Yuletide protector, p.1
Yuletide Protector, page 1
Yuletide Protector
Jane Blythe
Copyright © 2020 Jane Blythe
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, distributed, reverse engineered or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, including photocopying and recording, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented without permission in writing from the publisher.
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Bear Spots Publications
Melbourne Australia
Paperback
ISBN-13:
Cover designed by QDesigns
I’d like to thank everyone who played a part in bringing this story to life. Particularly my mom who is always there to share her thoughts and opinions with me. My awesome cover designer, Amy, who whips up covers for me so quickly and who patiently makes every change I ask for, and there are usually lots of them! And my lovely editor Lisa Edwards for all her encouragement and for all the hard work she puts into polishing my work.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Book List
About the Author
September 1st
8:32 P.M.
She couldn’t wait for fall.
Ashley Fallon was sick of summer. However it was September now and in just a few weeks fall would officially begin. Warm sweaters, woolen socks up to her knees, cups of steaming hot chocolate, crackling fireplaces, pumpkins, apple pies, and Halloween and all the other good stuff that came in the fall was just around the corner. Knowing that made enduring muggy summer days more bearable, especially when she had plans with friends.
As she stepped out of the restaurant with her takeout bag, she glanced at her watch. She was running late. She was having dinner with her best friend, and she was supposed to have been there at eight-thirty, but it was already after eight-thirty. She’d had errands to run after work, she’d thought she would have had plenty of time, but the line at the grocery store was long, and the cashier was so slow. Then the hairdresser was running behind time, and Ashley had to wait half an hour before it was her turn. Then traffic was terrible, and the restaurant was busy, and it was at least a fifteen-minute drive to Sawyer’s house.
Sawyer was one of those super punctual people who was never late for anything. Traffic, other people, the weather, none of it seemed to affect him, he was always there not just on time but early. She was the opposite and Sawyer was always complaining that whenever they made plans she kept him waiting, and today was obviously not going to be any different.
She had some major damage control to do.
Balancing her purse on her arm, she managed to keep hold of the bag containing their dinner as her free hand searched around for her cell phone. Her fingers curled around it, and she pulled it out, hitting speed dial one.
“You're late,” Sawyer said as soon as he answered.
“Sorry,” Ashley said but couldn’t hide a small smile. Nothing was better after a long day than hanging out with your best friend.
“Let me guess, you just walked out of the restaurant with dinner.”
“Actually, I'm halfway back to the car.” She giggled.
She could practically hear the eye-roll come down the phone line. “Well, get your pretty little butt in gear and hurry up, I'm starving.”
“Pretty little butt,” she echoed. “I didn't know you spent any time looking at my rear end.”
Sawyer cleared his throat. “I don’t, I just want you to get here.”
Hmm, that was an odd response. She’d just been joking, she didn't really think Sawyer cared about her backside, and even if he did look occasionally, he was just a guy, and he hadn't gone on a date in a really long time. Besides, they were best friends, and she was just as guilty of checking Sawyer out as he was of checking her out. He worked out a lot, as a bodyguard it kind of went with the territory, and she could appreciate his ripped body without it going any further than that.
“I'm going as fast as I can,” she promised, darting across the road in a break in the traffic.
“What movie do you want to watch tonight?” Sawyer asked, his voice back to normal, there was really no need to be embarrassed about checking her out, but he was such a gentleman. She loved that about him, it made him safe, and after a couple of bad relationships she really needed a safe place.
“I don’t care, whatever you want,” she said. She was tired and doubted she’d even make it through the movie. She would probably end up falling asleep on Sawyer’s sofa and then crash in his spare bedroom.
“Oh no,” Sawyer said. “Last time I picked the movie you complained for a month about it.”
Ashley laughed out loud. That was true, and she always told Sawyer to choose the movie and then complained about his choices. “Okay, you narrow it down to five, and then I’ll make the final decision once I—”
She broke off as someone grabbed hold of her and yanked her into the alley she had been walking past.
For a moment she froze.
Her brain couldn’t process what was happening.
Everything felt surreal.
Like it wasn't really happening.
She was being dragged further back into the alley, away from the busy road and all the people who were out for dinner or a walk, away from help.
“Ashley? Ash? Are you still there?” Sawyer’s voice echoed in her ear.
That was what she needed to snap her back to reality.
She had to do something, if she didn't, it would be too late. She would be dragged too far away to be able to scream for help. She was a twenty-four-year-old woman, the chances of her physically overpowering her attacker were pretty much zero.
“Sawyer, help, someone’s—” That was all she got out before her phone was yanked from her hand and thrown against the wall. She knew because she heard the shattering thump as it connected.
