So many relatives, friends, colleagues have been broken by It, the vile thing that slithers through the streets of her home country. The thing that terrorizes women, holds them in Its grasp. The thing she has always known is here in this country, too, but at least somewhat deeper in the shadows.
But It has free rein in these forums.
She is being careful to mask her movements. Using a laptop that cannot be traced to her. Scrambling her IP address to cover her tracks. But on another level, she simply does not care.
She knows Ortiz’s aliases. She knows his habits. When he tends to access the secret forums. The order that he checks in on all of the forums he does haunt.
She has created her own identities and posted in the forums by copying the grotesque, almost invariably ungrammatical writing style of the forums’ inhabitants. With her aliases, she has gained access to secret subforums on the Darknet.
There are extreme porn videos and forums with titles like “Top Ten Ways to Get Away with Rape.”
Here also is where professional trolls recruit like-minded men to attack women who dare to post their opinions online. Scientists, actresses, journalists, politicians, game designers—anyone female is vulnerable to trolling. A target is posted in the forums and a harassment campaign is begun, in which the victim is deluged with insults, threats, images of sadistic porn.
Over the past several years, online trolling has been rising in an alarming wave. Singh has seen hundreds of female celebrities deluged with rape threats—not only against themselves, but against their children, their mothers, their sisters. A coordinated attempt to silence female voices.
These trolls have only been emboldened by the ascension of the ultimate troll, a sexual predator now determining national policy.
Singh left her own country in part to be free of the pervasive underlying belief that rape is normal, part of a woman’s fate. In India the attitude is that the victim asks for it and the male is nowhere in sight of blame.
She does not see these forums or postings as innocent. From attitude comes action.
So she is collecting files on the posters. Trawling for crimes. She is hopeful that the task force that Roarke is spearheading will give her a platform to go after these monsters in some way.
In the meantime, she watches.
She searches all the forums she knows Ortiz frequents, checking for any recent activity. She only skims the threads. Reading closely is unbearable.
But Ortiz has not posted today. And as usual, it is not long before she has to sign off in revulsion.
She puts the computer away, sits back in her chair. She feels agitation prickling under her skin, and takes a moment to close her eyes.
She lets her workplace cubicle slip away and focuses on her breathing, identifying the sensations in her body.
They are too familiar.
Her body temperature is elevated, her face flaming. She is burning up, shaking from this toxic overflow of misogyny and racism and hatred.
Not just in the forums, but in the news, everywhere.
She feels often that she is losing her grip on anything rational. And as so often happens, in this moment she has literally stopped breathing.
She makes herself inhale deeply, exhale slowly.
Then she centers, visualizes the sun, the rays warming and surrounding her, and silently recites a prayer, the ritual of light.
Light before me.
Light behind me.
Light at my left.
Light at my right.
Light above me.
Light below me.
Light around me.
Light to all.
Light to the Universe.
She sits in the visualization, and feels her breath steadying. And it helps, of course it helps. But her prayers and rituals do less and less to calm her.
She spends her days in a haze of anxiety. By night her dreams are ominous: Of a dark force settling over the country. Paroxysms of malice. The constant sense of being hunted.
Nowhere to run. No place that is safe.
And a terrible, inescapable reality: there is no end in sight.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Cara huddles in her niche between massive rocks. The tent ripples in the wind, dancing with menacing presence.
She has been through most of the material in the backpack now, the printed-out emails and web pages. The directive is clear. There is a $25,000 bounty on her head.
“Alive and undamaged,” is how the missive is worded. “Bring her to me first, and you’ll get your taste.”
She feels the presence of It, hovering, smiling at her through jagged teeth. She sits for some time, breathing through the horror.
The printouts are from an online forum. How many are hunting her, then? Hundreds? Thousands? There could be any number. These stunted beings congregate in the dark corners online, but all her life she has seen them walking in the daylight, every day. They are legion.
She forces down revulsion.
The others are the next problem. First, she will deal with these in front of her.
She tries to keep her mind focused, despite the overwhelming physical sensations telling her to flee.
Get out now. Drive. Put several states between you and these monsters.
The thing that is most stunning, and simultaneously not surprising, is that she knows the man who has sent the hunters on their grotesque mission.
His name is pinned to the wall of the tent, in the printout of the online message that amounts to a bounty offer. The message is anonymous, but the hunters had added their own notation, a name and address, in a town that she is quite familiar with.
An old enemy.
Ortiz.
This man from her childhood, who bore some intense, outrageous hatred of her.
He came for her as a teenager, barely fourteen years old, with It crawling behind his eyes and equal parts rage and lust in his heart. He suspected her of the killing of the group home counselor who had tried to attack her, and was bent on destroying her for it.
And now, it is clear that hatred has never died. Instead it has festered, metastasized.
She is so overcome by the malice of it that she can’t focus. And that makes her vulnerable.
She coldly brings her mind back to the present, the problem at hand. The hunters.
There are two of them, she knows. Two sleeping bags. Two air mattresses.
Two is an easy number.
