Wild Man

by Kristen Ashley

  He stared at me again, likely letting the news that my ex-husband was that big of an asshole sink in before he changed tactics. “It was you who filed for divorce.”

  They’d looked into me.

  Good God. They’d looked into me.

  What was happening?

  “Yes,” I confirmed, thinking that with whatever was happening, honesty was definitely the best policy, so I kept with it.

  “Infidelity?”

  I nodded and added verbally, “Yes.”

  “Repeated,” he stated.

  “You’ve obviously read the court documents so you know that’s also a yes. But, yes, I’ll confirm that Damian cheated on me repeatedly.”

  “Yes, Ms. O’Hara, I have read the court documents and the sheer number of them indicate that the papers you filed were contested. He fought the divorce. It went before a judge.”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “He didn’t wish for your marriage to be dissolved.”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “But it was.”

  I sighed, then said, “Yes, it was.”

  “And you walked away with nothing except money enough for your legal fees. Did I read that right?”

  It was at this point I was beginning to get scared. That was to say I was beginning to get scared in addition to the scared I already was, which was layered on top of the massive freak-out created by my home being invaded by what appeared to be about three teams of multiagency SWAT (because some had the word POLICE on their vests, some had FBI, and some had DEA), pulled out of my bed, and hauled to the Police Station to be questioned.

  Therefore, my bravado melted and it came out as a whisper when I asked, “Please, can you tell me what’s going on?”

  He didn’t tell me what was going on. Instead, he queried, “Did you ever regret that, Ms. O’Hara?”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Accepting nothing from your husband but your legal fees, did you ever regret that?”

  I shook my head. “No, I… no. I didn’t. I wanted a fresh start. I wanted—”

  “Why?”

  I blinked at him. “What?”

  “Ten years with him, multiple infidelities, he made six figures and you lived a very nice life. You could have cleaned up. But you took the dog and took off. Didn’t you think he owed you? Didn’t you think you should have part of the life you built together?”

  I shook my head again. “No, I wanted a fresh start. I just wanted to… go,” I answered. “Is something… has something happened to Damian?”

  He didn’t answer my question. Instead, he remarked, “Ten years is a long time. That’s a lot to invest in a life, a marriage, a home just to walk away with nothing but the dog. Seems strange you wouldn’t lay claim to something. The wedding china. The dining room set. You didn’t even take a car.”

  “Damian paid for the cars,” I said quietly.

  “And you wanted nothing to do with him,” he noted. “Nothing to remind you of him. Am I right?”

  I nodded, staring at him, trying to read his face, but he wasn’t giving me anything.

  “Lotta women, they wouldn’t feel like you. Lotta women, kind of money he made, kind of lifestyle they were used to, they’d feel something different,” he observed.

  “I’m not a lot of women,” I told him.

  “No, seems to me you definitely aren’t. Leaving all that behind, taking nothing but the dog. Seems to me it wasn’t so much leaving him as running away. Were you running away from your husband, Ms. O’Hara?”

  I felt my chest compress like a hundred-pound weight had settled on it.

  “No,” I breathed out on a wheeze. This the first lie I’d uttered since he came in and his eyes sharpened on my face.

  He knew I was lying.

  “Clearly, we had someone taking photos of you at that lunch. This did not go well. We know this. You didn’t finish your lunch, Ms. O’Hara. You left early, looking agitated. Hurried. Like you were running away. He tell you something at lunch that would make you wanna run away?”

  “I didn’t run away,” I denied. My second lie, I did. “I just didn’t… when he told me that he’d lied about his father and he wanted to reconcile and I knew I didn’t, I didn’t think there was any reason to stay.”

  He sat back in his chair and threw out an arm. “Ten years together, he screwed around on you, that’s tough but you married him, spent ten years with him. Time had passed. Time heals wounds. It wasn’t cool he lied about his dad but he went out of his way to get you. You couldn’t shoot the breeze over salads? Talk about old times?”

  “Please tell me what’s going on,” I begged softly.

  “I’d like to understand why you left your husband and why you left that lunch in such a hurry.”

  “I told you and so did the court papers. He cheated on me and I didn’t want to have lunch when I learned the theme,” I reminded him.

  He leaned toward me and said softly, “I don’t believe you.”

  Oh God.

  Something had happened to Damian.

  “Something’s happened to Damian,” I whispered, and he smiled.

  I didn’t like that smile mainly because it wasn’t the kind of smile you liked.

  “Now, why would you think that?”

  I threw up my hands and lost a bit more control.

  “I don’t know. Because we’re talking about him in an interrogation room in the middle of the night, maybe?”

  “You know someone who would want to hurt Damian Heller?” he asked.

  “No,” I told him, the truth.

  “Sure about that?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Yes, I am.”

  “No one?” he pushed.

  I shook my head. “No one.”

  “Why’d you want a fresh start, Ms. O’Hara?”

  “My husband was cheating—”

  “Why’d you want a fresh start?”

