by Britney King
Eventually, his eyes fall to the table. There’s more bothering him than the fact that I’ve come here on my own accord. “You think your tricks work on me?”
“No.”
“Apparently, they don’t work on anyone.”
“You’re right.” You learn quick when you know what kind of punishment is on the line. “Please,” I plead. “I can do whatever you want. Whatever you need…”
“Whatever I need. That’s cute.” When his eyes meet mine, they are no longer troubled; they are crazed. I watch as he pulls a syringe from his pocket, holds it toward the light, and narrows his eyes. “Less messy this way.”
“I can fix this, Adam,” I beg. “I know I can.”
“If only I believed you.”
“Fine,” I offer, playing my last good card. “If you want to lose this one—that’s your call.” I fold my hands neatly in my lap. “I trust you know what’s best.”
He smirks. I can see he doesn’t believe me. “Oh, it won’t be me on the losing end, sweetheart. You know better than that.”
A hard knot settles in my stomach, the culmination of a lot of hard work and the defeat I know is coming. The room grows so quiet there’s nothing left but the pulse thumping through my ears. “What is it?” I ask, eyeing the syringe. They like to mix it up. Or so I’ve heard.
“Just a little something to paralyze the larynx. Takes about ninety seconds. Probably won’t be much suffering involved. A pity, really. It’s his own drug, ironically…but then you didn’t know that, did you? Had no idea what you were really messing with…”
My eyes study the grooves in the carpet.
“Figures,” he scoffs. “You really should be a little more careful. You’re in a business where there’s no room for secrets.”
My eyes meet his. “Guess I got lucky.”
“You got the opposite of lucky.”
Bile burns the back of my throat. I swallow it down like all the other things I’ve been forced to swallow.
I should be thinking about an exit strategy. Instead, my mind is filled with the man lying in the next room. Sleeping now, relaxed. Happy, even. Maybe. I’ve never met anyone like you, he’d whispered, just moments before he dozed off, moments before the text came. I think of his hands on my body. Such smooth hands. Hurried hands. Desperate, seeking hands.
“Funny, isn’t it?” His voice catches my attention. His gaze drifts over the length of my body, lingering. “How money can buy pretty much anything.”
“I don’t find it so funny.” I shift and then I make a move to stand. He raises his hand to halt any progress I might make.
“Tell you what…you go lie on the bed and spread your legs, and when I’m done with you, I’ll think about giving you another week.”
“No.” This is his way of testing me. He doesn’t have to make deals if he wants me on my back.
“Guess you can’t complain then.” He smiles. “This is on you.”
I’ve passed his test.
He stuffs the syringe in his left pocket, and I realize this isn’t one of his usual threats. Regardless of how much talking he’s doing, he isn’t bluffing. He’s come here, personally, to teach me a lesson. It’s going to hurt, I know.
But there’ll always be the next job, the next lesson: Work harder. Faster. He thinks his punishment will make me more efficient. But then, he knows little of seduction. He only deals in fear.
There’s movement in the adjacent room.
My chest seizes. Time slows. I don’t know how, but I have to stop this.
“Pity. I’d really preferred to handle it while he was sleeping.”
More movement.
I don’t say anything. He has a way of knowing how to hit where it counts. I’m aware of what happens next, and even though this will be my first, I’ve heard what comes after.
“Chin-up, baby doll.” He places his ear to the door. I look on as he steps back, rolls his neck, loosens up. He speaks in code, and what he means is there will always be another target. “It was just a job. You know how it goes.”
He’s wrong, and I suspect he knows it. Acting will only take you so far. You can’t be good at this without feeling something. I do my best. Which explains why someone’s about to die. It won’t surprise me when I’m next.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I stand and walk over to it to get a closer look at the gash in my head. Look at you. Look at what you’ve become. I see someone who is supposed to be me, but isn’t. I’m unrecognizable. Almost. The eyes hold a lot you don’t want them to. At least I look like I feel. Dark. Angry. Full of rage. Scared to death. How could you let this happen? What kind of person justifies killing a man?
I tussle my hair and then turn on my heel and go to Adam. I stop when I’m just close enough that he can feel my breath on his skin. “One week,” I say taking his tie between my fingers. I deftly twist it around my hand and ball it into a fist. I pull him toward the sofa. He doesn’t budge. “I’m not into sluts.” He takes my hand in his and he squeezes. Hard. Easily, he removes his tie from my grip. He’s going to kill me. “If you couldn’t succeed with him, what makes you think I’d want sloppy seconds?”
I swallow hard. We both know there’s nothing more to be said. Seduction got me into this. It won’t get me out. It’s suddenly clear—if I want to win, I’ll have to play the game his way.
He steps toward the door. I sink to the sofa and reach for my phone. Adam isn’t even threatened by it. That’s just how in my place they have me. “While I take care of business, get yourself together.”
I meet his eye. What he’s really saying is what I already know: this isn’t the end, just another beginning. Eventually, it won’t be an intended target that will be so easily disposed of. Eventually, it will be me. One misstep, one wrong word, the allure gone, it doesn’t matter the indiscretion. There are no illusions on which direction things are headed. I’ve messed up by coming here.
