Vicious Carousel (16 page)

“No.” She took a deep breath in and tried to breathe out the stress and fear.

“I have a recommendation for you for a counsellor,” he said, handing a card over to her. “I took the liberty of making you an appointment for next Tuesday morning. She’s good, she understands the basics of your situation, and she’s willing to work with you, understanding you’re unable to pay her at this time.”

“Thank you.”

“Thank us all by staying the course, leaning on us, and listening to us.”

“I will.”

* * * *

After Ted’s, Eliza made a side excursion to shopping plaza in south Sarasota that housed a martial arts school. The sign outside touted several different classes in a variety of martial arts skills, as well as self-defense classes for women and children.

“Why are we stopping here?” Betsy asked.

“Because next week, and every Thursday night, you’re coming with me to class,” she said as she parked and unfastened her seatbelt. “We’re here to sign you up.”

Betsy didn’t argue, and she somehow managed not to cry when Eliza produced a credit card and paid for the eight-week class for her. The instructor, an older woman who was retired military, scowled as she studied Betsy’s face hidden behind the sunglasses and under the hat.

“Is the guy in jail now?” the instructor asked.

“Oooh, yeah,” Eliza said. “Couldn’t make bail.”

“Yet,” Betsy said.

The instructor nodded. “Let me know if he makes bail,” she said to Eliza. “I’d like to meet him in person and have a little chat.”

“You and about half of Sarasota,” Eliza said.

* * * *

The rest of Betsy’s afternoon with Eliza was spent at the house, with Betsy continuing her job search. She’d received nothing back yet from any of her inquiries except a few auto-responders noting receipt of her application and resume.

She knew it was too soon to feel disheartened about it, but it was difficult to keep her spirits up.

“Maybe I should apply to stores,” she said. “Get something while I’m waiting.”

“For starters,” Eliza said, “it’s too soon. You need to heal up. Even if that’s what you end up having to do, no offense, it’s going to be hard to talk someone into hiring you when they see that goose egg. That might sound harsh, but it’s the truth. They don’t know you or your history, or that this is a one-time occurrence that won’t happen again. They might worry that you’ll be calling in more than working because of an abusive boyfriend or something.”

“True.”

“And what did Tilly tell you to do?”

Betsy smiled. “Keep applying online.”

Eliza pointed at her laptop. “Then get to it, young lady. This is the Tilly Says show until she says it isn’t.”

* * * *

On Friday, Betsy dressed in one of her few pairs of older jeans and a T-shirt before Ross and Loren drove her out to the industrial complex Kel owned. He and Mark Collins met them there, in the vacant unit where they’d left all the stuff they’d moved from the apartment.

“Okay,” Mark said. “All you do is say keep, or toss. Let us handle the rest.”

Betsy sank onto one of the two scarred dining room chairs that matched the discount-store table. Piled near the unit’s door, there actually didn’t look like there was a whole lot. Yes, the apartment had been small, but dwarfed by the cavernous empty bay, it looked like less than she’d even had at her previous apartment, which had been even smaller by comparison.

Trying to think ahead, knowing there were some things she might need to keep, she helped them whittle the pile down to about half its previous bulk. The discarded items went into a large Dumpster, with a few going into boxes for Kel to drop back by the apartment and leave locked inside, with her key. The remaining items Kel was going to move into the unit where his office and spare apartment were because he had a prospective renter wanting to look at that unit tomorrow.

Ed had joined them to let her know he’d been interviewed by a Tampa TV station. He also assured her that even though her name wasn’t on the apartment lease, since she’d changed her driver’s license to that address and had lived there for several months, she met the legal definition of being a resident. As such, while Jack could try to come after her legally and sue her, it was doubtful he would be able to because she could claim the items were hers. And yes, some of them were. Or, had been, before he’d confiscated them and claimed ownership of them, and her.

Retribution would be especially difficult for Jack now with the restraining order against him. An attorney would have to go through Ed to contact her, and Ed had already promised her that he would thwart any attempts along those lines in the most expensive, costly, and time-consuming ways possible, so that any attorney Jack might be able to afford to hire in the future wouldn’t even want to touch the case.

