by Eve Gaddy
SHE’D GOTTEN NO MORE than she’d deserved, she knew. His utter contempt for her. Well, he couldn’t possibly think worse of her than she did herself. She had to leave. Cam wouldn’t want her there, not after she’d lied so disastrously. But even if he’d be willing for her to stay, she couldn’t stand seeing him day after day knowing he hated her. Knowing she loved him and that any kind of a future between them was doomed.
It didn’t take long to pack. Even with having to stop because she was crying too hard to see. She didn’t have much. And she couldn’t take anything with her that Cam or his family had given her.
She slung her backpack over her shoulder. Straightened and wiped her eyes. She could cry later. Right now she had to tell Cam goodbye. She owed him that, and her thanks for everything he’d done for her.
She turned around and saw him standing in the doorway. Her heart stuttered as she realized this might be her last image of him. He looked tired. And angry. And beneath it all, she could see the pain in his eyes. The pain and misery she’d put there.
“Running away again?”
“I didn’t think you’d want me here.”
He didn’t respond to that. He walked into her room, stood gazing at her, his face blank. “Was it all a lie?”
“Last night wasn’t a lie. I wanted you.” I love you, she thought, but didn’t say. He wouldn’t believe her. “I needed you.” She still did, even though she would never have him.
Anger flickered again in the depths of his eyes, turning them almost black. “If you’re smart, you won’t talk about last night,” he said harshly. “Is the rest of it true? Did your husband beat you?”
“Yes.”
“Did he choke you? Drug you? Lock you up?”
“Yes.” She raised her chin and gazed at him. “Do you believe me?”
His expression was bleak now. He sat down, heavily, on her bed. “Yeah. Damn it, I do.”
Not much, but it might be more than she deserved. “Will you let me tell you about it? Why I married him and why I knew I had to get away?”
“That depends.” He looked at her now, his expression hard and unforgiving. “On how much is going to be truth and how much of what you’re telling me will be bullshit.”
“Why don’t you decide that after I’ve told you?” She met his gaze, striving for, if not dignity, at least composure.
Impassively, he folded his arms over his chest. “Have at it.”
She drew in a deep breath and spoke his full name for the first time since she’d left him. “His name is Avery Freeman. He’s a corporate attorney in Houston. Well-respected, wealthy. With connections everywhere but especially in the police department.” She gave a short, unamused laugh. “He’s everything I’m not.”
Cam didn’t speak. She couldn’t read his expression, which was probably just as well. She went on, finding a surprising relief in telling the whole story, regardless of the fact that her audience doubted every word out of her mouth.
“I was a waitress at a steak place in Houston. Not the fanciest place in town, but not a dive either. Sometimes I worked the bar. The tips were good.” She smiled wryly. “Especially if you wore a short skirt. I needed every penny I could get to go to school part-time. Accounting, like I told you before. I did a little bookkeeping on the side. I was making it, but it wasn’t easy.
“There was a guy who started coming in regularly, and he always tried to sit at one of my tables. The others teased me about it, since he’d wait at the bar until he could sit at my table. He tipped well, so I didn’t mind. It didn’t occur to me at first that he was interested in me. He was older, in his mid-forties, I thought.” She paused and looked at him, waiting for a comment.
He gave her a cynical smile. “I’d already figured out you like older men.”
Neither the smile nor the comment were encouraging, but at least he’d spoken. “Avery was really nice. Charming. Handsome. Respectful, which I didn’t get a lot of, so that was appealing. He didn’t put the moves on me, which surprised me. He talked to me. I enjoyed it. Enjoyed him.”
She closed her eyes, then sat down on the other end of the bed and began again. Just tell him. Don’t think, just talk. “He started staying later and later. After I got off work, he’d walk me to my car. Because I wouldn’t let him follow me home, not at first. Like I told you, I’d been on my own for a long time, and I’d learned to be wary.” She grimaced. “Not wary enough. After a while, I relented. We started dating.” She faltered, fell silent.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I was trying to think why I missed the signs that should have clued me in to what he was really like. They were subtle, at first, but they were there.”