All of a sudden it really dawned on her.
She was all alone in this.
Whatever this was.
She knew it wasn't good.
This man was going to rape her, or kill her, or both.
And she didn't think there was anything she could do about it.
“Help,” she screamed at the top of her lungs, praying someone heard her.
“Uh, uh, uh,” her attacker said, slamming her up against the wall.
Pain spiraled through her back and momentarily knocked the air from her lungs.
As she struggled to suck in a breath, the man wrapped something around her neck.
A chain.
Automatically her hands lifted to claw at it, but she couldn’t dislodge it.
The man yanked it tighter, and she could no longer draw in enough oxygen to sufficiently fill her lungs. White dots danced at the edge of her vision, but he didn't tighten it enough to cut off her air supply completely.
He didn't want her dead yet.
He wanted more from her than just her life.
The man held his face close to hers, and she got her first good look at him. Small brown eyes, messy dark hair, a mole on his cheek.
That he didn't care that she had seen him meant only one thing.
She wasn't walking out of this alley alive.
Ashley knew what was coming even before his hand took hold of the hem of her knee-length white skirt and shoved it up.
She worked as a secretary at a private security firm, she knew self-defense, she should have done more before now, but there was a difference between knowing in theory what to do and putting it into practice in real life.
Although she was struggling to breathe, she couldn’t do nothing, she couldn’t go down without a fight. Ashley lifted her knee and managed to ram it upward, connecting with her target, her attacker’s groin.
He sucked in a breath, and she knew that she’d caused him some pain.
That was small satisfaction because the blow didn't seem to do anything more than annoy him, and he shoved her a couple of times back against the wall, enough to stun her and send the world spinning like a top around her.
By the time her head cleared, the man was throwing her down to the hard, concrete ground and straddling her.
The chain around her neck tightened.
Cutting off her air supply.
Her fingers clawed at the metal until her fingernails were a mangled, bloody mess but it didn't do any good.
The chain was too tight, and the man was too strong.
Ashley fought as hard as she could. She tried to kick him, she tried to throw him off her, but he was at least twice her size, and her body was already weakening from the lack of oxygen. Her movements became clumsy and uncoordinated. Her limbs grew heavy, as did her eyes, and her vision was graying. She was getting cold, and fear was settling over her.
She hadn't felt it earlier, everything had happened too quickly and she had been too busy trying to get away.
But now that she knew she was going to die she was terrified.
She was going to die.
Die.
She didn't want to die. She was only twenty-four. She still had her whole life ahead of h er. She wanted to get married and have kids, she wanted to travel, and she’d never told anyone, but she secretly wanted to write and record her own song, she’d always loved singing, but she was too embarrassed to sing in front of anyone.
Now she wasn't going to get to do any of that.
“Thank you.”
Those were the last words she heard before she dropped into unconsciousness.
* * * * *
9:12 P.M.
Sawyer had no idea if he turned his car’s engine off.
As soon as he got here he wanted only one thing.
To see Ashley.
When she had broken off in the middle of a sentence, he had known something was wrong. He’d thought maybe a car had nearly hit her—she never paid proper attention when she crossed the street—or that she had tripped over something—she was so clumsy sometimes. He hadn't expected that someone was trying to abduct her or kill her.
But that’s what she’d said.
Before the line went dead she’d screamed for help and said that someone had her.
His heart had practically stopped.
As he’d jumped in his car he’d dialed 911, he knew Ashley’s favorite restaurant so he knew where she would be. And he knew where she would have parked her car because she hated parking and she always went somewhere quieter and walked further so she didn't have to worry about squeezing into a tight spot.
He’d told 911 where he thought she was and he prayed they had gotten there in time, but that was it, that was all he knew. He didn't know if someone had abducted Ashley, he didn't know if she had been murdered, he didn't know anything, and that was terrifying.
Sawyer scanned the scene.
There were two cop cars and an ambulance all parked in front of an alley, so that was where he headed. A cop was just rolling out tape and shot him a look that clearly said he was about to be told to move along.
He would not be moving along.
He was here to find Ashley and nothing and no one was going to stop him.
“I was the one who called 911, I was on the phone with Ashley when someone grabbed her. Is she alive?” The words came out in a rush as he preempted the cop telling him to get out of here.
The woman debated for a moment, then her face softened and her eyes filled with empathy.
Sawyer’s heart almost stopped.
Was the sympathy because she was about to tell him Ashley was dead?
“She’s over there,” the cop said, lifting a hand to point to a stretcher that was being carried out of the alley.
He took off toward it then stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Ashley’s still form. There was a tube down her throat, and one of the paramedics was bagging her.
