The Babysitter Read online

  Pain half-forgotten, I shot upward, hearing the springs of a bed squeak as I moved.

  Another red flag.

  My bed didn't have springs.

  The room came to me in a blur as my head whipped around.

  Small.

  It was the size of a walk-in closet at best, just barely big enough for the twin sized bed I was situated in. No windows, no clocks, no paint on the white walls. The floor was hardwood, but not like the perfect strips you'd find in most people's homes. Each slat was a different shade, a different length and width. A single thick white and blue braided rug sat at the side of the bed.

  The bed itself - wrought iron, likely older than I was - was covered in rough white sheets and a big blue comforter that was pulled up to my collarbones.

  My gaze moved downward, finding a door and an Army-like trunk at the foot of the bed.

  But that wasn't what made my heart stutter in my chest.

  Oh, no.

  That was the giant dog on the bed with me - all white save for a black patch around one eye, his head rested on my knee, eyes looking up at me curiously.

  I was in a strange bed in a foreign place in more pain than I had ever been in my life before with a dog I didn't know staring up at me.

  Seeing my inspection, its tail thumped onto the bed, making a little whimpering noise, like he was somehow trying to explain to me that he was friendly, that he wasn't going to hurt me.

  Or, at least, wasn't going to hurt me more than I was already hurt.

  But dogs as strong and sturdy and happy as he looked usually had owners.

  Who was to say if his owner was going to hurt me? If his owner wasn't the one who had already hurt me.

  And maybe his apparent friendliness would disappear if I tried to get out of the bed, get away.

  I couldn't claim to have a fear of dogs per se, but I had a healthy trepidation around unfamiliar ones. And, never having had any pets myself, I couldn't claim to know how to read their body language, interpret how they felt about a situation.

  I drew in a shaky breath as I slowly pulled myself upward, cringing as the tightening sensation in my belly intensified.

  Eyes on the dog whose head was still down, gaze holding mine, I pushed the blankets down, feeling the chill of the room creep in, claw at me with cold fingers as I looked down at what I was wearing.

  A men's flannel.

  A huge men's flannel.

  The owner of it must have been half giant.

  Why I was wearing it, I had no idea.

  The last thing I remembered putting on was a pair of mustard yellow slacks and a white tee. And nude heels. I'd debated the heels for almost twenty minutes, wondering which pair was going to hurt me the least since I was going to be on my feet at work all day.

  Another glance around the room didn't display any of those items laid over a chair like I had contributed to taking them off. Or even strewn on the floor as though I had ended up in bed with someone and we had clumsily pulled at clothing.

  Nothing of mine was in this shoebox of a room.

  Which, well, didn't exactly bode well for me, did it?

  If I had not actively participated in removing my clothes, then someone else had done it. And then hidden them somewhere.

  Heart thudding - hard and slow like it tended to do when I was starting to panic over something - my hand lifted - heavy, half-numb feeling.

  Bandages.

  My hands were covered in bandages.

  I snagged the edge of the hem of the shirt with the tips of my fingers, nail beds caked with dirt. Like shaving my legs, I never would have let my nails get dirty without cleaning them.

  Dread became a living thing, moving in behind me, its hot, sticky breath breathing on my ear, whispering ugly words I tried not to listen to as I inched up the warm fabric.

  No panties.

  My breath came out in strobes as I swallowed hard against the sick I felt rising in my throat.

  I had put on panties.

  Nude, completely seamless, the material like butter on the skin, the kind of panties that would never leave lines, but were more comfortable than a thong.

  Pushing thoughts away, I kept my focus on the strange feeling in my belly until the material lifted up past where it was coming from, revealing a long, ugly gash crudely sewn up with stitches.

  Brows knitting, I tried to put the pieces all together. My lack of clothes. Stubbly legs, too stubbly for just a day of not shaving. Another person's clothes. Bandaged hands and feet. A giant gash down my belly. The bruises. The weird veil over my mind, the slow feeling of my movements.

