by Riley Moreno
“Get your hands off of her,” Ethan said as he took a small step forward. Matt pressed the gun deeper into her skin.
“Why should I do that?”
“Because…”
Ethan hesitated, and she found his eyes. It would be now. He would drop the hero act along with the gun and show his true colors. What would he say? Probably something like because I get her first. This had always been a long con with the payoff being the most awful violation. There were moments when she trusted the stranger who literally gave her the clothes off his back and lied that he would never even conceive of doing what his buddies had, what he was about to do. Closing her eyes, she felt Matt’s hands reach under her sweater and start to twist her breast.
“Stop it! She doesn’t want to be touched.”
And then her eyes went wide.
He didn’t fulfill her worst fears. She saw his chin tremble as moved closer with the gun, and she realized that he was trying hard to keep his aim away from her even as Matt held her like a shield. Could she actually trust him?
“What is your deal?” Matt asked. “You come to party and then get all ancient choir boy and shit?”
“I’m not leaving without her.”
“You’re not leaving period.”
Matt turned his gun on Ethan. The world was moving in slow motion, and Julie tried to tell him to run.
And then she remembered the knife.
Reaching into her skirt, she pulled the blade out of its hiding place. Matt felt her shifting, and his eyes went to her hands. He wrestled Julie to the ground before she could stab him anywhere. The knife started to slip from her grasp, and as her head slammed into the dirt it was gone.
“Bitch!”
Matt climbed on top of her, and he lost his gun. Pinned by his legs, Julie couldn’t move. Matt claimed the knife and sliced the sharp edge against her cheek. Julie cried out in pain, and she could taste the blood trickling into her mouth. As she struggled, Ethan reappeared. Taking Matt by his shoulders, he pulled the animal off of her, and Julie scrambled away even as her face burned from the cut.
“Run, Julie! Run!”
She was on her feet as the men fought. Matt slashed at Ethan, and she heard him scream as he tried to keep his hands around his gun. Julie slowly got to her feet and made a move to help him.
“No! Run!”
“Ethan---”
“Just go!”
And she did. Back into the woods.
“No, Julie! Not that way!”
She wasn’t listening. Her legs carried her into the shadows. It was wrong to leave him, but she couldn’t go back. Matt was younger, stronger. In short order he would overpower Ethan and hack him to death or find a way back to his gun and blow his head off. When that happened, Julie had to be as far away from him as possible. She couldn’t go back. She would rather die, and as a shot rang out, a shot that had to be for Ethan, she wished she had the knife again. Not for Matt. She wanted it to open her wrists and then hide until the life drained from her. It was the only way her suffering would ever end. Maybe she could find a jagged stone to complete the task and find another open tree until she was where Kim was. For so long, that had been what she wanted most.
And she also wanted Ethan alive.
He hadn’t hurt her. He had only tried to help her, and now he was dead or dying for just being a good guy when she thought they were a deceased breed. She should go back. Maybe he was only injured and she could duck Matt until she was back on the road.
The road!
In her beleaguered state, she had run back into the thick of it. Pete was out here. He was probably around the next corner. Once he had her subdued, he would bind her with ropes or chains or whatever he had been able to grab before he started his pursuit. He’d call for his friend and they would beat her for her defiance and take her to the next set of customers. So what if she was bloodied and bruised. They could still fuck her and add to the marks that covered her like a second skin. She turned back around and stopped as she saw a shadowy figure approaching.
“No, no!”
Julie gave into despair and fell. She covered her head with her hands and sobbed into her chest. The sight of the figure became sound. Heaving breaths and feet pounding into the earth intensified, and then she felt hands.
“Let me go!”
She tried to pull away, but the hands followed her as she crawled.
Gentle hands.
Julie looked up and saw Ethan.
His face was masked in sweat and dirt. Julie had to blink at the reality of him. It wasn’t enough. With a shaking hand, she reached for his arm. It was a mass of torn fabric and fresh blood, and he winced as she touched him.
“You’re alive,” she whispered.
He nodded and held the hand that she kept over his wound.
“I’m okay. I’m… oh God.”
He started to touch her bleeding face, but stopped short of true contact.
“You’re hurt,” he stated plainly. Without another word, he tore at her skirt and he pressed a piece to her injured face.
“Where’s Matt?” she asked.
“He won’t hurt you ever again.”
So the bullet was for him. Julie relaxed, and cried tears of joy at the news. In her former life, the life that wasn’t a nightmare, she had no conception of how someone could rejoice at the news of a person leaving the planet. But when the boy in question was a shape without a soul, it was all too easy. Ethan cleaned the blood from her face and told her to take the torn piece of skirt and apply pressure as he started to help her up.
“No. No wait.”
Ethan obeyed and held his arm as she spoke.
“I’m… sorry.”
“Julie, it’s not your fault. None of this---”
“No. I… I thought you were one of them. I thought you would hurt me as soon as you had the chance. I’m sorry I didn’t…”
She cried, unable to continue. Ethan sighed and grazed his fingers against her arm.
“I’m not. I never was. You know that now, right?”
Julie nodded and didn’t recoil at his light touch. She was relieved that he was safe, but for the first time since she’d been taken, she felt something else. There were still good people in a world that had grown increasingly dark, and that one of them had found her and saved her was all that she had dreamed of even as her cheek stung and her body still shuddered at the thought of others using her until she was limp and pleading with no one to hear her cries. Ethan heard them, and he didn’t laugh at the sound. And she repaid him by running away and leaving him to face down the man who started the cycle of torment all alone. It could have gone the other way, and Ethan could be dead just because he wanted to save her. He didn’t deserve that. And he didn’t deserve her mistrust.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
She kept repeating it over and over again. Ethan gritted his teeth and lifted her off the ground. He wrapped a tentative arm around her shoulder and kept the pressure on her bleeding face.
