The Promise He Made Her

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “You have news?” she asked, her heart still beating heavily, but now for an entirely different reason. She moved a little closer to the cliff face to her left, letting the overhang hide her from view of anything but the ocean. Lucy had made her way back toward them and was walking slowly at Sam’s side.

  “I don’t think he plans to harm you physically,” he said. “At least not at first.”

  Bloom shook her head. She didn’t understand. How was the plan going to work if they couldn’t get Ken riled up to the point of abusing her? She’d figured one or two meetings with him ought to do it...

  “He’s seen a divorce attorney, Bloom. Who then put in a request for a copy of your decree. I think he intends to contest the decree.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “It was granted on the basis of proof of what he’d done to you. You got the house, the savings account, your car—and the divorce—because he was a convicted criminal and you were his victim. With the conviction gone as though it never existed...”

  She stumbled again.

  And this time let Sam catch her before she fell.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “CAN WE SIT, PLEASE?”

  Sam, still reeling from the feeling of Bloom’s body touching his, watched as she lowered herself to the sand against the cliff wall and leaned back.

  She’d held on to him for less than a second, and something had changed. He didn’t know what. Didn’t want to know. He’d had women in his life since his divorce. Not many, but enough.

  He was not willing to be a changed man.

  So he’d just make certain that whatever it was that had just happened got changed back.

  He sat beside her and watched Lucy settle on her other side. As though the dog sensed that Bloom was in some kind of trouble.

  “I wanted it to be physical violence,” she said, her voice sounding calm. Normal. Not anything like he felt.

  But maybe it was just him...this weirdness going on where she was concerned.

  No harm, no foul if this was all just in his head. He could control that.

  “I planned to tell you tonight that I’m going to contact him,” she said. “To get this going and done with...”

  His skin turned cold. It was almost dark. But they’d be safe down here. Safer than in the house—not that he feared that, either. He had her well protected.

  As long as she didn’t run off and do something rash like...

  “Come again?” he said when he could do so without sounding ominous.

  “You said the plan was to draw him out, to find a way to get him to implicate himself.”

  He had. Yes. That was still the plan. If he couldn’t find the gang connection evidence.

  Word was Freelander had bragged that they didn’t ever find evidence of the drugs for trial because he’d already passed them on, right after his arrest.

  “Chantel’s planning to go under cover,” he said now. If they needed her to. If Kenneth didn’t give them something on his own that they could use against him.

  Bloom shook her head. “Not a good plan,” she said. “For so many reasons. Early on in his relationships Kenneth always feels like he’s in control. If he meets a woman who comes on too strong, he walks away. He doesn’t have to control all women, just those in his sphere. She’d have had to have been his boss, or in some form of authority over him to even have a chance of setting him off, and even then it’s not guaranteed that he’d do anything to her. Kenneth isn’t violent.”

  “He broke your jaw.”

  Her silence bothered him. And he thought back to the night he’d met her in the emergency room. Police had been called due to suspected abuse. She’d never admitted that Kenneth hit her. But when he’d asked if Freelander was responsible for the bruises on her face and shoulder, she’d nodded.

  It had been in his report.

  Mentioned only briefly in court.

  At the time, it hadn’t mattered.

  He and Banyon had been after the guy for more than a first offense domestic violence charge. They’d gone after him for drugging Bloom, dumbing her down to what one doctor had testified had been half her potential.

  Even more criminal, now that he knew Bloom had lost any vestige of a normal home life so that she wouldn’t live at half her potential. Her parents had sacrificed their life with her so that wouldn’t happen.

  “He hit you,” he said now.

  “I never said that.”

  “Banyon asked you in court if Ken Freelander was responsible for the bruises on your face and you nodded. His attorney didn’t even mention it in cross. And when he had Freelander on the stand, when he asked if he denied breaking your jaw, he said no.”

  Sam had been in court. And now, after all he was going through to help her, she’d been lying to him?

  She wasn’t like that...

  “He was responsible for them,” she said, an uncharacteristic break in her voice.

  Sam got the nuance this time around. “But he didn’t hit you.”

  “No.”

  He’d never asked, just assumed. Hadn’t really mattered how the jaw got broken. Only that it was. And that Freelander had done it.

  “How did he break it?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  Oh, no, lady, you aren’t doing that. Uh-uh. They’d come too far.

  “Bloom.” One word. But it better get her talking.

  Clasping her hands between her knees, she stared out toward the ocean.

  The waves were becoming harder to distinguish beneath the darkening sky. Their sound as they reached the shore and receded, was not.

  “I can’t help you if you aren’t going to be straight with me.”

  “I am straight with you.”

  “You’re withholding information that could be pertinent to the case.”

  “It wasn’t pertinent back then, why would it be now?”

  She was staring out toward the horizon. So was he. There was only a diminishing line between ocean and sky. No boats. No lights.

  “I knew what I needed to about your ex-husband to charge him with more than a hundred counts of premeditated dangerous assault that could result in murder. A domestic violence charge didn’t matter at that point.”