“Why did you?”
She hesitated. “The only answer I have is that I wanted to believe him. So I ignored the signs. He’d take me places, fancy restaurants, even the opera, but he never, or rarely, introduced me to anyone. Not friends, not family. I think I met a total of three people he knew, the whole time I was with him. I thought he wanted me to himself. I was even…flattered.” God, why hadn’t she seen how odd that was? Or how controlling he was? How he’d moved in so smoothly and taken over her life. But she hadn’t, whatever her reasons.
“He bought me clothes. Beautiful clothes. Jewelry. I didn’t feel right taking so much from him, but he made it sound so reasonable. He’d say he loved being able to buy me things. He said he appreciated my scruples, but it wasn’t a hardship for him. I knew he was wealthy, but I still resisted. He’d act so disappointed when I wouldn’t let him. So after a while, I quit fighting him. I accepted whatever he gave me and I buried my qualms.”
It was harder now. Harder to admit how foolish she’d been. How she’d allowed herself to be taken in by his smooth manner, his practiced lies.
“It happened so fast, he just sort of swept me along in his wake. He said he wanted to take care of me. And I was tired of being alone. Tired of struggling. He promised me all sorts of things. The thought of not having to worry about money anymore tempted me, but the emotional promises were even more appealing. He swore he loved me, and I believed him. And since I did, I let him convince me to marry him.”
“Did you love him?”
She shook her head, ashamed to admit it but she had to be honest. “I wanted to. I thought I’d grow to love him, because he loved me so much. I cared about him. Or I cared about the man I thought he was. But that man was all smoke and mirrors.” She gripped her hands together, bowed her head. “The real man, well, he showed me quickly enough after the wedding who that was.”
“What did he do?”
She looked up at him. Was it her imagination or had the anger eased from his eyes, from his voice?
She’d come this far. Might as well tell him the whole, wretched, sordid truth. “One night I had a headache. A bad one. Avery wanted to…make love.” She looked away, not wanting to see his face when she told him the rest. “I told him I didn’t feel well. He—he didn’t care.”
“Delilah, look at me.” His voice was soft, the tone gentle.
She shook her head, her throat closing. Hesitantly, he reached over and put his hand over hers.
“It’s not your fault.”
She looked at their hands, seeing the strength of his, how small hers looked beneath it. “I—he didn’t rape me.”
“He forced you to have sex against your will. What else would you call it?”
“It wasn’t like that. Exactly. He said we were married and he was my husband, so I owed him my obedience.” Sickened at the memory, she looked at Cam. “Obedience. As if I was a dog.” She sucked in air, determined not to cry. “But I—I was afraid if I didn’t—I didn’t like the look in his eyes. Or the way he held me. So tight, his fingers digging into my arms… So I let him.”
Cam let go of her hand and stood. “Bastard.” He paced away a few steps then turned to look at her. “Being married doesn’t make that right, Delilah.”
She just shook her head. There was more. And it
was worse, much worse than that. “The next day he acted as if nothing had happened. I did, too. I wasn’t sure… God, I was so stupid. I thought maybe he’d had too much to drink and he didn’t mean it. He had been drinking, but he wasn’t drunk. I just pretended to myself he had been. It made it easier.”
“You stayed with him.”
“We’d only been married a couple of months. I wanted it to work. I thought maybe it was my fault. That I was making it into something it wasn’t. But deep down, I knew. I knew it was wrong. And I worried it would get worse. And it did.
“He didn’t like my friends. Didn’t want them around. So rather than making everyone uncomfortable, I quit asking them to come over. He talked me into quitting my job. He had promised before we married to help me through school. So I thought, great, I’ll be able to go to school full-time.”
“How did he stop you?”
