Violent Delights

by Helena Maeve

  Climax slammed into me with an intensity I’d seldom known. Maybe that was why Ashley tipped me over onto my back and brushed tears from my cheeks as I rocked through the aftershocks.

  “You’re okay,” he cooed. “You’re okay, I’ve got you…” He kissed me chastely, our tongues meeting in sharp, gentle flicks.

  “What about you?” I asked, still trembling.

  “You okay if I finish?”

  I nodded. Ashley had moved my legs from his shoulders so I flattened my soles against the mattress and tipped my hips up to urge him along. It took a handful of thrusts before Ashley followed with a groan. He collapsed onto my body, his heart thumping raggedly against my ribcage.

  It might have taken an hour or a minute for us to regain our breaths. Eventually Ashley pulled out and disposed of the condom. He grimaced when he took a sip of the coffee.

  “Cold?” I asked, too sated to feel any remorse.

  He nodded.

  “We should probably go down and eat something. Breakfast’s still being served for another hour…”

  “Shower first,” Ashley said. “Wanna join me?”

  “We won’t make it to breakfast at all if I do.” I waved him off, rubbing my thighs together. I felt at once numb and oversensitive. It was a delicious sensation. I wanted to cling to it for as long as I could.

  “Suit yourself.” Ashley kissed me one last time and crept slowly out of bed.

  I watched him go, unabashedly letting my gaze linger on his bare buttocks and the handsome slope of his spine. Maybe skipping breakfast wasn’t such a terrible idea. Who needed nourishment, anyway? We could live on sex. I grabbed one of the coffees as I stood from the mattress and went in search of my phone. It had been conspicuously silent since last night.

  Sure enough, the screen was dark, battery dead. I hunted for my charger in the suitcase and plugged it into the extension cord Ashley had already used to charge his phone. I sipped at the lukewarm coffee while I waited for the screen to light up. Once it did, five seconds was all it took for the device to connect to the local network.

  A whopping forty-two messages and missed calls flashed onto my screen. Melanie, Javier—even my grandparents had called during the night. My hands shook as I opened my inbox.

  Lawrence’s text message was first in the queue.

  Just saw the news. I can’t believe you were right.

  “The news?” I groped for the remote. The flat screen came alive with a Breaking News alert. Live video streamed from Kansas beneath a tagline my addled brain couldn’t seem to process.

  It didn’t have to. I recognized the dead stump of the maple tree outside the Macintoshes’ house. Outside my old childhood home.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I heard the shower switch off, followed by the click of the screen as it swung open. Seconds passed. On screen, the ribbons of yellow tape and the surfeit of police cars did nothing to dissuade the cameras from zooming in on the slightest twitch of movement. Helicopters whirred over the reporter’s voice, drowning out her senseless speculation.

  “Residents report seeing police wheel a black body bag off the premises. So far we have no confirmation from the authorities whether this is related to the case of Bethany Faye Cruz, the missing five year old from Missouri…”

  I muted the sound. I didn’t care to hear the media’s take. I knew where this was going. It was only a matter of time before a connection was made.

  The bathroom door swung open. Ashley emerged with a towel wrapped around his waist, damp glistening on his skin. Our eyes met across the room.

  “What is it?” He couldn’t see the screen from his vantage point and I couldn’t find the breath to tell him that our quiet streak was over.

  I crooked a finger. Ashley joined me in the sitting room and swore under his breath when he registered the scene. Somewhere in a quiet neighborhood in Topeka, Donna Barnes had just been exhumed. I rested my chin on my knees, my stomach twisted up in knots. “They know,” I murmured.

  “What? Who?” Ashley asked, frowning.

  “Everyone back home. I guess the police must’ve called my grandparents…” Who, not knowing where I was, had called Melanie, maybe even Piotr. I wasn’t surprised that Javier had found out.

  “They’re not reporting it yet—”

  “Probably waiting for confirmation from Barnes.”

  A knock at the door roused me from the descending gloom. I sat up a little straighter.

  “Ms. Reynaud? This is the police,” echoed through the door, if slightly muffled.

