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Then I can’t be stopped.
I rush to her side.
All the times Pamela was there for me. When boys in middle school were cruel and called me “giraffe” and grabbed my breasts that barely budded at the time, sneering, “You’re skinnier than a boy.” Or when they grabbed my crotch and laughed, “Where’s your dick?” Pamela defended me.
“They just got little dick problems,” she’d laugh, pulling me down the hallway to the candy machine.
She was stronger than me back then. She was the fighter. And today, she’s the strongest person I know. Because she survived.
Still in the FBI Agent’s arms, she’s held there while her eyes squint to the sunlight, and I know she can barely see, but she’ll know this.
“It’s me.” I stroke her long brown hair. Small waves of relief ripple through me because she doesn’t look as bad as I feared. She looks fed. She looks very pale, but she doesn’t look scarred or disfigured. But my heart holds strong; it holds back the wails I want to scream for all I know that she’s survived inside. “It’s Cade. Redix too. We’re here.”
She can’t open her eyes. The sunlight’s too brutal, even in the shade. But tears fall from their corners while she says, “I knew you’d find me.”
And I want to cry for her. I want to sob with relief and grief and will many times later.
“How long has it been?” she asks, and it’s grace that she can’t see because that unleashes my tears, clenching my teeth so she can’t know, not yet. She’s lost all sense of time while each day, every day, I’ve searched for her.
“It’s been some years.” I hold her cheek. The agent hasn’t put her down. He lets me have this with her. “But we’re here for you. For all the rest of them. Me and Redix and your mom, and you’re safe. You won’t hurt anymore.”
She nods. “Go get him.”
She won’t say his name—Gentry—but the look on her face is vengeance. Like we’re thirteen again, and she’s shoving a bully into a locker. Like her pain is finally over.
“I’ll drag him down to hell for you,” I promise, and I know I’ll bawl and grieve for her later, but for now… I’m strong for her, too.
All the rage. All the fury. I don’t show it except for my right hand twitching for my gun while I lead a procession of agents and officers through the front door of Senator Gentry Evans’s palatial home.
His lovely wife, Stacey Evans, invites us in.
The thrill on her face matches mine because he’s hosting friends for drinks this Sunday afternoon while they watch some dumbass golf tournament on the flatscreen.
For Senator Gentry Evans to get arrested in front of all his important buddies, hell yes. And you can be damn sure I’ll be investigating these assholes too.
“This is bullshit!” Gentry’s shouting toward the screen with a beer in hand. “They need to scrap these shotgun starts.”
He doesn’t even see us at the threshold of his newly remodeled living room. Special glee fills me at all the fucking of other men Stacey’s been doing in here.
But these men are oblivious, with their backs to us and eyes glued to a screen.
Before I say it, I send another prayer to Mama. It’s like since she couldn’t have justice in her life, she sure as heaven made it possible I’d get it in mine.
And for Pamela and all the women he’s hurt. And how it started that night that changed me and Redix forever, that tried to rip us apart, but they never could; this is sweet revenge because now it’s his turn to suffer…
“Senator Gentry Evans, you are under arrest.”
How those words thunder from my mouth. How they heal my soul. How Pamela and Redix, and all the victims will get justice. In public. In a trial. In a jail sentence of multiple lifetimes.
Gentry turns my way, shocked, and my smile could sell snow in a blizzard.
This is too fucking great.
I list all the crimes on the arrest warrant, making sure his friends hear each horrific one, of just how evil he is. Gentry’s so stunned. So mortified and knocked from his wicked pedestal, he doesn’t even fight the satisfying clicks I give of the handcuffs I make sure are extra tight on his wrists.
I hope they shred his skin off by the time he’s in a holding cell.
I don’t know what guilty party called the local news station (Redix), but they’re waiting outside, getting this live shot of me escorting Gentry out of his home in handcuffs with his head hanging low, defeated.
