Twist My Heart by Brooke Taylor (ebook audio reader .txt) 📕

Labor Day of last year. The smell of mouse poop and musk permeated the tiny area, even with the windows wide open. The campy wood-paneled walls and orange-and-brown-striped bed linens made him feel like he was in a Seventies horror movie. No telling how many tourists had re-enacted the scene from Psycho with the nasty plastic shower curtain hanging in the bathroom.

He’d have much preferred to stay at the stately Stanley Hotel, even a Best Western, but being the only guests allowed the privacy he’d need with Thea.

“We have to get to her before the authorities and we have to be very careful with her when we do. She’s fragile.” Explosive. “She needs us.”

“It had to be the right car!” Aimee spouted with confidence. “Her German shepherd was inside barking his head off at me when Thea called.”

Clay stared at her. “Thea called to you? She saw you in the parking lot?”

“She called me on the phone.” Aimee shot him a sheepish, yet proud smile. “I befriended her at the mall and we exchanged numbers.”

Clay set the drone he’d purchased on a brown coffee table. It sat in front of a nasty foldout couch, the presence of which made the dinky cabin a “suite” and twenty dollars more a night. “You were to keep an eye on her. You weren’t to talk to her! I made it crystal clear.”

“She approached me. She asked me to help her. What was I supposed to do?”

“Not speak to her!”

“Why are you so mad? I gave her the oils. She was going to try them.”

Clay laughed, nearly choking with disbelief. “Oh, you gave her the oils. Great. Malls are full of cameras and witnesses. What was your plan exactly? Have her keel over asleep right there? Was the salesperson going to help you drag her body to the car, too?”

“I was only trying to help, and you haven’t told me anything. Why is she running from us, anyway?”

Because she isn’t stupid. Clay tried to keep his irritation in check. But between Aimee’s screw-up and seeing Thea acting like a fucking whore in the mall parking lot, his patience had worn thin. Acting. Yes, that was what Thea had been doing. Falsely leading the guy on to get him to help her. Because his fiancée would’ve never come on to a guy unless she was working him, and even then she did it safely tucked behind a computer screen.

Or would she?

What if her avoidance of intimacy and limited affections had all been an act? Not the byproduct of her unique upbringing and history, as he’d originally assumed? Had their entire relationship been a lie? A way for her to bait him into dropping his guard? Had she accepted his proposal just to appease him while she retrieved as much information on him as she could?

Now was not the time to second-guess everything. No, she’d merely gotten lucky discovering his involvement in human trafficking. But she clearly knew more than she’d stumbled onto. The seraphim mark she’d left at Animal Control wasn’t just some random graffiti like it appeared—it was a crumb to follow. A clue that could tie him to the Ring. But only if her death was suspicious enough for anyone at the Bureau to follow up on it. He’d made sure to cover all those bases well, thanks in part to having her therapist Dr. Mitchell in his back pocket. In the dead therapist’s files was an extensive fictional account of her spiral into madness. Thea was smart, but he was smarter. He just had to stay calm and keep his wits about him.

“Clay? I don’t understand what we’re doing…or why. People come into the sisterhood freely. Why are you trying to force her?”

He pushed out a breath. Aimee was new to this and he didn’t need her spooked and doing anything stupid. “Thea’s a lot like the old you. Before you found Sera and all of us in the Ring. On the outside she’s strong. She has a good job and her life looks like she has everything together, but inside is a different story. She’s unstable. Therapy hasn’t helped. In fact, I’m very concerned. I haven’t been able to reach her psychiatrist after her latest episode.”

“Episode?”

“Thea’s been using FBI resources, going rogue. I’ve been able to cover for her, but after what she did at Animal Control and now not being able to contact Dr. Mitchell… I just pray she hasn’t done something I can’t help her undo.”

“So we’re just trying to help her?”

“Of course we are.”

It was several minutes of silence before Aimee tentatively asked, “What happened to Thea…to make her like me? Was she…?”

“No. Her father never touched her.”

Not to dress her, not to clean her or feed her or doctor her wounds, not even to hug her. Never once. His indifference had broken both his daughters’ young hearts. Asperger’s or autism, Clay never really knew for sure. But Thea’s father had had severe social anxiety. Her only connection to him had been when he’d taught her how to shoot. The man had collected firearms, was obsessed with them. Between the mental stuff and the guns, he’d been an easy target for police when little girls started going missing.

“She’s like the former you because she couldn’t save her sister, either.”

“Drugs?” At Clay’s head shake, she asked, “Then how?”

“You already know, I imagine. Her sister was Amanda Gale.”

“The Amanda Gale kidnapping? She was the girl who was raped and taken right before her little sister’s eyes. Same neighborhood as Maggie Miller. Wait, so Thea is her little…? Oh, wow. I can’t even imagine.”

“Thea was the sole witness. She doesn’t know what happened next, but she believes Amanda was sex trafficked. She’s been trying to find her for fifteen years. It’s why she went into the FBI.”

And why I need to stop her.

“Could Amanda be one of the girls we rescued and brought to the Sanctuary?”

Rescued. Retired was more like it. But rescued had a nice philanthropic ring to it when