Vicious Carousel

  Retribution would be especially difficult for Jack now with the restraining order against him. An attorney would have to go through Ed to contact her, and Ed had already promised her that he would thwart any attempts along those lines in the most expensive, costly, and time-consuming ways possible, so that any attorney Jack might be able to afford to hire in the future wouldn’t even want to touch the case.

  “Realistically,” she asked, “what are the chances of him getting out on bail?”

  He shrugged. “Doubtful,” he said. “But I’ve seen strange things happen before. The judge already denied one bail reduction request. I can promise you that I will do my damnedest to make sure the prosecutor buries whatever poor PD he draws under a mountain of paperwork. I know the woman assigned to your case. She’s got a great track record of negotiating pro-victim plea deals for domestic violence cases. And the few that go to court, she nearly always wins them.”

  “Jack’s not going to want to just roll over.”

  “Maybe not,” Ed said, “but if he doesn’t, he’ll wish he had by the time this is over.”

  * * * *

  Betsy had been sitting on the couch with Loren and Ross and watching the local evening news when Kenny and Nolan arrived home almost at the same time.

  That was when a story caught her attention.

  “In Sarasota, John Adams Bourke was arrested early Sunday morning on charges of domestic battery, assault, and false imprisonment.”

  Her blood chilled, everyone falling silent as the female anchor from the Tampa station continued. An evidence picture of the chain, where it had still been bolted to the wall, flashed on the screen as the voiceover continued.

  “Police reports state he’d kept his live-in girlfriend, Elizabeth Lambert, chained against her will like a slave. She was finally able to escape from the apartment late Saturday night after allegedly suffering a brutal beating by Bourke, and called friends for help.”

  The screen changed again, to video of Barbara Stallings being interviewed. “The victim in this case is in hiding out of fear, and rightfully so,” Stallings said. “In addition to past injuries, in the most recent attack she’d suffered a concussion, facial lacerations and injuries, and other wounds consistent with a brutal assault. Our office plans on prosecuting this case to the fullest extent.”

  The reporter interviewing her noted, “The public defender representing the defendant states this is a case of Fifty Shades kind of consensual sexual play.”

  Stallings looked like she wanted to slug the man interviewing her, but she pursed her lips together before finally answering. “There was nothing consensual at all about the kind of severe facial injuries the victim suffered. She had a concussion, required stitches, one eye swollen shut. There is a huge difference between some rough consensual sex play and being beaten up and chained against your will. And I’m sure there’s not a jury in the world who will disagree with the state’s case there.”

  The voiceover continued as the picture changed to another shot of the chain, this time of the locked loop that had been around her ankle, dried blood on the links almost looking like rust. “The suspect has not posted bail yet, and at a bond reduction hearing, a judge denied his request. The victim’s attorney, Edward Payne, has already filed for and received a restraining order for his client.”

  The picture changed again, this time showing Ed. “My client has requested, for her safety as well as her privacy, to please be left alone. Even with her attacker in jail, she fears for her safety. She will not be speaking to the media at this time or giving any statements except through me.”

  The scene switched once again, to video of the apartment, shot through the kitchen window and showing it empty except for a few stray items lying around. “There were suspicions of something amiss even before this.” Then, an interview with the next door neighbors.

  “Yeah,” the man said. “We heard bad sounds sometimes. Almost called the cops a couple of times. But she never spoke to us. She always looked scared. We weren’t home Saturday night. I wish we had been to help her out. We came home and there were police everywhere. I’m not surprised, I hate to say. That guy was never friendly. Few times I saw him and her together, he was ordering her around. But it wasn’t our business, you know?”

  Back to the anchor. “Requests for comment from the suspect, made through his attorney, have not been answered.” The camera angle changed, and she looked at it. “A special delivery for a new Tampa mom, whose little bundle of joy decided not to wait, had traffic tied up on the—”

  Nolan grabbed the remote and shut the TV off. “Okay,” he quietly said. “That wasn’t so bad.”

  Betsy felt like she wanted to scream, to cry, to vomit, but sat motionless.

  How many times in the past had a story like that flashed on the TV news, and she’d barely paid any attention to it? Not even ninety seconds, and poof, onto the next story.

  Her phone rang, startling her. It was Ed, but she still passed the phone to Ross, who glanced at it before answering. “Yeah. We just saw it…Yes, she did…Okay, thanks.” He hung up and returned the phone to her. “It’ll probably run again at eleven. He tried to talk them into not giving your name, but they wouldn’t make him any promises since it wasn’t a sexual crime.”

  What little appetite she’d had before quickly fled as she stood. “I guess I won’t be watching the eleven o’clock news, then. Excuse me, I need to go lie down.”

  She softly closed her bedroom door behind her. With the help of her friends the past few days, the bedroom was tidy, as if she’d always lived here. No more hastily stashed piles of items. Everything had a place and was neatly tucked away.

  It even felt like home.

  That scared her.

