"The police had arrested him for domestic violence and assault, and I filed for divorce. He got a crack defense attorney. Because he'd been cut by the glass as well, he tried to sell the story that I had attacked him first. Maybe they believed him. Anyway, it was his first offense and he’d never even had a traffic ticket, so he got off easily—anger management classes or something.
"I didn’t care what happened to him. I just wanted it to be over. I moved in with my dad, because I had no place else to go. In the beginning, I was so traumatized that I was afraid to be alone. I didn’t want anything from Derek—money or property or anything from the marriage. I just wanted to be free and for him to leave me alone.
"Dad took amazing care of me. He didn't leave my side. I know you don't like my father, but when this happened, he was awesome."
"I'm glad he was there for you." Her father, gruff and domineering in so many ways, had always been protective. He was an arrogant bastard, but hell, Stephen had no doubt that he'd have done everything in his power to take care of his daughter.
As he intended to do now.
"I used to think I was good at reading people," she went on. "But I never saw Derek's violence coming. Before it happened, I was certain he would never lay a rough hand on any woman, much less someone he professed to love."
"He probably didn't love you anywhere near as much as he loved himself, the bastard."
"That's it exactly. Deep down all there was in him was a void. Even after the end, after he beat me so badly, after I left him..." she paused. "He tried to get me back. Back under his control. Sometimes I'm afraid he's still trying."
"What do you mean?" His voice had grown sharp.
"I don't know. There have been some hang-ups on my phone. Probably just marketing calls—I get those all the time and I ignore them. But I'm anxious so I'm imagining things. There was a car that parked on the street outside my house the other night for a few minutes. It made me remember how obsessive he was about me."
"What car? Did you get the license plate number?"
"No, it was dark. But it could have been anybody. Just someone visiting the neighbors. Hopefully Derek's still on the other side of the globe."
He'd fucking better be or the guy was going to be damn sorry. "We can find out."
"We can? How?"
"I know some people. There are ways to track these things down."
"It would be a relief to know he's still in Australia."
They lay in silence for a few minutes while he gently massaged her tight shoulders. "Thank you for telling me. I know it was hard for you. But you did fine. You got through that explanation like a champion." He smoothed her cheeks and kissed her forehead. "No tears. No panic. You didn't break down."
"I haven't cried since that night. Not once. I did see a therapist for a while, and she thought I needed to cry about it. But I won't. I won't give that creep the satisfaction."
"You do know that what happened wasn't your fault?"
"I know. The marriage would have ended anyway, but maybe it wouldn't have ended in violence if I had been a little more mature, a little more insightful."
"Viola. There is never any excuse for what he did to you. Never."
She hugged him hard. "You're one of the good guys, Stephen. Thank you for being so understanding."
"No problem, babe. You make it easy to care about you."
Chapter 26
Later that night, Stephen had one of those ideas for his book that was so insistent that he was forced to get out of bed and write it down. It happened often when he was in one of his creative periods.
He left Viola sleeping and went into the living room with the laptop she had lent him. The neighborhood was quiet, since it was well after midnight. He vaguely heard a car driving down the street. He probably wouldn't have noticed it at all if he had not grown so accustomed to the lack of traffic near his quiet beach side home.
He went to the window and glanced out. The car has passed the house and continued on down the street. He watched for a couple of minutes, but it did not return. There was no reason to think that Viola's fears about Derek's possible return were anything but the shadows she had admitted them to be. Still, he wanted to make sure, so he decided to call Max.
His friend Max was a computer genius and a software baron. And he was almost always awake in the middle of the night. Stephen pulled out his phone and called.
After the usual cheerful insults were exchanged, he asked, "Can you check whether somebody is actually in the country where he is believed to be? As opposed to being here in the USA?"
"Sure. Within limits. If he's an ordinary guy, it's easy. If you want Ed Snowden's precise whereabouts, that will be a little bit harder."
"I think this guy is ordinary. Middle-aged. Not a techie type. He is believed to be in Australia, where he returned after living in the States for a number of years. But I want to be sure he's on another distant continent instead of here, stalking my girlfriend. He's her ex-husband, and he abused her."
"You have a new girlfriend?"
"I do. Can you do it?"
"Easy. Is she kinky?"
"None of your business." He didn't know whether Max was kinky himself, but he did know the guy was strange. "What kind of information do you need me to give you about the guy?"
"Send me whatever you know about him. Does he have a web presence?"
"He's supposedly a professor of anthropology at some university in Australia, but I want to be sure he's actually there, teaching his classes and living his life far away from my girl. I'll email you everything I can find about him online, if you can check the more direct evidence, however you do that shit."
"I can probably get current surveillance photos that will establish his location. Is that the sort of thing you want?"
"If you can get current pictures, yeah, I want them."
"I'll give it a whirl. What else do you need? Why do you suspect stalking? Has he been calling her? Emailing? Harassing her on social media?"
"She said she had some hang ups, but they might be marketing calls."
"Give me her phone number. I can trace her calls."
"Isn't that illegal?"
Max laughed. "Tell that to the NSA."
"You computer guys are fucking scary."