  It was my turn to swear. “Can you get that? I need to put some clothes on.” I found my jeans and underwear on the floor, and hastily buttoned up my shirt. My thighs shook with exertion and nerves. I’d never placed much faith in cops. After they’d separated me from my dad, I hated them with a passion I usually reserved for bugs.

  Their voices traveled from the sitting room in a dull staccato. They wanted to talk to me and they wanted to talk to me now. Ashley tried to fend them off as best he could, stalling until I was ready to face them.

  I sucked a deep, fortifying breath, and swung open the double doors. At least this time the officers didn’t go for their guns as soon as they saw me. The plainclothes agent who was with them stepped forward. “Morning, ma’am. Can you confirm that you’re Laure Reynaud?”

  “I can. Do you need my passport?” I went to fetch it from my handbag.

  The plainclothes checked it, then introduced herself as Special Agent Valenzuela. The FBI was involved, I realized with a certain degree of surprise. No wonder they were calling my grandparents.

  She nodded to the TV screen. “I see I don’t have to explain what this is about. I’m going to need you to come with me—”

  “Let me put some clothes on,” Ashley said.

  “You don’t have to join us,” I murmured.

  He fixed me with a glare. “You want to face this alone?”

  I didn’t, but the alternative was dragging Ashley into my mess. I hesitated just long enough for him to mistake my silence for uncertainty.

  “Five minutes.”

  I turned to Valenzuela. “I guess we’ll wait… Have you spoken to Joshua Barnes?” I only asked for the sake of making conversation.

  The FBI agent pressed her lips into a taut line. “I can’t comment on the case, ma’am.”

  “It’s not a case. She’s been dead twenty years.” I suddenly felt very weary, like I’d been crawling toward this summit for a very long time. I was ready to tumble down the other side of the slope, back into anonymity, and stay there for the rest of my days.

  “You know the victim?” Special Agent Valenzuela asked, furrowing her penciled eyebrows.

  “Her name is Donna Barnes. I have her father’s number if you need it.”

  “Might not be her.”

  I smiled without mirth. “It is.”

  Ashley emerged from the bedroom with his laces undone. He looked harried, but determined. I took his hand when he offered it. He was right. I didn’t want to do this alone.

  * * * *

  Special Agent Valenzuela was joined by another colleague in the interrogation room. They offered me coffee, but I didn’t want to get comfortable down at the precinct. I told them everything they wanted to know, from Barnes’ calls—which phone records would confirm—to my arrival in the United States just five days earlier.

  “When are you flying out?” Valenzuela asked, jotting something down on her notepad.

  “Tomorrow morning,” I said. “I have an electronic ticket if you want—”

  “That won’t be necessary. You mentioned you flew to Kansas City?”

  “Yes.” I gave as objective an account of my visit to Leavenworth as I could, but whenever my father came up, my blood pressure also ratcheted up a few notches. I pinched the bridge of my nose, willing away a migraine. Skipping breakfast and not sleeping nights did not agree with me. I was getting old.

  Valenzuela wanted to know how I’d found out Donna Barnes�
� location—and why I hadn’t said anything all these years.

  “I was six when my father killed her,” I pointed out. “How much do you remember from when you were six?”

  Valenzuela’s colleague arched an eyebrow. She’d told me her name, but I had forgotten it already. “And after you saw your father you suddenly recalled where he buried the body?”

  “It’s a little more complicated, but essentially… Yes.” I glanced from her to Valenzuela. The light in the interrogation room was so bright that it reflected off her shaved skull. “Unless you’re going to charge me as a six-year-old accomplice, you really need to tone down the skepticism. I’ve already been thrown in jail once this week. Frankly if it happens again, I’m going to my embassy, maybe even the press.”

  “Are you threatening us, Ms. Reynaud?”

  I tilted back in my creaky plastic chair. “Damn right. I do your job for you, I put my safety and mental health on the line… And now you’re treating me as a person of interest because—what? I tried to help a man you all gave up on years ago?” I hitched up my shoulders. “I have nothing left to lose.”