“Nothing so simple as not paying for it. He got rid of my car.” She smiled at his exclamation of disgust. “At first he said it was in the shop, but after a few weeks he couldn’t keep that up. So he said his first wife had died in a car wreck. That she’d been drinking and had run off the road. He couldn’t bear to think of me getting into an accident. His solution was for me not to drive.
“The car—that was the real wake-up call. I couldn’t rationalize it, like I had the other. I knew then that I was in trouble. I’d had a friend in an abusive relationship. Her boyfriend started out with just that kind of controlling behavior. Behavior that escalated into violence. And however stupid I’d been up to that point, I’m not normally a stupid person.”
“You weren’t stupid, Delilah. You believed in the wrong person.”
Like he had. She read the thought in his eyes, though he didn’t speak it.
She drew in another breath and continued. “I could see where it was headed. I found a lawyer in the phone book and begged him to see me. He gave me an appointment the next day. I must have sounded desperate. I waited until Avery went to work the next day and I called a cab and went to see the lawyer.”
“You filed for divorce?”
“No.” She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them. “I talked to the lawyer about the possibility of divorce. But then I made a huge mistake, almost worse than marrying him in the first place. I wanted to think about it. I needed to be sure before I ended my marriage, after such a short time. I went through everything, point by point. He hadn’t hit me. Maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe I was imagining the control issues.” She lifted a shoulder. “It doesn’t matter why. I went back.
“Avery was waiting for me. He asked me how my meeting with the lawyer went and mentioned him by name. He’d dialed star sixty-nine and gotten the taxi company and traced me through them. I don’t know how, but I imagine he bribed somebody.” She looked at Cam who was gazing at her intently. She gave a weak smile. “I never thought of that.”
“You don’t need to say any more. I can guess the rest. The son of a bitch beat you and drugged you. Then he locked you up.” He looked grim and angry. At least this time his anger was directed at Avery.
“Yes. But that’s not all.”
He sat again. “Go on. Finish it.”
“He went ballistic. Started screaming and cursing at me. Hitting me. He said I wasn’t going to divorce him. I wasn’t going to get away. I was his. His property. He owned me. That bitch Anita had thought she could divorce him but she’d found out different. He’d taught her respect before she died. And then he laughed and said I’d better be careful, that accidents happen all the time.”
“Anita was his first wife? The one who died in a car wreck?”
“Yes. His first wife. The woman he murdered when she tried to divorce him.”
Cam stared at her. Their gazes locked, she added, “And he got away with it.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CAM HAD THOUGHT Delilah’s story couldn’t get any worse. It just had. He was reeling from a dozen emotions. Anger at her. Pain over her betrayal. Rage at what the son of a bitch had done to her, and had nearly managed to do. He didn’t doubt the truth of what Delilah had told him. He couldn’t say why, when he knew she had lied, but every word of that chilling story held a ring of truth.
“How do you know he killed her? Did he admit it?”
She shook her head. “No, he’s not that crazy. I don’t have proof. Except here.” She touched her chest, over her heart. “I know he killed her, Cam. And one other thing.” She got up and dug through her backpack until she hauled out a small bound book and handed it to him. “This is his first wife’s diary. I found it in the bedroom he locked me in.”
Wondering what he’d find inside, he opened it. There was a poem on the first page. He flipped through and saw other poems, interspersed with narrative. Near the end, a title caught his eye. “Shattered Dreams.” He read a little, then looked at Delilah, thoroughly shaken. It spoke of dreams and death, the death of her love. A love that had been systematically beaten out of her by her husband.
“God. How could he—what a sick bastard he is.”
“She was a poet. He promised he’d help her get published. She loved him. She believed him. She was twenty-two years old, Cam, when he killed her.”
“I don’t know what to say.” He closed the diary. “As bad as this is, it doesn’t prove he killed her.”
“No, it’s not proof. But Cam, she didn’t drink. He told me she was driving drunk and in her diary she says she couldn’t drink because she was allergic to any kind of alcohol. She couldn’t even drink a beer without getting sick.” She took the book from him and paged to the back. “The last entry is a poem. About divorce. I think she asked him for a divorce and I think he killed her for it.”
