by Beth Yarnall
I hesitate. I’m not an idiot. Leave everything and everyone behind. I’ve been toying with the idea ever since I got out, but now that it can be a reality, I’m not sure if I can do it. I’d be hurting Cora. I’d be throwing away an incredible opportunity doing work I actually like and am good at. I’d lose any chance at reconnecting with my parents.
On the other hand, I’d get to be with Vera.
“What’s going on?”
I release Vera and turn toward Cora. She’s got her hands on her hips. Her gaze bounces between Vera and me, then sticks on me. I pull my cellphone out of my pocket and look at it. Cora follows the movement. I can see the moment she realizes what I mean to do. She glares at Vera, her eyes hot and angry.
I hold my phone out to Cora. “I’m going with her.”
“Why?”
“She needs me.”
“And I don’t?”
“You have Leo now.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t need you anymore. Don’t go.”
“I’m sorry.” I take her hand and put my phone in it, curling her fingers around it. “I’ll contact you when I can.”
“What about your job? What about Mom and Dad and the life you’re building here?”
“I barely have the beginnings of a life here. It’s not enough. I can start over somewhere new where I’m not recognized and stared at.” I reach back and take Vera’s hand. “I have more with Vera than without her.”
“What exactly do you have with her? A life on the run? Do you even know why she’s running? I bet she hasn’t told you the real reason, has she?” She leans around me to glare at Vera. “Go on. Tell him the truth, Gwendolyn.”
Vera gasps, covering her mouth with her hands.
“Shit.” I spy Nolan and Savannah behind Cora, hovering just around the corner. “Not here.” I jerk my head toward the office.
Vera doesn’t want to go back in there. It takes some convincing, but I finally talk her into it. I take her hand and won’t let go. The minute I do I know she’ll bolt.
Once we’re inside with the door closed, I round on Cora. “How did you find out?”
“I was suspicious of her from the start, remember? When you started spending time with her, I got worried. So I checked the search history on your computer. You knew she wasn’t who she said she was from the start but didn’t tell me. What did she say to get you to keep it quiet? Is that when the sex started? God. You’re just like every other guy. Jerked around by your dick.”
“It was nothing like that. You don’t know the whole story.”
“I know more than you do.”
“What are you talking about?”
“A simple Google search. That’s all it took to find out everything I needed to know about Gwendolyn Marie Johnston.”
“No. Please don’t tell him,” Vera begs. “Please. He doesn’t deserve that. Don’t do that to him.”
“Me?” Cora asks. “I’m not the one fucking him and lying to him.”
“We don’t fuck,” Vera spits out. “Fucking is having your virginity sold to the highest bidder and being tied down so he can collect his prize. Fucking is not knowing the name of the guy sticking his cock wherever the fuck he wants because he paid to get off on you. Fucking is being forced to your knees, to your stomach, or to all fours to fulfill whatever fucked-up request some sick fuck has. Fucking is paying your room and board in blowjobs whenever and wherever the master wants. What Beau and I do isn’t fucking.”
“Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?”
“Knock it off!” I put my arms out, separating them. “Both of you.”
“If you don’t tell him,” Cora challenges Vera, “I will.”
“No. You won’t,” I tell Cora.
“I don’t want to come between you and your sister.” Vera pulls her hand from mine. “I should go.”
“Goodbye,” Cora says.
“Hold on a minute. Both of you.” God. I can’t think with the two of them going at it like this. I let out a frustrated breath. “I can’t leave things like this between us,” I tell Cora. “I know I don’t know the whole story, but neither do you.”
Cora crosses her arms. “I know enough.”
“I’m going with her. Don’t leave things like this between us.”
“I’m not the one doing this to us. She is. I love you, but you’re all kinds of stupid right now because of her. You need to hear the truth, Beau. Once you do, if you decide you still want to go with her, I won’t stand in your way.”
