by Kelly Favor
The thought of it made me rock hard, and I flashed back to an image of her on her knees at the club the other night, crawling over to me, ready to do whatever I asked.
She needed to be careful out with that asshole Josh. I put my iPad away and went to remind her of that fact, to make sure she stayed safe and alert. I decided to implement a new rule - she would have to text me every hour on the hour, and if I didn’t hear from her, I would come and find her.
When I reached the office, she was sitting on the floor looking down at something in her lap. Her hair fell over her face, her legs curled under her. She looked small and vulnerable, and I wanted to wrap her up in my arms and carry her back to my bed, lock her away and never let her out of my sight.
“Charlotte,” I said. “Look at me.”
She looked up at me, her face set in stone. Her eyes were blazing with something unexpected – anger.
She picked up the folder that was in her lap. “You want to explain this?” she asked.
I took a step closer, until I could see what she was referring to. It was my file on Katie Price -- the pictures of her, the record of her movements, the places she’d gone, the times she’d gone there. Each one meticulously recorded and catalogued, right down to the minute.
“Why were you following Katie?” Charlotte demanded. “Tell me.”
I had to be careful.
If I said the wrong thing, I could lose her.
And that was unacceptable.
So I began to speak, choosing my words carefully.
CHARLOTTE
“Well?” I demanded, standing up and thrusting the folder at Noah. “What is this?”
“Charlotte,” he said, his voice even, “you weren’t meant to find that.”
“Yeah, no shit I wasn’t meant to find it. It’s probably not ideal for the woman you’re fucking to find a bunch of evidence that shows you were stalking someone who was just murdered.”
He shook his head and moved over to me, took the folder from my hands and paged through the documents. He still didn’t say anything, and it was infuriating. I had been in such a good mood, thinking I was finally getting through to him, and then just like that, my hopes were completely dashed. Again.
It was like being on a seesaw, flying up into the air, only instead of coming down, it felt like I was being throw off into the air before crashing straight onto the ground.
“Are you going to tell me what the hell is going on?” My voice was halfway between panic and desperation, with a dose of shrill added in for good measure. My heart was pounding, adrenaline pulsing through my body, the fight or flight instinct in full effect. I wasn’t sure if I should slap him across the face, or run out of there and never talk to him again.
If this wasn’t proof he was a murderer, I didn’t know what was. I wasn’t sure why I was even standing there, asking for an explanation.
He kept going through the pictures, page by page, maddeningly slowly, until I felt like I wanted to scream.
When he was done, he slid them carefully back into the folder and placed the folder back in his filing cabinet.
“Charlotte,” he said.
“Stop saying my name.” I hated the way it made me feel, hearing him say my name like that. It felt too intimate, too close, the way he said it, like he knew me. When the truth was, he didn’t know me at all. And I didn’t know him. This whole thing we’d been doing, the sex and the games and the control – that’s all it was. Just games.
Dangerous, risky games that might cost me my life.
“I was following Katie,” Noah said.
I closed my eyes, and my breath started coming in rapid gasps, so fast that I was afraid I was going to have a panic attack. I hadn’t had a panic attack since those last days with my dad, since he was lying in bed dying, and I was there with him, all alone, not sure what to do. I took in a long deep breath through my nose, counting to three beats, then holding it for three beats before exhaling for three beats. It helped a little bit, but as soon as I was stopped counting, my breath started coming fast again.
“Charlotte, please,” Noah said. “Let me get you some water. Sit down. You need to let me explain – ”
“Don’t,” I said. “No. I’m done with this.”
Noah stood there, his eyes boring into mine, blazing with fury. And something else, something right below the surface.
Hurt.
He was hurt I didn’t trust him, that I didn’t believe him. But I was done playing these crazy games.
Noah Cutler was a murderer.
And I needed to stay far, far away from him.
The day had turned overcast and dreary, and I walked fast toward the subway, ignoring Noah’s car, which was parked in front of his apartment.
I ducked into the bodega on the corner and bought myself a cheap phone charger, the kind that would probably last me two days before breaking, and a bottle of water. As soon as I was out on the sidewalk I opened the bottle and gulped down half of it. A second later, my mouth was dry again, my lips like sandpaper, my tongue thick and heavy.
My heart was still beating rapidly, even faster now that I’d been walking, and I could feel a tiny bit of sweat starting to pool in the small of my back. I wasn’t wearing a coat, but I was still hot, even though the day wasn’t particularly warm.
I drank some more water and forced myself to slow my pace as I walked. There was a sharp pain starting in my side, almost like a stitch, and even though I’d slowed down it began to take over my entire stomach, fading and bleeding into a dull ache.
As I stepped down into the subway station, I felt suddenly claustrophobic, like I was stepping into a coffin. Get it together, Charlotte, I told myself. Relax.
A second later, I was being swallowed up by the crowd as we filed into the subway car. I took a seat in between a woman with a yellow umbrella and a college kid wearing a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. The ride to campus was at least twenty minutes, but I had no memory of it when I stepped out of the car. It was like my mind was disconnected from reality.
