Page 21 of Boneyard HEA

I don’t even know what I’m doing anymore.

Here’s the video. I stare at it, at the first frame. An ache grows in my chest as the past grinds back in. I grimace. I do know. I rub my temple and squeeze my eyes shut for a moment.

The pain from what Riley did to herself. The awful pain. The satisfaction I got from killing Nathan. It’s there inside me, lodged like a stone.

I’m being stupidly self-indulgent.

Abruptly, I tap the video then hand the phone to him.

I’m here for Riley.

Discovering my kinks can wait.

The large wall screen goes gray then starts showing the video. The part where her face is shoved underwater shows crookedly, tilting as it appears. There is no sound, and the silence makes it seem worse, to me. And Loxland?

He watches with not a single change of expression—a frozen man. Then he replays it, and his lip curls up. This hits him with disgust when it’s almost the same as what he has done to me?

The difference is I agreed to it.

Blackmail or not, I agreed and I began the chain of events by shovel-whacking Nathan. It’s an excuse for him but is it a moral one? And I’m just so hyped up on adrenalin, sex, grief, and who-knows-what that the sun could go out, and I’d not be sure where to run to.

One key point I can cling to, if he doesn’t follow through and help me find the other rapists, I’m gone. Even if I must do something violent to escape.

“I need to analyze this, break it down frame by frame. Feed it to an AI program on my air-gapped computer. Metadata might be there, but I assume it’s been scrubbed. Where did you get it?”

I open my mouth to reply.

“Wait.” He holds up a finger. “I remember. Riley sent it.”

I fiddle with the hem of the dress. “You have to tell me how you found out about this.”

“Do I? I suppose I should, just in case it’s relevant in some way.”

Relevant in some way. AI analysis and all that. He really sounds invested in doing this. I don’t understand him at all. I cannot remember anything much about him as a teacher except he was determined to drum math into us, and he was younger than some and a man, so several of us had crushes on him for a whole month.

Not me. Never me.

“After seeing that.” He nods at the screen. “I understand why you killed him.” His appraisal of me is more than that of a man looking at a woman he sees as a sex object. He takes my hand, squeezes it in his. “I’m sorry, though, I have to say this does not prove it was rape.”

“What?” I struggle to rise, but he’s crushing me with his legs and holding my hair.

He shakes his head, slowly. “It looks bad, but it could still be consensual.”

My face must be showing ferocious anger. I can’t help that. “I want to leave.”

“No, you don’t. Listen to me!” He firms his grip on my head and cranes it backward, so that we are staring at each other. Upside-down Aaron says, with every word carefully enunciated, “Even if it was CNC, that video shows a reckless disregard for safety. She’s drugged or very drunk, and they hold her underwater? I’m still helping you. Okay? You. Are not. Leaving. Anyway. I’m keeping you. And I’m helping you. Say it.”

Keeping me. I harden my expression, stare at him some more. All my defiant genes are fired up, and my neck is starting to hurt, but I have heard what he said.

I have.

“If you’re helping me still…”

He nods.

“I guess I will stay.”

“Good. The deal is still on.”