"Be afraid, Silkwood. Be very afraid."
Chapter 27
The next thing Stephen did to ensure Viola's safety was harder. After he got back home to the Cape, it took him a whole day to psyche himself up for it.
He went to visit Viola's father. As he rapped on the door of Percy Quentin's cottage, he could feel the tension buzzing in his neck and shoulders. He had to concentrate to force his fingers from automatically curling into fists.
Breathe, he ordered himself. He wasn't here for Percy. He was here for Viola.
When the door opened, the big man stood there, his eyes blinking against the bright sunlight. He looked older, but he was still in reasonably decent shape. His mane of hair was messy, and matching his unkempt beard. He also had more of a belly than he used to have. That'll happen if you sit in front of a computer screen all day long.
"What the fuck are you doing here?" was all the welcome Stephen received.
"Let me in, Percy. We need to talk."
Percy folded his arms over his chest. He filled the doorway. "About what?" He sounded aggressive and challenging, as always, but suddenly his face crumpled. "It is my daughter? Has something happened to her?"
Stephen felt something then, something different from the way he'd been feeling about this man for the past nine years. He was worried about Viola. She got to him, just as she got to Stephen. He took amazing care of me, she had said. He didn't leave my side.
"No," he said quickly. "She's fine. I'm just worried about her because she's still afraid of that creep ex-husband who put her in the hospital."
"Derek the Fucktard." Percy's expression had relaxed a bit. "He's gone. Left the country."
"Are you sure?"
&nb
sp; Percy considered him. There was a long pause. "Why are you asking?"
"Viola's a little anxious. Thought someone might be lurking outside her house. Making calls and hanging up. That sort of thing. It's probably nothing. I just want to make sure."
"Fuck." Percy's face had darkened again. He opened the door wider and made a gesture. "Come on in."
It felt strange being back in the house where he had spent so much time during those halcyon days of summer. He'd gotten a lot of writing done, and Percy had taught him stuff that had come in useful in subsequent years. He realized that he'd put it out of his mind—how much instruction the man had given him in their mutual craft. He hadn't wanted to remember anything good about Percy.
"I don't think she has to worry about Derek ever coming back to hassle her," Percy said a few minutes later. He had poured himself a single malt Scotch, his favorite drink. Stephen had declined; it was too early in the day for him to start drinking, even though it was tempting. Percy always had the finest Scotch.
"Why's that? His record was cleared after he completed his probation and his anger management bullshit classes, right? Is there any reason why he couldn't legally enter the country again if he chose to do so?"
"He won't." Percy sounded pretty damn sure of that.
"Why not? Did you do something to the guy to ensure that?"
He was guessing here. Like him, Percy wrote about tough guy heroes. Macho dudes who could tear you apart then flick the blood off their fingers and go out to a fancy restaurant for a hearty meal. But Percy wasn't Harry Fielding any more than he was Bart Giles. Still. He wasn't exactly a spineless nerd either. Percy was a big man, physical.
Instead of answering directly, Percy said, "I've been checking up on you, Silkwood. Ever since I found out you were fucking my daughter."
Stay cool. Percy had always been good at knowing how to push his buttons. "Yeah, well, since you haven't come after me yet with your shotgun, I figure you didn't find anything too incriminating."
"I know about your involvement in the fetish community."
"So? You made that clear last time we met. It's really none of your damn business."
"It's my business if my daughter is ever harmed."
"The only person Viola has been harmed by was a fucked-up dude who didn't know anything about safe, sane and consensual. So let's not get diverted. I'm sure it's shocking as hell that your kid might be interested in activities that you consider perverse, but she finds it super-embarrassing that you're even aware of that."
"It doesn't shock me at all. It would fall strictly into the too-much-information category were it not for what happened with the fucktard. But she's my girl and I need to make sure she's okay. If you're ever a father yourself, you'll understand."
"BDSM with a trustworthy partner is not harmful," he began, wondering if he was going to have to go through the whole spiel. This was one reason why he had not wanted to make this visit today.
But Percy interrupted him. "I know that. Christ, man. I just told you I'd been checking up on you. How do you suppose I could do that if I didn't know people in the scene? Haven't you ever wondered if there's a gene for this shit? It would surprise me more if my daughter were not a little bit kinky."
Stephen spent about five seconds being dumbfounded. Then he began to laugh. "Fuck me. I should have guessed. You're into it yourself."
"Why do you think Viola's mother divorced me? She didn't get it. Couldn't deal. She and I were good in other ways, but a total mismatch in the bedroom."
Well there it was, Stephen thought, inwardly mocking himself. Nine years ago, at 21, he'd undoubtedly suffered from the typical young man's delusion that his own generation had discovered sex. Folks of his parents' age (over 40) had maybe tried it once or twice, purely for procreation, then given it up. He'd certainly never thought about Percy having sex. And yet Percy's fictional hero, Fielding, a real man's man, had engaged in new affairs in each of his books, some of them quite raunchy.
He realized now that Percy, a divorced man who had never remarried, must have had girlfriends. Given that he could be a charming bastard, he'd probably had a lot of them.
