Larger Than Life by Alison Kent (read the beginning after the end novel .txt) 📕

edge of the love seat's second cushion, leaning forward, elbows on his widespread knees. So much for the barrier between them. She could feel his body's heat, his tension, his instincts kicking in. "What do you mean you don't know what to do? This is what you do, isn't it?"

She nodded, brought her knees to her chest, tucked the toes of her boots beneath his cushion. "For five years now."

His frown said it all. "Then I'd think you'd have the system down pat."

"I thought I did." Dear Lord, was she really going to tell him things she hadn't even told Ed and Candy? Her partners in crime? Her hands trembled with the force of her decision, and she tucked them into the folds of her knees. "But I've run into a couple of problems that make me leery to put Liberty into my network."

Moisture welled in her eyes, and she looked away to scan the camera feeds. She would not cry. She didn't have time to cry. Crying in front of Mick Savin was the last thing she wanted to do.

"What sort of problems?" he asked, and when she continued to look away, added, "I can't help if I don't know."

"I'm not sure you can help anyway." She breathed in, breathed out, allowed her stomach to settle, her unshed tears to dry. "I'm not sure anyone can."

"Have you let anyone try?"

She looked over at him then, away from the monitors and to the man staring into her eyes. His piercing expression made it hard for her to speak, to admit that what he was accusing her of was true. She was unnecessarily shouldering this sizable burden alone. It didn't make sense, no, and she knew that. But there were only two others to tell.

Candy had been through one fight for her life already. If this went that far, Neva wanted to spare her friend a repeat of that pain. Ed would ask too many questions, demand answers she didn't have, and then try to take over. And this particular truth was ammunition she didn't want to put like a gift into his hands.

But now she had Mick. Mick who was still waiting, still patient, still offering to help. "I think there's a leak in my network."

"A leak." He laced his fingers between his spread knees. "Someone's talking?"

She shrugged, feeling stupid for knowing no more than she did. "I don't know if it's talk, or someone not following through, dropping the ball, I don't know. I just know I've lost three of the girls who came to me for help."

His head bobbed as he worked to process what she'd told him. "Lost how?"

"Lost as in vanished. I can't find them anywhere." She moved one hand to the back of the love seat, pinched and played with a fabric seam. "They were with their handler where they should've been, then they were gone. No one has a clue."

Mick glanced over, shifted to face her. "No chance they ended up back in Earnestine and were hidden away?"

She shook her head. "If that had happened, I would've heard. Holden Wagner would never let me live down such a failure."

"Even if he couldn't prove your involvement?"

Smart man. "How fast you're learning the vagaries of our celebrity lawyer."

"Celebrity?"

"Oh, yes." She nodded briskly "Before he moved here, he was a big First Amendment activist. Upholding freedom of religious expression at all costs."

"What's he doing in small-town West Texas?" Mick asked, his brows drawing together, his forehead furrowed.

"The township apparently made him an offer he couldn't refuse. And yeah," she added, listening to the gears whir in Mick's mind, gears that had whirred in hers for years. "No one I know believes that's the whole story. Problem is, research resources in the area are limited. I've got the only satellite dish for miles. And most people in the area are happy to think of what goes on down the road as gossip. Otherwise they might feel compelled to get involved."

"And you who are involved. You've never wondered?"

"Of course I have." The more she heard, the more she did. "But I've got a business that keeps me hopping eighteen hours a day, not to mention this criminal sideline. Holden Wagner's a back-burner item."

Mick rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. "I'll move him up to the front."

A good start, but not nearly enough. She needed more and told him so. "If you've got those kind of resources available, I'd rather you look into all the places I can't and see what you can dig up on my girls."

"Your girls. Makes it pretty personal, doesn't it?" he asked in that perceptive way he had.

"It is personal. These girls are being abused. They're being raped. They're having anything resembling dignity stripped away." She felt her blood pressure rise, her pulse race, both fueled by her anger, her powerlessness to do more than she was already doing.

She shuddered when she needed to remain calm and focus. "They're not allowed control over their own bodies. Not when it comes to sex or bearing children for men who offer them nothing. No love. No respect. They have no autonomy. They're not allowed to think for themselves, speak for themselves—"

She couldn't go on. It wrung her out to put that much into words. Admitting to Mick anything more . . .

He braced his good arm along the back of the love seat and reached over with his other hand, took hold of hers where she held them twisted together. "I can't promise you anything, but I'll check into it, okay? See what I can do."

She nodded, and this time when her vision blurred, it was too late not to cry. She sobbed softly, drew in shaky, rickety gulps of air. Mick asked her nothing. He simply pulled her into the crook of his shoulder and tucked her close.

He smelled like soap and liniment and fabric dried in the sun. His thigh beneath hers was solid, hard, as was his chest where she rested