  Valenzuela pursed her lips. “You’re not a person of interest, ma’am. We’re simply trying to establish how you came to know Ms. Barnes’ location.”

  “Assuming that is Donna Barnes,” her colleague added under her breath.

  “It is,” I repeated. “I was there when Kane put her in the ground.” Right beside my wooden swing set, a little farther away from the pool, next in the row of rubber ducks.

  Hot, angry tears sprang to my eyes. I brushed them away with quaking hands.

  “Christ. Let’s get this over with. What else do you want to know?”

  They kept me for another half hour, until my growling stomach became too much of a nuisance to continue the interview. Valenzuela walked me out, looking appropriately embarrassed. “This is my card. If you remember anything else…”

  I took the card. “Yeah, I’m sure I’ll come back for seconds.”

  Ashley was waiting for me in the hall. He sprang to his feet as soon as I appeared. “You okay?”

  “Starving.” I was sure I looked like hell, but Ashley had seen me look worse and I didn’t have the strength to feel anything more than exhausted.

  We pushed past the revolving doors of the precinct and I sucked in a deep gulp of exhaust fumes, scorching the inside of my throat with God knows what chemicals. The urge to retch came and passed in a flash.

  “What did they want?” Ashley asked as we crossed the street to the nearest café.

  “The usual. How did I know, why didn’t I come forward sooner, am I sure I don’t remember anything else…? At least this time they didn’t ask me to play with puppets.” Schooling bitterness out of my voice was all but impossible. Granted, I didn’t really put in the effort. I trusted Ashley to cut me some slack. I doubted anyone else would.

  The coffee shop was largely empty. Ashley instructed me to get a table while he put in our order. I went for the booth furthest from the door. I had a good look of the counter and the street, plus the flat screen nestled between the quirky, lopsided chalkboards inscribed with the coffee menu.

  CNN was still running with the story. The on-site reporter had somehow dragged Eileen Macintosh out of the house for an exclusive interview. It won’t be long now, I thought as I played with my phone. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was standing on the edge of a cliff looking down at the steep drop.

  My phone buzzed in my hands—I’d muted it before I went in to give my statement. Another call registered on screen. It was Mel, no doubt worried and confused about what was happening.

  The urge to pick up and let Melanie inspire me with her strength lashed through me. I refrained. I didn’t want to talk about what was happening because then I’d worry. These things never went away as fast I would’ve liked. They lingered, put down roots. Twenty years after the trial, my father still had fans who thought he was set up. Some of them knew where I lived.

  I rejected the call and sent Mel a message to say I was okay and would talk to her tomorrow. In person. I found another message from Lawrence in my inbox. He wanted to know how I was holding up. Badly, I replied. I wondered if police would ask him to confirm our meeting—if my movements were at all important, if I was under suspicion. Part of me hoped Valenzuela proved nosy just to ruin Harry Pruitt Senior’s day.

  “Two black coffees, no sugar, no cream—and the food of the gods,” Ashley announced, joining me at the table. “Danishes. I hope that’s okay.”

  “Yeah, sure…” I flicked a glance at the TV screen. “Do you think there’s any chance we could get an earlier flight? My impending celebrity is making me antsy.”

  “Why?”

  I frowned. Was he serious?

  “I mean,” Ashley said, sighing, “Carmen’s a publicist. She has a lot of contacts. If you wanted to manage this and get something out of it, you could do an interview with a reputed journalist. Get ahead of the rumor mill—”

  “No.”

  “You don’t want to consider it?”

  “Are you kidding me?” I scoffed. “I want to get away. I’ve lived with this shit all my life. The last thing I want is to give Kane any more publicity.” I took a sip of scalding coffee, my eyes watering as it scorched my esophagus. “I know you’re in the business and—”

  Ashley stopped me short, clasping my wrist. “Hey, no. I wasn’t speaking as Ashley Compton columnist extraordinaire just now… You don’t want to go to the press, you don’t go to the press.”

  I flashed him a smile. “You’ll never get anywhere in life with that kind of attitude, buddy.”

