized Dalton really didn’t know anything about her. It was a fair question, she supposed.
“I’m positive. The guy I was seeing at the time…we hadn’t…you know, been intimate.” Her cheeks burned and she kept her gaze averted from his.
“So, you realized you were pregnant. What happened then?”
She looked at him once again. It was impossible to read him. She had no idea if he believed her or not, couldn’t get a sense of anything that might be flowing through his head.
“The last thing I wanted was for Brandon Sinclair to know that I was pregnant. I managed to hide my condition from everyone until late in the pregnancy, then I told people who noticed that I’d had a fling with a salesman passing through town.” She gazed down at Sammy. “As far as I was concerned Brandon Sinclair had no right to know about my condition. From the very beginning Sammy was my baby and nobody else’s.”
“So, he didn’t know anything about Sammy.”
“I didn’t think he knew until three days ago when he walked into the café where I worked.” She told him about Sinclair and his deputies coming in and the sheriff asking her about her son.
“There was something in his eyes, something in the things he was saying that let me know I had to take Sammy and run and so that’s what I did. I didn’t steal anything from the café, but the moment the sheriff left, I told Smiley, the owner, that I didn’t feel well. I also told him I wasn’t happy working there and I was quitting, then I went home.”
She paused a moment to draw a deep breath then continued, “Nana agreed that I needed to take Sammy and leave town, get as far away as possible from Sheriff Sinclair. One of Nana’s friends drove me here to catch the bus. Our plan was that I’d get settled someplace far away from Oklahoma, then I’d send for Nana and we’d start building a new life together.” Grief once again rocked through her and new tears burned at her eyes as she thought of her grandmother.
Dalton studied her, a tiny frown furrowing