  She studied the shark’s tooth, where it lay in a small crystal dish on her dresser. The dish had been one of the few things she’d managed to hold onto when she moved in with Jack. It had belonged to her grandmother, and Jack had let her keep potpourri in it. When they’d returned to the apartment that night to grab her stuff before taking her to the ER, it’d been something she’d specifically asked for, besides her photo albums.

  Before she’d moved in with Jack, it’d sat in her living room, on the shelf next to her TV, and had held several rocks, shells, and other little small trinkets she’d picked up over the years.

  Things Jack had forced her to get rid of because, to him, they were junk.

  Things that had been her life, and meaningful to her.

  The shark’s tooth was her first new addition to the dish.

  Turning, she went to lie down, feeling weary and sad to her very core.

  Chapter Fourteen

  When it was obvious Jack wasn’t making bail, and no one from the media had tracked Betsy or any of their friends down, the next Wednesday, Tilly signed off from LA on Betsy spending the day alone at the men’s house, if that’s what she really wanted.

  It was.

  Betsy had known in the beginning she’d needed her friends’ love and support and protection. She now needed some alone time to decompress. She also wanted the day alone to process what she’d talked about with the counsellor the day before.

  She had a lot of work to do on herself. Yes, before this, she’d had some relationship patterns that weren’t exactly healthy, even though they’d never led to anything so violent before. She’d pushed people away, and when she’d finally let someone in, she’d let the wrong kind of person in without taking a healthy stand.

  Asking Tilly and Eliza to play matchmaker for her was tempting, but Betsy knew she needed to do this work herself.

  After the men went to work, ensuring she’d securely locked the door behind them, she went to take a shower. She didn’t even need the shower chair anymore. After she got out, with a towel wrapped around her damp hair, she wiped steam from the mirror and stared at her reflection. While still swollen a little, and bruised, at least now she could completely open her right eye again and see out of it.

  The face
staring back at her almost looked recognizable again.

  Almost.

  Tilly had also told her she could take a break for the day from her job search. To spend it taking care of herself, reading, relaxing, even sleeping, if that was what she wanted.

  What Betsy wanted to do was help out a little and start pulling her own weight. The men had spent a chunk of the weekend doing chores inside and out, and she felt badly that they’d gently refused her help doing any of them.

  After putting on shorts and a T-shirt, she pulled her still-damp hair back in an elastic band and started working. The house wasn’t dirty, and the men were decent housekeepers. But there were always things to do. She dusted the living room, vacuumed and mopped the floors, wiped down all the kitchen counters and cleaned the fridge.

  Then she cleaned all three bathrooms, did her laundry and theirs, and by the time Nolan got home from work, she had a roasted chicken and side dishes almost ready for dinner, and had brushed her hair out so she even looked halfway presentable.

  Her heart nervously fluttered in her chest when Nolan walked in the door. “Oh, hey, that smells delicious.” He gave her a quick peck on the cheek before walking down to his bedroom.

  Nervous tension ratcheted up inside her, tight, painfully so. She didn’t understand why and was trying to figure it out when Kenny walked in the door.

  More painful tension.

  “Hey, sweetie.” Another innocent peck on the cheek. “Mmm, yum. Let me go change.”

  “Okay.”

  As the minutes ticked past, she stifled the urge to scream, completely unsure why she felt that way, which disturbed her most of all.

  She jumped when she heard the men’s bedroom door open, followed by the sound of them talking as they returned to the kitchen.

  Then they stopped in the doorway and she froze.

  Nolan looked concerned. “Bets, are you all right?”

  “I…I cleaned the house today.”

  He glanced around, looking confused. “Oookaaay?”

  “And did laundry.”

  Kenny’s brow furrowed. “Thank you?”

  * * * *

  The hackles on the back of Kenny’s neck stood up, as if a huge lightning strike were about to hit in the middle of an afternoon storm.

  And he was standing there holding a lightning rod.

  In the pocket of his shorts, he had the small shark’s tooth necklace for Betsy that he’d picked up at lunch in Sarasota. He’d seen it in a store on Main Street as he was walking back to work, and he’d bought it for her on a whim. It wasn’t expensive, a cheap tourist souvenir, but considering the shark’s tooth she had in her dish, he thought maybe she’d like it.

  She was acting terrified, frightened, her body language screaming fear with neon-bright energy.

  “Did you want to check what I did?” she asked.

  She didn’t even sound right, the low, tight tone to her voice sounding nothing like the woman he’d quickly grown more than a little fond of over the past week and a half she’d been living with them.

  “Why?” Nolan asked.

  Kenny quickly stepped forward, something instinctive in him welling up, protective. His hand slipped into his pocket to find the necklace. Nothing much, just a tooth and some beads strung on a black cord. His fingers closed around it, but he didn’t pull it out yet.

  “Bets,” Kenny softly said, “we appreciate you helping out.” He deliberately kept his tone low, gentle, slow, afraid of spooking her in whatever this mental state was that she’d suddenly dropped into.

  Tilly had warned them about PTSD. That Betsy might go through it, and that it might trigger in strange, unexpected, and baffling ways, but that they always had to be patient with her when or if it did.

  She edged away from them. “If I did something wrong, I’ll do it again.”