  But none of the pieces seemed to fit.

  If I was hurt badly enough to require stitches, why wasn't I in a hospital? If someone had done this to me, why would they fix me?

  The dog made a whining noise, making me jump, causing the headboard to crack against the wall.

  "He's friendly," a voice said. Well, no, not said. It was more of a rumble, a growling noise, rough like from disuse.

  My breath gasped inward as my gaze shot toward the door, finding it pulled open, a figure standing there in the space.

  Taking up all the space, head ducked down a little to even be able to fit under the top of it.

  A mountain man.

  That was what came to mind first.

  Like an actual, real-life lumberjack.

  But an attractive one.

  He had to be nearly six-five with a wide, strong body. There was no question in my mind that his was the shirt I was wearing, a shirt that fit me like an oversized dress.

  As that thought crossed my mind, I remembered my hand was holding up said shirt, exposing my belly, pelvis, legs.

  My hand flicked the material down as my gaze held the dark one of the man standing there.

  Dark haired, dark-eyed, with a full, dark beard.

  There was a roughness to his look, but there was no denying he was attractive either.

  I couldn't claim he was my personal taste. I guess I always went for well-groomed men, lighter haired, freshly shaven.

  But even if his look wasn't my personal preference, he was objectively good looking.

  "Well, friendly-ish," he added when I said nothing, my mind all over the place, not able to latch onto one thought to force words out about it.

  "You're safe," he added, brows knitting as he watched me.

  To that, well, a strange, choked, hysterical noise escaped me.

  "You're in my house," he went on as another dog muzzle poked into the space between the man and the blocked space behind him. I couldn't claim to know a ton about dog species, but everyone knew a German Shepherd when they saw one. "I found you in the woods last night," he told me.

  "The woods," I parroted, voice sounding scratchy, bringing with it a new pain. A rawness in my throat. The flu-like gargled glass sensation, making me swallow hard.

  "Pine Barrens," he clarified.

  "Pine Barrens," I repeated, not finding any sense in those words.

  I knew about the Pine Barrens, of course. I had been born and raised in New Jersey. But they were always a sort of foreign idea. I'd always lived in the northernmost part of the state; the Barrens were more toward the south and east.

  The last thing I remembered clearly was being on my way to work. It had just been a normal Tuesday. Which would have meant I would have been to work until around six, then would hit the grocery store to grab something to make for dinner, then go home, cook, eat while I watched a show or two, take a bath, go to bed.

  Nothing exciting.

  Certainly nothing that would send me southward.

  Not on a work night.

  And, to be fair, not any night. I wasn't someone who ventured very far from her comfort zone. If I were to go out after work, it would have been to a local restaurant I'd been to a dozen times before, whose menu I knew held something I would like, where I would feel almost at home.

  I wouldn't have headed south.

  And I couldn't think of a single r
eason - ever - for me to be in the woods.

  I was a mani-pedi-Sunday-brunch kind of person, not a hiking-boots-and-pants-tucked-into-socks, adventure-seeking kind of person.

  If I had been in the Pine Barrens, I had not been there willingly.

  "Do you remember how you got here?" he asked, making my head shake. "Do you take drugs?"

  "No!" The word came out like a shriek, making my throat set to fire. My hand shot up, the softness of the bandages pressing into my neck like I could rub the pain away.

  "Okay," he said, seeming to attempt soothingness as he raised a hand, palm out. Nothing about his voice could be considered soothing, though. And something about those enormous hands - nearly big as a dinner plate, I swear - was very unsettling. "I'm just trying to figure out how the fuck you ended up in the Barrens all sliced up."

  "You stitched me?" I asked, trying to understand the sequence of the events.

  "It was dark. Takes hours to get back to civilization from here. I wasn't sure if you'd make it if I didn't stitch you up. I can drive you into town to get looked at by a doctor," he added, but there was genuine hesitance, reluctance in the words.

  Why? I wasn't sure.

