Stealing Joy Read online

  “Let me carry her, you’re going too slow.”

  “Shut up and get out of my way.”

  “I get it, Max, we’re moving as fast as we can.”

  “Dude, cut it out. I want to see you hauling an unconscious girl, while naked, through the forest the morning after a full moon. Let’s see how well you do. You don’t have opposable thumbs right now.”

  Nothing they said made any sense but their voices all had a nice rumble to them. I dozed, feeling safe for the first time in days. At least my dreams, while I was dying, were nice.

  I came to for a bit and had the oddest sensation of being carried thru the forest. It was like I floated, but it was a rough, jerking floating. Sunlight filtered in through the trees. Birds sang. I was lulled by the movement back to sleep.

  The next time I came to, I couldn’t focus. I could tell I was inside. It looked like a party with a bunch of guys milling about. Maybe Doggo had gotten his people.

  I tried to talk but I couldn’t make much noise.

  An angel appeared in my vision. He was heavenly—cheekbones, blue eyes, and wavy blonde hair. I must have been watching a movie; no one in real life was that pretty.

  “Hey there, let’s sit you up and get you some water.”

  A glass was pressed to my mouth and I swallowed the liquid down. I had no focus and could feel my eyes rolling back up into my head. I was back against pillows and my hand reached out for the pleasant weight on my legs. Yes, Doggo found his people, and he was still with me.

  I don’t remember being moved, but I do remember waking up in a moving car.

  I screamed.

  3

  Absolute panic washed over me when I was finally able to come to properly. Gordon had me buckled in the front seat, and he hummed along with the radio as if nothing had happened.

  “Good morning, sweets. You crashed right out once we got moving.” He reached over and ruffled my hair.

  I grabbed a thick strand and stared at it. It was brown. I dabbed lightly at my eye and flinched. I could only imagine the color it was. It felt swollen.

  I looked down—I wore a brown T-shirt and gray sweats. The blue nail polish was gone from my fingernails, and my beautiful stiletto nails had been cut.

  “Gordon, what is going on?” I needed a straight answer.

  “Nothing, sweetheart. You mean the road? It looks like they have some potholes that didn’t get fixed after last winter.” He chattered as if nothing was amiss.

  “Why aren’t we on the freeway?” I had gotten distracted by the pothole talk.

  “We always take this highway to cross over from seventy when we head this way.”

  I nodded my head. “Okay. Which way are we going?”

  “North, and then west. Like we always do after visiting the family.” He returned to humming.

  I didn’t say anything for a long time. I watched trees, and rocks, and ranches pass by outside my window. Eventually, we merged with a freeway, our speed increased, and the occasional road sign let me know we were in Wyoming. I know Gordon had been pretty secretive about our little trip, but Wyoming was never mentioned as being a destination.

  “Hey, there’s a rest stop coming up, can we pull over? I have to pee.”

  Gordon swerved the car and slammed on the brakes. “You will go pee when I tell you and not before.” He reached across the seat and smacked me in the mouth.

  The cars behind us blared their horns as they sped past. A knot of terror formed in my gut. Some truck was going to come by and eat us for dinner if he didn’t start the car back up. I also really needed to go even more now. Another fright like that and I’d pee all over myself and the car.

  “Okay Gordon, can you move the car?”

  “I’m going to drive the way I want to drive. Don’t tell me what to do.” His face was pretty frightening at that moment. I nodded and closed my eyes, and prayed to any nearby gods that might be listening to get me through this moment, and if they could, to provide a toilet soon.

  He finally got the car moving again. About twenty minutes later, he took pity on me and pulled over. Without any shoes, I had no idea when he took them, I didn’t want to wander too far, so I was content for the moment with being able to squat and pee by the roadside.

  Doggo’s nose was in my face, and he was licking my tears.

  “Are you all right?” the handsome man I was leaning against asked. “Bad dream?”

  “Bad memory,” I slurred. “Car? Go where?” I couldn’t focus, words were so hard.