  He shook his head. “We don’t have any rules about how chores are done. We appreciate you volunteering to help.” He heard Nolan start to speak behind him and he held his other hand up to silence him.

  “I…I just wanted to help,” she said, her eyes growing bright. Tears pooled there, spilling down her cheeks.

  “We know, sweetie,” Kenny said, slowly bringing his hand out of his pocket, concealing the necklace. “And we appreciate it.”

  She looked at him, to Nolan, back to him. He wasn’t even sure at this point if she realized what she was doing. She trembled, her color poor, pale. He was actually afraid she might be close to fainting, but he didn’t want to swoop in, instinctively sure any sudden moves would terrify her, even though he didn’t understand why.

  “I swear, I’ll do it over if it’s not right.”

  He took a risk and lapsed into what Nolan always teased him was Dom tone. “Bets, look me in the eye, sweetie.”

  She finally did. It broke his heart that he couldn’t just fix this shit for her.

  “Why are you scared, right now?” he asked.

  Her mouth opened…closed…Then her gaze darted around.

  “Bets,” he said. “Look at me.”

  She did.

  “I’m sorry we’re scaring you. What did we do to scare you, sweetie?” And that was the only word for it. Terrified. He didn’t know why, but she was.

  “You…you didn’t.” She frowned, and he wasn’t sure if she was frowning at him, or at herself.

  He tried a trick Tilly had taught them. “I’m going to ask you something, and you need to answer me without thinking about it first. The first thing that pops into your mind. Okay?”

  She nodded.

  He took a risk and added a little more Dom tone. “Why are you scared of us right now?”

  “Please don’t punish me,” she whispered. “If I did the chores wrong, please don’t punish me. I don’t know your rules. We haven’t talked about your rules yet, and I was trying to do the best I could.” She broke down sobbing, her hair hanging, concealing her face as she slumped against the counter.

  Rage and sorrow warred inside him. He instinctively shifted to the side to block Nolan when he heard his partner’s gasp of horror behind him and sensed him trying to step forward. He knew Nolan wanted to do exactly what Kenny wanted to do, and that was protect her and take away her fear.

  Only she could do that, though. Only she could work through this.

  He had to reach behind him and swat at Nolan to hold him back. “Sweetie,” Kenny said, “what did Jack do to you about chores?”

  He couldn’t see her face through her curtain of hair. “If…I tried so hard. In the beginning, he told me how good I was. I tried harder. Then…it was like every day, even if I did stuff exactly the way he told me, he’d find something wrong. Or change it. Until I never did anything right, no matter how many times I tried to do it, it was always wrong, even if it was right before.”

  He had to force his breathing to stay slow, steady. “And he’d punish you for it?”

  She nodded.

  He took another deep breath. “Sweetie, here is our rule about chores, and it’s the only rule we have about chores—we will never punish you about chores. Ever. Understand?”

  She nodded, but tears still spilled down her cheeks and onto the counter, her body wracked with silent sobs.

  He edged forward, slowly, not wanting to spook her. “Not even if you do them badly, not even if you don’t do any at all. You have our word, absolutely no punishments about chores. Understand?”

  She nodded again.

  “Is that why you got so scared when you asked if we wanted to see what you’d done?”

  More nodding.

  “Tell us.”

  “As…as soon as he got home from work every day…usually…that’s what he did first thing. Find out what to punish me for. The…the first…in the beginning, he always made it seem like he felt badly about it. Like he didn’t want to punish me…but later it was for fun. I could tell. Fun for him. Why did I let him do this to me?”

  “Look at me, sweetie.”

  She finally did.

&n
bsp; He opened his hand and held it, palm-up, showing her the necklace. “Do you trust us?”

  She looked from it to him and back again, nodding.

  * * * *

  Holy…fuck. Nolan was desperate to shove Kenny out of the way, to get to Betsy and hold her, but then came the revelations and he realized exactly why his partner had stood firm and not let him pass.

  He felt ill, physically sick. And angry.

  And protective.

  No, June wouldn’t get a chance at the fucker if Jack got out of jail.

  He’d make sure he took care of Jack himself.

  “I found this for you today,” Kenny told her in that warm, soothing, but at the same time firm and commanding tone.

  Fuck, it even made his cock stir despite the circumstances.

  “If you’d like,” Kenny continued, “you can wear it as a symbol. A symbol of our promise to protect you and to never punish you. Something you can touch and hold onto when you’re afraid, when the fear hits you. Would you like that?”

  She stared at it, then at Kenny, then past Kenny to him.

  Finally, she nodded.

  Kenny held his other hand out to her. “If you trust us, come to us.”

  Nolan watched as she sucked in a deep, ragged breath before she stepped forward, still crying. Then she reached out and took his hand.

  “Good girl,” Kenny whispered.

  She looked up into his eyes, startled, but now her tears renewed as she folded against him.

  He held her, turning so Nolan could step in, too, engulfing her between them in their embrace.

  “Such a good girl,” Kenny soothed. “You’re our very good girl. We’re so proud of you for trusting us.”