The Babysitter

  Contents

  TITLE

  RIGHTS

  DEDICATION

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  EPILOGUE

  DON'T FORGET!

  NOTICE

  ALSO BY JESSICA GADZIALA

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  STALK HER!

  The

  Babysitter

  Professionals Series #5

  --

  Jessica Gadziala

  Copyright © 2019 Jessica Gadziala

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author's intellectual property. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for brief quotations used in a book review.

  "This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental."

  Cover image credit: Shutterstock .com/ Improvisor

  DEDICATION

  To Sheri Mireles.

  For her eagle eyes.

  And all her support.

  ONE

  Ranger

  The woods were a breathing thing. The way the wind whispered through newly budding trees. How the dry underbrush hissed across the floor, catching against shrubs and stacking up with half-moldering piles of fallen leaves.

  The sounds were long since familiar, ones I heard nightly for years. In the barns, the roll of furry bodies against hay was as predictable as the chorus of crickets, as intermittent as the lonesome-sounding hoot of the occasional owl high in a tree.

  My home kept as many secrets as it disclosed - the silent pads of rodent feet, the inaudible swish of fins in the lakes and rivers, the quick, cunning bodies of foxes attempting to steal under my chicken coop only to be thwarted by the four feet deep fence and cement underneath, keeping them safe as they puffed up their feathers to ward off the early spring chill.

  But there were some secrets it never could keep.

  I'd been unable to sleep, work-weary body begging for rest, mind unable to slow enough to slip into unconsciousness, making me swing my legs off the side of the bed, soles touching down onto the furry side of a German Shepherd who made a grumbling noise before turning on her side, snuggling into one of the seven other bodies scattered across my floor instead of the living room where their beds were, the fire likely having died down, chilling that space.

  The house was quiet as it so often was, just the heavy breathing of dogs, the snoring of them, the whimpering or scratching of their nails on the floor as they chased something through the forest floor in their dreams.

  The crackling of the dying fire met me as I moved out of my bedroom and into the main living space, going over to throw another log on, knowing it would be several long, cold hours before the sun teased through the windows, warming surfaces, making a fire unnecessary. I could probably get through the night without the fire, but the dogs would start shaking. The same dogs that - all winter - bounded through feet of snow like it was cotton candy. But it meant nothing to me. It wasn't like there wasn't enough wood around us to keep us all as warm as we wanted to be.

  One-point-one million acres of wood, to be exact. Sure, it was protected which meant that cutting it down was technically a crime, but when you chose to build an entire homestead on government land without permission, you didn't fuss too much about a little firewood.

  I moved a pot of water over the fire, figuring if I wasn't going to get some sleep, then a head start on coffee was going to be necessary.

  Spring meant more work than usual just to get all the gardens and the greenhouse ready for new planting. I was working from sunup to sundown from March through May. And then, well, it was weeding and harvesting. It never let up save for the winter.

  It had been a long, cold one, though. And I found myself itching for the work, for the tiredness in my muscles, the bone-deep exhaustion that would make sleep possible.

  I had just been pouring the grounds into the press when I heard it.

  A sound that didn't fit.

  A secret the woods refused to keep.

  Putting down the spoon, I moved over toward the front door, pulling it wide, feeling the night air - still slipping under freezing - slap my shirtless body, making the skin prickle in objection.

  I paid no mind, though, as I moved a step outside, bare feet on the cold ground, chin tilted up, listening, needing to hear it again to be sure.

  The Pine Barrens was a desolate place, full of animals and ghost towns. But quiet places were a magnet for some people too. Ones like me, drawn to the emptiness, the isolation, needing to get away from a world that was hard to breathe within. Those I left alone, knowing how badly my soul had needed this place when I first stepped through the tree line many years before, how much I still needed it now.

  The others, they came here for the lack of population as well. But not for their own peace of mind. Not for their own bastardized form of therapy, recovery.

  No.

  They came to disrupt, to destroy.

  Stupid teenagers touring the ghost towns, tagging the crumbling brick in heinous, unnatural neon spray paint. Ridiculous street names, immature, unoriginal curses, declarations of undying love. The paint would outlast the relationships by decades.

  Others still came by the truckload, beds loaded down with kegs, cases of beer, giant handles of hard liquor, pockets loaded down with pills that would make the trees come alive, chase their hallucinating selves through unfamiliar terrain.

  Campers came, often needing a search party. Or, more often, me, to get them back to land where they most likely ended up needing a digit or two to be surgically removed.

  Small annoyances, ones I rarely went out of my way to chase out of my home.

  Kids needed to party.

  People needed to learn they didn't have what it took to survive in the wild.

  But there were others too.

  Ones who saw this barren land, the mostly lawlessness within as a prime stomping ground to do other things.

  Damaging things.