  I mean, well, what was he doing in the Pine Barrens?

  I didn't know as much about them as I likely should have seeing as they were part of my home state, but I did know that no one lived in them. You could visit, camp, that kind of thing. But you didn't just... live in them. I think I remembered seeing something in a book about New Jersey once about there being ghost towns there, though.

  So maybe he was squatting.

  But why?

  Who squatted in the woods?

  The homeless.

  Criminals.

  Well, that might make sense.

  He wouldn't want to reemerge, have to take me in, risk being seen.

  Or have me tell someone about the mountain man who saved me.

  If he matched some description for some bad guy somewhere, they would come looking for him.

  "What time is it now?" I asked, disoriented by the windowless room. But, oddly, I was almost sure I heard the sound of a rooster crowing. "How long was I asleep?"

  "It's about seven. You were out for a good five hours."

  "On Wednesday," I clarified, liking details, figuring it would be easier to piece this whole thing together if I had all of them.

  "Thursday," he corrected, brows drawing down. "Is Tuesday the last thing you remember?"

  "Yeah. I was on my way to work. I remember..." I started, blinking a few times as I tried to drag a thought to the forefront of my slow brain. "I remember trying to figure out if I had enough time to stop and get coffee on the way."

  "Where do you work?"

  "Why?" I asked, suspicious, not sure if he was someone I should be trusting when I didn't know him from Adam. Even if he did sew me up.

  "You don't strike me as someone who gets involved with the kind of people who slice other people open. Just trying to figure out how you ended up here with someone who did that."

  "Wouldn't that be the job of the police?" I shot back.

  "If you think they have better connections than I do, then yeah."

  "Well, seeing as I have no idea who you even are..."

  "Ranger," he supplied easily, shrugging the information off.

  "Ranger. And you live in the Pine Barrens with your dogs?" Maybe a bit of dubiousness slipped into my tone. But who could blame me? Someone living in the Pine Barrens was about as unlikely as you could get, right?

  "Not for long, I guess," he said, turning and walking out. As though we were at the end of a discussion instead of in the middle of one.

  Doorway no longer blocked, the German Shepherd charged its way in, hackles at the very top of his shoulder blades raised as he made his way toward the side of the bed.

  The snarling made a choked shriek rush out of me until I realized it was my friendly bull-like dog making the noise as he lunged toward the side of the bed, snapping at the German Shepherd in a way that - and there was almost no denying this - seemed to imply he was trying to protect me from his fellow dog friend.

  "Come," Ranger barked from the other room, making the curious, fearful dog turn on a dime and rush back out.

  If nothing else, at least he had good control over his beasts. And a somewhat steady hand with stitches.

  Stitches.

  A weird snorting sound escaped me at the word, at realizing I had never hurt myself beyond a scraped knee - or, more accurately, a rubbed raw ankle from long wearing of ill-fitting high heels - in my life. And now my hands and feet were wrapped in bandages, I had a giant gash down my belly, and something was wrong with my face.

  Chancing a look at my dog protector, I carefully swung my legs off the side of the bed, wincing when my sore soles met the rough carpet, but breathing through the pain, knowing I needed to get up, get to a mirror, check out all the damage.

  Maybe while I did that, something might come back to me. A memory, some clue to how I got here, what had happened to me, who had done this.

  Slipping up onto my tiptoes, I made achingly slow progress across the tiny room, hearing the click of nails as the dog fell into step beside me.

  "Probably shouldn't be walking around," his voice met me as I moved into the doorway.

  "Is there some kind of ba..."

  My words trailed off as my gaze moved around.

  I expected sparseness. A squatter's home in an abandoned town in a giant set of woods. Maybe there would be a few personal items, some signs of living.

  But this, well, this was not what I found.

  I found a home.

  There was no other way to describe it.

  This was someone's home.