One of the medics caught sight of him. “She’s alive. You the one who called it in?”
“Yes.” Sawyer took a tentative step toward Ashley, scanning her for injuries. Her throat was bright red, and he could see marks indented in the skin of her throat in the shape of small ovals one beside the other, it looked like she had been strangled with a metal chain.
“She can breathe on her own, we were just concerned that her throat was going to swell closed as the bruising came out and decided we should be safe rather than sorry,” the other medic explained.
Relief nearly knocked him off his feet.
Ashley was okay.
Alive.
He’d never been so scared in his life as he’d been these last thirty minutes. Ashley didn't know it, but he had been in love with her since they’d met three years ago. She was sweet and funny, kind and thoughtful, and drop-dead gorgeous, with long jet black hair and soulful brown eyes.
“Are you coming with us to the hospital?”
“Absolutely,” he said as he climbed into the back of the ambulance behind the stretcher. As much as he was positive he didn't want to know, he had to ask, “Was she sexually assaulted?”
The medic who had stayed in the back with him averted his gaze but nodded. “They’ll do an exam in the hospital, but from the looks of things, she was.”
For a second Sawyer felt like he was going to be sick.
How was he going to tell Ashley that when she woke up?
That he was the one who would tell her was a forgone conclusion as far as he was concerned. Ashley was an only child whose parents had her later in life, they had both passed away not long after he met her. The cops could do it, but they would be too detached. It wasn't that they wouldn’t care, but their job was to find the person who had hurt her, as her best friend, his job was to protect and support Ashley through this.
“Did they get the guy who did it?” he asked.
“No, I'm sorry.” The medic finally met his gaze. “He must have run when he heard the sirens. You saved her life. If she hadn't been on the phone with you when he grabbed her, and you hadn't known where she was, then she wouldn’t have survived. She had already passed out by the time the guy got spooked and ran. Another minute or two and she would have been dead.”
Minutes.
Ashley’s life had come down to a matter of minutes.
Sawyer couldn’t help but shudder at the thought.
He reached out and picked up her hand, carefully avoiding the needle in the back, and tried to reassure himself that she was all right.
It didn't take long for them to reach the hospital and as he followed the paramedics inside, he spotted his sister and her husband. Savannah had reconciled with the man she loved last Christmas, and they had married in the spring. He loved seeing his twin so happy and content, and Sawyer’s gaze dropped to Ashley’s pale face. If the man who attacked her had succeeded in killing her then he would never get a chance to find out if there could be anything between them. He feared they were too firmly stuck in the friend zone, so he had tried to be content with that, but it was hard. Spending so much time around Ashley and never letting on how he really felt was like a form of torture.
“Sawyer.” Savannah obviously spotted him, and with her husband’s arm around her waist, she hobbled over. After being attacked twice by two different psychopaths, both times having the same hip shattered, Savannah walked with a limp. The injury had also ruined her dreams of becoming an FBI agent, so instead, she had joined the FBI’s evidence response team. He wondered if he should ask her to go to the scene and see if she could find anything. It wasn't that he distrusted the crime scene unit it was just that he trusted his sister more.
“She’s alive,” his brother-in-law, Jett Crane, said when he and Savannah reached him.
It sounded more like a statement than a question, but he nodded anyway. “She was unconscious but still breathing when the cops and medics arrived. They intubated her because they were worried her airways might close as the swelling increases. Did you speak with anyone? Do you know anything?” he asked Jett. His brother-in-law was an FBI agent, and he was hoping Jett and his partner might find a way to help with the investigation.
“I don’t need to speak with anyone. I already know more about the man they’re looking for than they do,” Jett said, his green eyes full of anger, empathy, and determination. “We don’t know who he is, but he’s raped and killed sixteen women in four states over the last three years. Ashley fits his preferred victim type, early to mid-twenties, dark hair, brown eyes, pretty. He grabs them in a reasonably public location, usually pulling them into an alley near a busy shopping or restaurant strip. He rapes them and then strangles them to death with a metal chain. As soon as I heard Ashley had been strangled and assaulted by a man with a metal chain, I knew it had to be this guy. Blake and I were assigned this case two and a half years ago, I've been trying to catch him ever since.”
Sawyer didn't miss the darkness that crossed both Jett and Savannah’s faces at the mention of Jett’s ex-partner who had gone off the rails and embarked on a killing spree that almost got all three of them killed.
“Ashley is the only surviving victim,” Jett told him. “If she saw his face then she could be the key to finally finding this guy.”
She was lucky to be alive. It was only the fact that he had been on the phone with her when it happened that she had survived.
He could have lost her.