  “Like I said, he was unfaith—”

  He banged his hand on the table, so, wound up and freaked out, my body involuntarily jumped in shock at the sudden movement and loud noise and he clipped angrily, “Why’d you want a fresh start?”

  “Because he raped me!” I shrieked.

  It just came out, those four words. They just came right out of my mouth, even surprising me.

  The first time I said them to anyone.

  He shot back in his chair blinking and I heard a loud crash outside the room so my head jerked toward the wall.

  My heart was beating fast and my chest was moving deeply with my heavy breathing as I stared at my pale face in the mirror.

  And I stared for a long time at my pale face in the mirror.

  God, I hadn’t really looked in the mirror for ages. Not really. Not for years.

  Was that what I looked like?

  “Ms. O’Hara,” he called, his voice different, quiet, weirdly gentle, but I kept staring at my pale face in the mirror, stunned by what I saw. “Tess,” he whispered and my head turned, my eyes sliding to his. “Your husband raped you?” he asked softly.

  “I know it sounds funny,” I found my lips whispering. “He was my husband but it happened.” I held his eyes and kept whispering. “It happened.”

  “It doesn’t sound funny,” he whispered back. “Not the least bit funny.”

  I held his eyes and said nothing.

  “You ran away,” he stated.

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  I ran away. Fuck yes, I ran away.

  “Had he hurt you before?”

  I nodded. “He was changing. Something was happening.” I hesitated, then repeated, “He was changing.”

  “What was happening?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. I tried to talk… we had… we fought. He would get…” I paused. “Suddenly, it never happened before, but suddenly when we fought it would get physical so I stopped trying to talk.”

  “He fought the divorce.”

  “Damian doesn’t like losing hold on what he thinks is his
.”

  He studied me with eyes now as gentle as his voice.

  Then he said quietly, “But he left you alone for four and a half years.”

  “Yes, he left me alone,” I whispered.

  “Then he wanted you back.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he explain why he approached you after all this time?”

  I shook my head but said, “He said he was… he said…” I pulled in a deep breath, then told him, “He said he loved me, missed me, messed up, and wanted to make it up to me.”

  “And since that lunch, he’s been contacting you regularly in an effort to do that?”

  “Yes.”

  His head tipped slightly to the side. “And after what he’d done to you, you took his calls? You had lunch with him?”

  Suddenly, needing to know, needing to know since I’d told him something I’d never told anyone before, I asked, “What’s your name?”

  “Sorry, I’m Agent Calhoun.”

  “Well, Agent Calhoun, the answer to your question is yes. I took his calls and I had lunch with him. Damian is who he is and I know who he is. I didn’t want him showing up at my house. I didn’t want him sending presents and flowers. I didn’t want him anywhere near me. He thought, throughout the whole time we were getting divorced, that I’d come back. He told me so and he worked at it. Only when I saw it through did he leave me alone. Whatever this is, whatever he wants from me, I had to see it through until it sank in with him that I wasn’t coming back and he left me alone. So, I was seeing it through.”

  He studied me again and then he remarked, “That took a lot of courage.”

  “He raped me, Agent Calhoun. He hit me, but he didn’t kill me. As long as I’m breathing, I’ve got fight in me and luckily I’m breathing.”

  It was at that he whispered, “You aren’t like a lot of women.”

  “Yes, I am,” I whispered back. “I’m like all women. You see this, but inside there’s something else that I won’t let you or him see, but it’s the mess he left me. But that’s mine. No one gets to it. Everything you get and he gets is a show. One thing you learn really quickly and really well when that kind of thing happens to you is to be a fucking great actress. You don’t have a choice in that because a man like that does something like that to you, you lose having choices. The only choice you have is what role you intend to play. I picked my role and that… that, Agent Calhoun, is what you see.”

  I watched him draw in a breath but he didn’t respond.

  So I asked, “Now, will you tell me what’s going on?”

  He held my eyes as he finally answered.

  “Tonight, we swept up your ex-husband’s entire operation. He’s the top narcotics distributor in Denver, with ties direct to Colombia.”

  I blinked.

  Then I breathed, “What?”

  “As far as we can trace it, after a number of years being a low-level dealer to high-end clientele, mostly colleagues, he entered the game in a serious way ten years ago and crawled his way to the top.”

  I felt my lips part as I stared at him.

  He kept talking. “Your name is joint with his on all his offshore accounts. There are four of them totaling seventy-five million US dollars.”

  “Oh my God,” I whispered.

  “You hit our radar with your lunch and when we started monitoring his calls. We were aware you were in regular contact with him over the phone for the last six months. And we were aware your name was on his accounts. However, we didn’t know what your involvement was in his operation. As the disintegration of your marriage and your divorce coincided relatively closely with his moves to elevate his position in the business, we thought you’d discovered what he was doing. But, considering your behavior at lunch, we couldn’t know why you and he resumed contact.”

  “I don’t have any involvement in his operations.” I was still whispering.

  He reached into his inside jacket pocket, pulled out a tri-folded piece of paper, and set it on the table. “Search warrant. We’re searching your house, car, business premises, and computers. We’ll also be taking a sample of your handwriting because someone signed your name to open those offshore accounts and they did this approximately six months ago.”