  “We’re taking you to the hospital. You were in pretty bad shape when we found you. And then it took a couple of days to get you down the mountain and out to our lodge.”

  I liked his voice. His words sort of made sense. I understood hospital, and that I was safe. Oh, and there was a group of them. Doggo had done well, he got multiple people.

  “Good.” The hospital would be good.

  It could’ve been better.

  Strong arms carried me into the ER. I didn’t open my eyes, and I didn’t want to talk. Fortunately, the rumbly bass voices did most of the talking for me. They got me a bed, and Doggo was there.

  “Can you tell me your name?”

  “Bailey Icecreams,” I think I said.

  “So, your name is Bailey?”

  “Hmm, yes. Bailey. Don’t believe Gordon it’s not Hanson, and I’m only twenty-four.”

  “You’re twenty-four? And your name is Bailey Hasteen?”

  “With an -ing. Hastings.” I knew I was whispering, but talking was hard. I don’t know if they gave me anything or not, but I felt pretty dopey.

  At some point, there was an argument around me regarding Doggo.

  “Get that animal out of here!” A low menacing growl answered.

  “We can’t treat her if he won’t let anyone near her. And I’m not taking that dirty mutt back into my clean ER.”

  “He won’t leave her side.”

  “Get him groomed and he can come back once we have her in a room.”

  “He’s dirty, and she’s got an infection.”

  I finally managed to join the conversation. “Get clean, Doggo, they’ll bring you back.”

  “Come on, Max, you heard the lady.”

  Doggo licked my fingers before he jumped off the bed.

  There was a sharp poke in my arm. I blacked out.

  The third night of my romantic epic road trip didn’t follow in the footsteps of nights one or two. Night three sucked. We slept in the back of the car in one of those truck pullouts—not a rest stop, just an off-again, on-again pull over for truckers.

  Gordon slept wrapped around me. I didn’t sleep. Between the abuse and the discomfort, I didn’t feel safe. I was tempted, more than once, to get out of the car and wave another down. Problem was, there really weren’t any other cars out on this stretch of road in the middle of the night. And there weren’t any semis pulled in with us.

  In the morning, the car shook with the rumble of a diesel engine. I slid out from under Gordon and high stepped it over broken up asphalt. I managed to knock on the driver’s side door of the truck when Gordon caught me.

  He swept me up like lovers playing. He laughed—I kicked and was loud.

  The trucker ignored us completely.

  Gordon tied me up after I tried that a second time.

  I tried to sleep, or pretend to, most of the time. But there were times I was wide awake, and couldn’t fake it. Those were Gordon’s teaching moments. He tried really hard to convince me that my name was Bailey Hanson, and he was my husband Gordon Hanson.

  “Who is Gordon Dryer?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, who?” He threw the question back at me.

  “Gordon. You told me your name was Dryer, Gordon Dryer.”

  “Are you still going on about that weird dream you had. You were a stupid redhead, and my name was Dryer? Bailey, you have a very active imagination. Maybe you need to cut back on your sleeping pills.”

  “I don’t take sleeping pill
s.”

  “Sure you do, sweets. Ever since, you know.” He hemmed and hawed a bit.

  “Ever since what, Gordon?”

  “The miscarriage business, Bailey. You’ve taken sleeping pills ever since then.” He glanced over at me with those big brown puppy eyes of his. And that’s when I realized he was a fucking good actor. If he had been playing that scene in front of me, and not with me, I would’ve been convinced he was a man who loved his wife deeply and hurt that she had pain.

  Oh, and he told me we were married. Had been for eight years. When I laughed and said that meant we got married when I was sixteen because I was only twenty-four, he smacked me and then continued on as if he hadn’t. No, I wasn’t twenty-four. We had gotten married when I was twenty-four. I was thirty-two, and when I was twenty-eight we started trying to get pregnant.

  The rest of his convoluted, mixed-up fantasy had me unable to carry to term. There were years of treatments and miscarriages, after about thirteen of them I tried to kill myself. That apparently happened last year. I was better now, and we were returning home after a visit to my family.