"So why did you make such a big deal about it when you discovered we were back together? She was embarrassed to realize that her father knew something about her sex life."
"Yeah, well, I haven't been keeping up with the local scene. For all I knew, you were still the jerkoff you were that summer who didn't know what the fuck he was doing."
Stephen was pissed, but his desire to walk out, preferably after slugging Percy in the face, was mitigated by his curiosity. "That must have been some surveillance you had mounted on your property back then." He glanced around pointedly. "You still filming everything?"
"Not in here. You didn't figure it out, did you?" He rose, set his glass down on the coffee table. "Come with me. I've got something to show you." When Stephen hesitated, the older man added, "It'll clear up your worries on the Fuckwad, too. Worst he can do is send harassing emails, although I'd be astonished if he'd even do that. He's sure as hell not coming back."
Stephen followed as Percy led the way out rear door of the house and down through the sandy scrub grass to the sheltered cove. The boat house was still there, the infamous shed where he and Viola had fooled around on that summer afternoon nine years ago. Its Cape Cod shingles were greyer, a little more weather-beaten. When Percy unlocked the door and entered, Stephen followed, feeling an odd sense of déjà vu.
The place was surprisingly neat and snug. The construction was solid—this was no prefab shed, but something that had been built to last. There was a thick carpet on the floor. Various canoes, kayaks, water skis and other sports equipment was stored on the rafters overhead or leaned up against the walls. There were two small windows that let in some light from outside. Shades were drawn closed on the windows, making it impossible for anyone to see into the shed from outside.
Percy walked into the middle of the shed. There were two vertical posts in the center. One of them had been the upright he had used when he'd tied Viola. He had wound the rope around her wrists, then lifted her arms over her head and attached them to a large hook. The hook was still there. Nothing was hanging on it. Nothing had been hanging on it that afternoon, either, which was probably what had given him the idea.
The post and its peg had been perfect for putting someone in standing bondage. It was almost as if it has been designed for exactly the use to which he'd put it on that day.
"Haven't you ever wondered why the boat house had no boat?" Percy said. "Yeah, there's a canoe and a kayak, but there's no big fucking boat here, is there? The middle is clear."
With eyes that saw differently now than they had in those days, he looked around. He looked up at the beams where the equipment was kept. They were thick and solid. Two of them, he saw, had additional hooks in them, from which something could presumably be hung, although nothing was.
He glanced at the contents of the shelves. Amongst the various beach balls, tennis rackets and croquet sets, he saw several coils of nylon rope. There were some light-weight chains and D-rings, steel clips, and a single ping pong paddle. On the lowest shelf, he noticed a large wooden chest. It looked like one of those old sailors' sea chests. It was locked with a padlock.
"It's a playroom." It wasn't anywhere near as elaborate as his own carefully planned dungeon, but, yeah. Over in the corner was a padded sawhorse that could be used as a spanking bench.
His old mentor nodded and gave a sigh. "Doesn't get much use these days, sadly."
There were no toys hanging on the walls, though. As if he guessed his thought, Percy put his boot on the sea chest. "Gets damp in here. This look antique, but it's water proof."
Stephen chuckled. "Were there toys in here back then? I wish I'd known that at the time."
"I'm glad you didn't. You obviously did know how to use them."
"I was young, for chrissake. And how do you know, anyway? Where's the camera?"
Percy pul
led something out from a dark shelf and held it up so Stephen could see the lens. "Motion-activated," he said. "In those days I was more active in the scene. I used to bring girls here. The place is soundproof. And look up—there's nothing stored on the rafters in the center. I didn't want stuff to fall on someone's head. Safe, sane, and all that shit."
Stephen had started laughing again. "I always wondered how you knew. You claimed you'd seen us together on the beach, but I wasn't a complete idiot. I checked to make sure we were alone. I didn't count on cameras." His laughter ceased as he added, "Or on you being a fucking voyeur."
"The camera was a thing. A woman I was dating back then was into filming stuff and watching it together afterwards. I sure as hell didn't figure I'd catch my young protégé doing kinky shit with my even younger daughter. And how did I know you weren't some kind of psycho freak?"
"Well, fuck, since you were kinky yourself, you might have shown a little tolerance."
"She was too young."
"She was eighteen."
"Look, I didn't come down here to argue this shit with you again. You're back with her now and she obviously likes your ass, so fine. Just don't hurt her. She's still fragile after what that asshole did to her."
"I know that. I'm trying to help her through it. That's the only reason I'm here. I want to make sure that guy never causes her another minute's grief or fear." He paused. "Apparently he left the country quite suddenly. I can't help wondering if you did something to scare him away. Did you?"
"Damn right I did. He and I used to be friends. We went fishing together. A buddy you fish with isn't supposed to betray you. You know that, right? Your fishing buddies are fucking sacred."
Stephen refrained from rolling his eyes. "So what did you do?"
"The asshole didn't even appreciate the gravity of what he'd done. Viola was fucked up, in the hospital, and this guy was tooling around town acting like he was the injured party.
The Dangerous Hero Page 20