When I got to campus, I realized I was going to have to go to class tomorrow. I had this whole life, this whole world that I’d worked so hard to build – getting good grades in high school, getting good grades in college, getting into law school. Up until a couple of days ago, school and the law had been my life. But then I had become consumed with Noah.
Was I becoming one of those women? The politicians’ wives you saw standing by them even as they admitted they’d been hiring prostitutes or posting naked pictures of themselves all over the internet. The women who married men in jail, who stood by their husbands and insisted they could never kill someone even when the evidence proved otherwise.
There was a thin line between standing by someone you knew wasn’t guilty, and getting so consumed with a man that you couldn’t see the truth. There was also a big difference between me and those women. Those women had been married to those men, had built lives with them, had houses and children and photo albums full of memories. They had money and power and success at risk -- their whole lives would implode if their husbands were found guilty of whatever charges had been lobbied against them.
I had nothing at stake here. Noah and I hadn’t built anything except a sexual relationship. The fact that he’d agreed to go with me to my stepfather’s birthday party, which at the time had seemed like such a huge victory, now seemed ridiculous and petty. A birthday party? That wasn’t any kind of promise. That was a joke.
I was done.
Done with Noah Cutler.
I felt like I kept saying that to myself, and every time, I’d get swept back up. But not this time. This time it was real. I felt like a junkie finally coming out of a haze. I was seeing my drug for what it really was – a man who had nothing to offer me except heartache and lies.
I ran up the stairs in front of Hinton Hall, then headed toward Professor Worthington’s office. I paused outside the door, wondering if I should tell Professor Worthington I wasn’t going to
be able to work on the case anymore. Ever since I’d been working with Noah, my whole life had turned upside down.
Maybe it was time to cut my losses and move on.
Fuck that. You worked hard to get into law school, you worked hard to even be able to go to college. You promised your dad and yourself you wouldn’t end up like your mother, that you’d make something of yourself. And you’re not going to let some man you just met take that away from you.
I opened the door and walked in.
The office was small, but Professor Worthington had made the most of the space, with a long conference table in the middle of the room, and a flowery green plant in the corner. A keurig coffee machine sat on a table near the door, and a bookshelf with volumes of law books was pushed up against the opposite wall.
Josh sat at the conference table, a cup of coffee sitting in front of him.
“Hey,” he said when he saw me. “The professor’s not here yet.”
“Great,” I said under my breath and sat down at the other end of the table. I wanted to leave the room and come back after Professor Worthington got here, but I didn’t want to give Josh the satisfaction. So instead, I plugged my phone into its new charger and set it down next to me on the table. Then I pulled out the file Professor Worthington had given me at the police station, the one filed with photos and reports I was supposed to have studied. I hadn’t really had a chance.
That’ s a lie. You did have a chance, you just decided to spend your time out at a BDSM club instead of working on the case.
“Is that the file on Cutler?” Josh asked.
I nodded, not looking up from the documents, even though I wasn’t really reading them. My mind was a mess, because of Noah, because of Josh, because of everything. The words swam on the page, blurring into one big black smudge.
“Interesting, right?” Josh asked.
“Definitely.”
“He’s a psycho.”
“No, he’s not,” I said automatically.
“Oh?” Josh said. He leaned back in his chair until the front legs were off the floor. He grabbed the side of the table and balanced himself. “Are you fucking him?”
I had to resist the urge to get up and give his chair a good hard shove. I imagined him hitting the floor, his head cracking against the linoleum, the blood pooling underneath him. It was a violent fantasy, and I was surprised at myself. I wondered if spending so much time with a probable murderer was making me prone to having violent tendencies.
I ignored Josh and pretended to be engrossed in my reading.
“I’ll bet your pussy gets so wet,” Josh said. “I’ll bet you get so wet and you scream while he drills that ass. You have anal, right? Julia won’t let me get anywhere near her ass. But I’ll convince her.”
I fought hard to control my breathing, but tears of rage filled my eyes. Josh seemed to like this.
“Aww, are you gonna cry?” he asked. “You’re going to have a thicker skin than that, Charlotte. What if they call you to the stand? They’re going to ask if he ever got rough with you, if he ever took you to that club, what’s it called? Rape?”
He was talking about Force, and he knew it wasn’t called Rape.
He wanted me to refute him, wanted me to get into a back and forth with him so he could get a reaction out of me.
But it wasn’t going to work.
“It’s called Force,” I said evenly, my eyes still trained on Noah’s file. “Which you would have known if you’d read the report.”
I glanced up at him, and he smiled at me, like he knew exactly what the club was called. He took in a breath. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “The guy’s a psycho for sure, but I still don’t think he did it.”
I looked up at him, interested for the first time. “Oh, yeah?” I said, still struggling to keep my tone light “Why do you say that?”