She must deal with just these two first.
Chapter Twenty-Four
When Jade woke, it was a moment before she knew where she was. Not the ranch, she knew that.
And there was someone in bed with her.
The realization was instant, blinding terror. Her whole body froze, and she was back in the endless hell of the street . . .
Shut up and take it, bitch. Swallow it, you little whore. Turn her over and let me at that sweet ass . . .
Jade gasped herself out of the memory, clutching the sheets below her, and bit the inside of her cheek to force herself into the present.
The sheets were soft, well worn, and there was a lavendery scent on the pillow. The breathing beside her in the bed was light, feminine.
The panicky sense of danger subsided.
She remembered now. They’d crashed at Kris’s place, an anonymous utility apartment at the edge of the two square miles of Isla Vista.
Beside her, Kris woke with a jarring gasp. And Jade knew the thoughts going through her head. She knew her fear, she knew her rage.
They were the same.
One rape, a thousand rapes . . . or a lifetime living with the fear of it. It was all the same.
“Just me,” she said softly. “It’s cool.” She looked into Kris’s eyes until the other girl focused on her, recognized her.
They both lay there, remembering the talk of the night before.
And finally Jade spoke. “So let’s go get a look at this prick.”
They picked up grande coffees at
a place called Equilibrium and walked under a cloudy sky over to the Kappa Alpha Tau house on Camino Embarcadero. It was one of four in a square block, backed up against each other.
A whole frat city, Jade thought, without amusement.
The dudebros were out in packs, in khaki shorts, shirtless, up on ladders, hanging lights on the front of the house, clipping paper hearts and angel wings on clotheslines strung over the back patio areas.
“Whaddaya know, it’s party time,” Jade said softly.
“Valentine’s Day,” Kris said.
Jade was startled by the thought. She’d completely lost track of time at the ranch.
How perfect is that? The possibilities danced in her head. Costumes. Easy entry. We can do this tonight.
“Where is he?” she muttered to Kris. “Do you see him?”
“He won’t be doing grunt work. Probably kicking back at the satellite house.”
Jade frowned. “Satellite house?”
“All the big frats have second houses on Del Playa. The main houses never get too crazy. They keep up a good front, so anyone official who drops in—the college, the frat boards, the cops—just sees what the frat wants them to see. The real . . .” She faltered. “The real action happens at the satellite houses.”
“Show me.”
Kris took her along the street, which curved into “the Loop,” a strip of road around a small park, lined with restaurants, cafés, liquor stores, a party store, an Amazon fulfillment store. From there short straight blocks led down to the ocean.
Del Playa was the street that ran along the cliff. Big old houses alternated with condo complexes with surfboards lined up on balconies. Many of the front yards boasted long, tall rectangular tables and grimy sofas on the sidewalk, perpetually set up for the next party. A fair number of the smaller houses were painted with colorful murals of Hollywood icons: James Dean, Marilyn, Elvis. Red beverage cups were strewn everywhere, like oversized confetti.
When the two girls got to the end of the next block, Kris kept moving, but jerked her head toward the last house on the block. “That’s it.”
Jade followed Kris, glanced back casually.
The satellite house was a huge modern three-story clinging to the cliff in a line with the other oceanfront houses along Del Playa.
Kris murmured beside her, “There are decks around the back, on the cliff. You can’t see the lowest level from the front. They call it the Basement. That’s where . . .”
She broke off, shaky.
The two girls kept walking. Beside the house was a mini public park overlooking the ocean, with a swing set, an outdoor shower, stairs leading down to the shoreline.
Kris nodded toward the park. “We can watch from there.”
The girls moved across the shabby grass and sat on the swings. The sound of the surf below them was a constant rhythmic rumble. Kris pointed out the patio overlooking the ocean, the triple level decks jutting out over the water. “The low deck is the Basement.”
Jade studied the house, assessing the layout. “Gotcha.”
Just then a group of guys spilled out the back door, onto the concrete side patio. Kris stared at the frat boys and froze. “That’s him.”
Jade got a glimpse of a tall, dark, and arrogant one. Kris stood from the swing. Jade followed as she darted away from the swing set, ducked under one of the twisty trees.
They watched from behind the branches.
Two of the guys carried a beer cooler between them. They set the cooler on the porch, on the house property, but an easy walk from the volleyball net.
A couple of them started to toss a ball between them, not a game yet, just fucking around. A lot of them carried red cups. Drinking already, or maybe they’d never stopped from the night before.
The girls hung back in the trees. “So this is the one,” Jade said, not taking her eyes off him.
Kris’s voice was hollow. “He hit on her first. All charm, so smooth. Of course he drugged her drink.”
Jade squinted, lasering in on him. Square jaw. Six-pack abs. Shorts hanging off his hips to show the triangle of pelvic muscles. She knew the type. Alpha asshole. Daddy’s little prince.
You’re a cocky fucker, aren’t you?
“Gimme your phone,” she ordered. Kris passed it over and Jade zoomed to take a few photos, then switched to video mode. She wanted to memorize his face.
