Her Dark Web Defender

by Dana Nussio

  She shook her head, but she was running out of arguments. If she was beginning to understand one thing about Tony, it was that he didn’t give in easily. She was too tired to fight.

  “All right.”

  “Good. Now scoot over.”

  She reached down to unlock her seat belt, only to realize she’d never buckled it. Maybe he’d made a good call that she shouldn’t be driving. Wiggling around and then moving her feet first, she maneuvered herself into the passenger seat.

  Tony slid behind the wheel and immediately reached down to adjust the seat since his knees were crammed against the dashboard. Then he adjusted the mirrors.

  Kelly settled back against the cloth upholstery, sweat plastering the back of her blouse to her skin. She pulled her seat belt across her, and her breath caught as Tony’s fingers covered hers and guided the male end of the belt into its female home.

  Of course, if he was going to the trouble of driving her himself, he would want to make sure she used proper restraints. So why did the gesture seem like something more? Something...safe.

  Once her belt was latched, Tony clicked his own in place. Only then did he turn the key to start the ignition.

  “There is one more thing you’ll need to do before we go,” he said after several seconds.

  She swallowed. Was he going to demand to know the story she wasn’t ready to tell, now that he was in the power position?

  “What’s that?”

  “You need to tell me where you live.”

  Chapter 10

  Tony stepped inside Kelly’s neat-as-a-pin second-floor apartment, his eyes adjusting to the glare from the overhead fixture. On second thought, the room looked so tidy because it was nearly empty.

  “Nice place.” He slid off his dress shoes and set them by the door.

  “You don’t have to say that. It’s a work in progress.”

  “How long have you lived here?”

  From the pristine quality of the walls, none of them marred with pictures or hanging hardware, it couldn’t have been long. He’d been surprised when she’d invited him inside at all. After the awkward fifteen-minute drive to her apartment complex, he’d expected her to wave at the door and make him wait outside until his shared ride picked him up. Good thing she hadn’t already instructed him to go on his app to schedule it.

  Whether she thought she was okay or not, he wasn’t ready to leave her alone.

  “It’ll be three years in November.”

  “Progress must be slow around here.”

  “Isn’t it everywhere?”

  She had a point, but that didn’t make her apartment look any less like an extended-stay hotel. Her living room didn’t even have a cluttered bookshelf to personalize it.

  “Two bedrooms?”

  “Just one.”

  He could only imagine what it would look like. Only a bed and a closet. He swallowed. On second thought, maybe he shouldn’t be thinking about her bedroom at all, not when he was supposed to be there to support her. Not to picture her and him taking full advantage of that forsaken bed.

  Some rescuer he was turning out to be, trying to protect her from whatever had her so freaked out. Now who was going to shield her from him?

  “Want something to drink?” She started into her tiny kitchen without waiting for an answer. Then she leaned out the doorway again.

  “I’ve got fizzy water. Or coffee. Or beer.”

  “Do I look like the fizzy water type to you?”

  “Well, you do look a little...European.”

  Was that good or bad, he couldn’t help wondering. “I guess that’s fair. But I’ll have a beer if you have one. Neither of us is driving, at least for now.”

  He’d also already drunk slushes with her and look where that had gotten them. It couldn’t get much worse with beer, right? Maybe if she had a couple, it would relax her enough that she could finally tell him what was really going on. She returned, carrying two bottles of good Michigan craft beer.

  “What did you expect? I’m not still in college, you know.”

  “I realize that.”

  He took his bottle and sat on one end of the sofa. She settled at the other end.

  “You sure treated me like you thought I’d left an off-campus party to come to the task force.”

  He’d tipped up the bottle and had taken a long swig of it, but at her words, he brought it down too quickly, causing foam to pour over the top. Some spilled on his hand with the rest dribbling on the sofa cushion.

  “Sorry.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and then brushed at the cushion. “But my behavior wasn’t that extreme.”

  “Close.”

  He shrugged. She’d seemed so young when she’d first entered their office. Or maybe she’d only appeared youthful to him because he felt so old and jaded. Refusing to think about whatever had brought them closer in age than those two extremes now, he downed the rest of his beer.

  “You don’t happen to have a couple more of those, do you?”

  “A few.”

  Her gaze narrowed, but she set her almost empty bottle on a coaster and disappeared into the kitchen. She returned with two more opened bottles.

  “This is the last of it, so don’t pour this one out on my couch.” She finished her first beer, set the bottle on the floor next to his and lowered her second one on a coaster.

  “I’ll try not to.”

  He took one swallow this time, grabbed another coaster and rested his bottle on it.

  “Are you ready to talk now?”

  “No.”

  She sipped from her beer, her gaze far away, and then she set her drink aside.

  “You said we could talk about it somewhere else.”

