Seeking Sanctuary_A Shelter Me Novel

  Seeking Sanctuary (Shelter Me Series)

  © Copyright 2018 Annie Anderson

  Published by Annie Anderson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, including electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the publisher, except in case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it to the seller and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  Cover Art by: Tattered Quill Designs

  Edited by: Emily Maynard & Barb Shuler

  Formatted by: Tattered Quill Designs

  For those of you who survived.

  I am lucky to name myself among you.

  Contents

  Introduction

  Warning

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  If you need help, you’re not alone…

  Be Awesome… Leave a Review.

  Sneak Peek of Scattered Ashes

  Also by Annie Anderson

  Are You Part of the Legion Yet?

  About the Author

  Introduction

  A long time ago, I was very, very scared. I did not have control over my body, I was not safe, I could not make my own choices, and I could not protect myself.

  I’m not special. There are millions of people out there who have been in that exact same spot, or are still in mired in a hell they think they cannot escape. I’m one of many.

  This story isn’t that one, and that particular story might never get told. But there are some elements of my past sprinkled throughout Seeking Sanctuary, so if you’re a survivor like me, you might feel this story a little too much.

  If you put it down and never pick it back up again, you won’t hurt my feelings. Anything you can do to keep yourself safe - from former monsters or ones still in your life - is a-okay with me.

  Just know that you’re in my thoughts. And if you need help, there are organizations who can and will do so.

  The National Domestic Violence Hotline

  1-800-799-7233

  www.thehotline.org

  RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network)

  800-656 HOPE (4673)

  www.rainn.org

  Warning

  I warn all my readers that I write for adults. I warn them that I have a trash mouth, write about sex and love, violence and death. I write about life in all its raw glory. You have been sufficiently warned.

  * * *

  Here be monsters.

  1

  ISLA

  The longest love affair of my life has been with math. I fell in love with her when I was four in Mrs. Nolan’s pre-k class and never looked back. I loved her numbers and consistency. Math never let me down, always told the truth, and was the same in every language, every country. Math didn’t give a shit if I was a discarded child (I was), didn’t care if I was popular in school (I wasn’t), or had a decent home life (I didn’t). Math didn’t give a single fuck about any of that trivial bullshit.

  One plus one always equalled two.

  Or at least it did a week ago.

  I grew up in the revolving door of the Sunshine State’s foster system, bouncing from family to family like a damn vagabond until I got too old and went to a lovely (not) group home. I wouldn’t say my life has been sunshine and roses, and I’m aware of my issues with abandonment. Those issues are hard to escape, even at twenty-seven.

  Hell, I didn’t even apply to state colleges for fear of being rejected. I had no rational reason for that fear. I was in the top ten percent of my graduating class, had enough extracurriculars, foreign languages, civil service, blah, blah, blah. It didn’t really matter. Too many of my classmates didn’t get into the schools they wanted, and I swear it’s like you need the blood of a virgin and oil money to get into college these days.

  I found my way regardless, taking night, online, and weekend classes in bookkeeping and accounting at the local community college. Grabbing the first job I could manage, I worked my way up. The Florida panhandle wasn’t exactly the best for non-seasonal work, but I managed to find a home at a moderately-sized real estate company. It was a place where I didn’t have to talk to anyone and got to roll in numbers all day long.

  My love affair with math continued.

  But today seemed to be the day math and I were going to break up because so far she’d lied to me twice. The first time, when she counted out two lines on the pregnancy test I took this morning in the employee bathroom, and the next when she refused to allow me to balance the escrow account I was currently working on.

  Okay, so the two lines were more my fault than hers, but since I couldn’t quite wrap my head around that particular dilemma, I was shifting the blame squarely onto her shoulders. Well, math’s and my soon-to-be ex-boyfriend, Cole.

  Yeah, I know there is a baby on the way now, but staying with that asshole was going to get me killed. He and I differed on several principles. Like how to be faithful in a relationship, how not to be an asshole, and most importantly, how not to slap around your girlfriend. My cheek was still sore from last night’s argument, my ribs ached from last week’s scuffle, and my shoulder probably needed an MRI from last month’s run in. There were more injuries to count, but those were the mental ones and not the physical.

  Staying in a shitty, abusive relationship is precisely what got my mother killed and me tossed into the system. I knew exactly what’s in my future if I try to stick it out. My plan needed to move double time and retrofitted now that there was a baby involved.