“Realistically,” she asked, “what are the chances of him getting out on bail?”

He shrugged. “Doubtful,” he said. “But I’ve seen strange things happen before. The judge already denied one bail reduction request. I can promise you that I will do my damnedest to make sure the prosecutor buries whatever poor PD he draws under a mountain of paperwork. I know the woman assigned to your case. She’s got a great track record of negotiating pro-victim plea deals for domestic violence cases. And the few that go to court, she nearly always wins them.”

“Jack’s not going to want to just roll over.”

“Maybe not,” Ed said, “but if he doesn’t, he’ll wish he had by the time this is over.”

* * * *

Betsy had been sitting on the couch with Loren and Ross and watching the local evening news when Kenny and Nolan arrived home almost at the same time.

That was when a story caught her attention.

“In Sarasota, John Adams Bourke was arrested early Sunday morning on charges of domestic battery, assault, and false imprisonment.”

Her blood chilled, everyone falling silent as the female anchor from the Tampa station continued. An evidence picture of the chain, where it had still been bolted to the wall, flashed on the screen as the voiceover continued.

“Police reports state he’d kept his live-in girlfriend, Elizabeth Lambert, chained against her will like a slave. She was finally able to escape from the apartment late Saturday night after allegedly suffering a brutal beating by Bourke, and called friends for help.”

The screen changed again, to video of Barbara Stallings being interviewed. “The victim in this case is in hiding out of fear, and rightfully so,” Stallings said. “In addition to past injuries, in the most recent attack she’d suffered a concussion, facial lacerations and injuries, and other wounds consistent with a brutal assault. Our office plans on prosecuting this case to the fullest extent.”

The reporter interviewing her noted, “The public defender representing the defendant states this is a case of
Fifty Shades
kind of consensual sexual play.”

Stallings looked like she wanted to slug the man interviewing her, but she pursed her lips together before finally answering. “There was nothing consensual at all about the kind of severe facial injuries the victim suffered. She had a concussion, required stitches, one eye swollen shut. There is a huge difference between some rough consensual sex play and being beaten up and chained against your will. And I’m sure there’s not a jury in the world who will disagree with the state’s case there.”

The voiceover continued as the picture changed to another shot of the chain, this time of the locked loop that had been around her ankle, dried blood on the links almost looking like rust. “The suspect has not posted bail yet, and at a bond reduction hearing, a judge denied his request. The victim’s attorney, Edward Payne, has already filed for and received a restraining order for his client.”

The picture changed again, this time showing Ed. “My client has requested, for her safety as well as her privacy, to please be left alone. Even with her attacker in jail, she fears for her safety. She will not be speaking to the media at this time or giving any statements except through me.”

The scene switched once again, to video of the apartment, shot through the kitchen window and showing it empty except for a few stray items lying around. “There were suspicions of something amiss even before this.” Then, an interview with the next door neighbors.

“Yeah,” the man said. “We heard bad sounds sometimes. Almost called the cops a couple of times. But she never spoke to us. She always looked scared. We weren’t home Saturday night. I wish we had been to help her out. We came home and there were police everywhere. I’m not surprised, I hate to say. That guy was never friendly. Few times I saw him and her together, he was ordering her around. But it wasn’t our business, you know?”

Back to the anchor. “Requests for comment from the suspect, made through his attorney, have not been answered.” The camera angle changed, and she looked at it. “A special delivery for a new Tampa mom, whose little bundle of joy decided not to wait, had traffic tied up on the—”

Nolan grabbed the remote and shut the TV off. “Okay,” he quietly said. “That wasn’t so bad.”

Betsy felt like she wanted to scream, to cry, to vomit, but sat motionless.

How many times in the past had a story like that flashed on the TV news, and she’d barely paid any attention to it? Not even ninety seconds, and poof, onto the next story.

