I sidestep Rocco just as quickly, certain the cause of Dimitri’s aggression has something to do with me. The image Smith showed him was blurry from a distance, but several parts of it were distinct—the most obvious, my recently dyed flaming red hair.
“Roxie…” Don’t misconstrue the annoyance in Rocco’s tone. If he didn’t want me to sidestep him, he wouldn’t have let it happen. From what I’ve overheard the past couple of hours, he encouraged Dimitri to let me stretch my wings, unaware Dimitri’s growth would come in the form of his possessiveness. He feels somewhat responsible for the six-week gap in whatever the fuck you consider my relationship with Dimitri to be. I assured him he has nothing to feel guilty about. He disregarded my offer on the basis I didn’t know all the facts. Supposedly, the bender Dimitri went on weeks ago wasn’t his lowest low. The past six weeks were.
“Dimitri!” I shout when he pole drives an officer in the middle of the group. The man he’s assaulting is in uniform, his colleagues are surrounding him. I don’t see him coming out of this with anything less than an extremely long rap sheet.
When the group of twenty-plus officers part to watch the charade unfold, I’m given an uninterrupted view of Dimitri clambering off the unnamed officer. He isn’t satisfied he beat his face to within an inch of recognition with only a handful of swings. He’s moving for the old rope swing in the front tree.
He doesn’t yank it out of the tree. He merely curls the frayed end around the officer’s throat before he hauls him onto his feet with inhumane strength. The dark-haired man’s feet dangle an inch from the soggy ground within seconds, and his friends do nothing but stare when he clutches at the rope burning his throat.
His imminent death already looks painful, but I realize it’s about to get worse when Dimitri knots the rope so that the officer is suspended mid-air without Dimitri needing to maintain his grip on the pulley. It isn’t just the wet patch on the front of the man’s pants responsible for my beliefs, it’s the deadly gleam in Dimitri’s eyes when he removes his suit jacket and commences rolling up the sleeves of his dress shirt. He’s set to punish this man, his endeavor only thwarted when he spots my watch.
“Get her out of here!” he yells at Rocco, his voice unlike anything I’ve ever heard.
Rocco doesn’t ignore his command this time around. He wraps his arm around my waist and hoists me away just as Dimitri hits the officer’s ribs with a punishing left-right-left combination.
As the officer slowly asphyxiates, his eyes protrude out of his head. It has nothing on the bulge mine do when I see Smith’s tablet screen head-on. The man who swore to uphold the law wasn’t tempted by the bounty on my head. He put my license on a rape-play site. The address of the apartment I share with Estelle is on a website specifically designed for men to connect with women who fantasize about being raped, clear as day for all to see.
It isn’t the only identification card on display either. There are several beneath me. One I recognize almost as immediately as I did mine. It’s a photo identification from what appears to be Demi’s place of employment. It states she enjoys being taken unaware, and the rougher her unknown john is, the better.
Oh. My. God. Is that why Demi was assaulted? Because the man Dimitri is killing made out she fantasizes about being raped? If that’s the case, what would have happened to me if Smith hadn’t found his disturbing website? I don’t have a dog nor a gun to keep me safe.
I only have Dimitri.
In all honesty, that’s all I need. It doesn’t make my anger any less violent, though. What if I weren’t home when the men came looking? What if they hurt Estelle believing she was me?
As the anger inside of me evolves, I fight with everything I have. “Let me go,” I seethe through clenched teeth when Rocco refuses to relinquish his grip around my waist. “I’m gonna pull his insides out of his nostrils.”
“You’re too late, Princess P,” he informs on a laugh. “He’s already met with his maker.”
My eyes jackknife back in just enough time to take in the fatal flop of the officer’s head. Although he’s still hanging from the tree I climbed as a child, I don’t believe he died from strangulation. There’s too much blood oozing from the many nicks and cuts on his body for the coroner to place anything but torture down as his cause of death.
Twenty-Five
Dimitri
My blood is boiling hot. I’m pissed, frustrated as fuck, and reasonably sure one kill won’t cut it. I want to murder Officer Daniel’s entire precinct. Do you truly expect my anger to be any less? He didn’t arrive with Maddox’s fleet. He’s been here since the start, standing mere feet from Roxanne for hours, drinking her coffee, and nibbling on the only morsel of food she had left in her cupboards. But instead of thanking her for her generosity, he put her information on a rape fantasy site.Allher information—date of birth, height, weight, and exactly how you can sneak into her apartment via the fire escape ladder on the west side of her building. He even made out she likes being sodomized with household equipment.
Why, you ask? Because Officer Daniel Packwood works for the special victims’ unit branched under Ravenshoe PD’s umbrella, meaning he wouldn’t just be in charge of Roxanne’s case if one of the sick fucks on that site believed her kink was rape, he’d hear every sickening detail of her assault directly from the source—just like he did with Demi.
That’s his kink. He isn’t a rapist. He just wants to hear the fear in the woman’s voice when she recalls her nightmare firsthand, then he’d go home to spank one out before climbing into bed with his wife—a rape victim and advocator for women’s rights.
And you thought I was sick.
“Has the site been taken down?”
Smith waits for me to remove some of Officer Packwood’s blood from my hands with the towel Clover tossed at me before jerking up his chin. “A new one will be back up by tomorrow. That’s how these sites operate.”
“His wife?” I question through a tight jaw.
“Had no fucking clue why her hosting server was being hit with a million views per week,” Rocco answers on Smith’s behalf. “She isn’t in the wrong here, Dimi. There’s no need to punish her, too.”
Even confident he’s right doesn’t weaken my agitation. It will take Smith hours to comb through the website’s visitors to see who screenshot Roxanne’s information. That’s hours he will be off Fien’s case, but hours I can’t refuse to give. Roxanne hasn’t been to her apartment building in months, but that doesn’t mean she’s safe. You won’t believe the lengths men go when they’re on the hunt. Nothing is off-limits. If they want to find her, they will. No fear.
“Send two guys to watch out front. Officer Packwood wasn’t working alone, so he’ll have a visitor or two show up when he fails to arrive for duty Monday morning.”
“And them?” Clover asks, peering at the officers who did nothing to help their boy in blue, too grateful it wasn’t them to risk punishment by intervening.
He stops rubbing his hands together like a kid in a toyshop when I say, “They’re on payroll, so they’ll keep their mouths shut. If they don’t…” When he spots the murderous gleam darting through my eyes, he recommences rubbing his hands. “When another site pops up, what are the chances of tracing the source of the server?”