  It wasn’t like I had friends – that required speaking to people – and I sure as shit didn’t have any family. If I’d had any family to speak of, I wouldn’t have spent my formative years in group home hell. As far as I knew, my mother was in the ground, and my father was doing twenty to life in the Florida State Penitentiary. Incidentally, those two things weren’t related. Dad’s been in the pen longer than I could remember, and Mom got killed by a drug-dealing boyfriend and not my father. Or so the story goes.

  I needed to get the hell out of Dodge, but this escrow account had put a serious kink in my schedule.

  The plan was to wait until Cole was on his annual family Memorial Day trip to Grand Cayman and skedaddle with my shit and move. I didn’t have a new job lined up, or an apartment, but I had a will to live and a plan. I just needed the time. I only had a day to go.

  One. Damn. Day.

  But my plan was shot to shit now.

>   The escrow account errors made absolutely no sense. The money went straight in, was held until the property sold, and then went right back out. This was supposed to be my easy account to balance. There were no expenditures – or at least there shouldn’t be. But the statement balance didn’t add up, and the representative with the bank wasn't very forthcoming.

  Our company was in the middle of this massive deal for the brand-new resort in Sand Dollar Beach. Multi-million-dollar units, private beaches, amenities galore. The escrow account that held the earnest money for each unit – fifty-five of them to be exact – was deposited into the account until the properties were built, closed, and inspected. We’d barely broken ground, but the escrow account – that was in the billion-dollar range last week – was about ninety million dollars short. My head was going to explode – or maybe implode – I wasn’t sure which.

  I’d tried tracing the money, but the account rep with the bank was stone-walling me, and my online access to our accounts was acting up. All I had were the PDF statements that highlighted significant withdrawals to accounts that we didn’t have.

  None of this spelled good things. Especially now since I couldn’t exactly skip town with a shit-ton of money missing.

  I groaned as I shoved back from my desk and rubbed my tired, burning eyes. Said eyes flicked to the clock on my screen. It was past eight in the evening, and given the day I’d had, I was more than ready to pack it up. I could work on it more at home – maybe try to find out more about the accounts or something before I left. I saved my spreadsheets, closed down the accounting software, and saved the PDF’s of the bank statements to my USB drive and ejected it. Packing up my stuff, I straightened the papers on my desk, plopped the USB in my bag, and grabbed my lunch bag. I was almost out the door, slinging my purse over my shoulder when a pair of hands dug their way into my ribs.

  I hissed in pain – which was likely the intended reaction – my ribs still tender from Cole’s outburst last week when he thought a realtor was looking too long at my legs.

  Like it was my fault what some asshole did with his eyes. I was wearing trousers for fuck’s sake.

  At any rate, I dropped my purse and lunch bag, the contents of both scattering across the slate gray carpet for all the world to see.

  All of the contents.

  Including the blue and white pregnancy test box.

  It didn’t matter if the world at large saw it, but the tall, broad, dark-haired man in my office was the last person I wanted knowing that particular secret.

  “What is this, Isla?” Cole whispered, his eyes latching onto the box. I hated his whisper. It heralded so many more things – worse things. The whisper came before the shout, before fists, and open-handed slaps. It came before the kicks and knees to the belly. That whisper chilled the blood in my veins, freezing me where I stood.

  “I-it’s a p-pregnancy test, Cole,” I stuttered, knowing full well not answering would hurt worse. The emerald of his eyes almost blazed in fury. You would have thought I got pregnant on purpose. I assure you that was not the case.

  Having children was never in my life plan, but I had no idea how much I wanted the baby in my belly until I saw his face twist. Up until that second, a baby made zero sense and the thought of keeping it filled me with dread. Until that second, the idea of being pregnant wasn’t even close to real.

  Until that second…

  “I can fucking see that, Isla. Why the fuck do you have a pregnancy test?” he roared just like I knew he would. What I didn’t foresee was the hand at my throat and the indiscriminate way he squeezed as he pushed me back. My hips met the sharp edge of my modern steel and mahogany desk, my back following suit as it slammed to the desktop.

  Cole didn’t care about my answer, if he did, he would have let me speak. As it was, I could barely breathe.

  My fingers clawed at his hand, the nails sinking into his flesh. Cole’s hiss of pain – while satisfactory – did nothing to lessen his hold on me, didn’t let in even the slightest bit of breath.

  “Who have you been fucking, you little whore?” he bellowed, spittle hitting me in the face as he reached a hand up my pencil skirt, tearing at my stockings. “You let someone in here? This is mine. You don’t give it away to anyone but me, you little bitch!”