Her phone rang, startling her. It was Ed, but she still passed the phone to Ross, who glanced at it before answering. “Yeah. We just saw it…Yes, she did…Okay, thanks.” He hung up and returned the phone to her. “It’ll probably run again at eleven. He tried to talk them into not giving your name, but they wouldn’t make him any promises since it wasn’t a sexual crime.”

What little appetite she’d had before quickly fled as she stood. “I guess I won’t be watching the eleven o’clock news, then. Excuse me, I need to go lie down.”

She softly closed her bedroom door behind her. With the help of her friends the past few days, the bedroom was tidy, as if she’d always lived here. No more hastily stashed piles of items. Everything had a place and was neatly tucked away.

It even felt like home.

That scared her.

She studied the shark’s tooth, where it lay in a small crystal dish on her dresser. The dish had been one of the few things she’d managed to hold onto when she moved in with Jack. It had belonged to her grandmother, and Jack had let her keep potpourri in it. When they’d returned to the apartment that night to grab her stuff before taking her to the ER, it’d been something she’d specifically asked for, besides her photo albums.

Before she’d moved in with Jack, it’d sat in her living room, on the shelf next to her TV, and had held several rocks, shells, and other little small trinkets she’d picked up over the years.

Things Jack had forced her to get rid of because, to him, they were junk.

Things that had been her life, and meaningful to her.

The shark’s tooth was her first new addition to the dish.

Turning, she went to lie down, feeling weary and sad to her very core.

When it was obvious Jack wasn’t making bail, and no one from the media had tracked Betsy or any of their friends down, the next Wednesday, Tilly signed off from LA on Betsy spending the day alone at the men’s house, if that’s what she really wanted.

It was.

Betsy had known in the beginning she’d needed her friends’ love and support and protection. She now needed some alone time to decompress. She also wanted the day alone to process what she’d talked about with the counsellor the day before.

She had a lot of work to do on herself. Yes, before this, she’d had some relationship patterns that weren’t exactly healthy, even though they’d never led to anything so violent before. She’d pushed people away, and when she’d finally let someone in, she’d let the wrong kind of person in without taking a healthy stand.

Asking Tilly and Eliza to play matchmaker for her was tempting, but Betsy knew she needed to do this work herself.

After the men went to work, ensuring she’d securely locked the door behind them, she went to take a shower. She didn’t even need the shower chair anymore. After she got out, with a towel wrapped around her damp hair, she wiped steam from the mirror and stared at her reflection. While still swollen a little, and bruised, at least now she could completely open her right eye again and see out of it.

The face staring back at her almost looked recognizable again.

Almost.

Tilly had also told her she could take a break for the day from her job search. To spend it taking care of herself, reading, relaxing, even sleeping, if that was what she wanted.

What Betsy wanted to do was help out a little and start pulling her own weight. The men had spent a chunk of the weekend doing chores inside and out, and she felt badly that they’d gently refused her help doing any of them.

After putting on shorts and a T-shirt, she pulled her still-damp hair back in an elastic band and started working. The house wasn’t dirty, and the men were decent housekeepers. But there were always things to do. She dusted the living room, vacuumed and mopped the floors, wiped down all the kitchen counters and cleaned the fridge.

Then she cleaned all three bathrooms, did her laundry and theirs, and by the time Nolan got home from work, she had a roasted chicken and side dishes almost ready for dinner, and had brushed her hair out so she even looked halfway presentable.

Her heart nervously fluttered in her chest when Nolan walked in the door. “Oh, hey, that smells delicious.” He gave her a quick peck on the cheek before walking down to his bedroom.

Nervous tension ratcheted up inside her, tight, painfully so. She didn’t understand why and was trying to figure it out when Kenny walked in the door.

More painful tension.

“Hey, sweetie.” Another innocent peck on the cheek. “Mmm, yum. Let me go change.”

“Okay.”

As the minutes ticked past, she stifled the urge to scream, completely unsure why she felt that way, which disturbed her most of all.

She jumped when she heard the men’s bedroom door open, followed by the sound of them talking as they returned to the kitchen.