“If you believe that then why haven’t you gone to the cops? Why didn’t you do that right away? The minute you got out of there you should have gone to them.”
“I couldn’t risk him finding me. Besides, I didn’t think it would matter. I told you he got away with it. The police don’t suspect him.”
“How do you know that?”
“When I looked online to see if he was dead…I didn’t spend all my time doing that. I thought maybe I’d overreacted. Maybe he hadn’t really killed her. Maybe her death really had been accidental. Just because he beat her, just because he beat me, didn’t mean he’d killed her. So I looked her up. I found some articles about the accident. They all mentioned the suspicion that it was alcohol related.”
“Still, Delilah—”
“I’m not finished. The car went over a cliff and exploded on impact. She was burned so badly she was hardly recognizable. I think he planned that so it would make it difficult or impossible to tell what injuries happened during the crash. And what he’d done to her before that. When he beat her to death.”
Oh, God, she could be right. “You’re right. When you put it all together, it’s suspicious as hell. Which is why you have to go to the cops, Delilah. You can’t keep this to yourself.”
“I can if I want to live.”
“We’ll tell Maggie. The police will protect you.” And he would, too. Because he knew, no matter what she’d done, that he couldn’t walk away from her. He couldn’t walk away and live with himself.
She laughed bitterly. “You’re living in a dream world. You must not know the statistics on abused women. Even if the police believe me, they can’t protect me. Once Avery finds me, there’s nothing to stop him from coming up and shooting me in broad daylight if he wants.”
“So your solution is what? To always be on the run? To always be afraid he’ll find you?” To be tied to an abusive killer for the rest of her life. Never to be able to move on, have a fresh start. “What kind of life is that?”
“At least I have a life,” she said flatly.
She sat down and buried her face in her hands. He wanted to touch her, comfort her. But beneath it all he still hurt. Still felt betrayed. He had been betrayed. And goddamn it, he still wanted her so much he would have sold his soul to have her.
She looked up and gazed at him, her eyes dark and brimming with emotion. “Why should they listen to me? To accuse anyone of such a thing, much less a respected attorney, takes a lot of resolution. Not to mention a faith in the system I just don’t have. I’ve never had much luck with the police.”
“You’ve said things like that before. What are you talking about? Have you been arrested? Charged with something?”
She nodded. “After my mother died I went a little wild. I got involved with someone several years older than me. He was bad news, but I didn’t see it.” She shrugged. “I don’t guess I cared.
“Anyway, he boosted a car and took me joyriding. Of course, he didn’t mention he’d stolen it. We were arrested and I was charged as an accomplice. If my boyfriend had had his way, I’d have been charged with worse. The judge believed me, though, and the charges were dropped.” She looked at him bleakly. “Juvenile records are purged when you become an adult, but cops don’t like me. I mean, look at your friend Maggie’s reaction to me.”
So men had been taking advantage of her since she was sixteen. He wished that didn’t bother him, but it did. “Maggie hasn’t heard this story. She’s a good cop, Delilah. She’ll help you.”
“I can’t.” She picked up the diary and placed it in the backpack. Got up and slung the pack over her shoulder.
“You’re not leaving,” he said.
“You don’t want me here.”
“No, I don’t,” he said harshly. “But I’m not having your death on my conscience. You run off and God knows what will happen to you. You’re as safe here as anywhere. So just save us both a lot of trouble and forget about leaving.”
“If I stay we can’t—we can’t be together again.”
He gave her a nasty smile. “Don’t worry, sugar. The way I’m feeling right now, you’re the last woman on earth I’d have sex with.”
Which was, he knew, a goddamn lie.
GABE WAS WAITING for him when he went to the bar. Cam didn’t know what to say to his brother. He wasn’t up for another scene, especially not one where he had to admit just how stupid he’d been.
