DEAD IN BED By Bailey Simms: The Complete Second Book

PART 10, SECTION 8

"No, it wasn't like that!" Shawn insisted. "I was assigned to guard her, that's all." He explained that Jason had arrested Lindsay for having withheld information about Bryce. But because she had a young son, they'd let her stay under house arrest in her motel room while the Home Guard council considered her case. Shawn had felt sorry for her, and especially for her son, Jake. He scrounged up a couple of toy cars and action figures, started playing toys with him to pass the time, and pretty soon Jake grew attached to Shawn as a kind of father figure. "After that, things started happening between me and Lindsay," Shawn confessed. "I fell in love with her, Ash. I'm so sorry, but I did. And when they sentenced her, I just had to help her escape. Everything changed for me. I just couldn't be part of the Home Guard anymore."

I was so taken aback that I didn't know what to think. I was shocked. Shawn's brave rescue of all those prisoners in the locker room had been for Lindsay's sake?

But I wasn't angry, not exactly. How could I be angry when I'd been the one to cheat on Shawn first, with Lindsay's husband of all people? Shawn had treated me horribly when he'd found out that I'd slept with Bryce Tripp, but he'd obviously changed since then. Even if his new personality was only the result of the TGV in his system, he had changed. And he had done a noble, brave thing by rescuing so many prisoners.

I remembered him on the football field, breaking free from the guard's grasp and racing toward the burning bodies.

"You let Jason burn." I was suddenly seeing everything Shawn had done that day in a new light. "You let him suffer on purpose. Why? Had he done something to Lindsay?"

For a moment Shawn didn't speak. Finally, he mumbled. "No. Thank God. Not to Lindsay." He was whispering so softly, I could barely hear him. "But he did something to you," he said. He looked genuinely upset. "Jason told me about what happened. He told me he drugged you, and beat you, then forced himself on you," Shawn said, seething at the memory. "He bragged about it. I was going to shoot him right along with all the other burning prisoners, but when I saw him suffering like that, I just couldn't do it. I just . . . I had to let him burn."

I didn't know what to say. No doubt when Jason had bragged about his exploits with me, he'd left out the part about me sticking an infected knitting needle up his ass. It may have been wrong to feel grateful to Shawn for letting Jason suffer, but I couldn't help it. That was how I felt.

Still, whatever Shawn had done to redeem himself, last night he'd slept with me without mentioning anything about Lindsay. It didn't matter that I may have come on to him first, or that I was still technically his wife. He should've told me.

"I gotta go," I said.

And it was true. I simply didn't have time to think about Shawn right now. Because just around the corner, one last refugee stood in line at Chris's door, still waiting to be tested for TGV.

It was my mom.

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