He carried her to his truck, balancing her on one powerful denim-covered thigh while he opened the passenger door and put her inside.
“My…purse,” she whispered, giving in to the shock and fear that she’d tried so hard to hide. She was shaking so hard her speech was slurred.
He closed the door, retrieved her purse and wallet from the ground, and handed it in through his open door. “What did they take, baby?” he asked in a soft, comforting tone.
“The tall one…took a ten-dollar bill,” she faltered, hating her own cowardice as she sobbed helplessly. “In his pocket…”
Eb retrieved it, tossed it to her and got in beside her.
“But those men,” she protested.
“Be still for a minute. It’s all right. They look worse than they are.” He took a cell phone from his pocket, opened it, and dialed. “Bill? Eb Scott. I left you a couple of assailants on the Simmons Mill Road just past Bell’s rental house. That’s right, the very one.” He glanced at Sally. “Not tonight. I’ll tell her to come see you in the morning.” There was a pause. “Nothing too bad; a couple of broken bones, that’s all, but you might send the ambulance anyway. Sure. Thanks, Bill.”
He powered down the phone and stuck it back into his jacket. “Fasten your seat belt. I’ll take you home and send one of my men out to fix the truck and drive it back for you.”
Her hands were shaking so badly that he had to do it for her. He turned on the light in the cab and looked at her intently. He saw the shock, the fear, the humiliation, the anger, all lying naked in her wide, shimmering gray eyes. Last, his eyes fell to her blouse, where the fabric was torn, and her simple cotton brassiere was showing. She was so upset that she didn’t even realize how much bare skin was on display.
He took off the long-sleeved chambray shirt he was wearing over his black T-shirt and put her into it, fastening the buttons with deft, quick hands over the ripped blouse. His face grew hard as he saw the evidence of her ordeal.
“I had a…a…whistle.” she choked. “I even remembered what you taught me about how to fight back…!”
He studied her solemnly. “I trained a company of recruits a few years ago,” he said evenly. “They’d had hand-to-hand combat training and they knew all the right moves to counter any sort of physical attack. There wasn’t one of them that I couldn’t drop in less than ten seconds.” His pale green eyes searched hers. “Even a martial artist can lose a match. It depends on the skill of his opponent and his ability to keep his head when the attack comes. I’ve seen karate instructors send advanced students running with nothing more dangerous than the yell, a sudden quick sound that paralyzes.”
“Those two men…they couldn’t…touch you,” she pointed out, amazed.
His pale eyes had an alien coldness that made her shiver. “I told you to get that damned tire fixed, Sally.”
She swallowed. Her pride was bruised almost beyond bearing. “I don’t take orders,” she said, trying to salvage a little self-respect.
“I don’t give them anymore,” he returned. “But I do give advice, and you’ve just seen the results of not listening. At least you had the sense to leave a message on my answering machine. But what if I hadn’t checked my messages, Sally? Would you like to think where you’d be now? Want me to paint you a picture?”
“Stop!” She put her face in her hands and shivered.
“I won’t apologize,” he told her abruptly. “You did a damned stupid thing and you got off lucky. Another time, I might not be quick enough.”
She swallowed and swallowed again. “The…conquering male,” she choked, but she wasn’t teasing now, as she had been that afternoon when he’d told her to get the tire fixed.
He drew her hands away from her face and looked into her eyes steadily. “That’s right,” he said curtly, and he wasn’t kidding. “I’ve been dealing with vermin like that for almost half my life. I told you there was danger in going out alone. Now you understand what I meant. Get that damned tire fixed, and buy a cell phone.”
Her head was spinning. “I can’t afford one,” she said unsteadily.
“You can’t afford not to. If you’d had one tonight, this might never have happened,” he said forcefully. The heat in his eyes made her shiver. “A man is physically stronger than a woman. There are some exceptions, but for the most part, that’s the honest truth. Unless you’ve trained for years, like a policewoman or a federal agent, you’re not going to be the equal of a man who’s drunk or on drugs or just bent on assault. Law enforcement people know how to fight. You don’t.”
She shivered again. Her hair was disheveled. She felt bruises on her arms where she’d been restrained by those men. She was still stunned by the experience, but already a little of the horror of what might have happened was getting to her.
He let her wrists go abruptly. His lean face softened as he studied her. “But I’ll say one thing for you. You’ve got grit.”
“Sure. I’m tough,” she laughed hollowly, brushing a strand of loose hair out of her eyes. “What a pitiful waste of self-confidence!”
“Who the hell taught you about canned self-defense?” he asked curiously, referring to the can of spray on the ground.
“There was this television self-defense training course for women,” she said defensively.
“Anything you spray, pepper or chemical, can rebound on you,” he said quietly. “If the wind’s blowing the wrong way, you can blind yourself. If you don’t hit the attacker squarely in the eyes, you’re no better off, either. As for the whistle, tonight there would have been no one close enough to hear it.” He sighed at her miserable expression and shook his head. “Didn’t I tell you to run?”
She lifted a high-heeled foot eloquently.
He leaned closer. “If you’re ever in a similar situation again, kick them off and try for the two-minute mile!”
She managed a smile for him. “Okay.”
He touched her wan, drawn face gently. “I wouldn’t have had that happen to you for the world,” he said bitterly.
“You were right, I brought it on myself. I won’t make that mistake again, and at least I got away with everything except my pride intact,” she said gamely.
He unfastened her seat belt, aware of a curtain being lifted and then released in the living room. “I sent Dallas straight here as soon as I got the message,” he explained, “to watch out for Jess and Stevie. You should have let me know about this night meeting much sooner.”
“I know.” She was fighting tears. The whole experience had been a shock that she knew she’d never get over. “There was a third man, on the porch. He said that Lopez wouldn’t like what they were doing, calling attention to themselves.”
He stared at her for a long moment, seeing the fear and terror and revulsion that lingered in her oval face, watching the way her hands clenched at the shirt he’d fastened over her torn bodice. He glanced at the window, where the curtain was in place again, and back to Sally’s face.
“Come
