Bind and Keep Me, Book 2 Read Free Page B

Jodie.
    “How are you feeling? I’m thinking you need a doctor. How groggy are you? Do you feel sick?” Had she been raped? I wasn’t asking that, not yet. That was a definite possibility, even if wondering about it made me feel like going back and killing the man again.
    If she seemed to be getting sicker, I’d be phoning for an ambulance.
    “My stomach feels funny. I thought I was going to vomit. But not now.” She shifted her legs up and closer to me, until her knees bumped my shoulder, then she felt my face with her fingers, patting me like she too couldn’t be sure this was real,
I
was real. “I just couldn’t get loose. And I can’t remember anything before I woke. Only coming here and drinking champagne. I don’t think I even finished one glass…” The hitch in her voice was followed by Jodie searching my face. “Klaus, what are you hiding?”
    I watched those beautiful eyes take stock. How in hell she’d figured this out, I did not know. I should work on my poker face. Least I knew now she was thinking fine. I had to tell her.
    “I killed the man, Jodie. The man on the bed with the woman who looks like you. Who I thought
was
you. There’s more, though.”
    Tiny creases formed between her eyebrows, and I caressed the curves above each brow while I waited for her next words, her next question.
    “You killed him…” Fear poured out with her next sluggish words. “What happened in there? It’s something terrible, isn’t it? That would be Melissa on the bed. What’s happened? You can tell me.” Her voice quavered.
    If I said this the wrong way, would I lose her? I had only one excuse, and it was Jodie. I’d thought it was
her
corpse.
What an ugly word corpse is. But death is damn ugly
.
    “The woman is dead. I killed him because he was lying beside her, and she has been strangled by a rope around her neck and her hands are tied. And I thought…he’d killed you.” I swallowed. I had to say this. “I thought it was you he’d killed, so when he started to vomit, I held him so he’d breathe it in. I let him die. I
made
him die.” The rest.
Say
it all. “And I’m not sorry.”
    “Ohmigod.”
    I sighed. “The other thing is there’s another woman in there, handcuffed still, but okay, and she saw what I did. I didn’t see her until after.” When her expression didn’t alter, I figured I needed to spell out what that meant. “She is a witness to me killing this man.”
    “Oh, Klaus. Oh god. I don’t know what to say. I shouldn’t have come here.” She began to rock, shaking her head against the rug, over and over, as if by denying it she could change what had happened. Her face went a smudged red and white. “It’s my fault. Now you’ll go to jail and it’s my fault. It’s my fault. I’m sorry.” She made a strangled squeak. “I’m sorry.”
    “What! The hell it is. It’s not your fault.” I wiped away the tears leaking from her eyes, thinking as fast as I could under the circumstances. “They can’t tell that I did this. People do that all the time when drugged, and he was drugged. Maybe she’ll stay quiet if I ask her to?”
    “I don’t want to lose you! I should have said no to coming. I should have known.” She wrapped her hand around my finger that had been stroking her forehead and sobbed, her shoulders trembling.
    Was it the aftereffects of whatever she’d taken? This was irrational. “Of course it’s not your fault.
Shh. Shh
. Let me think this through.”
    For once though, I was having trouble getting it all lined up in my head. I’d murdered someone. Bad man or not, it was what I’d done.
    And I’d been seen doing it. That was, for me, the worst of it. For a man who always liked the moral high ground, I had awful shaky foundations.
    I leaned my head in my palm, with Jodie still clutching the other hand. I had to do right for her as much as me. I had no right to drag her into something illegal, to make her a victim again.
    I didn’t want to go to