Through the phone lens, she could see their horseplay up close, how some of their touches lingered on ass cheeks, how fingers brushed across abs and thighs.
Homoerotic much? she thought, with contempt. Why can’t you all just fuck each other? Leave the rest of us out of it.
Finally she lowered the phone. “Okay then. We do it tonight.”
Kris stared at her, jolted.
“They got her at a party, didn’t they? So we get him at a party. Poetic justice, yo.”
“I can’t,” Kris says. “I can’t be there.”
Jade got that. Not to mention that Kris would never get into one of those parties. She looked too much like a real person with real thoughts, instead of a blow-up doll.
“I can,” Jade told her. “I can handle this just fine.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
There were only two hundred or so miles between Santa Barbara and San Diego, but Roarke’s only option from Santa Barbara’s airport was a connecting flight through Phoenix: six-hour travel time, and airport hassle on both ends. If he started in the dead of night, he might be able to drive to San Diego in four hours. During peak traffic, which was nearly all the time now, it might take up to eight.
Which left the Pacific Surfliner, an Amtrak train that hugged the coastline. The website ad boasted, “To get a closer look, you’d have to be on a surfboard,” and true to the advertising, a stunning view of the ocean opened up minutes after the train left the downtown station. Roarke leaned back in his seat, luxuriating in the view, and replayed the Janovy interview in his head.
Was Janovy a Bitch? Highly likely. Was she a leader? Quite possibly. But the leader? His strong suspicion was that there were dozens, hundreds of Janovys across the country. Educated. Each with their own skill set, as Janovy had said. And angry.
Roarke stared out the window, and his thoughts turned to Cara’s cousin Erin McNally. The fog drifting in the coastal cypress took him back to the last night he’d seen her. Golden Gate Park had been blanketed in the mist of the December Cold Moon.
Erin was the ulterior motive that Epps had been right to be suspicious about.
Roarke still felt Erin was as good a suspect as anyone for the series of pimp and john murders at the time of Cara’s incarceration and after, the Santa Muerte Murders. If Andrea Janovy was one of the maddening loose ends of the case, Erin was another.
Erin had been on the scene. She was a survivor of sexual assault. And Roarke had an uneasy feeling that the young woman might have gone as far as murder to create a kind of firewall to further protect Cara from prosecution.
His best guess was that Erin’s disappearance had something to do with Bitch. That she was working with them, now.
And it had occurred to him that Janovy’s surrogate, the one who had used her ID (and whom he was sure Janovy knew, quite possibly had sent), and Erin McNally were the only two people who had visited Cara in jail.
Could the two women be connected?
All of those nagging loose ends. And Santa Muerte, whoever, whatever she was, on the loose still, from that night.
So yes, he was going to San Diego to check out the Morton trial. But there was no doubt Erin was on his mind.
If the real assignment here was to track down Bitch, Erin might be a way in. He just wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Singh scribbles on the screen of the delivery man’s device to accept the bouquet, a spray of coral roses. The man looks over her desk and gives her a knowing smile as he turns to leave. “Have a good one.”
If Singh were in the habit of blushing, her cheeks w
ould be the color of the roses. They are not the only floral arrangement on her usually pristine desk. Her workspace is overflowing with flowers, gift boxes. The fragrance surrounds her.
Valentine’s Day. Not a holiday she has grown up with or has any real attachment to. Yet in lieu of his presence, Damien has taken it upon himself to shower her with presents.
Every hour, on the hour, a different gift has been delivered. A mirrored milagro, in the shape of a burning heart. An etching by Remedios Varo, her favorite Surrealist. A statue of the goddess Saraswati for her collection. A book of Sufi poetry. A stunning necklace. Other items . . . unsuitable for public display.
Her dark mood from the morning has dissolved into a pleasant haze, mildly erotic. The whole day has been a typically extravagant gesture from Epps, who, she suspects, is partly feeling guilty about not being with her for the day. But she also knows what all this is leading to.
She has no doubt that Damien is the partner of her heart.
In her spiritual practice, she is familiar with the concept of astral bodies. That in sexual union, in deeper relationships, the auras of both partners combine in one entity that is the couple. She has felt her own astral force comingling with Epps’. And she knows it is right, and good.
And she has been immensely grateful that he understands her fear and rage since the election. That as an African American man, he has intimate knowledge of those feelings. There are things that do not have to be voiced between them. They understand the peril the country is in.
It has never gone away—the racism, the misogyny, the relentless hold of the patriarchy.
But now it has full, unimpeded voice. It is becoming, more quickly than she could have imagined, in dozens, hundreds of small ways and large, the law of the land.
They are lucky to be living in one of the most liberal cities in the country, even in the world. And yet they have discussed quitting their jobs.
To have a man, a partner, a soulmate, who understands every heartache of the times, who feels the horror of each new announcement, who is willing to support any move she feels she has to make—that should be a given. Instead, she knows it is a luxury few women will ever know. With Damien, she is safe, loved, cherished, supported—in body, mind, and soul. It is a grace.
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