He swallowed, then bit his bottom lip nervously. The skin there was all torn up, like he’d been chewing on it a lot. “There’s something weird going on in this case,” he said. “Have you noticed – ”
But before he could finish, the door to the office opened and Professor Worthington walked in.
“Good,” he said shortly. “You’re both here.”
“Yes,” I said, nodding and smoothing down my sweater.
Professor Worthington took a seat in the middle of the table, in between me and Josh. I was happy for the buffer. He spread out a bunch of papers and a legal pad, then turned his attention to his laptop.
“We’re going to have to do something about Noah’s inbox,” Professor Worthington said, not wasting any time. “He’s turned his password over to me, and he has emails that are going to make him look exceptionally guilty.”
“What kind of emails?’ I asked, my heart sinking.
“He was having an inappropriate relationship with Katie Price,” Professor Worthington said, shaking his head as he scrolled through the emails. “Jesus Christ, Noah, you really should learn to keep your dick in your pants.”
“Can I see them?” I asked, the blood rushing in my ears.
Worthington slid the laptop over to me. It was open to Noah’s email account, and there was an email between Katie and Noah up on the screen. It was a long conversation, the kind of conversation that only happened when two people were emailing back and forth incessantly, all day. The kind of conversation you usually only had with someone you were involved with. My stomach turned.
“Maybe I should be emailing you from my personal account,” Katie had written. “Since the conversation is getting so personal.”
She’d followed it up with a smiley face. Was she that stupid? Didn’t she realize Noah was the head of the firm, and therefore, they couldn’t really get in trouble? Noah owned everything. If anyone found out they were emailing using their work email addresses, there was nothing they could do about it.
I kept scrolling through the conversation, which started out being flirtatious and funny, then quickly devolved into something borderline X-rated.
“I’ll bet you’re a good kisser,” Katie had written.
“I’ll bet you taste so good,” Noah had written back.
Bile filled the back of my throat. I didn’t want to see how far it had gotten, so I pushed the computer back over to Professor Worthington. I pretended to make a note on my legal pad, hoping Josh and Worthington wouldn’t be able to tell how upset I was.
I was devastated, not only because it pointed to Noah being guilty – this made three women now he was involved with who’d been killed – but because he’d lied to me. He and Katie had been involved.
I wondered how long they’d been together. Why had he killed her? Did it have to do with why she’d called him last night? Why had she called him last night? Was Katie in love with him? My thoughts swirled together, and I had to summon all my strength to bring my attention back to the meeting.
“Charlotte?” Professor Worthington was asking. “Can you take care of that?”
“Can I take care of what?” I asked.
He sighed and looked at me like I was useless. Which, honestly, I supposed I was at this point. “Of interviewing Katie’s friends. Poke around, find out who she hung out with, if there was anyone else who might have wanted to hurt her. Find out who she was, where she hung out, what she was like. Can you do that?”
“Yes,” I said, even though I would have rather poked my eyes out with a fork than find out exactly what kind of person Katie Price was.
“Here’s her address,” Worthington said, pushing a piece of paper over to me. “You can start there.”
I folded the paper in half and placed it in my purse. What had Noah said? That Katie still lived with her parents? I’m sure they weren’t going to welcome me showing up at her house, asking them all kinds of questions about what Katie was like. Especially when I told them I was a defense lawyer for her boss, who might have been the last person to talk to her before she was killed.
There was a headache starting at my temples, and all I
wanted to do was go home and have a long, hot bath, followed by a glass – or a bottle – of wine before crawling into bed.
But I had reading for tomorrow’s classes that I was behind on from spending my weekend with Noah, and I needed to get it done. And then there was the matter of my stepfather’s birthday party. I still hadn’t bought him a present.
This is why I usually kept to a meticulous schedule, and why there was no room for anything else in my life. Distractions needed to be minimized. It was imperative that I stay focused, because as soon as one thing slipped, it was like dominos.
“Josh,” Professor Worthington said. “I’ll need you to go through Noah’s email, line by line, mail by mail. Any emails with Katie should be deleted. Any mention of Katie to anyone else should be deleted.”
My attention snapped back to the conversation. “Should we really be doing that?” I asked. “Isn’t that destroying evidence?”
“There is no case yet,” Professor Worthington said. “So none of this is evidence. And we’re not destroying them, we’re deleting them. If the prosecutor’s office is that determined to find the emails, they can access the back up files. Which reminds me, we’re going to need access to Katie Price’s work email account.” He made a note on his legal pad.
“Yeah,” I said. “But if they find out we – ”
“We’re not doing anything wrong,” Josh said, shrugging. “It’s a gray area.”
My phone buzzed with a text before I could reply, and I looked down.
Noah.
“Come back to my apartment. Immediately.”
God, he was so arrogant. What gave him the right to think he could just demand where I went or what I did? It was barbaric, when you really thought about it.
You like it. It turns you on, how demanding he is, how he wants to take control of you.
This was how he roped women in. He got them all confused, caught up in a whirlwind of sex and lust and hormones, so they couldn’t see what was really going on. Well, I wasn’t going to be another Katie.