  “I got into your bed,” Ashley answered with a rueful grin. “Good enough for me.”

  We made small talk over breakfast, clinging to any and all topics unrelated to the melodrama playing out on TV. We didn’t mention the FBI or the statement I’d given. We definitely didn’t acknowledge my father’s mugshot flashing across the flat screen once CNN caught on that this was about a much larger, juicier whodunit—one with a predictable ending because the perpetrator was already behind bars.

  Ashley suggested we take a cab back to the hotel and get packing, but I wanted to walk. With the brewing furor on the horizon, I had a feeling I wouldn’t be back to the States for another twenty years. Ashley agreed.

  Our hand-in-hand stroll took us down long, paved streets, around glamorous and not so glamorous shops, all the way to the Hudson. We stopped for drinks at a riverside eatery because we had time to kill, and Ashley took the opportunity to call the airline to check if our tickets could be changed to an earlier flight.

  “Nine tonight?” he repeated, looking at me for confirmation. “Nine tonight it is.”

  I closed my eyes and let the salty, humid breeze buffet my cheeks while Ashley gave our details to the operator. I didn’t ask if there was a fee for the alteration—probably, but I would make it up to Ashley when we got home. I was fairly certain my checking account was in the red already. “Guess we need to pack,” I mused, slowly tipping my head into my chest.

  Ashley nodded. He looked as forlorn as I felt. I could guess why.

  “If you want to meet Marissa again before we leave, I can take a cab back to the hotel by myself.”

  He considered it for a long moment, then shook his head. “No. We’re doing this together. Marissa’ll understand.” His smile was tepid. I wasn’t the only one struggling to put on a brave face.

  “She did say she wanted to see more of Paris.” My attempt at levity felt as flat as I anticipated. I didn’t push the point. I didn’t want to be on my own.

  This morning my biggest worry had been making things right with Ashley. Less than four hours in and all I could think of was the sword of Damocles swinging above my head.

  * * * *

  We landed at Roissy at noon—six in the morning New York City time—and stumbled through baggage claim like a pair of zombies. Ashley had spent the flight paging through newspapers and napping. I
tried to follow his example, but I couldn’t get comfortable. The thought of Donna Barnes’ hand peeking from the garbage bag wouldn’t give me peace. In the space of an eight hour flight, I’d grown to hate her, to pity her, to tell myself that maybe I’d made the thing up and it was just a lucky coincidence.

  I yawned into my hand as we rolled our suitcases through the throng of friends and families eagerly crowding around the arrivals gate. No one was waiting for us because, at my request, we hadn’t told anyone we were flying back early. I wanted one last evening of peace. Tomorrow I would have to come clean to my grandparents. I would get in touch with Mel and fill her in on everything that happened.

  Ashley squeezed my hand as we slid into the backseat of a taxi. “Almost there,” he breathed, a tepid smile tipping up the corners of his lips.

  For a moment there I’d deluded myself into thinking we might have a shot at being together—at being happy. Then this had exploded in our faces. I pressed Ashley’s fingers with mine. How long before he decided I was more trouble than I was worth?

  I banished the thought as we sped down the highway, chasing the flow of traffic past Porte de la Villette and into the city proper. It was slow going around the North Station and we were completely immobilized for a good ten minutes along the quay. I started to doze off despite the angry debate taking place on the radio and it took Ashley giving me a little shake to wake up as we skirted Place de la République.

  “You’re exhausted, aren’t you?” He sighed. “If I suggest you have a lie-in tomorrow…”

  “What?” I mumbled when he trailed off. I quit rubbing the grit from my eyes. His own were wide open and trained on something beyond the windshield. I had to crane my neck to see the press of reporters outside our apartment building.

  Blood fled my extremities and relocated to the back of my skull. “Keep going,” I told the driver.

  “But—”

  “Keep going, don’t stop here!” I switched to English, for all the good it would do me. “Jesus Christ, they already know where I live. How can they fucking know where I live?” I scraped my hands through sleep-matted hair. What was I going to do? I couldn’t go back here, but all my stuff was inside the building. And what about Ashley?