  “I know what I said.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest as if to shield herself from his questions.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “The truth. You didn’t panic today on the job like you did the first time, but there’s something freaking you out every time you interact with potential suspects.”

  “My friend, Emily, was, uh, abducted when I was a kid.”

  His throat tightened. If there ever were a partial truth in front of him, this had to be it. His arms started to reach for her all on their own, so he tightened them at his sides to prevent the movement. He wasn’t sure if there was an “Emily” at all. Could it have been a code name for Kelly herself, like when someone asked for advice for a friend?

  “That’s too bad. How soon was she...recovered?” The last word came out in a strangled sound, as if his voice box wanted to ask it, but his brain wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer. If they were talking about Kelly, she had to know she was lucky to have been found at all.

  “She was able to escape after a week and found a neighbor to call police.”

  “I’m sorry this happened to your friend. Did she get the help she needed afterward?”

  Now he folded his hands together to keep from reaching out to her. Many families pretended that nothing had happened and only compounded the trauma on their children. Could Kelly’s family—or her friend’s—have been like that?

  “I think she was in counseling for the last few months before she moved—”

  “Moved?”

  “Chattanooga, if I remember right. Why does that matter?”

  “I thought you were talking about yourself. As in you were Emily.”

  She made a tight sound in her throat, and her shoulders lifted toward her earlobes. Tony was just the opposite. The tight muscles in his neck released, allowing his head to dip forward. How could he be relieved that Kelly had been spared when another child had been abducted?

  “No, I wasn’t Emily. Not even close.”

  She stared at the blank wall next to the kitchen.

  “Then I don
’t get it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You say it was your friend, so why do I still get the feeling that it happened to you?”

  “Well, it didn’t.”

  She spat the words and then peeked at him as if to check if he’d noticed. He had.

  “What was that?”

  “It’s just...nothing.”

  “Tell me, Kelly. I really want to know.”

  She looked at him then. Really looked, as if she wanted to believe him but couldn’t quite make the leap. She didn’t speak for so long that he wondered if she would.

  “I was there.”

  “You were with her when it happened? That must have been awful.”

  She nodded in answer to both his question and his comment. She blinked several times, her eyes too shiny.

  He didn’t bother stopping his hands this time. They reached for hers then, her fine-boned fingers cradled between his palms. She stared at their joined hands for several seconds and then slid hers away to fold her arms again.

  “How old were you?”

  “Nine. We both were.”

  He swallowed. It was a story he’d heard so many times, and yet he couldn’t maintain a professional detachment this time. It had happened to Kelly’s friend. And Kelly, too, whether she’d been abducted or not. He was tempted to insist that she spill all the details at once, but years of participating in and observing victim interviews had taught him not to rush them. He took another drink of his beer and waited.

  “We were out riding our bikes,” she said after a long time. “Our parents had finally given us permission to ride without adults as long as we stayed on the sidewalks and remained together.”

  “A lot of people count on safety in numbers,” he said before he could stop himself.

  She shifted on the sofa cushion. Would she stop talking now that she’d finally started?

  “We thought we were bulletproof. We rode as fast as we could. Didn’t wear helmets. Even occasionally rode in the street, but only to get to the next block.”

  “None of that means that you deserved to be targeted.”

  Tony pressed his lips together. Why couldn’t he stop himself from interjecting into her story? Did he believe that something he would say could fix the past for her?

  “I know that.”

  But she shook her head, contradicting her own words.

  “Anyway, we’d gone a little farther that day to buy slushes at the convenience store. Blue raspberry. Emily’s spilled all over the sidewalk when the man popped out of a hedge and yanked her off her bike.”

  She shivered visibly, and a faraway look appeared in her eyes.

  “I froze. I just stood there watching the whole thing like a bystander at a car accident. I couldn’t even scream.”

  “That must have been awful,” he said. “Not knowing what to do. Feeling powerless to help.”

  She shook her head as if unwilling to accept the excuses he offered.

  “He got away with it, too.”

  “Are you kidding? I figured they got the SOB.”

  She shook her head. “No arrest was ever made.”

  “Sounds like the system failed Emily and—”

  “I failed her, too,” she said to interrupt him.

  He didn’t bother saying she was a victim as well. She would never believe him. He tried to defend her instead.

  “You were just a kid.”

  “And I kept failing her, even after the police brought her home.” She stared at her hands, turning them over and back in her lap. “She was different after that. Quiet. Nervous. No longer Emily to me. I convinced myself it was because she knew things that only grown-up women knew, that she didn’t want to be my best friend anymore.”

  “So you pulled away from her?”

  “Bit by bit, yes. Then, when her family moved, I just let her go.”

  “And you never forgave yourself for it.”

  She shrugged, but Tony didn’t need an answer to that.

  “This assignment has probably dug up some tough memories for you.”

