Unable to get back to sleep, Amy slid out of her sleeping bag to walk around the cabin. Finding her purse, she searched for her retractable baton, a weapon she’d carried with her since the early days in Atlanta. She’d found it in a pawnshop, where the old couple who ran the place had given her a good deal that she still hadn’t really been able to afford. Holding it in her hand now, feeling its familiar weight, helped settle her nerves. Seeing the boar and having the disturbing dream had stirred old anxieties. Hell, just being in Heartache was an anxiety.
Baton in hand, she forced herself to unlock the front door—the original lock as well as the new dead bolt she’d installed her second day in residence. She wasn’t crippled by her old fears. She’d learned tangible ways to own them, manage them and keep them at bay. The locks helped, as did the assortment of self-defense devices. Plus she was more physically equipped to handle herself now than she had been as a teen.
Her first year in Atlanta, she’d taken a free class at the YMCA to learn how to get away from an attacker. Each year, around the anniversary of The Incident, she rewarded herself with a new class. Karate. Kickboxing. Krav Maga. She still wasn’t strong, but she was a whole lot smarter than that paralyzed, silent teen in the woods had been.
Breathing in the cold night breeze, she leaned against the porch rail and hoped the fresh air would help her sleep. In the distance, when the wind blew the trees a certain way, she could just catch a glimpse of a light farther down the hill. It had to be Sam’s house, the only other residence within half a mile from hers.
Would he be awake right now, too? Did worries about his son have him pacing the floors? She hated that someone had threatened that tiny baby simply because Sam was good at his job. It also unsettled her to think that whoever had made that threat was not behind bars. Sam didn’t believe he had the wrong man in jail, but who else besides the man who had assaulted Gabriella Chance and the others would want to stifle new evidence in the case?
The attacker—whoever he was—might still be free.
Her gaze slid from the light in the woods to her car parked out front. She could leave whenever she wanted. Whenever she needed to. She wouldn’t allow this trip to Heartache to undo all her hard work to put the past behind her.
But for now, she would stay. She still wanted to reconnect to the family she had since she’d never have one of her own. Life was too short to live with regrets.
Slipping quietly back into the cabin, she locked and bolted the door before settling back in her sleeping bag. Tomorrow, she’d see one of her siblings face-to-face for the first time in a decade. She’d offer whatever help she could to Heather since her big sister had proved braver than her to testify against a local menace. If Covington went to jail, maybe her nightmares would end. But as she laid her head on the pillow, Amy didn’t think about vindication or revenge, or even her family. Instead, the image that settled into her tired brain was the moment in the woods when Sam Reyes had stood between her and everything scary. The moment when he’d touched her with shocking intimacy that had stirred long-forgotten pleasure.
After the fear and dread of the nightmare, she didn’t bother to fight thoughts of Sam. Reality would set in soon enough that he was off-limits to her now.
But not in her dreams.
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