  Hurtful things.

  At least once a year, a noise would reach me, a sound that didn't belong.

  Follow it, and you might happen upon men trying to overcome the women they had tricked into coming into the woods with them.

  You might find someone getting the shit beaten out of them by bullies who'd made their lives hell for years.

  You might find assholes taking a dogs' natural instinct to obey commands, twisting it, warping it, forcing them to use it against one another in bloody, horrific ways.

  I followed those sounds.

  I dealt with them appropriately.

  Well, maybe the law would have something to say about how appropriate my punishments were, but this was my place, my land, my laws, my punishments. If they wanted to find me and give me a talking to, well, they would be at it for weeks just to try to locate my place. And by then I'd have gotten a whiff of them and would have been long gone.

  As a whole, cops just stayed clear. Rangers patrolled the more border areas. But no one was coming into the thick of the Pine Barrens on the regular. It would take hours to get back out again. If you were lucky.

  "You hear that too, Cap?" I asked, pressing my hand on the rounded white head of a
n American Bulldog deemed too aggressive to be adopted, shipped off to death row where I had found him, convinced them to let me take him.

  Too aggressive.

  The dog was a teddy bear.

  He just didn't like most people.

  And, well, who the fuck could blame him.

  People, as a whole, were loud and selfish and predictably terrible.

  Captain had the best ears of all my dogs, able to hear the first hiss of breath of one of the birthing goats, waking me up, leading me out to lend a hand.

  We stood there a few feet outside our front door, silent, listening.

  And there it was.

  Crying.

  A woman crying.

  "Fuck," I hissed, charging back inside, slipping my feet into shoes, throwing a jacket over my bare torso, tossing a flashlight into my pocket, and grabbing a gun, feeling the familiar weight in my palm.

  By the time I was out the front door again, the whole pack was awake, alert, ready to bound off into the darkness with me.

  I pointed to two of them, grinding out a simple, "Stay," never wanting to leave my place wholly abandoned as the others fell into a run along with me, following the sound of whimpering on the breeze.

  Sure, it was possible it was someone like me. A woman who had been through some shit, seen some shit, found herself haunted by it, brought herself to the woods, so the neighbors didn't knock on her door while she sobbed, called the cops when she screamed through nightmares.

  But, well, it was more likely that she wasn't. That she was here against her will. That someone had or was currently trying to hurt her.

  The sharp arms of pine branches whipped the side of my face as I tore through the woods, the sounds getting louder as I curved off to the right, away from the lake, going toward one of the deepest parts of the Barrens, so deep that there was no way a car had been driven in. If this woman was brought here, she had walked or had been carried. Dragged. No. No one was strong enough to carry someone for hours. Dead weight or struggling. It couldn't be done.

  My hand curled tighter around my gun, solid, reassuring.

  I hadn't needed to use it in years.

  I had a shotgun over the fireplace that I had needed once or twice over the years to scare off some persistent bears, ones hungry enough, desperate enough to be able to break into my barn, kill my animals.

  But I hadn't raised a gun with the intent to kill in longer than I could remember. Which was a solace of sorts. Once I put one down, I genuinely hoped I wouldn't find a need to pick one up again, to pile on some more unpleasant memories.

  But, at the end of the day, if it came to me - and her - or them, I could use it. I could take a life. Again. I could live with that.

  Hell, I'd learned to live with everything else up until this point.

  A low grumble from one of the dogs had my head jerking to the side, watching him turn directions, looking at me, conflicted.

  Because the sound was not coming from that direction.

  But something was.

  Something was there.

  Or someone.

  There was a choice to be made.

  Find and help the girl.

  Or find the person who had hurt her.

  My gut churned at the idea of him getting away, but my mind reminded me that she was the one crying, she was the one in need of help.

  "Go," I hissed to the pack, watching as they turned and charged off in that direction, the cracking of twigs under their feet making them sound like a stampede.

  I honestly didn't know what they would do if they found someone. It was rare they were ever far enough away from me that they might encounter another living soul without me there to keep them calm and focused.

  But that wasn't really my problem as the sounds got louder, closer, as they were loud enough to drown out the pounding of blood in my ears, the labored sound of my breathing.

  I broke into a small clearing, the fledgling pine trees trying - and failing - to make it through the hard winter, trunks and branches dried, full of brittle needles.

  And there it was.

  She was.

  Her frame spread over the cracked body of one of said dead trees.

  Facedown in an oversized men's tee that at one time must have been white but was now caked in dirt, stuck with brambles, and most distinctively, soaked through with blood. Some dried. Some, well, not.

  Her blonde hair was wet, hanging around her shoulders, down her back, blanketing her face from view.

  The bare skin of her soles, calves, thighs were torn and trickling blood. Not enough, though, to explain the state of her shirt.

