by LS Hawker
Nessa scrambled to get the nightstand drawer open and reached for the Walther PK380. It wasn’t there, of course. The cops had it.
“What is this?” the man wheezed. “Some sort of femi-nazi ambush? This is false advertising!”
With the knife still in her hand, Isabeau bounded over to the bed and yanked the guy’s ski mask off. Nessa switched on the bedside lamp, temporarily blinded by the light. She focused on her attacker. He had glossy black hair, smooth pink skin, and blue eyes.
She’d never seen him before.
What had she expected? That it was Otto? Detective Dirksen?
She gripped her chest, her hands suddenly freezing cold, panic rising inside her. She swallowed, willing her heartbeat to slow, but her heart ignored her and went on thundering.
“Call 911, Isabeau,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound quite as terrified as she felt.
“But this is what you wanted!” the man said, his voice pitched high with hysteria.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Isabeau said.
“Am I at the wrong place?” he said, still clutching his crotch.
His eyebrows were several millimeters higher than Nessa would have thought possible. The pain and fear that contorted his face made her own abate to an almost tolerable level.
“Who are you?” she demanded, her voice sounding strong in her own ears.
“Is this part of the thing?” the man asked.
“What thing? What are you talking about?”
“The ad! Your ad! If I’d known it was supposed to be a threesome, or that you had weapons, I wouldn’t have—”
Isabeau stared at Nessa, then at the guy. “Okay, shitbird,” she said. “I want you to tell us exactly what ad you’re talking about. Where you saw it. What it said. Et cetera.”
The poor guy’s voice shook so badly Nessa could hardly understand him. “It was online, on that site Fantasy Island. The ad said that you—” he inclined his head toward Nessa “—had a fantasy about being rrrr . . . rrrr . . . raped in your bed in the middle of the night.”
So Nathan had sent someone to do his dirty work for him.
“I knew this was too good to be true,” the guy said. “I knew it.”
Nessa grabbed her phone and stumbled out into the hall, closing the door behind her, confident that Isabeau could handle this guy. Nessa dialed 911. While she explained to the operator what was happening, she kept her eye on Daltrey’s door.
When she opened her own bedroom door and slipped inside, Isabeau was still interrogating the would-be rapist, brandishing her knife at him with one hand and holding an unfolded piece of paper in the other.
“Here, Nessa,” she said.
Nessa took the paper from her and tried to read it while her attacker blubbered in the background.
Have you always fantasized about raping someone? I’ve always fantasized about being raped. We should get together. Come to my house at three A.M. some morning (but don’t tell me when!) and let’s make our dreams come true. Nessa Donati, County Road 8, off John Brown Road.
The header indeed said FantasyIslandXXX.com on top and was dated yesterday.
“And you expect me to believe that you saw this ad online?” Nessa said. “That you didn’t just type it up and print it out as an excuse or whatever to attack someone in her sleep?”
The man was crying now. “Oh, God, I didn’t know it wasn’t real. I’m so sorry.”
Nessa was clobbered with an intense, almost overwhelming craving for a shot. Right now.
“Hey, scumbag,” Isabeau said. “How did you get in the house? Slit a screen? Break down the back door?”
“No,” he said.
“How’d you get in, then?”
He reached for his pocket, and Isabeau raised her knife at him.
He whimpered. “I need to show you,” he said. “I’m getting something out of my pocket, okay? Take it easy!”
He pulled out a brand-new shiny house key.
“Where did you get that?”
“I got it in my post office box. The return address was this house.”
Nessa and Isabeau looked at each other.
Nessa looked at the piece of paper again. The email that was from [email protected].
That was not her email address.
The paper floated to the ground.
Her name. Her address. Her troll had broken through the fourth wall and had invited every freak within five hundred miles to come to her house and rape her in her bed.
When the patrol car pulled up in front of the house, the would-be rapist was hauled to his feet, crying and choking out excuses and explanations to the cop, who cuffed him and took the piece of paper from him.
Once the cops left, Nessa went into her bedroom and dialed Marlon.
“I need a shot,” she said, then told him what happened.
“Are you drinking now?” he said, speaking slowly and deliberately.
“No.”
“Did you drink before you called?”
“No,” she said.
“You did the right thing—you called your sponsor before, not after, you took the first drink. I’m going to throw another AA aphorism at you, and I want you to think hard on it. ‘Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity.’ You know what it means, right?”
“Yes,” she said. But she knew he was going to tell her anyway, and that made her smile.
“It means that you can’t handle this. You really can’t. But God can, and you need to let him. But you still need to do your part. First, don’t drink. Second, you need to get a security system out there. This is insane.”
“You’re right,” she said.
“You can do what you can do, and God will do the rest.”
Would He though?
“Thank you, Marlon,” she said. She did feel better, especially with an action plan. “I’m going to go to the locksmith Monday and see if they do security systems too. The cop who came out here to arrest the guy told me he’d see to it that a patrol car is sent out here for the next several days.”