I look to Vera. Her eyes are wide and round on Cora, her chest heaving. Trembling in the corner, she looks like a cornered animal facing off with a predator. I glance back at Cora, silently begging me to stay. This is an impossible situation. If I choose one, I lose the other. I don’t know what to do.
“I escaped instead of testifying and an innocent man went to prison,” Vera blurts out.
I whip my head in her direction. “What?”
“Sam French. He’s still in prison,” Cora says. “The Freedom Project is looking for her. So is the FBI. They need her to corroborate his and another missing witness’s story. She’s also wanted in another crime. Have I gotten anything wrong?” she asks Vera.
“No.”
“How could…” I can’t wrap my head around it. She knows my story. She knows it. How could she be a part of putting an innocent man in prison? How could she look me in the eye, fucking sympathize with me, when she did the same damn thing to another person?
“I don’t expect you to understand—”
“Understand? Of course I fucking don’t understand. How could you?”
“Are you still going with her?” Cora asks with a sneer.
“I can’t…I can’t fucking think. Just shut up. Both of you. Goddamn it!”
“I’m sorry.” Vera turns for the door.
I grab her by the arm. Hard. And pull her to me. “You’re not fucking going anywhere.”
She tries to twist out of my grip. “Let me go. I’m not safe here. I’m not safe anywhere.”
“I really don’t fucking care right now. You’re not leaving that man in prison.”
“You don’t understand.”
“You’re damn right I don’t. How can you fucking live with yourself and what you’ve done?”
“That missing witness isn’t missing. She’s dead.”
Chapter 26
Vera
“Is this more of your lies?” Cora’s face is full of hate for me. “You’ll say and do anything, won’t you?”
“Wait a minute,” Beau tells Cora with a hand out. He turns to me. “Is this true?”
I nod.
“How do you know she’s dead? You said she, right?”
“Cherry,” I start. “Her name was Cherry. Or at least that’s what she was called. I don’t know her real name. Javier slit her throat right in front of me.”
The memory burns fresh and I’m catapulted back to that stark room with the blackout curtains so you couldn’t tell day from night.
“Cherry didn’t keep her mouth shut,” Javier had sneered, holding her black hair in his fist as she clamped her hands to her neck, the blood gushing between her fingers as she gasped her last breath. “Now she can’t talk at all.”
His laugh had echoed in the bare room. I can still hear it in my head. He made me sleep in the room with her body that night, her sightless eyes shining in the darkness, the combined stench of blood and shit gagging me. In the morning he came and got me and took me to his office. Obediently, I got undressed and went to my knees in front of him. He sat back as I unbuckled his belt and unzipped his pants. I sucked him off, as I was trained to do. As all the girls were trained to do when he brought us in there. All the while he caressed my face, telling me he loved me. When I was done and had rebuckled his belt, he made me bend over his desk naked. He unbuckled his belt again and beat me with it, holding me down with a hand on my back while I screamed in agony and he struck me over and over.
When he finished
he yanked me up by the hair. “You’ve always been one of my favorites, but I’ll cut you like I did Cherry if you try the shit she did. Got it?”
“Y-y-yes, sir.”
“Vera?” Beau’s voice snaps me back to the here and now.
I close my eyes and fight for control. Everything around me is spinning, spinning, spinning and I can’t and I’m having trouble keeping it together. There. Better. But my hold is tenuous at best.
“Cherry and I,” I continue slowly. “We were supposed to testify that we saw Sam French kill a woman. A city councilman’s wife. It was supposed to look like a home invasion.
“Cherry and I were hired for the party. There was drinking, drugs, and sex of course. We only left Hell House—that’s what we called where we were kept—on special occasions for very special clients, under guard. Sam was one of the guards. Javier always went with us. He has very strict rules about parties. Anyone who isn’t on the guest list doesn’t get in. The councilman’s wife came in through the garage, slipping past Sam. She was supposed to be at a spa for the weekend and came home early. She freaked out when she walked in on Cherry and me with her husband.