  She knew that. They’d talked about it. He’d been completely honest with her when he’d asked her for the ultimate sacrifice—taking the stand and testifying against the man she’d married. Facing him and opening herself up to the cross-examination of his very expensive and skilled attorney.

  “What happened to my jaw isn’t going to help put him back in prison.”

  The more she resisted telling him, the more he was certain he needed to know. He just couldn’t be sure whether the need was personal or professional.

  “No, but my understanding of him will help me know how to proceed in my promise to see that he gets there. He’s not in custody now like he was two years ago,” he added, to show her he wasn’t kidding. “I need to know what I’m protecting you against.”

  Up until that point he’d have sworn Freelander hit her. Multiple times. But only in one incident. There’d been no other accounts of physical violence involving the two of them, which had painted a picture of a mostly nonviolent man whose abusive tendencies had been escalating.

  “As he got older it was getting harder for Kenneth to...get an erection.” She spoke like a doctor speaking of a patient. But for that one little hesitation. He tried to listen like a professional law enforcement official in conversation with a doctor, as he’d done countless times before. He’d heard it all.

  “He had...fantasies.”

  The waves became a buffer. Something between them. Between her words and his hearing. A filter of emotion.

  “He’d give me orders, and
I’d...follow them.”

  Red hot anger possessed him. The man hadn’t just drugged his wife to dumb down her genius mind so that he could be intellectually superior to her. He’d drugged her for...sexual capitulation? And, he’d bet, for any other order he wished to mete out. He’d made her his slave.

  Overwhelmed with the sense that no one he’d ever helped had been more deserving of his protection, Sam wanted to stop her words. To spare her. Wanted the secrets to remain just that...her secrets. She’d paid the price once.

  He couldn’t tell her to stop. She was a victim. And part of his job was to get all the facts. Whether it be a child who’d been molested. Or a beautiful, special woman who’d never known what it had been like to be a child.

  “He liked to have me...tend to him while he was driving.”

  Illegal. He jumped on the thought.

  Without an accident it would only be a driving violation. Not even enough for a night in jail.

  “That night...”

  Her voice had changed. Slowed. Become more thick tongued. And Sam knew that she was slipping back to the medicated woman she’d been for so long. He hurt for her. Not the compassion that came from witnessing a stranger’s pain. But real pain. The kind he’d take with him.

  “He’d been driving fast. Speed was a part of what turned him on...”

  Lucy sat up. Put a paw on Bloom’s leg. She took Lucy’s paw, as though holding her hand and said, “He slammed on the brakes and my head slid between his knees and the steering wheel. I can remember that feeling...being trapped there. I can remember seeing his shiny wing-tipped shoes and the pedals. There was some kind of under-dash light on or something...”

  If she was squeezing Lucy’s paw now, the girl didn’t seem to mind. Sam’s mouth twitched. Biting back expletives.

  “That’s what broke your jaw,” he said between gritting his teeth. “Him stopping so suddenly.”

  “No, it was how he moved...”

  He had the full picture now.

  Kenneth Freelander better hope there was never a time when he was alone with Detective Sam Larson.

  Not ever.

  * * *

  “YOUR PRISON CONTACT was right.” Bloom had lost track of time. She’d asked Sam if they could walk again, and they had been for a long time. Back and forth along the beach that was accessible only from his property. “I am his target. And his ultimate goal,” she said. And she told him, “He called me the day before his release. I recognized the number from the prison and his is the only list I’m on, so it had to be him.”

  Prisons had systems for inmate calls. Predetermined lists. Phone numbers.

  When they’d first come down to the beach she’d asked Sam about Ken being able to get to her here by boat. He’d told her about the rocks and boulders that had, over centuries, fallen from the cliff behind them into the ocean, making boat access impossible and swimming dangerous sometimes, too. If the waves were fierce they could throw her against a rock.

  And she felt like life had been throwing her against rocks since the day she’d been born.

  “This is Ken’s way,” she continued, touching Lucy’s head as the dog walked beside her, sometimes pressing against her leg. Lucy wasn’t Madge. And the life Bloom had lived on the farm, the six years she’d been truly happy, had been more of a mirage than reality.

  Why Carl and Betty had been given a daughter like her, she didn’t know. You’re getting maudlin.

  Right. Feeling sorry for herself would get her nothing.

  “Just like drugging me.”

  Sam hadn’t said much since she’d told him about that night in the car. She had no idea what he was thinking. Of what had happened. Of her.

  Maybe she’d dropped a notch or two in his estimation. Lost a modicum of respect.

  Nothing she could do about that. Any more than she could have made Carl and Betty feel sufficient and capable of raising her. She couldn’t change who she was, what she’d done or what had been done to her.

  She could only shape her future. Not her past. She walked. He walked. Lucy walked. The night air was chilled. She wasn’t cold, though. Or maybe she just couldn’t feel much of anything.