  I clenched my legs closed, trying to stop his hand, but my legs weren’t strong enough. I kicked out, my fingers abandoning Cole's hands in search for something – anything – to make him stop. My elbow caught on my gold-foiled glass pencil holder, knocking it over and spilling the contents everywhere. I’d gotten it at a thrift shop for a dollar and change when I landed this job. I thought it was so classy and pretty – like something a polished, stately woman would have on her desk.

  But I was neither classy nor polished as evidenced by my live-in boyfriend trying to kill me.

  I kicked out again, the heel of one of my pumps gouging his shin. Cole roared back, releasing his hold on my throat. I sucked in a glorious breath, but my victory was cut short when the heavy palm of his hand blasted fire across my cheek and nose. He was wearing his college class ring, and the metal gouged my cheek.

  The strike rocked me, and I rolled, reaching for something, anything I could use to defend myself. Why had I cleaned my desk?

  The light caught an orb of a glass paperweight I could bash him with if I could just reach it. My fingers grazed the thick glass ball when the vice grip of his fingers closed around my knees, yanking me back to the edge of my desk and prying them open so he could wedge his hips between them.

  My elbow grazed the pile of pens and pencils scattered across the desk, my eyes latching on the saving grace of a solid silver letter opener. One second he was screaming in my face, and the next my shaking fingers closed around my only sliver of refuge.

  Without the barest of thought, I buried the letter opener into his gut, the action stopping him like a record scratch.

  Cole staggered back, his bottle green eyes flashing wide as he stared at the silver, filigreed handle coated in the fresh scarlet of his blood still in my hand. He stumbled back another step before his knees refused to hold him, buckling under the strain, and sent him backward. His head made a solid crack against the wooden filing cabinet on his way down.

  Yep, math had definitely fucked me over more than once today.

  2

  ISLA

  I needed bleach.

  Yes, that was my first thought as I watched my unmoving, more-than-likely-dead now ex-boyfriend for signs of life. I knew I should check – make sure he was either dead (my preference) or alive – but I just couldn’t make myself do it.

  Adrenaline pumped through my veins, triggering hot tears and weak limbs. The copper tang of blood filled my mouth, and the fire of my nose blazed enough for me to know it was more than likely bloody if not broken. A sob escaped my vice-like hold, and the fire in my throat alerted me that I almost died.

  No, we almost died. My hands flew to my belly without thought, pressing to my still-flat tummy.

  With shaking hands, I slid off the desk, trying to organize my chaotic thoughts. I’d have settled for just regulating my breathing at that point. I had to think, but at that moment I was more concerned with keeping the contents of my stomach, well, in my stomach.

  I should have called the cops, but my brain was stuck on getting the fuck out of there and disappearing before someone found Cole decomposing in my office. I couldn’t take back what I did, and I couldn’t make myself feel sorry for it either.

  It was him or us, and I picked us.

  A halo of blood grew from his scalp, staining the slate carpet black, and something about that slow creep of darkening fibers kicked my ass into gear.

  The first order of business was cleaning the blood off of the letter opener still in my hand. I snatched a tissue from the travel pack I usually kept in my purse, locating it under the floral zippered pouch of pads and tampons that I no longer needed, and took care of the blood. But once the blood was on the tissue, I realized
this whole room was bathed in evidence.

  All of it. The body I couldn’t move, the letter opener, the scattered remnants of my desk, my fingerprints.

  Hell, my purse’s contents were strewn everywhere…

  That thought spurred me on, and I dropped to my knees, grabbing everything I could reach, stuffing my phone and wallet and bits and bobs back in the cavern of my handbag while eyeing the immobile Cole like a coiled snake. My fingers slipped around the slim blue flash drive, and I tossed it in with the letter opener, and the pregnancy test that started this whole mess. I scanned the room for anything else I could need. Finding nothing, I searched the haphazard hollow of my purse for my keys, locking the thick wooden office door behind me like I did every night.

  The office was empty, which wasn’t an unusual occurrence. It was normal for me to stay late if I had a project and add in that everyone was gone for the holiday; the office was a ghost town at little after noon. But the quiet hallway to the exit seemed wrong somehow. How could everything be so ordinary after what just happened? Shouldn’t the world be different now?

  I knew I was.

  The drive to our apartment was quick, so quick I don’t even remember it. Then, I think on the word ‘our’ and I want to slap the shit out of myself. I moved in with Cole two months ago after nearly six months of dating and over a year of him trying to court me. He was intelligent and protective. He understood my reluctance to date, and I was fooled. This was before Cole got angry at the drop of a hat. Before he was more possessive than protective. I was such an idiot. It wasn’t like I didn’t see all of the warning signs with my mother.