“Excellent,” he said. He yawned into the phone. “And now I’m going back to sleep.”
“Good night,” she said, and clicked off.
She went back downstairs and Isabeau was sitting on the living room couch clacking away on her laptop keyboard. Nessa got hers, sat down next to her nanny, and typed the Fantasy Island website URL into her browser. She searched the site for the ad the creep had brought with him.
“I can’t find the ad,” Nessa said.
“I know,” Isabeau said. “I think whoever posted it took it down. We could try to get the owners of the site to turn over the IP address the troll’s using to post this shit, but I’m guessing they’re not exactly paragons of virtue.”
“Can we use the email address to try to lure him out of hiding somehow?” Nessa said. “How would we do that?”
“I don’t know. I’ll do some research and see what I can come up with.”
“By the way,” Nessa said. “What you did tonight was totally badass.”
Isabeau smiled at her, pleased. “Thanks.”
“Where did you get that knife?”
“I have a whole collection of them,” Isabeau said. “I used to throw knives competitively when I lived in Alaska.”
This blew Nessa’s mind. “You threw knives?”
Isabeau nodded.
“And you lived in Alaska?”
“Yup. In a tipi.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“You’ve never asked,” Isabeau said. “I keep them right upstairs in my room.”
“You—what?” Nessa said.
“Don’t worry,” Isabeau said. “I keep them way up high in the closet where Daltrey could never get to them.”
; “You know,” Nessa said. “Maybe we should keep them in the kitchen pantry up high. Just in case, with all this crap going on around here.”
“Okay,” Isabeau said. “You want to see the set?”
“Definitely,” Nessa said, and Isabeau’s smile widened as she bounded up the stairs.
She returned with a black nylon carrying case, which she unrolled. Six purple metal handles protruded from pockets in the sheath. She slid one out and handed it handle-first to Nessa. It was much lighter than Nessa would have expected.
“They’re titanium,” Isabeau said. “I can show you a video of one of my competitions if you want.”
She rolled the knives back up, then got her laptop and set it on the coffee table. She typed into it and spun it toward Nessa, then clicked on the play button of the YouTube video.
The camera swung toward Isabeau, who held her knives and did an outstretched arm curtsy before turning toward six archery targets attached to an outdoor wall.
The camera focused on the targets, and one by one, each was pierced by a knife, most of them near the bull’s-eye.
“Cool, huh?” Isabeau said, waggling her eyebrows, her wide smile proud and delighted.
“That’s amazing,” Nessa said with real admiration. “You are a woman of many talents.” She reached forward and grasped Isabeau’s hand. “Thank you so much. You saved me tonight. You really did.”
“You’re welcome,” Isabeau said, then got up and went in the kitchen. Nessa heard the pantry door open and close.
Nessa realized she’d never asked Isabeau anything about herself, and it made her ashamed. She was so swept up in the drama that was her life Isabeau was just a bit player, a prop, an extra.
But by rescuing Nessa tonight, she’d earned top billing.
Sunday, June 19
AT NINE THE next morning, Nessa stuck Daltrey in front of the TV—something she was doing far too often these days—while Isabeau worked on her computer in the same room.
Nessa went up to her bedroom and steeled herself to call John’s parents. Then she dialed her mother-in-law’s cell phone.
“Linda, I have a problem.”
“Oh?” her mother-in-law said. “What is it now?”
Nessa ground her teeth. “Is there any way you can push up your Kansas City trip with Daltrey? And then take him back to Russell with you for a week or so?”
Nessa was grateful that, other than cell phone usage, her in-laws were completely technophobic and had no knowledge of or interest in the Internet, so they wouldn’t have read her blog and all the horrific comments.
“Need a little break, do you?” Linda said.
Nessa bit her tongue. Actually, since people were now invading her house at all hours of the night, she feared for Daltrey’s safety. But she wasn’t about to let slip this bit of info. She’d always had the feeling that Linda was just waiting for her to screw up so she could swoop in and take control of Daltrey’s life.
“I’ll have to miss my book club, but you know I’ll do anything for my boyfriend.” That’s what she called Daltrey, to Nessa’s revulsion. Linda sighed, put-upon, but agreed to pick Daltrey up in the morning.
As Nessa drove into town to Lock It Up later, she couldn’t shake the feeling of the would-be rapist’s hands on her, the gun pointed at her. She’d showered twice that morning, but now she felt like she needed another one. She felt like she was covered in slime.
Lock It Up Locksmith Services was housed in a converted brick home. She walked in and asked to see the owner.
“I’ve used your company before, but I want to talk to him to see if there’s a more sophisticated system we should be using. Or maybe you could show me—”
“He should be back anytime,” the receptionist said. “He went to lunch. If you want to wait, that’s fine.”
Nessa watched the receptionist play The Sims on her computer until she got bored and leafed through some old magazines. Finally, the bell over the door sounded, and an older man with thin silver hair and glasses walked in leading a younger guy who was looking at his phone. Nessa recognized him—what was his name? Brady, the kid who’d changed her locks.
