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Rae thought a moment before saying, “Yes. He said he had an important meeting at the Skirvin Hotel, but he didn’t say anything else about it.” Then she remembered something else she had forgotten before. “And when he asked me out, he mentioned knowing about these big play parties we could go to. I didn’t ask him details about it, but I assumed he was talking about a kink party with sex involved, which, again, I made it clear to him I wasn’t interested.”
Only she had been. She hadn’t had sex in months and hadn’t dated anyone serious in years, but she knew it’d be the kiss of death to go out with a client.
The detective was furiously writing notes again, but he paused to look at her. “Have you ever heard of parties like that happening locally?”
“Of course. People have private parties all the time, including ones where there’s sex involved, and there are private clubs where kinky people can play in front of others.”
“But something about the parties he mentioned bothered you.”
Rae disliked how perceptive and confident Detective Clearwater was, making statements when someone else would ask questions.
“What concerned you, Ms. Dixon?”
She didn’t know why, but the old her, the young woman named Echo who had escaped so many years ago, hummed in her chest like a hive of bees about to be punched.
“He said there were no rules or safe words at the parties, and that’s not how kink works. There are always safe words or other ways to communicate to prevent someone from getting harmed.”
The detective’s face turned grim. “Have you ever heard of parties like that happening in the kink community?”
“Never. Not ones I’ve been to anyway.”
He rested his notepad on his thigh and sat up, reminding Rae of his height. “How did you get into this kind of ... work?”
Rae crossed her arms again, this time because she felt inexplicably chilled. “I don’t see the relevance of your question.”
“Fair enough. That was my own curiosity,” he said. “But I would like to know what you get out of this. I mean, besides money.”
“I’d be lying if I said the money wasn’t good, but we’re also in the middle of a shitty economy, and I’m a single mom, so the money certainly helps. But what I really get out of it?” She thought of Viv, her old friend who had been so much more. “I guess some people’s pleasure is another person’s power.”
Detective Clearwater’s eyes narrowed. “That’s an interesting way to put it. So, you get power from giving clients pain?”
“We both do, my clients and me. It’s a power exchange.” She looked him straight in the eyes. “And the endorphins you get from it can be better than the best sex.”
Rae smiled to herself as the detective cleared his throat and appeared to mull that over. She tried to casually shift on the spank bench to give her lower back some relief. Her throbbing feet, still in thigh-high stiletto boots, felt like a can of biscuits left in a hot car, about to explode any second.
“We’re going to need access to your client records, Ms. Dixon.”
Rae shot up from the bench but quickly sat back down when pain stabbed through her feet. “Absolutely not. My clients’ privacy is vital to my business. It would ruin me, not to mention what it could potentially do to my clients if their names were somehow leaked to the public.”
“I understand your concern, but we need to know if we can connect any of your other clients to Thomas Highsmith. I promise we will be discreet about it.”
Rae shook her head, which was starting to throb as much as her feet. “Detective Clearwater, I want to cooperate with your investigation, but not if there’s even a minuscule chance of it affecting my business or family.” She let out a grunt of frustration. “My daughter doesn’t know what I do, and I have to keep it that way. So, no, I won’t share my client records.”
The detective sat for what seemed like a full minute, his eyes steadily focused on her as if he was waiting for her to change her mind. He looked around at the room and dismissed the officer who was still digging through her dungeon items.
It was just Detective Clearwater and her now, facing each other.
“Ms. Phalin, I don’t think you have much choice.”
His words, they punched her, and that humming, terrified girl in her chest, the hive of bees, broke free.
“What did you call me?” Her voice came out in a whisper.
“That is your real name, isn’t it, before you changed it? Echo Phalin.”
CHAPTER 11
RAE
