Atone (16 page)

Is she motherfucking kidding me?
If she thinks I'm just going to let her walk out and into who-the-fuck-knows-what, then she doesn't know me at all.

“Don't do this,” she says.

“You're not alone anymore. Don't you get it?”

“I can't drag you into this. You have no idea what I'm up against.”

“I have a damn good idea what that fucking asshole is capable of.”

“Please don't make me hurt you.”

“The only way you could do that is if you walk out that door without me.”

She sags in my embrace, her head bent.

“We can help you,” I say. “We can protect you.”

“I don't see how
you
can when the police couldn't.”

“What do you mean?”

She doesn't answer.

“Vera. Talk to me.”

“I can't stay here. It's not safe. He'll be watching the office. He probably already has photos of us coming in here. He knows what I look like now. He knows what you look like and—thanks to your overprotective streak—what you are to me. You're going to be a target now too.”

“That's an argument for us to stick together, not separate.”

“Why do you have to be so damn stubborn
and
smart?” She tips her head back on my chest. “Fine. Come with me. But that means leaving your cellphone, Cora, your job,
everything
behind. Are you sure you want to do that? Do you even understand what that means?”

I hesitate. I'm not an idiot. Leave everything and everyone behind. I've been toying with the idea ever since I got out, but now that it can be a reality, I'm not sure if I can do it. I'd be hurting Cora. I'd be throwing away an incredible opportunity doing work I actually like
and
am good at. I'd lose any chance at reconnecting with my parents.

On the other hand, I'd get to be with Vera.

“What's going on?”

I release Vera and turn toward Cora. She's got her hands on her hips. Her gaze bounces between Vera and me, then sticks on me. I pull my cellphone out of my pocket and look at it. Cora follows the movement. I can see the moment she realizes what I mean to do. She glares at Vera, her eyes hot and angry.

I hold my phone out to Cora. “I'm going with her.”

“Why?”

“She needs me.”

“And I don't?”

“You have Leo now.”

“That doesn't mean I don't need you anymore. Don't go.”

“I'm sorry.” I take her hand and put my phone in it, curling her fingers around it. “I'll contact you when I can.”

“What about your job? What about Mom and Dad and the life you're building here?”

“I barely have the beginnings of a life here. It's not enough. I can start over somewhere new where I'm not recognized and stared at.” I reach back and take Vera's hand. “I have more with Vera than without her.”

“What exactly do you have with her? A life on the run? Do you even know why she's running? I bet she hasn't told you the real reason, has she?” She leans around me to glare at Vera. “Go on. Tell him the truth,
Gwendolyn.
”

Vera gasps, covering her mouth with her hands.

“Shit.” I spy Nolan and Savannah behind Cora, hovering just around the corner. “Not here.” I jerk my head toward the office.

Vera doesn't want to go back in there. It takes some convincing, but I finally talk her into it. I take her hand and won't let go. The minute I do I know she'll bolt.

Once we're inside with the door closed, I round on Cora. “How did you find out?”

“I was suspicious of her from the start, remember? When you started spending time with her, I got worried. So I checked the search history on your computer. You knew she wasn't who she said she was from the start but didn't tell me. What did she say to get you to keep it quiet? Is that when the sex started? God. You're just like every other guy. Jerked around by your dick.”

“It was nothing like that. You don't know the whole story.”

“I know more than you do.”

“What are you talking about?”

“A simple Google search. That's all it took to find out everything I needed to know about Gwendolyn Marie Johnston.”

“No. Please don't tell him,” Vera begs. “Please. He doesn't deserve that. Don't do that to him.”

“Me?” Cora asks. “I'm not the one fucking him and lying to him.”

“We don't
fuck,
” Vera spits out. “
Fucking
is having your virginity sold to the highest bidder and being tied down so he can collect his prize.
Fucking
is not knowing the name of the guy sticking his cock wherever the fuck he wants because he paid to get off on you.
Fucking
is being forced to your knees, to your stomach, or to all fours to fulfill whatever fucked-up request some sick fuck has.
Fucking
is paying your room and board in blowjobs whenever and wherever the master wants. What Beau and I do isn't
fucking.
”

“Am I supposed to feel
sorry
for you?”

“Knock it off!” I put my arms out, separating them. “Both of you.”

“If you don't tell him,” Cora challenges Vera, “I will.”