  “Ken isn’t a brute. He’s not one to raise a fist. Or a gun. His way is quiet and slow. Insidious. Far more cruel, in a way, than broken bones that can heal. Because most times there’s no proof. Or enough proof.”

  “It’s emotional cruelty,” Sam said. “And it’s a crime.”

  The sound of the waves took his words and brought them back to her. He meant well. He thought he’d win this battle.

  A man like Sam, he didn’t give up easily. Or believe that there was a guy he couldn’t get with hard work, diligence and determination.

  He wasn’t just married to his job. He was the job.

  “It’s not a crime you can prove.”

  “We got him drugging you, Bloom. We’ll get him again.”

  She didn’t think so. But knew better than to try to get him to see that. Ultimately people saw what they wanted to see.

  And sometimes, depending on their reality, even if they tried to see something differently, they couldn’t.

  “Power, greed—they’re the ultimate diseases, and for most people, there’s no cure. It got Ken. I don’t know for sure when. Maybe back when he was kid. Maybe it was the way he survived his mother’s cruelty to him. But what I do know is that he has to have power and control in order to survive. And for him, the way to feel powerful and in control is to prove that he can outsmart you. Right now he thinks I outsmarted him. He has to prove that I did not. He has to show me that his intellect is superior to mine. And when I play him at his own game—that’s when he’ll strike.”

  Her calves were getting tired with the sand sifting beneath her feet. She pressed on, anyway. The ocean was vast. The house, any house, symbolized the trapped state her life had become.

  “He had such a great reputation,” she said now. “Everyone respected him. Liked him. He was made department head when there were others who were equally qualified and had been there longer. Students clamored to take his classes. He was truly a nice guy.”

  “Until someone challenged his sense of power.”

  Sam was right with her. She wasn’t alone. She looked back at him.

  “I don’t think anyone ever did. He was of genius-level intelligence, as well. No one in the field came close...”

  “Until you came along.”

  Until she’d come along. But Ken hadn’t known, at first, that she could outsmart him. She hadn’t known at all. Until the night she’d ended up in the hospital with a broken jaw and had tested positive for medications that had not been prescribed to her.

  Kenneth had insisted, when they’d gone to the emergency room, that she tell them that she flew over the front of their Jet Ski and hit something. There hadn’t been bruises on her body, other than the shoulder that had hit the steering wheel, to withstand a falling-down-the-stairs excuse. He’d refused to let the car come into play at all. It was too close to the truth.

  The Jet Ski excuse hadn’t worked, either. But with the drugs coming up in her system, the broken jaw had taken a back seat almost immediately. When Sam had gotten around to asking her about it, she’d admitted that Ken was responsible. He’d known better than to deny it. He hadn’t wanted the truth of that night to get out...

  Truth was...he probably didn’t have problems with erectile dysfunction. There were things he could take for that. He’d just been using her to act out his fantasies because he wanted to. Because he could...

  It was getting late. They should get back. Get some rest. She had a seven o’clock appointment in the morning. And an eight and a nine, too. Chantel’s soon-to-be sister-in-law, Julie Fairmont, was coming in.

  And something was nagging at her. She fought it off as
they climbed the path back toward the house. She didn’t want to deal with anything else that night. Didn’t want to...

  “I might as well return home,” she said as soon as the cottage came into view. She couldn’t keep using him. Inconveniencing him. “With the divorce thing we can assume that I’m not in physical danger with Kenneth. He’s going to drag me through the court system. My physical safety isn’t at risk, my security is. The house. My car. My money...”

  Sam didn’t respond. She hadn’t really expected him to, not until he thought about what she was saying. He wasn’t going to like letting her live alone so soon after Ken’s release, but there was no longer any justification for the money being spent on guards. For Chantel to be away from her family every evening. Or for Sam to be eating dinner out instead of at home. And sleeping in his guest bedroom.

  There was also no reason for him to be pushing her down into the brush at the side of the path. “Stay here.” His voice was a harsh whisper. “Stay down and don’t move. I’m taking Lucy with me. I don’t want her giving away your position.”

  Heart pounding, she stared at him. Doing as he said without question.

  “Someone’s in the house.”

  He pulled a knife out of his pocket. “Use this if you have to,” he said. “And don’t move unless you have to use it. I’ll be back.”

  Shaking, more frightened then she’d ever been, Bloom watched as, gun in hand, he headed toward the cottage.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  SAM KEPT TO the tree line, shimmying along with his gun trained on the front door of his cottage, Lucy at his side. Several yards away from Bloom, he told the dog to stay. If anyone came around the house, they’d think Lucy was Bloom. And he’d be alerted when he heard the dog bark. Or squeal.

  He prayed he’d hear neither and moved forward.

  With no idea how many people he was dealing with, and a helpless woman in the weeds, he couldn’t just send Lucy in to fight off the danger. In the first place, she wasn’t a trained police dog. And in the other, she could be shot in a heartbeat, leaving him who knew how many alerted bad guys on his hands.