AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Orly shook her head. “I tried to get her to talk to me, but she never answered. I think she was so focused on the gun pointed at her that she wasn’t exactly aware that someone else was there with her. She didn’t even acknowledge me.”
“Did you hear anything else besides the television?” Garrett asked. Orly appreciated how interested they all were. She’d expected some kind of judgment or pushback from them, but all she felt was their respect and genuine eagerness to help.
Orly shook her head. “No. I was focused solely on her. My pasta even boiled over and I didn’t notice it until after…” She let her voice trail off, knowing she was only delaying the inevitable.
“After what?” Luke asked.
This was the worst part. Orly had never been connected to someone when they were killed before that night. “After he shot her,” she said, nibbling on her bottom lip in an effort to keep the lump from forming in the back of her throat.
“That’s what I’m not clear about,” Caden said. “You seem so sure Russell shot her, but you never saw his face. How do you know it was him?”
Orly drew in a ragged breath. “Right before he pulled the trigger, a headlight shone through the window and I saw him. I remember the shock when I recognized him, but I don’t know if it was more mine or hers.”
“What do you mean?” Luke asked. “Hers?”
“I know you’ll probably wonder why I didn’t mention this before, but I honestly don’t think it makes much of a difference. I mean, Russell is a captain of the LAPD. He’s very well known and liked for the most part. At least from what I could tell.” It was one of the many reasons she couldn’t turn to anyone in law enforcement. Orly was sure they’d take his side over hers.
“Tell us,” Luke said. “We just want to help.”
Orly closed her eyes, dreading their reaction as she spoke the words. “She knew him.”
Caden nearly jumped out of his chair. “What? How do you know that? Did she tell you?”
Orly shook her head. “No. The last thing she said, before he pulled the trigger was ‘Russell, please don’t.’” A sob escaped Orly’s throat and she put a hand over her mouth. “I was in her head, seeing through her eyes when she said it. Then I heard a click, and everything went black. The woman was gone and I was on the floor, my head throbbing. At first I thought I’d been shot by proxy, but there was no wound or blood on me. I tried to reach back out to her, but there was nothing. Just - nothing.”
There was a moment of silence as the men took in Orly’s words. She waited for them to doubt her. To ask her if she was sure.
“I am so sorry you had to experience that,” Martin said, folding his arms across his chest.
“Thanks,” Orly said. She’d noticed Martin’s height as soon as they met, but it was his green eyes that captured Orly’s attention. They were a brilliant jade color and so expressive, it was like she could read his every emotion in them.
Caden ran a hand over his short hair and rubbed the back of his neck. “Did she say or do anything that could’ve told you who she was or where she was? I mean this guy obviously gets around, so it’s possible she’s not even from LA.”
Orly swallowed, letting out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding. They believed her. Not that they shouldn’t, but a part of her would probably always expect people to doubt her. “I didn’t catch anything, but I was only in her head for the last few minutes of her life. I’m pretty sure it was in Los Angeles because Russell left our apartment only about half an hour before that.”
Blake leaned forward in his chair. He was around Luke’s height with a similar build, but his features were lighter and he had a mop of blonde curls on his head that covered the tops of his ears and the nape of his neck giving him an almost boyish charm. “What happened then?” Blake asked. “How did you confront him or how did he find out about you? I mean what you can do.”
There was a nervous energy behind Blake’s words, like he didn’t want to say something that would offend her. It was sweet and almost made Orly want to smile, a gesture of comfort, as if to say nothing he said would surprise or offend her. But she focused on his question instead. “Russell’s known about my ability for a while. I told him soon after he proposed. I wanted our relationship to work and keeping a secret like that - I honestly thought telling him would bring us closer. He’d always been controlling, but it came off as protective, so I didn’t mind it too much. He was okay about my ability at first. I think he tried to be supportive, even if it weirded him out, but the longer we were together and especially after I moved in with him, he became less and less tolerant of it. After he killed that woman though, I…” Her words trailed off.
“You were afraid of him,” Luke surmised.
Orly nodded. “I didn’t want to be, but I’d seen him kill her. I left him that night, but when he found me, he quite literally dragged me back. He tried to forbid me from using my ability, but I can’t control it, so I did my best to hide it from him. But I wasn’t always successful. Things just got worse after that. He started calling me names and…”
“And what?” Caden asked, leaning forward in his chair.
Orly had been through so much growing up in the foster care system, but admitting to these men that her fiancé hit her was probably the hardest thing she could imagine doing. “He’d hit me,” she said, probably too softly for them to hear, but they had heard her. It was written all over their expressions. “I don’t think he meant to hurt me. He’d never laid a hand on me before that day.” Even as she tried to defend Russell’s actions, Luke and his friends listened with a respectful silence. She’d told Luke that Russell hit her, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to him. Still, he sat there with his friends, their lips pressed into tight lines, their fists clenched, their gaze never leaving hers.
Orly just wanted to finish the story so she let the rest of it tumble out in a hurry. “At first, Russell tried to convince me that I didn’t understand what I saw, that he’d killed her in self-defense. But she didn’t have a weapon. Her hands were empty. She was standing in her own home, begging for her life, and Russell just killed her, like it was no big deal. Like she was just a bug on the wall that didn’t matter to him. Anyway, I stopped arguing the point because it only made him fly into a rage and hit me whenever I mentioned it. I knew I had to get away, but I needed to save up some money and figure out a plan first. I didn’t think it would take as long as it did. I felt like such a coward, but -”
“No,” Luke and Caden said at the same time.
“You’re not a coward,” Blake said firmly.
“I think you’re brave as hell,” Luke said.
“And you’re the key to putting this guy away. I’m just sorry you didn’t have someone to turn to sooner. He could’ve seriously hurt you,” Caden said. “I’ll call the FBI office in Los Angeles and see if they can look into him. I’ll have them dig into any of his exes. Hopefully that will give us a lead on who that woman was.”
“He’s divorced,” Orly said. She hadn’t thought about his ex-wife in a while. “I met Russell a few months after his divorce was finalized. I don’t know much about her, except that he hates her.” Orly wrung her hands. “I hope it’s not her though. I never met her, but I know she left him for another guy and I heard they have a kid now.”