“Javier shot the wife. He got Sam to help him make it look like a home invasion. Sam didn’t know—none of us knew—Javier planned to pin it on Sam. It was payback for being so careless. Cherry and I were supposed to say we were with the councilman at his election office, helping with flyers. We were his alibi.
“You have to understand. This was a very special councilman. Whatever Javier wanted, this guy got passed. He was a perverted fuck.” I close my eyes on the memories of that night and what I had to do. “Didn’t give a shit about his wife either. I think he was glad she was dead, like Javier did him a favor.
“Cherry got cold feet and told the cops the truth. Javier found out. He killed her for going against him and as a lesson to me. He…punished me. Severely. In advance, so I didn’t get the same idea Cherry did. When he held me down I took something. He doesn’t know I have this….” I pull a thumb drive from the pocket in my bra.
“What’s on it?” Beau asks.
“How he keeps his books. His clients. The money. The girls. Everything. I pulled it out of his laptop and palmed it. I couldn’t work that night because of the welts.”
Cora winces. She’s been quietly judging the whole time I’ve been talking. Up until now, I don’t think she believed me. She finally might.
“So I had the night off,” I continue. “If I didn’t get out right then, I knew I’d never get out. He’d discover I had the thumb drive and that would be it. I’d end up like Cherry. I waited until the guard outside my room stopped one of the girls to get him off, then I pried the wood off my window with a piece of the bed frame and climbed out.”
“You jumped out a second-story window?” Beau asks in disbelief.
“I lowered myself as far as I could go, yes. I got lucky. There was a bush under the window.”
“Where did you go?” This from Cora.
“I couldn’t go to the police, so I went to a fire station and hid. When they went out on a call I took what I could use—some cash, clothes, a car—”
“The other crimes,” Cora chimes in. I don’t hate her for trying to protect her brother, even though she destroyed any chance I might have had with Beau.
“I drove as far as I could,” I continue. “Ditched the car. Got on a bus. I just kept going as fast and as far as I could. I changed everything I could to stay hidden. I only came back for Marie. But I was too late. He already had her.”
“Why did you take the thumb drive?” Beau asks. “What were you planning to do with it?”
“Revenge, maybe? To prove I could hurt him a fraction as much as he hurt me? I don’t know. After a while I came to see it as insurance. I had something over him I could use to negotiate with if I had to. I really don’t know. There was no plan. It was there. I knew what it was. I took it…while he beat me. It was me trying to be defiant, I guess. How dumb. God. I was so dumb.”
I laugh at how ridiculous I was back then. How ridiculous I am now. This whole thing is just so stupid. I don’t know what I was thinking then, and I don’t know what to think now. I wrap my arms around myself and lose it, laughing like a fucking lunatic. Cora stares. Beau takes a step toward me, but I shake my head at him to stay away. I can’t be touched right now. I can’t restrain myself. Everything is spinning out of control. All of my careful planning, every well-thought-out move, how I kept myself separate, alone, all of it was for nothing.
It’s all out now. Every ugly thing I did. How desperate and sad I am. How totally and completely stupid I’ve been about everything. How after all the things I’ve been through I still held on to hope. Hope of a better life. Hope to be a person of worth. Hope to find someone like Beau and the sheer, absurd, comical hope that I could hold on to him, that what I’ve done, who I’ve been, could just be ignored or forgotten. That’s what’s so goddamn funny to me now. I believed it! I tried to pretend I didn’t. I ignored the part of me that wanted and honestly believed I could have normal things, a normal life.
But it was there all the while. That seed of hope. I should’ve killed it a long time ago. It’s disintegrating now, eating me up from the inside, spreading like poison through me. It fucking hurts. I drop to my knees. Then on all fours. I’m dying. I’m on my face on the floor. Beau and Vera crouch beside me, but I can’t hear them. The other voices are too loud. All of the things they said to me, those men. All of the ugly, vile things they did to me. I can feel them touching me, pulling at me. They all want a piece of me. They take and take and take till nothing’s left but an empty shell. I’m nothing. This is what they made me.