“No. You won't,” I tell Cora.

“I don't want to come between you and your sister.” Vera pulls her hand from mine. “I should go.”

“Goodbye,” Cora says.

“Hold on a minute. Both of you.”
God.
I can't think with the two of them going at it like this. I let out a frustrated breath. “I can't leave things like this between us,” I tell Cora. “I know I don't know the whole story, but neither do you.”

Cora crosses her arms. “I know enough.”

“I'm going with her. Don't leave things like this between us.”

“I'm not the one doing this to us. She is. I love you, but you're all kinds of stupid right now because of her. You need to hear the truth, Beau. Once you do, if you decide you still want to go with her, I won't stand in your way.”

I look to Vera. Her eyes are wide and round on Cora, her chest heaving. Trembling in the corner, she looks like a cornered animal facing off with a predator. I glance back at Cora, silently begging me to stay. This is an impossible situation. If I choose one, I lose the other. I don't know what to do.

“I escaped instead of testifying and an innocent man went to prison,” Vera blurts out.

I whip my head in her direction.
“What?”

“Sam French. He's still in prison,” Cora says. “The Freedom Project is looking for her. So is the FBI. They need her to corroborate his and another missing witness's story. She's also wanted in another crime. Have I gotten anything wrong?” she asks Vera.

“No.”

“How could…” I can't wrap my head around it. She knows my story. She
knows
it. How could she be a part of putting an innocent man in prison? How could she look me in the eye, fucking sympathize with me, when she did the same damn thing to another person?

“I don't expect you to understand—”

“Understand? Of course I fucking don't
understand.
How
could
you?”

“Are you still going with her?” Cora asks with a sneer.

“I can't…I can't fucking
think.
Just shut up. Both of you. Goddamn it!”

“I'm sorry.” Vera turns for the door.

I grab her by the arm. Hard. And pull her to me. “You're not fucking going anywhere.”

She tries to twist out of my grip. “Let me go. I'm not safe here. I'm not safe anywhere.”

“I really don't fucking care right now. You're not leaving that man in prison.”

“You don't understand.”

“You're damn right I don't. How can you fucking live with yourself and what you've done?”

“That missing witness isn't missing. She's
dead.
”

“Is this more of your
lies
?” Cora's face is full of hate for me. “You'll say and do
anything,
won't you?”

“Wait a minute,” Beau tells Cora with a hand out. He turns to me. “Is this true?”

I nod.

“How do you know she's dead? You said
she,
right?”

“Cherry,” I start. “Her name was Cherry. Or at least that's what she was called. I don't know her real name. Javier slit her throat right in front of me.”

The memory burns fresh and I'm catapulted back to that stark room with the blackout curtains so you couldn't tell day from night.

“Cherry didn't keep her mouth shut,” Javier had sneered, holding her black hair in his fist as she clamped her hands to her neck, the blood gushing between her fingers as she gasped her last breath. “Now she can't talk at all.”

His laugh had echoed in the bare room. I can still hear it in my head. He made me sleep in the room with her body that night, her sightless eyes shining in the darkness, the combined stench of blood and shit gagging me. In the morning he came and got me and took me to his office. Obediently, I got undressed and went to my knees in front of him. He sat back as I unbuckled his belt and unzipped his pants. I sucked him off, as I was trained to do. As all the girls were trained to do when he brought us in there. All the while he caressed my face, telling me he loved me. When I was done and had rebuckled his belt, he made me bend over his desk naked. He unbuckled his belt again and beat me with it, holding me down with a hand on my back while I screamed in agony and he struck me over and over.

When he finished he yanked me up by the hair. “You've always been one of my favorites, but I'll cut you like I did Cherry if you try the shit she did. Got it?”

“Y-y-yes, sir.”

“Vera?” Beau's voice snaps me back to the here and now.

I close my eyes and fight for control. Everything around me is spinning, spinning, spinning and I can't and I'm having trouble keeping it together. There. Better. But my hold is tenuous at best.

“Cherry and I,” I continue slowly. “We were supposed to testify that we saw Sam French kill a woman. A city councilman's wife. It was supposed to look like a home invasion.

