“Oh, no, you’re not, and you’re not a victim, either.” Tripp took careful hold of her jaw, his fingers laced over her ear and into her hair. He tipped her quivering chin up with his thumb, until Ashley had no choice but to look at him. “Trust me, honey, I’ve seen victims before, and you’re nothing like them. You’re a winner. A survivor. You are faking it, and you are making it. So what if confidence doesn’t come back in a day or one month, or even in a year? What you think you’re lacking, you’ve made up for in courage. In bravery, girlfriend. That’s what they call people who march out of their homes and away from their families for war. They’re heroes, because even when they’re scared as fuck they’re going off to die, they do it anyway. They’re called brave, Ashley. It takes a shitload of courage to do what you’ve been doing. Can you do it for just one more day?”
“You called me girlfriend.”
Out of everything he’d just said, she’d picked up on that. “That’s what you are to me, Ashley. I mean after today, what should I say? Hey, you?” Tripp was trying so hard to make her smile again.
Those beautiful sapphire eyes blinked. “I get up extra-early,” she murmured, “just to talk myself into going to work. Every day, I look in my mirror, and I tell myself I’ll be okay. That I can do it. ’Course I never leave my apartment until everyone else is going to work, too. I don’t go into elevators alone with guys, and I don’t let men into my apartment. I’m very careful. Same way at five o’clock, but in reverse. I travel home in crowds, Tripp. Never alone. Until tonight.” She licked her bottom lip. “Won’t do that again.”
“Yes, you will. I have faith. You and that can of mace will go far.”
There it was. Finally. A real smile. “Does being scared count as being brave?”
Tripp grinned. “I’ve got news for you. Every last one of us soldier-types is scared shitless sometimes. Deep down, we’re just boys doing men’s work. Now talk to me. Tell me what you can, and I’ll tell you what we know.”
“That fourth woman…” Ashley’s bottom lip disappeared behind her top teeth. “Sh-sh-she… she, umm, didn’t get away. He’s the one who got scared. He just l-l-left.”
Hot white rage exploded inside Tripp. “You are the fourth victim,” he rasped, his throat so damned dry, he could barely speak. Shit, damn, and son of a bitch! I was right. I knew it!
“Yes…” She forced another noisy swallow. “I left my door unlocked one afternoon. I was expecting Mac. I had a late class, and at that time, I didn’t have a roommate. I was alone. He just came in like he owned the place. At first, I thought h-h-he just had the wrong apartment but… Then he grabbed me. He kept asking if I wanted to p-p-play.” Her voice trailed away.
“The bastard,” Tripp hissed, so damned angry he could barely see straight. But he refused to frighten Ashley now that she was talking. It took a few seconds, but he came to his senses and toned the angst-filled rhetoric down. But she’d been assaulted—twice! Two gawddamned times! “Sorry, kiddo. Go on. Tell me what you can. I’ll be quiet. Who’s Mac?” Until I find that fucker and rip his head off!
“Okay, umm, well then…” Ashley trembled, she was so nervous. “Mac was the maintenance guy where I used to live. It was an older home near the college. We’d arranged for him to replace my thermostat, only… that other guy came. He didn’t look like a r-r-rapist. I mean, he didn’t have tattoos or piercings or scars, anything weird I could see. He wasn’t particularly ugly, but he wasn’t what I’d call cute, either. He looked boring. Normal.”
“What color hair and eyes?”
“Light-brown hair, but weird gray eyes. Light gray. Like fog.”
“How tall was he?”
“About my height. Ordinary build. Not muscular or handsome, like…” Her gaze dropped when she said, “…like you.”
She blushed the prettiest strawberry pink, and for some stupid reason, Tripp’s all-male body sucked in its gut and flexed its muscles. Not on purpose. It just happened. Reflexively. Like blinking and breathing and thinking of Ashley. Of breathing in the sweet scent of her hair and feeling the sensational softness of her skin beneath his fingertips.
It was time to move. They were still sitting together on her couch. Trying not to be obvious, he eased her off his lap and set her next to him. Tripp kept one arm around her shoulders, and he hoped—man, how he hoped—she hadn’t noticed what was going on under his zipper.
“Anything else you can remember? Like how old he was?” he asked, wishing he sounded like Joe Friday, the emotionless cop from those old time “Dragnet” reruns. Instead of the sometimes baritone, sometimes tenor, sixteen-year-old jock he was sure he’d just devolved back into.
His physical reaction was expected. Instinctual. Typical male response to a pretty woman. Tripp couldn’t help it; he had no more control over the bad boy in his pants than he had over the chill in the autumn air. But his emotions were something else. They were all over the place. One minute he was pissed as hell. The next, so damned tender and worried for her that he wanted to cry at all she’d lived through. By her damned self!
He ached to keep her as safe as he was going to keep Trish from now on. Wished he’d already killed the pricks who’d hurt both of them. And Tripp would kill them. On the job or during his late-night shift. With every quiet explanation out of Ashley’s mouth, every last inch of him hardened into a lean, mean war machine. His knuckles couldn’t clench any tighter. The guy who’d hurt these women would pay. In blood and