She stood and introduced herself. The owner clasped her outstretched hand, and Brady looked up from his phone and started. He looked quickly away.
“Hey, Brady,” she said.
“Hi,” he said, without looking at her. “I have a doctor’s appointment, Jerry. Forgot about it. I’ll be back in a few.” He turned and walked out the door.
Nessa watched him go. Why wouldn’t he look at her?
The thought that struck her took her breath away. The key the would-be rapist showed her was from the new locks. The locks Brady had installed. In the trauma of the moment, this hadn’t occurred to her.
“Will you excuse me for just a minute?” she said. “I want to thank Brady personally for the great job he did on our house.”
She followed Brady out the door where he was sprinting toward a truck.
“Hey,” she said.
He didn’t hesitate or turn around. He was fumbling with the keys to the truck, and she ran toward him, overcome with the desire to kick this kid’s ass. He sold her fucking keys to a fucking rapist.
“Hey, Brady,” she said.
He didn’t respond.
“Are you the one who placed the ad?”
He turned then, his face a mask of confusion.
“How much did you get, you little punk-ass bitch?” she hissed.
He turned back to the truck door, trying desperately to get his key in the lock.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, lady,” he said.
Nessa had to force herself not to start screaming and clawing at him, force herself to realize she needed to go mom on him rather than Robocop. She caught up to him and put her hand on his. “I can get you fired right now,” she said, “or you can tell me who you sold my key to, and your boss never needs to know.”
She grabbed his keys away from him and put them in her pocket. “Look at me,” she said in the same tone she’d use with Daltrey when he was ignoring her. “I need your help. Whoever you sold my keys to came into my house in the middle of the night and tried to rape me.”
Brady continued to look at the ground.
“I have a little boy,” she said, pleading. “You met him. You’ve put him and me in danger. Don’t you give a shit?”
The kid started to cry.
“Listen. Just tell me the truth and I swear I won’t tell your boss. I just need to know who it was.”
He couldn’t stop crying.
“How much did he pay you?”
“A hundred dollars,” the kid said, wiping his nose on his arm. “Both times.”
“Wait—what? Both times?”
Brady started crying anew. “I needed the money.”
Nessa tried to compose herself. She had to confirm that it was Nathan who’d bought the keys. “Was this guy about six-four? Blond?”
“No,” Brady said.
Of course Nathan wouldn’t be blond after spending twenty-three hours a day inside a prison.
“Not blond, then,” Nessa said.
“And not six-four either,” Brady said. The crying had stopped, but he still looked terrified. “He was—”
“Taller or shorter?”
“A lot shorter. About my height.”
Brady looked to be about five-nine. She puzzled over this.
“Don’t you even know how tall your own husband is? Ex-husband, whatever?”
“Kid,” Nessa said. “It wasn’t my ex-husband. He’s—”
“But it was,” Brady insisted. “He showed me his driver’s license.”
“His—”
“Yes! I know it was him because he has the same last name as you
. Donati. John Donati.”
Chapter Sixteen
AND THEN NESSA was on her back on the pavement, staring up at the sky with Brady kneeling next to her, crying again. She didn’t know how long she’d been out, whether she’d hit her head, or if she’d had a seizure, or just fainted.
“Mrs. Donati?” Brady was patting her hand with his clammy one. She yanked her hand away and sat up. “Are you all right?”
Her hands were scraped up from the gravelly surface beneath her.
John was alive.
“When did this happen?” she said. “When did . . . Mr. Donati buy the keys from you?”
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Just answer the question,” she snapped. “When did this happen?”
Brady startled, then looked up, obviously trying to remember. “It was, like, a week ago. He said you’d locked him out of his house, and he just wanted to get in there and get his stuff. That’s all he wanted to do. His name was the same as yours, so I figured it was legit, you know?”
She couldn’t breathe, felt like she was going to pitch over again. The world was not real, not at all, it couldn’t be.
John was alive.
Brady held up a Vulcan “live long and prosper” hand. “I swear to God,” he said, sniveling again. “I never thought something like this would happen. I swear to God.”
She tried to stand.
Her legs turned to water and she fell to the ground again, her bones and muscles no longer capable of supporting her weight, her brain unable to support this fact:
John’s alive.
Brady chattered away like a monkey, but she couldn’t understand anything he said because she was trying to adjust her worldview.
“I’m going to go get you some water. Stay right where you are.”
As if she could do anything else at this moment.
He ran back inside the locksmith office while she sat leaning against his vehicle’s tire in the shade.
She’d never known John at all, not really. And he was so much sicker than she ever realized.
Her mind lined up all the events of the past three weeks, and it was now so obvious. Of course it was John. He was punishing her for keeping him away from his stuff, his wife, his house, his son. He’d smeared the pickup truck with his own blood, fired her gun into the bed, and called the cops . . . he’d done all of it. And then tormented her with the details of her past.