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The sun was low in the sky. I sucked in a breath of air, holding myself together with the last dredge of pride I could scrape from the bottom of the barrel.
“This way,” I said, hiding the loose handcuff up inside the sleeve of my robe. “Follow me.”
We ran to the bedroom where Josh lay on the floor. I stood aside as the first responders charged past me into theroom. My eyes were closed but tears still streaked out and ran down my face.
Pictures were taken of me and of the handcuff in particular. All kinds of questions came at me but I only gave the bare minimum of answers, not willing to get into the rest of it until my lawyer was there. The whole time, Josh did not come out of the room on a stretcher, with an oxygen mask on, ready to be rushed off to the hospital. It was going to be even worse than I’d imagined.
“Sally,” said a familiar voice. “Hey, it’s Hank. It’s okay now, sweetheart—it’s okay. Let’s find you somewhere to sit down.”
“Hank?” It came out as a croak. I opened my eyes and stared into his brown ones, rimmed with black eyelashes. A nerve twitched on his clenched jaw.
Somehow, the idol of my teenage years, the suffering saint himself, stood in front of me, his broad shoulders stretching his short-sleeved uniform top. He stood very close and I could smell coffee, gun oil, and woodsy man soap on him.
“You call a lawyer?” he asked. Hank had become a cop, unexpectedly. He’d specialized in domestic violence cases, he’d said at the bar a year ago. I hadn’t seen him since that night we’d danced but I’d sure thought about him.
“Yes,” I managed, my breathing short and shallow. Somehow his aura of safety brought home what I’d been through. I broke out in a cold sweat and pressed a hand firmly over my chest.
“Good. How about the kitchen in the other part of the house? Let’s get you over there before things get too busy.”
“Hot mess express,” I muttered.
His mouth twitched up at the corner. “You always did have a steel backbone.”
I blinked, not sure I had any backbone left, and glanced into that horrible bedroom. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
Hank took a deep breath. “Yeah, he is.”
When he took my hand, I gripped his hard, then stumbled as we moved away from that hellish bedroom. Our hands were hidden between our bodies as we walked past the family room filled with Josh’s equipment.
“Shit, Hank,” said another cop with a black mustache. “We’re gonna have to call in the FBI. This asshole had a lot happening.”
“Yep,” Hank said, “sounds about right.” He got us out of the guesthouse and propelled me through the main house at a quick pace. The driveway and extra parking was full, with more cars piling in as what seemed like an army of police arrived.
Hank sat me down at the breakfast table in the kitchen. He rummaged around until he found a glass and a mug, a carton of orange juice, and a package of cookies. The table in front of me filled up with things to drink and eat. Other people were filing into the kitchen. When they started firing off questions, and I sat there like a slumped statue, Hank turned them away with a few brisk words about my lawyer. He made coffee.
Sometime later he spoke into his radio then he crouched down in front of me, his face grim and serious. “Hold on, Sally. Your lawyer is here. She’s showing her ID to the officers at the door.”
“Thanks, Hank. I owe you one.”
“Nah,” he said. “You’re gonna get through this. Hang on. I’ll do everything I can for you. How about getting your parents out here?”
I hesitated. I’d never wanted my parents to know what a sex slave I’d been to Josh during our marriage. In the end though, I couldn’t resist having them there that night, not nearly as grown up as I liked to pretend I was.
An older woman bustled in, with tight sandy blonde curlscut short. She took over everything. The handcuff finally came off my right wrist. She kicked everyone out of the kitchen and then I told her my story, every awful detail. I really appreciated her cool unresponsiveness.
“Okay,” said Cristina Addison, nodding decisively. “We have a solid case for self-defense here. However, to keep this thing from dragging into eternity we’re going to have to release the security footage of you in the bedroom to the police. For evidence. It will make your case airtight and get this all over with quickly.”
“But…” I cleared my throat. “You don’t understand. Josh was making a kind of sex tape. That footage is pornographic. I can’t stand the idea of anybody watching it, let alone a bunch of police, a judge, lawyers—holy hell.” I put my face down in my hands, glad my parents weren’t there yet.
She sighed. “I’ll see what I can do to protect your privacy, but they will get a warrant.”
In the end, the dead body trumped all. The video footage was taken as evidence and I couldn’t stop it. Then it was leaked onto the internet. A local reporter heard about the story and it was on the front page of theAustin Statesman,our local newspaper. The next day, it was national news. Almost overnight, I became an unwilling porn-star.
CHAPTER THREE
My parents’ house was still home to me. They’d both worked hard, my fit and handsome father as a firefighter, my sharp and glamorous mother as an accountant. They’d bought their pretty ranch-style home when I was in middle school, with a turquoise pool in the backyard.
Have I mentioned how much I love a pool? That log cabin mansion I’d been living in didn’t have one. I’d been like a frog without my pond the whole time I was up there.