  But he wouldn’t tell me where home was. I should know this. Well, asshole had another think coming because I grew up in a theater family, and I knew my fucking Shakespeare.

  Sorry not sorry, I was no damned shrew to be tamed. No lord or husband was going to tell me what was what when he was straight up wrong. He couldn’t gaslight me into thinking I was wacky. Sure, I would play along, because he hit me and it hurt. So, humoring the guy to avoid another bruise seemed reasonable.

  Night number four wasn’t nearly as pleasant as night number three. He got a little rapey. And yes, we had mad monkey sex a few days ago. I was all in at that point. I was not all in after that second morning. I wasn’t all in at all. It was not good, and I did not play along for my own safety. The beating he gave me hurt.

  That’s when I realized he wasn’t merely crazy, he was psychotic. This little act of his was only going to get worse. I was going to end up dead. Better dead by my choice than by his. Of course, that’s not what I thought when I jumped out of the car and ran across four lanes of freeway traffic.

  “Hey Bailey, are you awake yet? Can you open your eyes?”

  I opened my eyes and glared at some guy in surgical scrubs.

  “Good job, Bailey. Can you tell me what day it is?”

  “No. It’s hospital day. I don’t know what day it is.” It really hurt to talk.

  “Can you tell me your name and birth date?”

  “Bailey Hastings. September, I’m twenty-four.” I passed out.

  “She should be able to hear you, but she’s not going to be very responsive.” Someone gently rubbed on my arm. “Hey Bailey, your boyfriend is here.”

  I was wide awake, eyes open, and pushing up and out of the hospital bed. “Not Gordon, get him away from me. He’s not my boyfriend. Keep him away.”

  I had a scrubs uniformed nurse on one side of me, and one gorgeous underwear model on the other side. Both were trying to keep me from flying off the back of the bed. I pushed with my legs, oh damn that hurt. There was a menacing growl outside of my door.

  They couldn’t let Gordon near me.

  “Who is Gordon?” the model asked.

  “I thought her dog’s name was Doggo?” asked the nurse.

  I settled. I looked frantically between them. “Doggo is here? I can see him?”

  There was a woof, and then a missile of white fur came toward me.

  He landed on the bed with a heavy thud, on top of my legs, on top of my… “Ow, what the hell did you people do to me? Get off, get off, get off.” I shoved hard on the dog until he dropped down to the floor with a whimper.

  His nose was back in my hand, and he was whimpering and almost crying along with me.

  “You were in bad shape when they brought you in.”

  “Who brought me in?” I had a hard time remembering anything clearly after Doggo curled up with me in the woods, and I waited to die.

  “We did. My pa—pals and I. We found you out in the deep woods. Or I should say Max here found you. He’s pretty much claimed you as his own,” the gorgeous man in low slung jeans with a fabulous ass said. Hey, I was sick and injured, not blind.

  “You had a transmetatarsal amputation of your left outermost toe,” the nurse answered.

  “You did what? In English.” I was confused. I really didn’t know why I was here, other than basic exposure issues.

  “They had to cut off your left pinky toe.” I recognized that voice from my floating dream. Holy Hecate, the man that voice belonged to was stunning. He made the underwear model look like some average Joe.

  The nurse fussed around my foot, getting it propped back up on a stack of pillows.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  The nurse nodded at him, patted me on the arm, and said, “Buzz if you need anything,” and then left me with two hot guys and one freaking huge Doggo.

  “You heard that Max? Stay off her left foot. I’m the person to blame for your missing toe. When we found you, we didn’t realize you had frostbite. I had the guys bring you into the lodge and try to get some broth into you instead of coming straight here.”

  “But with the frostbite, your toe was already gone. I don’t think getting food into everyone would have changed that, Gage.”

  The uber hot one named Gage shot a glare at Pretty Boy. Pretty Boy dropped his gaze to the floor. I suddenly recognized him as the one who gave me water.