Nothing.
Chapter 27
Beau
“Should we get her to a hospital?” Cora asks.
I don’t know what the fuck to do. Vera is scaring the shit out of me. She’s always been so strong. She says things so bluntly, so matter-of-factly, that I don’t look past her candid words to what she might be burying deep down underneath. I forget how young she is, how young she was when all of that shit happened to her. I don’t know how she survived this long.
“Go,” I tell Cora.
She gives me a worried look as she stands, then leaves the room, closing the door behind her.
Vera lies on her side away from me, crumpled into a ball. The sounds she makes. The keening. The shaking. I put a hand on her shoulder. She shrinks away, as though my touch burns. I don’t know where she is, but she’s not here. She’s gone to that place in her head. It’s not the comforting, blank place it once was. There’s no strength for her to draw from anymore. I don’t know what to say or do for her. I’ve never felt so helpless in my whole life. The only thing to compare would be my first few weeks in prison. I try to think of what would’ve helped me back then, what someone could’ve done for me.
Nothing.
Not a damn thing. There wasn’t anything anyone could’ve said or done that would’ve brought me back from that dark place. I know where she is and what’s waiting for her there. I lie down next to her where I can see her face. Not too close. Just so she knows I’m here. My fingers are barely an inch from where hers claw the carpet. Squeezing my eyes closed, I pray for the first time in more than six years. I request peace for Vera. I demand justice for her and for Cherry and for all the other girls. I plead for the strength to look past what she’s done and the understanding to accept it. I appeal to whatever higher power to make me a better man, and ask for forgiveness for myself and for Vera.
I beg for her pain to be taken away and for that fucker to suffer twice as much as she has.
When I open my eyes, Vera’s staring at me, but she’s not seeing me. Her whimpers rip at me. She’s a wounded child in a woman’s body. I want to touch her, hold her, but I’m not sure that’s safe for her. All I can do is be with her. A tear drips off her nose and onto the carpet. Another follows, slower than the others. And another, even slower, until they stop altogethe
r. Her body jerks, her lower lip getting sucked in with each hitching breath. The light flickers behind her eyes. She’s coming back.
“Vera,” I whisper. “I’m here. Hey. I’m here.”
Her wet lashes flutter and then her gaze connects with mine. I put my pinkie finger on hers. She doesn’t flinch away. I ease my hand over hers until I can grip it and hold on. She walked me back from the brink and now it’s my turn to do it for her. I don’t think about how ridiculous we must look lying on the floor side by side, holding hands. We’ve had so many moments like this. It’s part of who we are…who we were. Where we go from here I don’t know. I can’t promise her the things I might have promised her before.
I understand why she did what she did.
A part of me thinks that I might have made the same choice she did. But I can’t put aside what happened to me to follow that any further than entertaining the possibility. She knew that all along. How horrifying that must have been for her. All this time. All we’ve been through. All the while she knew it would end like this. Goddamn, she’s stronger than I ever gave her credit for. She could’ve walked away anytime. She could’ve rejected me when I came after her, needing her and not knowing why. But she didn’t. She took me in and healed me.
I’d bleed for her, but I can’t be with her. That’s a hard fucking thing to acknowledge.
I suck in a rough breath. This is a death we’re mourning together. I don’t know where we go from here, but we go there separately. I’ll help her any way I can. My mission for her isn’t over. It won’t be until Marie is safe and that fucker is either dead or behind bars. Preferably dead. Prison’s too good for him.
She pulls her hand from mine and rolls to her back, scrubbing her hands over her face. I don’t need to ask if she’s okay. She will be. That’s the one thing I’ll always be sure of about her. We’ll both be okay, but we’ll never be the same. I’ll never meet another person like her. I’ll never have the same connection with anyone else or know the same level of calm that I have when I’m with her.