This is what happens when you give away your freedom.
I send Elliot a text. Run. I know three little characters may very well get me killed. But I can’t let this happen. Fix this. My mind races. They will kill you. I can’t help it. He’s going to die and it’s going to be your fault.
My hands shake as I send a second text. Run now. Six characters thrust me toward certain death. Nine all together, and I am a traitor. They will find his phone. They will read the text. How stupid of you, risking your life. What will become of Matthew? He’ll grow up without a mother. He’ll grow up hating you. For what? For a long shot? And then, as Adam grips the door, he pauses, but only briefly. He seems to have read my mind. He shakes his head before offering one last glance in my direction. He shrugs like it’s nothing, like it was always nothing. “Sometimes you win. Sometimes you don’t.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Elliot
The moment Adam Morford crosses into my hotel room with the intent to kill me, chaos ensues. “Hands up, FBI!” men shout in unison. I watch as they take him to the ground. His face is expressionless.
My phone buzzes a second time. The screen lights up. Vanessa is telling me to run.
If only it weren’t too late for that. My phone is confiscated, lest I do something stupid. I’m placed in handcuffs and hauled into the bedroom. It’s unnecessary, given that this has all been orchestrated. If only it too were a part of the act.
But when you make shady deals, sometimes you get caught. Suddenly, it became against them. If I didn’t help the Feds, life as I knew it was essentially over. They had a whole host of charges against me, charges that amounted to upward of forty years. I wouldn’t have left prison alive.
This way I’ll serve a little time in a comfy setting— “Club Fed,” as they call it—and then be on my way, at least to the extent that is possible when you’ve done what I’ve done, which is to say when you’ve outed the kind of people I’ve outed, you don’t get to live outside of witness protection.
They don’t let me see Vanessa before she is hau
led out. I hadn’t figured they would. There’s a small part of me that feels bad for not warning her. But she’s a smart girl. She seems like the type to know how to work a system. She’ll figure it out.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Vanessa
My name is not Vanessa. It’s Bethany. And my parents did not willingly let me go with Sean Bolton. He convinced me to run away with him when I was fifteen. He found me on Instalook, promised me the moon, and the rest was history. I knew I could never go back to my old life. I knew what the church would do to me and my family if I ever told the truth. They fixed me, they brainwashed me, changed my appearance, until even I couldn’t recognize myself.
And the truth was, I didn’t want to go back. But I never wanted any of this either. I know I wasn’t the only girl this happened to within the church. It just wasn’t something that was spoken of, and whatever thing most of the girls had been running from was something they didn’t want to return to. It’s hard to understand freedom if you’ve never really had it, and it’s hard to understand there are varying degrees of terrible things in this world, unless you’ve really walked a mile in someone’s shoes.
“I realize you’re scared, Miss Bolton,” the agent tells me.
I do my best to cover myself.
“I’m Agent Stanley with the FBI. May I call you Vanessa?”
I can see he knows I’m lying about who I am and what I’m doing here and also that he is trying to establish rapport. We learned about this in training. I refuse to give anything away; I’m aware of what the church will do to me if I speak. I nod instead.
“The Sex Crimes Unit will be here soon,” he offers reassuringly, and suddenly I am glad for the blood pouring down the side of my face. “Can someone get a medic in here?” he calls out.
I run my hands along the length of my forearms. I’m shivering. My knees shake. I press them together as hard as I can, assuming it will help. It doesn’t.
He calls someone and asks if there’s a female agent on staff. Someone brings a blanket in. Even after I cover myself, no one looks me in the eye. I can see it in their sympathetic sideways glances; they don’t think I came here on my own accord. Even I wonder what the truth is in that regard.
“Adam Morford has been placed under arrest. Everything that happened in this hotel room and in the other, we have on camera,” he says, and I don’t know why he’s telling me this. I’ve seen enough on TV; I know about my Miranda rights, and I know to keep my mouth shut because anything I do or say will be used against me in a court of law.
“Is there anything you can tell us, Mrs. Bolton? Anything about how you and Adam Morford are connected?”
“I have a son.” I don’t know why I blurt this out when I do. Maybe it’s the thought of Matthew all alone while I rot in jail. Surely, Gina will keep him for a few hours, at least until this is all sorted out. But something tells me this isn’t the kind of thing where they’ll ask me a few questions and send me on my way. Surely, they’ll search our home, if they haven’t already, and they’ll find Sean, and what happens then?
“Where is your son now?”
“With a sitter.”
“And your husband? You’re married to Sean Bolton, correct?”
I nod.
“And where is he?”
I think this is the point where I’m supposed to ask for my lawyer. Trouble is, I don’t have a lawyer, and I don’t want to seem guilty by asking for something I don’t even have. Instead, I begin crying profusely.
“And Elliot?” I ask. “Is he under arrest?”
“What is the nature of your relationship with Mr. Parker?”
I shrug, and it’s mostly genuine. I don’t know the answer to his question.
“You used the term mark. Can you explain what that means?”
I shake my head. Another man comes in and stands at Agent Stanley’s side. He whispers something in his ear. I think he means for me to hear because he isn’t all that quiet about what he says. They’ve raided my home. They’ve found my husband’s body.
