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“AP?” I feel a surge of nausea. “As in, an advanced placement course in high school?”
“Exactly. He thinks she’s seventeen, a junior at a boarding school in the DC area.” Nikolai pauses, then adds softly, “An orphan whose parents died in a car accident, leaving her in the care of an indifferent uncle who wants nothing to do with her.”
“The perfect bait for a predator,” I whisper, my eyes burning. “The most vulnerable type of victim… like my mother.”
“Yes. That seems to be his MO. We’ve located two more women he’s done this to over the years.” Nikolai’s jaw flexes. “He likes them smart, pretty, and way too young—and with no one to turn to.”
I suck in a breath, the icy needles piercing deeper. “You found them? Will they come forward?”
“They will now.”
I swallow to keep the contents of my stomach down as I return my attention to the screen. As sickening as this is going to be, I need to see this video with my own eyes, to know exactly what kind of monster hurt my mom when she was a vulnerable teen.
I’m done hiding from reality.
Finding the video, I click “play”—and my nausea intensifies, my stomach cramping with the knowledge that I share this man’s genes.
The recording begins with a short but violent chase, with a tall, fit, handsome older man—unmistakably Tom Bransford—lunging at a petite blonde dressed in a pair of tiny shorts and a cropped top. The camera is at such an angle that only a portion of Masha’s face shows, but there’s no mistaking the youthful line of her jaw—nor the terror in her frantic movements.
She makes it most of the way across the narrow, cluttered room before he tackles her from the back, slamming her into a wall next to a BTS poster, then spinning her around to face him. Sobbing in panic, she attacks, clawing at him with small, slender fingers, but he slaps her brutally across the face and slams a fist into her stomach.
I tense, feeling the blow as if it landed on me, but the worst is just beginning. While Masha is bent over, wheezing for air, he rips at her shirt, tearing it open at the shoulder.
A delicate, softly rounded shoulder, one that could belong to a young teen or a child.
I know that’s not the case—I know with her government background, Masha must be at least in her early twenties—but it’s easy to forget that I’m not witnessing an actual assault on an innocent teenage victim.
Or rather, that the assault is likely real, but not the victim.
Either way, I can’t help exhaling in relief when, after a few more moments of agonizing struggle, Masha makes a twisting motion that seems to accidentally bring her knee in contact with her assailant’s groin. He staggers back with a high-pitched scream, his hands cupped over his crotch, and she makes a break for it again, this time reaching the door and disappearing as Bransford screams, “You fucking cunt! Get back here, you fucking tease, or I’ll fucking kill you!”
The video cuts off then, but not before the camera zooms in on Bransford’s face, on the handsome, even features twisted into a red mask of thwarted fury, a bulging-eyed visage as monstrous as the man himself.
Shaking, I shut down the laptop and gulp in small breaths in an effort to bring oxygen into my tightly banded ribcage—and stop myself from puking.
To paraphrase Nikolai, one person vomiting around here this week is plenty.
When I’m sure my stomach won’t expel its contents, I turn to look up at Nikolai. “How did you do it?” My voice is only marginally unsteady. “How did Masha get him to… you know?”
“To attack her?” At my nod, he says, “I don’t know all the particulars, but I suspect it was by doing exactly what he accused her of at the end.”
“Being a tease?”
“Whatever you’d call strongly encouraging his attentions, then deliberately withdrawing—what men like that think all women do. Only in this case, Masha was actually doing it, just with a different goal than what he thought.” Nikolai’s upper lip curls. “He undoubtedly figured she’d be so eager to get school credit for volunteering at his campaign, she’d let him fuck her, and when she didn’t, things escalated quickly… as we figured they might, given his history.”
I swallow down another wave of nausea. “So everything that happened in the video took place for real? None of the footage was fabricated?”
“It was heavily edited, but not fabricated, no.”
“Edited for what?”
Nikolai takes a seat across from me. “To hide her face and highlight his, for one thing. Her anonymity is important to her.”
I mentally replay the video and realize he’s right: Masha’s face never actually appears in it. The angle is always wrong. Even when Bransford has her pinned against the wall and the camera is looking directly at her face, his shoulder or something blocks it, allowing the viewer to catch only a glimpse of her cheek, ear, or jaw—enough to get an impression of youth and beauty but not to capture a printable photograph.