  “Yeah. Some.”

  “Why didn’t you turn it down?”

  “It wasn’t about me. It couldn’t be. We were investigating a murder case, and those two girls deserved justice.”

  She met his gaze defiantly, as if she expected him to argue with her. He couldn’t. At least not on that.

  “Does anyone at your post know about your history?”

  “Some. It’s in my file, too. But it was a long time ago, and I never let it affect my work.”

  Until now, he almost said. But that day, at least, she’d handled herself well with the potential suspects. Only afterward had she allowed herself to fall apart.

  “Do you think you can continue to work in this environment, even with your history?”

  “I do.”

  Tony had to take her word for it since he was already in this with her. He’d covered for her, too. If he went to Dawson now, he would have to explain why he hadn’t done so earlier.

  “Well, we know why at least one of us chose a career in law enforcement,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  Her startled expression hinted that she wasn’t joking.

  “You never considered that your childhood trauma might have had as much to do with your career choice as anything that happened with your mom?”

  “Not really. I was a psych major, but when I took a criminal-justice class, I was hooked.”

  “All I’m saying is there might’ve been a reason you were drawn to a career where you could serve and protect. Maybe you wanted to give back.”

  “Since I had a debt to pay?”

  “That’s not what I meant,” he said, though it was clear to him that she believed that. “It’s just that our experiences affect our choices in life.”

  “I suppose.” She stared at her hands. “Was it your experience working on cases like Emily’s that convinced you not to have kids?”

  He blinked, her words catching him off guard. Though he wanted to ask her more questions about the abduction, to get specifics so he could look up the case, he recognized she’d said everything she would on the topic that day. She’d answered his questions, so it was only fair that he answered hers.

  “There was more to it than that.” So much more than he’d shared with anyone else. Until now. Was it because she’d let him in on her secret that he was unlatching the padlock to his?

  “I always wanted kids. Pictured myself with a bunch of them. It’s funny how you change your mind about things when your wife aborts your baby.”

  Her eyes widened.

  “Tony, that’s awful.” She reached for his arm and squeezed. “You couldn’t talk her out of it?”

  “I didn’t even know Laurel was pregnant.”

  “She terminated the pregnancy without even discussing it with you?”

  He shook his head. “She told me what she’d done just before she asked for a divorce.”

  “That seems so cruel. Why didn’t she at least talk to you about it...before?”

  Kelly scooted closer, placed her arm around his shoulder and leaned against his side as if she could lend him her strength. It was all he could do not to shake off her compassion, just as she’d pulled away from his touch earlier.

  “Maybe she would’ve talked to me if I’d ever been around to listen. If I’d been a halfway decent husband who paid attention to her occasionally. If we’d had a marriage where there had been emotional and physical intimacy. Or if we hadn’t been at each other’s throats for months.”

  Her body stiffened at his words, but she didn’t pull away from his side.

  “None of those things are good excuses for not telling you.”

  “Her body. Her choice. I’d always believed that for othe
r women. Still do.”

  “I believe that, too. But you two were married. Shouldn’t that mean you both got a vote?”

  “I thought so. I guess I was wrong. Laurel must have figured we were headed for divorce, anyway, and a baby would have tethered us together forever.”

  “I’m sorry you lost your child, Tony.”

  A knot formed in his throat. His child. No one had ever posed it to him that way, but then Kelly was the first person he’d ever told. Angelena didn’t even know. The pain had been too sharp, the loss too great. Anyway, how could his sister ever have looked up to her big brother if she knew how horribly he’d failed?

  Had he shared this story with Kelly as a test because he didn’t want her to see him as some hero? Why did he care so much what she thought?

  “It didn’t matter what was going on in your marriage. This wasn’t your fault. It ultimately was her decision, and she made it.”

  “Why is it so easy for you to see me as innocent, when I wasn’t, and then blame yourself for your friend’s abduction?”

  Where before she’d leaned against him to bolster his strength, she pulled her shoulder away, from his words and a pardon she must have believed she didn’t deserve.

  “Those two things are completely different.”

  “Yes, they are. You were a little girl. I was an adult. I can be held accountable for my mistakes.”

  “Youth shouldn’t absolve me of any wrongdoing.”

  “Why not? Youth isn’t valued for much. Take what you can get from it.”

  “Thanks, I guess.”

  Though she hadn’t admitted he was right, he sensed that something was different between them. He’d thought that sharing his story would push her away, but she was still there, trusting him. Maybe more than she had before. Her story had convinced him that she was stronger than he could have imagined. She’d traveled through a dark tunnel and had emerged on the other side, not without scars, but she’d found daylight just the same.

  He could have let the topic fall away, spoken and forgotten, but he couldn’t do that. If no one else had already told her and insisted she listen, he was about to try.