His Thrust: A Dark Small Town Romance (Pine Grove Book 3) Read online

  HIS THRUST

  A DARK SMALL TOWN ROMANCE

  BB HAMEL

  CONTENTS

  Special Offer!

  1. Emma

  2. Rhett

  3. Emma

  4. Rhett

  5. Emma

  6. Rhett

  7. Emma

  8. Rhett

  9. Emma

  10. Rhett

  11. Emma

  12. Rhett

  13. Emma

  14. Rhett

  15. Emma

  Also by BB Hamel

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2019 by B. B. Hamel

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Sign up for my mailing list and find out about new releases, giveaways, and more. Plus, get a free book and other awesome bonus material! Click here.

  1

  Emma

  T he guy behind the wheel lights a cigarette and blows his smoke out the window. “Pine Grove, huh?” he grunts at me.

  I shrug a little bit, watching the woods flash by in the dark. I catch glimpses of the forest all over the place, hemming in the road like barriers on either side, ghostly in the headlights.

  “You know anyone in town?” he asks.

  I shake my head. “Nope.”

  He’s quiet for a second. I glance in his direction and quickly look away. He’s older than me, probably in his thirties, and getting a little heavy as he ages. His eyes are squinty and dark and his flannel shirt has a stain on the right elbow, like he leans on something all day long. He looks like a football player getting old, a big guy shoved into a little seat, and he makes me uncomfortable.

  But I needed the ride. He was the only person that stopped to pick me up. I’ve been walking along the road for almost an entire day, and I was about ready to give up and sleep in the damn woods again when he pulled over and offered me a lift.

  “Why Pine Grove?” he asks.

  “I don’t know,” I admit. “I saw it on a map and thought…”

  “That it’d be a good place to disappear?”

  I smile at him. “Yeah. I guess so.”

  He sighs and doesn’t look at me. “Listen, you’re not the first one, you know? Pine Grove’s right smack dab in the middle of fuckin’ nowhere, so everyone thinks it’s perfect. But it’s far from perfect.”

  A strange chill runs down my spine. “Yeah? Why’s that?”

  He glances at me. “You’ll see, I guess.”

  I frown and look away from him. I’ve been getting a weird vibe from him ever since he picked me up, but I can’t refuse a ride. If I can get into town, at least I might have a chance of finding something to eat or maybe even a bench to sleep on.

  My stomach rumbles again and I know I need to get something in me soon. I haven’t eaten in over a day now, actually closer to two days. My head feels light and I know I’m running low on strength, but I’m desperate.

  I’m not turning back. I’d rather starve to death than turn back.

  We drive in silence for another half hour. I watch the trees slowly thin out until we turn into town, and he heads down the main, deserted street into Pine Grove.

  “Here it is,” he finally says. “Got a destination in mind?”

  I shake my head. “Not really.”

  He grunts and pulls the car over. We’re in the middle of a commercial area, lots of shops and stuff, but no people around, no cars.

  “Here’s as good a place as any. You got any money or a place to stay?”

  I shrug. “I’ll be fine.”

  He stares at me, and his gaze is hard. “Come here. I’ll give you some money if you’re nice to me.”

  I grab the handle of the door and fling it open before he can hit the lock button on his side. He curses and fumbles for me as I jump out of the car.

  “Bitch,” he grunts at me.

  I throw my bag over my shoulder and flip him off as I walk as fast as I can away from his car.

  For a second, I think he might follow. Instead, I hear his tires peel off down the road, and the car disappears into the night.

  I turn a corner and sigh. I lean up against a wall, heart hammering in my chest.

  That’s not the first time I’ve felt unsafe while hitchhiking across the country, but that’s the first time someone actually tried anything. Fucking hell, I knew that guy was weird, but…

  I sigh and grab the strap of my backpack. I have some clothes in there, nothing clean at this point, my wallet with my ID and nothing else, and that’s pretty much it. I sold anything of value a while back and now I’m basically just praying for something to work out.

  I don’t know what I’m doing here. I have no plan, no hope, no money, nothing. I’m homeless, a freaking runaway. I don’t know a thing about the world. I’m absolutely pathetic.

  My stomach rumbles. Well, I may be pathetic, but I’m also freaking starving.

  I stumble along the street, heading in a random direction. Ahead, there’s a crosswalk, and a convenience store is standing alone in a parking lot surrounded by tall hedges. I cross toward it and hesitate just a second before sneaking around toward the back.

  I’m not really thinking about it. I’m just moving. I’m so hungry, I don’t care at this point if I’m breaking the law. I need food, and there’s nothing else around, nothing open, no people to help, nothing. Just this crappy convenience store.

  At least it’s full of food, even if it’s all junk.

  I sneak around the back and find the door. I walk up to it, figuring it’ll be locked. I don’t have a plan for what I’ll do, but as soon as I grab the handle, it pulls open easily.

  I don’t stop and think about why the back door might be unlocked. It doesn’t occur to me that maybe, just maybe, I shouldn’t go inside. I mean, places like this lock the back door at night. Especially when it’s half past two in the morning.