  I patted the right side of the bed. “Hey Doggo, you can come up here.” He took up as much, if not more, of the bed than I did. But I felt better with him there. I knew he was the reason I was alive.

  Gage picked up one of the room chairs and brought it next to the bed. Pretty Boy posed artfully on the window sill. “I’m Gage Masterson,” he said as he sat. “And to the best of our ability to figure you out, you’re Bailey Hastings, you had a birthday in September, and you’re twenty-four. And you are terrified of someone named Gordon.”

  I dug my fingers into Doggo’s fur. I couldn’t quite figure out how to call him Max. Tears streamed down my face, and I felt the snot start to run too. I didn’t care anymore. I nodded. “Can I call my mother?”

  “Travis, phone.” Gage held his hand out. The other man placed a phone in his palm. He handed me the phone and a tissue.

  I stared at it. Mom’s number was “call Mom.” I never had to remember her number before. I stared at the stupid phone and cried some more.

  Gage slowly took the phone from me. “Do your parents still have a house phone?”

  I nodded.

  “Can you tell me?”

  “Keith and Donna Hastings. Thirteen-thirteen, Sweet Briar Road.”

  “I need a phone number, not an address,” he said quietly.

  I could tell he was a little aggravated, but I had to go through the entire routine from kindergarten if I was going to get it. Name, address, telephone. I ran the rest of the routine silently until I got to the phone number. He dialed as I recited.

  He handed me the phone.

  “Mommy?” And then I couldn’t talk I was sobbing so hard.

  Gage took over. He seemed good at that. Doggo nuzzled, he was good at that.

  Gage told her everything he knew, which meant he included that I was terrified of someone named Gordon, but not why. He told her what little country hospital I was in, and, “Yes ma’am, the police are on this.”

  “How are the police on this?” I asked a few minutes after he hung up and I settled down.

  “Gage is a local county sheriff,” Travis said.

  “Are you really?” I sniffed. “That explains why you had authority to lop my toe off?”

  Gage smiled. If I still had that toe, it would have melted right off. Damn.

  “No, the doctors are the ones who made that call. But yeah, I’m with the local Sheriff’s Department.”

  “Then I should probably report that Gordon raped me before I got away from him, a
nd I should be examined to make sure all my parts are okay. I seriously doubt anyone took a look at those while they were lopping off my toe.”

  Gage cussed.

  Travis dashed from the room.

  Doggo growled.

  Travis returned with the nurse. The look on her face was full of concern. “You need a rape kit?”

  I nodded my head. “I don’t know how long it’s been, but I haven’t had a shower or anything, and I know it’s been a few days. And I don’t know if it’s gonna do me any good.”

  Gage rested a hand on my shoulder. “The sooner you report it, and anything that can be done, the better. It will help.”

  “Do I need any kind of official order, or a police report to go with it?” I asked the nurse.

  “Not at all. I’ll put in the request. I should have one up here in a matter of minutes. And I can do the examination if you’re okay with that. My CRN will be in here with me.” She sighed. “He’s male, but I need a second. He’ll stand by your head and—”

  “It’ll be fine,” I said.

  Doggo didn’t want to leave. But after Gage growled right back, he hopped down and went with the two men.

  I don’t know if fine was the right description. Awkward, definitely.

  “You know you shouldn’t use drug store hair dye on your pubic region,” she said mid-exam.

  “I do. That was done to me while I was unconscious. Can you include that in your notes?” The relief I felt with that one little bit of acknowledgment sent me back to tears.

  Before she left, the nurse injected something into my saline and antibiotic drip. “Rest.”

  “You can go back in, but let her rest. I gave her something, she should be asleep soon,” she said to the two men who had become my self-appointed bodyguards. Doggo sailed from the door to my bed with the grace of a flying squirrel.

  We were going to have to have a talk about flying wolves. I thought those only existed in video games.

  4

  Everyone left me alone to rest, except for Doggo, and my nurse put in a shower request. Not a sponge bath, but a legit shower.