“Cherry and I were hired for the party. There was drinking, drugs, and sex of course. We only left Hell House—that's what we called where we were kept—on special occasions for
very
special clients, under guard. Sam was one of the guards. Javier always went with us. He has very strict rules about parties. Anyone who isn't on the guest list doesn't get in. The councilman's wife came in through the garage, slipping past Sam. She was supposed to be at a spa for the weekend and came home early. She freaked out when she walked in on Cherry and me with her husband.

“Javier shot the wife. He got Sam to help him make it look like a home invasion. Sam didn't know—none of us knew—Javier planned to pin it on Sam. It was payback for being so careless. Cherry and I were supposed to say we were with the councilman at his election office, helping with flyers. We were his alibi.

“You have to understand. This was a very
special
councilman. Whatever Javier wanted, this guy got passed. He was a perverted fuck.” I close my eyes on the memories of that night and what I had to do. “Didn't give a shit about his wife either. I think he was glad she was dead, like Javier did him a favor.

“Cherry got cold feet and told the cops the truth. Javier found out. He killed her for going against him and as a lesson to me. He…punished me. Severely. In advance, so I didn't get the same idea Cherry did. When he held me down I took something. He doesn't know I have this….” I pull a thumb drive from the pocket in my bra.

“What's on it?” Beau asks.

“How he keeps his books. His clients. The money. The girls. Everything. I pulled it out of his laptop and palmed it. I couldn't work that night because of the welts.”

Cora winces. She's been quietly judging the whole time I've been talking. Up until now, I don't think she believed me. She finally might.

“So I had the night off,” I continue. “If I didn't get out right then, I knew I'd never get out. He'd discover I had the thumb drive and that would be it. I'd end up like Cherry. I waited until the guard outside my room stopped one of the girls to get him off, then I pried the wood off my window with a piece of the bed frame and climbed out.”

“You jumped out a second-story window?” Beau asks in disbelief.

“I lowered myself as far as I could go, yes. I got lucky. There was a bush under the window.”

“Where did you go?” This from Cora.

“I couldn't go to the police, so I went to a fire station and hid. When they went out on a call I took what I could use—some cash, clothes, a car—”

“The other crimes,” Cora chimes in. I don't hate her for trying to protect her brother, even though she destroyed any chance I might have had with Beau.

“I drove as far as I could,” I continue. “Ditched the car. Got on a bus. I just kept going as fast and as far as I could. I changed everything I could to stay hidden. I only came back for Marie. But I was too late. He already had her.”

“Why did you take the thumb drive?” Beau asks. “What were you planning to do with it?”

“Revenge, maybe? To prove I could hurt him a fraction as much as he hurt me? I don't know. After a while I came to see it as insurance. I had something over him I could use to negotiate with if I had to. I really don't know. There was no plan. It was there. I knew what it was. I took it…while he beat me. It was me trying to be defiant, I guess. How dumb. God. I was
so
dumb.”

I laugh at how ridiculous I was back then. How ridiculous I am now. This whole thing is just so stupid. I don't know what I was thinking then, and I don't know what to think now. I wrap my arms around myself and lose it, laughing like a fucking lunatic. Cora stares. Beau takes a step toward me, but I shake my head at him to stay away. I can't be touched right now. I can't restrain myself. Everything is spinning out of control. All of my careful planning, every well-thought-out move, how I kept myself separate, alone, all of it was for nothing.

It's all out now. Every ugly thing I did. How desperate and sad I am. How totally and completely
stupid
I've been about everything. How after all the things I've been through I still held on to hope. Hope of a better life. Hope to be a person of worth. Hope to find someone like Beau and the sheer, absurd, comical hope that I could hold on to him, that what I've done, who I've been, could just be ignored or forgotten. That's what's so goddamn funny to me now. I believed it! I tried to pretend I didn't. I ignored the part of me that wanted and honestly believed I could have normal things, a normal life.

But it was there all the while. That seed of hope. I should've killed it a long time ago. It's disintegrating now, eating me up from the inside, spreading like poison through me. It fucking hurts. I drop to my knees. Then on all fours. I'm dying. I'm on my face on the floor. Beau and Vera crouch beside me, but I can't hear them. The other voices are too loud. All of the things they said to me, those men. All of the ugly, vile things they did to me. I can feel them touching me, pulling at me. They all want a piece of me. They take and take and take till nothing's left but an empty shell. I'm nothing. This is what they made me.

Nothing.