  But I don’t think about it, of course. I’m too hungry to think about it.

  I stumble inside. This is so stupid, so reckless, and it’s not me. I’m not a thief, I don’t steal things, I don’t break into stores just to grab food. I was brought up to be a good person. I had it beaten into me, over and over, mercilessly, that I have to be a good person no matter what.

  Fuck being a good person if it means also being a hungry person.

  I stumble down a short hallway. I step in something slick and nearly slip but catch myself on the wall. It’s really dark and my eyes haven’t totally adjusted yet as I come up toward the main body of the store.

  I hear a weird sound up ahead. I stop, frozen in my tracks, just in the entrance to the left of the register.

  It’s a moan. I hear it again, definitely a moan, a freaking human moan.

  I see someone move, something scrape against the floor. One figure stands up, looking down.

  “Sorry, Kaleb,” the standing man says.

  There’s another groan, another person. I think it’s coming from the floor.

  The standing man raises something. My heart stops suddenly.

  The gun goes off, like an explosion in the small space.

  I stumble backwards. The moaning stops.

  “Asshole,” I hear the man with the gun say. He lowers it and slips it into his jeans. I don’t get a good look at him, and I don’t really care. At this point, I just want to run.

  But my legs aren’t working. They aren’t moving. I should be sprinting awa
y, running as fast as I can, but I’m totally frozen.

  The guy sighs. He kneels down and does something I can’t see, something to the body I’m pretty sure is lying at his feet.

  When suddenly there are sirens in the distance.

  “Shit,” the guy curses, standing. “Hit an alarm, didn’t you, asshole?” The guy sighs and turns in my direction.

  I need to run. I need to get out of there.

  He moves in my direction and stops. His eyes meet mine. I don’t know him, never seen him before right now, but he has dark hair, a handsome face, bags under his eyes.

  He cocks his head. “Who the fuck are you?”

  I don’t have time to answer. The sirens get closer, really close now, and he curses. He runs past me, pushing me aside. He tries to grab my wrist, fumbles for something, but I kick him as hard as I can. My foot slams into his crotch and he gasps.

  I kick him again and he stumbles away, back toward the door. I flatten myself against the wall as he runs away, bursting outside and into the night.

  I stand there, alone in the building as the cop car finally arrives. It screams into the parking lot and I hear one door open then close.

  I know I need to run. Finally, my legs start working again, adrenaline coursing through my veins. I hurry to the door and push my way out.

  And I run directly into a cop.

  “Stop,” the guy says, grabbing me, “hold on.”

  I wrestle with him, but he’s strong. He’s twice my size, muscular, his grip like iron as he grabs my wrists and lifts me up off the ground.

  “Holy shit, calm down,” he says. “What the hell is happening?”

  I struggle to get away. I know what this looks like. I need to get away before he goes in there, before he sees.

  “I didn’t do it,” I say. “I swear to god. It was the other guy!”

  “What other guy?” he asks. “Calm down and talk to me, miss.”

  I finally stop struggling. He slowly lowers me down and takes a half step back.

  I turn and look into his startlingly green eyes. He’s handsome, gorgeous actually. I didn’t expect him to be so freaking attractive, and for a second, I’m taken aback. He’s in his forties, gray highlights in his otherwise black hair. He’s wearing a police uniform, his right hand on the gun at his hip.

  “Someone…someone’s dead,” I manage to say.

  His face clouds over. “Where?”

  I point back to the building. “In there.”

  He stares at me. “And there’s someone else?”

  “He’s running,” I say. “That way.” I point in the direction I saw the guy head toward, although I have no clue where he is now.

  The cop frowns at me. “Who are you? Why are you here?”

  “I’m… Emma,” I manage.

  He sighs and grabs my wrist. “Come on,” he says.

  I stumble along behind him. “No, stop,” I say, struggling again. “Let me go.”

  He half turns back to me. “If you don’t stop fighting, I swear to god I’m going to carry you. Show me the body.”

  I hesitate for a second and he yanks me forward. We stumble back into the building.

  He turns a flashlight on. There’s red on the floor, something dark and sticky.

  It’s blood.

  He curses. “Where?” he says, his voice more urgent.

  “In there.”

  He pulls me behind him. I can see where I stepped in the blood, where I left footprints. We hurry back into the store and we go through the aisles until we find the body.

  Blood everywhere. His head broken into pieces.

  The cop curses and grabs his radio. “Dispatch, this is Rhett. We got a body at The Fast Fresh. Over.”

  “Chief, seriously? A body?” The voice on the other end of the radio is male and sounds young.

  “Yeah, dumbass. Wake everyone. Over.”

  The man sighs and turns away. He grabs me tighter. “You’re coming with me.”

  “What?”

  He tugs me along behind him again. We head back out and into the night.

  “Officer, wait, wait, wait. I didn’t do that back there. I don’t… I don’t even have a gun.”

  “You don’t, huh,” he says, uninterested.

  He tugs me along toward his car.