  It was a small building to be sure, one open space that had a kitchen, living, and dining space. But it was filled. It was relatively new. Not some crumbling, neglected structure back from the logging days. The appliances in the kitchen were stainless steel, modern. The furniture in the living space was well loved, soft-looking, but likely first-time-used - no stains, no holes, no damage. The dining table was simple, small, likely only used to accommodate the mountain man, but it had a second chair.

  Dog beds were scattered around, two of them even sitting before the giant stone hearth that dominated the space.

  The windows were clean, though free of drapes which, I guess, was a somewhat feminine touch. And no one would dare accuse this Ranger guy of anything other than through-and-through masculine. A few more of those braided rugs littered the floor - in front of the couch under the coffee table, in front of the kitchen sink.

  On the center of the small dining table, instead of flowers or fruit or stacks of daily mail like you might usually find, there was a brown and tan speckled earthenware bowl nearly overflowing with potatoes of every color - russets, reds, purples and ranging in size from the size of your fist to little pebbles like I'd seen in the grocery store, costing five dollars for a tiny bag.

  "Bathroom," Ranger finished for me, jerking his chin toward the room I had just emerged from. "Next door over."

  Turning carefully, I made my way back that way, inwardly preparing myself for a bucket rank with waste at best.

  But what I found was something that looked suspiciously like an actual toilet, a sink, and shower of sorts. Really, it was one of those giant metal basin things you saw in movies about farms or ranches with a shower curtain and a shower head. But it was a shower and bath of sorts.

  But how?

  How could he have water and sewage if he didn't have a legal house?

  Shaking my head, I moved inward, closing the door, reaching for a lock that didn't exist since, well, he seemed to live alone. Because, really, what woman would sign up to live illegally in the woods with him?

  I moved toward the sink where a giant round mirror threatened to tell me the truth of the pain I was feeling. Taking a deep breath, I stepped in front of it, knowing that the only thing worse than knowing was not knowing.
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br />   It wasn't good.

  I guess I had been anticipating as much. It was the only explanation for the throbbing sensation from forehead to chin.

  Almost the entire right side of my face was mottled with bruises - plum and navy and green-tinged yellow. There was a gash through my eyebrow. And I had an admittedly long moment of vanity where I worried about a scar there, how the hair would never grow back. Scars through eyebrows were attractive on men - giving them a dark, edgy look, but I couldn't say it was a good look for a woman. I never wanted to look dark or edgy. That wasn't me. But now I would be forced to.

  The slit through my lower lip might scar too, but that same vain voice told me that a steady hand with some lip liner and lipstick could make it disappear.

  Chancing a look over at the door with suspicion, I reached my hands to my borrowed shirt, slowly undoing the buttons, heart thudding hard in my chest as I did.

  I'd already seen the gash in my stomach, the bruises, and scratches on my legs. But a part of me simply needed to see everything, to know each injury.

  There wasn't much else, I decided as I got onto my tiptoes, turning to look over my back that had some superficial scrapes, like maybe I had caught it on tree branches or something.

  Scrapes from what, though, I wondered.

  How had I found myself bleeding in a forest, at the mercy of some mountain man who clearly didn't want the hassle of dealing with me?

  Who had cut me? And why?

  My gaze slid down my body, cringing a bit at the ugly stitches, the bit of dried blood around them, then downward.

  The bruises gave me pause.

  On my thighs. Deep, painful to the touch.

  My belly turned over as I looked at them.

  There was a clear reason for bruises and cuts on my face. Someone hit me, or I fell.

  But my thighs, the fleshy bits of fat and muscle that didn't exactly bruise easily no matter how many cabinets I jammed myself against.

  Bruises on thighs, the sizes of fingers.

  A fist of fear wedged itself in my throat, knowing the only logical reason thighs might have finger-shaped bruises spanning my thighs.

  Fear turned to sick as I threw myself down in front of the toilet, yanking open the lid, only having a moment to be curious about the strange mix of shredded wood there like you might find in the bottom of a hamster cage before the bile rose up and demanded exit, leaving me retching, each movement bringing a stab of pain to my stomach.