  Her body shifted, another pained whimper escaping her as her hands, palms broken open - from fighting, from clutching at trees or the ground, who knew - pressed down on the forest floor, brown, prickly pine needles biting into already raw flesh, making her collapse back down before she could even push herself upward.

  Taking a deep breath, I tucked the gun away, closed the distance between us.

  "Hey," I called, cringing at the loud timbre of my voice.

  Another whimper.

  But she didn't shock away from my loudness, didn't try to scramble away.

  Brows furrowed, I stopped when the tips of my shoes nearly touched her hip, leaning down, pressing a hand into her shoulder. Getting no reaction, I gently pushed, her body rolling easily, flopping down on its back oddly. Unnaturally. With absolutely no attempt to stop herself.

  Squatting down, I pushed the wet hair out of her face when she made no move to do so herself, to see if I was an attacker or a savior.

  Her face was a bruise. Blue and purple abuse mottled every inch that wasn't already caked in dried blood that stemmed from a cut through one of her brows, her nose, and a badly split lip.

  It was impossible to make out her true features, so obviously swollen from her beating.

  Her eyes were open, glassy, staring up at me, but somehow not seeing me at the same time.

  Drugged.

  That was the look of someone who was drugged.

  That was why she wasn't screaming, wasn't trying to crawl away, fight back, something, anything.

  "I'm not gonna hurt you," I told her, reaching down, snagging the edge of her oversized tee, pulling it up, trying to find the source of the bleeding with the beam of the flashlight.

  I tried not to think about the fact that she had nothing on beneath, about the implications that could mean, the emotional damage mixed with the physical if that had happened to her.

  But those thoughts were fleeting when I saw the cut down her belly. Long, though not deep, tapered at the top into little scratches. Hesitation marks.

  Why the fuck would someone try to cut her open?

  No.

  The why didn't matter, I decided, pulling her shirt back down, tucking my flashlight away, reaching down to slide my arms under her legs, behind her back, trying not to jostle her too much, not wanting to cause any more damage.

  It was hard to tell, but I didn't think the knife had cut deep enough to cause any real damage - the possibility of infection aside from the filth of the forest floor, the pine needles stuck into the cut. I had to get her home, in the light, flat on a table with a kit to try to clean her up.

  It would take too long to get out of the Barrens, back to civilization, back to a doctor. She needed attention before she could make that trip. I was no doctor, but I could clean her up, remove the foreign bodies, sterilize the wound. Then at first light, I could pack her in the car and get her out.

  Decision made, I pulled her to my chest and started the long way back, this time at a brisk walk instead of a dead run, making progress slow, frustrating as little whimpers and groans escaped the woman, as tears wet my chest.

  It felt like hours but was maybe only twenty minutes before I found myself back at my cabin, two of the dogs still standing guard beside the front door, making space for us as I went to the door, letting out little whining noises as their noses picked up the scent of blood.


  I lowered her body down on my dining room table, going for the lights, rushing into my bathroom for my medical kit, grabbing a bottle of vodka out of a cupboard, then going back, finding her staring blindly back up at the light and fan above her.

  Light on, I could see that the one eye that wasn't full of bloody broken vessels was green. A light sage type green.

  Shaking my head, I looked away from her eyes, from the unnatural size of her pupils.

  My hand went for my kit, unzipping the sturdy material, laying it open beside her head, reaching in for the scissors, making short work of slicing her shirt down the middle.

  "Okay," I hissed on an exhale, tipping the bottle of vodka over my hands and the edges of fine-tipped tweezers before quickly removing every prickly pine needle, every strip of dried leaf, every little twig.

  "Sorry," I told her as she writhed and arched. "Can't give you shit with eyes like that," I added, mostly to myself since she wasn't likely hearing - or processing - anything I was saying.

  Twisting off the tip of a saline tube, I poured it over the cut, washing the dirt slide away, giving me a better few.

  Superficial.

  Ugly, but superficial.

  Nothing deep enough to do real damage.

  Why it was there in the first place was a question for another time, preferably whenever whatever drugs the woman was tripping on were out of her system.

  Out of saline, I reached for the vodka, casting a look at her eyes for a long moment before tipping it.

  I knew that pain.

  I'd experienced it myself many times before.

  The searing, burning, all-consuming pain of alcohol on a gaping open wound.

  There was the start of a cry that got cut off as unconsciousness claimed her. "Probably for the best," I mumbled, reaching for the suture kit.

  Stitches were something I was an old hand at. Living in the middle of the Pine Barrens, constructing a homestead, well, there were sure to be mistakes, miscalculations, things that led to injuries of varying degrees. I'd learned how to stitch with my non-dominant hand. I'd done it on myself, on some of the animals, on old buddies in the service a lifetime ago.