  “Officer, please, wait. I was just hungry. I haven’t eaten. I just got into town and the door was open and I went in, I was going to pay, I swear I was going to pay them back. I just went in, and I saw the guy, and the gunshot, and—”

  “Okay, enough,” he says, turning back toward me, his gorgeous eyes locking onto mine. “Stop. Okay?”

  “Okay.” I blink at him.

  “Listen to me.” He puts his hands on my shoulders. “You have to come with me. This place is going to be swarming with cops soon, and if you’re still here, you’re going to get sucked into that. You want to get sucked in?”

  “No,” I whisper.

  “Come with me. I’ll take care of you.”

  I don’t know why those words almost make me cry.

  Nobody’s ever said that to me before. Nobody’s ever said they’d take care of me, not once, never in my entire life.

  And now, here’s this gorgeous older cop, and I just…

  I believe him.

  “Okay,” I say. “I’ll come with you.”

  “Good.”

  He walks me over to his car, opens the back door, and gestures at it. I climb inside and he slams the door shut behind me.

  He gets in the front seat and starts the car. He turns back and looks at me.

  “You’re making the right choice,” he says softly.

  And we drive into the night.

  2

  Rhett

  T he girl in my back seat stares up at me with wild eyes and I can’t help but wonder why the fuck I’m doing this.

  I mean, there’s the obvious. She’s fucking gorgeous. Perfect, tight little body hidden under a dark sweater and tight jeans, long black hair, light blue eyes, and pretty lips that scream for my cock. That’s the easy reason, the surface-level reason.

  There’s gotta be more than that. I mean, shit, saving a pretty girl is a lot of fucking trouble. If she actually killed poor Kaleb, then I’d be aiding a goddamn murderer, and that wouldn’t look too great.

  The Pine Grove police chief can’t be caught taking care of murderers, no matter how pretty they are.

  The thing is this girl doesn’t strike me as a killer. I saw the blood back there, even in the hallway, and the door showed signs of a forced entry. There was clearly a struggle and someone overpowered Kaleb. I can’t imagine this girl did that, small as she fucking is. I can’t imagine she fought Kaleb, forced him into the store, and executed him right there on the floor.

  Not with the way she’s acting. If she were a killer, she wouldn’t be so damn freaked out.

  No, there’s just no way this girl did it. Even still, if I had left her back there, she’d be drawn into this investigation like a moth to a flame. There’d be no escaping its pull, and I bet they’d even try to pin it on her in the end.

  Here’s the thing about Pine Grove. You’d think, being a small town in the middle of nowhere and all, that there wouldn’t be all that much crime. But you’d think wrong. And here’s the thing: most of the crimes, the big ones at least, don’t get solved.

  We have a horrible close rate. Our numbers are in the fucking toilet, and although that doesn’t matter all that much, not for a little fucking small-town outfit like ourselves, it’s still pretty bad. People out here, they feel safe, they want to be protected.

  But they’re far from fucking safe.

  Truth is, I could see one of those detectives pinning it on the girl just because. I could see any number of prosecutors take the case, even with flimsy as fuck evidence, just because it would be a win for a town that desperately needs a win. We’ve had too many people disappear over the years, too many bodies up and vanish. We need to start solving some damn murders.

/>   So this girl, she’d go down for it, I can almost promise that. Taking her away from the scene like I am, hell, I’m saving her life.

  Not that she understands it right now.

  “What’s your name?” I ask her as I drive.

  “Emma,” she says, her voice soft.

  “Emma. I’m Rhett.”

  She doesn’t answer. I don’t blame her. I’m the asshole cop that threw her in the back of his car for no apparent reason.

  “Listen, Emma,” I say. “We’re going to the department right now. Do you understand that?”

  She frowns at me. “You’re taking me to jail?”

  “Sort of,” I say. “We have some cells there, holding tank sort of things. I’m going to put you in one.”

  Her eyes go wide. “Wait. No. Please, don’t do that.”

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I need to put you somewhere. I’m going to tell people I found you stumbling around outside drunk, and I’m letting you sober up.”

  She shakes her head. “Please. I can’t go to jail. I really… I can’t.”

  “Listen. You’ll be safe. You’ll wait it out there, while the heat gets bad. When it’s passed, I’ll let you go. Okay?”

  She shakes her head violently. Her eyes are wide, and I can tell she’s panicking, even just from looking at her in my rearview mirror.

  “Please don’t put me in jail.”

  “Emma,” I say. “You’re going to be fine. You said you were hungry, right? I’ll get you something to eat, a blanket, and a pillow. You can rest.”

  She shakes her head again, but this time, she doesn’t look like she’s about to try and make a break for it. “I don’t like confined places,” she says softly.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “This is the best I can do. You want to become a suspect in a murder case? In a small town like this, a total stranger like yourself?”

  She goes quiet for a second. Finally, she shakes her head.

  “Didn’t think so,” I say, looking back at the road. “Just follow me and don’t say a goddamn word.”

  She stares out the window again, still fidgeting, but not freaking out. Poor fucking girl, I wonder what happened to her, why she’s out here, what she’s running from.