  I kept staring at him and then I closed my eyes and turned away while shaking it.

  Damian.

  Evidence was suggesting that I would, indeed, never get rid of him.

  “I don’t… I can’t…” I sucked in a deep breath, looked back at Agent Calhoun, and said, “I don’t believe this.”

  “If what you say is true, our searches will bear this out. However, I will have to ask you to remain here until those are complete. This could take some time, Ms. O’Hara,” he stated while standing. “Can I get you some coffee while you wait?”

  I had tipped my head back to look up at him, too shocked by what I’d learned to respond.

  “Tess,” he prompted quietly. “Coffee?”

  I kept staring at him then I shook my head sharply once and looked at the table, murmuring, “Yes, thank you.”

  “Someone will be in shortly with your coffee,” he told the top of my head.

  “Thanks,” I told the table.

  I didn’t see him but I also didn’t feel his presence leave for several long moments. Then I heard his feet hitting the floor as he walked to the door. The door closed and I was alone in the room with nothing but the table, the chairs, the mirror, and whoever was behind it.

  I didn’t move and continued to stare at the table.

  And luckily, when the one tear I couldn’t control fell, it coursed down the cheek that was on the opposite side to the mirror.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Exit. Stairs.

  I STARED AT the table for a long time and I kept staring at it after they brought my coffee and asked me to write my signature on a blank piece of paper. I did that, drank my coffee, and then kept staring long after I was alone again.

  But in my head, even with all that was happening, all I could see was my pale face in the mirror.

  God, was that really me?

  The door to the room opened, my head came up, and Agent Calhoun was standing there.

  “You’re free to go, Ms. O’Hara,” he said quietly. “I’m afraid we’ll be working with your computers for a little while longer and we’ll need to ask you not to leave town in case we have follow-up questions but you can go home now.”

  I stared at him a moment before I stood. Grabbing my purse, the only thing they’d let me bring with me, I walked his way but he didn’t move out of the door so I stopped two feet away.

  “We’ll contact you when we’re done with the computers and arrange a time to return them. It shouldn’t be more than a day or two.” He was still talking quietly and I nodded. “You want me to call you a taxi, or do you have a friend who’ll come pick you up?”

  No way I was phoning any of my friends. Not about this. Not when it had to do with Damian. Not when questions could be asked and answers would be expected and lies might need to be told.

  No way.

  “I’ll call a taxi,” I told him. “Thank you, Agent Calhoun.”

  He didn’t move. Therefore, I didn’t either.

  Then he offered, “I know it’s been a long night, Tess, but you give me twenty minutes, I can get away. Take you home.”

  I studied him and really saw him for the first time. A little salt in his pepper hair, not much. Tall. Broad shoulders. A bit of a belly. Nice wrinkles by his eyes, saying he either needed to wear protective eyewear in the sun more often or he laughed a lot. Older than me by maybe five years, maybe more and he was good at hiding it, maybe less and he didn’t take great care of himself. No wedding band.

  This was the kind of man for me. This was the kind of man who might take on that pale-faced woman in the mirror and handle her with care.

  Not Jake Knox.

  Never Jake Knox.

  Agent Calhoun was a decent-looking man, probably a good man, maybe a safe man an
d, above all, I needed a man who made me feel safe.

  But not being a bitch or anything, he was no dream man.

  I’d fucked up once, gravitating toward a man who blinded me with his charisma if not his looks.

  But if that night taught me nothing else, it taught me I needed to learn to play it safe in order to get safe.

  Something tight and uncomfortable was sitting coiled in my belly. But it was squirming like it was about to unfurl and I’d had enough experience with that poisonous snake that I knew I didn’t want it to do that.

  But it was going to happen. I knew that too.

  “I’ll be okay,” I said softly.

  His head tipped to the side and something shifted through his eyes, disappointment, maybe, concern, possibly.

  “Sure?” he asked, and I nodded.

  He opened the door farther but stepped out of my way.

  I stepped into the hall and dug into my purse for the phone. Lucky for all citizens of Denver, the taxi companies had easy-to-remember numbers they plastered on the sides of their cars.

  I’d never called a taxi.

  Until now.

  I punched in one of the numbers as I walked down the hall. I put the phone to my ear, listening to it, eyes on the elevators in front of me as I walked out of the mouth of the hall and into a bustling open room filled with people, phones ringing, fingers tapping keyboards, and low conversations.

  My eyes moved through the room unseeing. They blinked as I heard the taxi company answer in my ear and I stopped short.

  My eyes were pointed through the window of an office, taking in the back of a man I knew.

  Hell, I knew that old T-shirt and I’d committed that fine ass in those faded jeans to memory. I’d been pressed to that back on a bike. My hands had moved across the skin of that back and that ass just that night after I’d removed that shirt and after he’d removed those jeans. My fingers had moved through that dark, messy hair that night too, and other times, countless times in the last four months.