I am taken to a hospital. Terms like shock and rape kit are thrown around, even though I tell them Elliot Parker didn’t rape me. They ask me if I’m aware of the term “sex trafficking.” They say they found information in my home alluding to the fact that my name is not Vanessa Bolton. It’s Bethany Felder.
I tell them I want to see my son.
“Do you know why Adam Morford would have wanted your husband dead?” the female agent asks.
This doesn’t make any sense.
“We’ve seen the tapes in your home. We know Mr. Morford forced you to have sex with him. We’ve reviewed the tapes. What we don’t understand is what happened before that. Can you shed some light? Was there a struggle between the two of them?”
“Ummm…” I pretend like I either can’t recall, or it’s just too painful to say.
“We’re just looking for a motive.”
I think of Sean’s strategic placement of the cameras in our home, and suddenly things become clear. The very thing my husband was using to keep tabs on me, the methods in which he enacted control, could be the thing that sets me free. I remember telling Adam to grab a bottle of wine the other night. I considered locking him in the basement and making a run for it, but in the end lacked the courage. If I’d sent him down there to discover Sean’s body, either he’d have to die, or I would. I know the comings and goings of the basement won’t be on that tape. Only what happened in the kitchen, living room, and of course my bedroom, which is how they know about the rape.
“Adam is a terrible person,” I confess, thinking of what went down in that hotel room. “If he was capable of killing Elliot Parker, then it makes sense he would want to kill my husband. But that’s the thing you need to know about him—he didn’t have to have a reason. He took what he wanted. No matter the cost.”
“He was very possessive of you, wasn’t he?”
It dawns on me when she says that…I find my angle. I don’t have to admit or confess anything. I only have to nod my head.
I am reunited with my parents in a boardroom within the hospital. I ask them to take Matthew for a while until things get straightened out.
I am not arrested, not right away. The entirety of New Hope leadership is eventually. Melanie, Adam’s wife, everyone.
New Hope makes national news. What happened to me, what happened to other Sirens, to other girls— the things that went on within the cult, as they’re calling it— are all speculated upon.
Even though not many people within its confines actually talk, still…it’s amazing how close the media comes to painting an accurate picture.
Eventually, I am arrested on a whole host of charges. I was an accomplice. The question is: was I willing? I was a minor player for some, but not much of it, and that helps. My court-appointed attorney turns out to be somewhat decent. It helps that he’s attracted to me, and that I know the right buttons to push to get him to see things my way, but he’s confident that I’ll end up with a slap on the wrist: probation at best, house arrest at worst.
Matthew and I are forced to move. The Feds confiscated all of the church’s assets, our home being one of them.
It’s not all bad. Thanks to all of the media attention, someone, or many someone’s actually, set up victims’ funds accounts, and thousands of people all across the world donate. Matthew and I end up in an apartment. We do all right. That’s not to say I feel safe. I don’t. Most nights I don’t sleep. I probably won’t, not until the trial, not until I find out my sentence, and maybe not even then.
It’s Adam’s word against mine as to the murder of my husband. He had the perceived murder weapon in his possession. His attorneys have no proof I committed the actual crime, only a timeline and that I was an accomplice in covering it up. Given the abuse that I suffered at the hands of the church, my behavior can nearly be explained away. In addition, when it came out that Adam and the church leadership were drugging not just me but the majority of its members, their w
ord isn’t worth much. And it makes sense that there would be blank spots in my memory.
I don’t know what the future holds. I hope soon that I can finally drop the mask, exit stage left, and explore who I might be when I no longer have to pretend.
Matthew often asks if I have to go away like Sean did, and this morning over breakfast was no exception. “I might have to go away for a little bit,” I say. “But not forever.”
“Is it because you were bad?”
“No,” I tell him, and what I say afterward is mostly the truth. “It’s so that I can learn to be good.”
Chapter Thirty
Elliot
Federal Prison Camp (FPC) Montgomery, Alabama
It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission. My father always liked to use that phrase; he heard it often in the Navy. He said you do what you have to do. He said in Vietnam the enemy was particularly tough because they realized they didn’t have to win. They only had to not lose. I used to think there was no in between, but now I can see I was wrong.
It’s a tangled web we weave as humans. I am no stranger to that. My father also said a sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer's hand. Information was my tool. When the Feds wanted to bring down a particularly profitable cult, the path led them to me. I wasn’t involved with New Hope, but I certainly wasn’t innocent either. That’s how they get you.
They wanted insider information that only I could give, and in turn for the forgiveness of my trespasses, I agreed. It’s amazing what one will agree with when their back is against the wall.
It started with Melanie Anderson. Nathan hand-delivered her to me, which put me on the FBI’s radar to begin with, or so the story goes. If he’d never brought her up to my apartment, I could have stuck with plausible deniability. Prior to this, I had no direct connection with the church. But Nathan wanted the deal made—as did Melanie Anderson. I was lonely. We had sex. And that was that. Both Nathan Foster and Melanie Anderson in their own ways, and for different reasons, thought they could trap me into signing, but they were in turn only ensnaring themselves.