“No more, Julie. Let’s just get you home.”
Home.
What would it be like? Ethan said that no one was looking for her, so maybe she had been forgotten before she left. That didn’t fit with her mother, and she wondered if Pete had used her cell phone to fire off texts that told tales of an odyssey that was more than she had ever dreamed of. Was that really enough to keep her mom from calling for help? Days and then weeks and then months without the sound of her daughter’s voice? Julie was unnerved by the idea, but it was crazy. Her mother would meet her in some police station or hospital room and cry at what had happened to her only child. And she wanted to cry in her arms.
Ethan led her back to the patch of road, and Julie pressed her head into his shoulder when she saw Matt. He was dead, looking into nothingness, and it was awful. Ethan dragged her from the body.
“Don’t look, Julie. He doesn’t deserve your eyes.”
She focused forward and felt the summer leaving her. Pete was pro
bably running around like a madman far away, and Ethan’s words would come to pass. They would find the road and a car or a cell signal and the nightmare would just stop. Their feet hit the pavement, and a pair of headlights peeked over the horizon.
Ethan’s hold became stronger, and Julie didn’t fight it.
“Almost, Julie.”
He left her side and started waving his arms in an effort to flag the car down. It slowed to a halt, and the lights went dark. Julie narrowed her eyes and watched someone put the car into park and open the door. The Good Samaritan was barely out of the car when Julie realized that she knew the driver, and she instinctively reached for Ethan and pulled him back to her side.
“No! No it’s Pete!”
Ethan pressed her behind him, and Julie could think of nothing else but to cling to him as her captor met the moonlight and pointed a gun at the quivering pair.
To her surprise, Ethan still had his gun, and he retrieved it from his side. He moaned as he tried to aim it at Pete, but his torn arm seemed too much to get past. Julie sprang into action and moved to keep his aim steady. Ethan fell to the pavement, and Julie was left with the gun in her hands as Ethan coughed at her feet and Pete kept moving forward.
“Jules, Jules, Jules. You’ve been a bad girl. You’re going to pay.”
“Get away from her,” Ethan said.
A glance at the ground revealed that his wound was worse than he had led her to believe. His blood pooled at her feet, and Julie tossed him the bloody bit of skirt.
“Hold it. Keep pressure on it.”
Ethan listened, and then he started crawling towards Pete.
“You touch her and I’ll… I’ll kill you. I swear… I swear…”
Ethan groaned and sputtered as Pete laughed. With his gun fixed on Ethan, he laughed and cocked the weapon.
“Pete!”
His eyes met the sound of her voice, and she aimed the gun at his head.
“Right, Jules. You’re gonna kill me?”
“Why not? Ethan killed Matt.”
She saw his face turn away in disbelief. They were friends. Sick friends, but it had to hurt. Good. She wanted it to hurt forever, and she wanted him to suffer. She wanted to see him in chains and tossed into a dark cell. Let a rusty scalpel slowly tear the infection from his body. The thought of Pete raped in a prison shower as he cried for mercy and disgusted guards turned a blind eye was so tempting. And she could make it happen.
Pete aimed his gun at Ethan’s head.
“So I’ll return the favor. Now get those clothes off and get into the car. And I’ll let him see tomorrow.”
It was a lie. Everything he had ever said was a lie, and Julie knew that Pete would kill Ethan as soon as her back was turned and do with him whatever he had done with Kim. Kim was dead. Julie had to survive this to tell someone what had happened. To find the body. To save Ethan.
“Jules?”
And she fired.
The bullet smashed into his leg, and he fell back. As he flailed, he lost his gun, and his head slammed into the hood of his darkened car. He screamed like a girl, like she had screamed for so many nights, and as his hand reached for his gun, Julie kicked it away and forced the barrel of her gun down his throat. Julie drove the gun deeper and glared into his eyes.
“I should kill you. I should---”
Ethan’s moan sent her away from Pete. His arm was covered in blood, and she removed her sweater and twisted the wool around his cut.
“Such a slut, Jules. Always.”
Because he had made a slut. A whore. She wrenched forward and pounded the butt of her gun into his head. He flinched at each blow, and his hands reached for the gun that she clung to with all the strength she had left. Pete got his fingers around the trigger, and Julie felt the gun lowering into her chest.
A shot rang out.
Pete screamed again as his other leg exploded with a stream of new blood. His hands worked like mad to stop the flow, and Julie crawled back to Ethan. His hands were filled with the stray gun, and he lowered the weapon when Julie returned to his side.
“Ethan? You okay?”
He nodded and reached into his pocket. He revealed his cell and smiled.
“There’s a signal. Call for help.”
She held his hand and dialed 911.
15
Connie Morales walked through a squad room on fire. The case was out of bounds. Raped girls and busted men many jurisdictions over. She poured herself a cup of stale coffee, folded a series of fresh files under her arm, and settled into an interview room.
Leo Barber was waiting.
“Hey, Morales.”
She settled in the seat before him and started to unfurl the facts of the case.
“No hello?”
Morales didn’t have time for pleasantries. This was big.
“He’ll live. I spoke to him last night. He told quite a story.”
Leo’s interest was piqued.
“Share.”
Morales sipped her coffee and sighed.
“He’s a lump. Wrong place wrong time kind of thing. Geoffrey Troxel on the other hand…”
She shoved a picture of the rich man in Leo’s direction, and he smirked.
“So it’s true.”
Morales retrieved the picture with a wicked smile.
“He’s not talking. But the one they shot? Peter Bowen.”
Another picture. An ancient mug shot on account of a DUI in Florida showed a different face from the one now lying, restrained in a hospital bed. The picture was proud and silent. The man today spilled at the first chance. He promised the entire ring for immunity, but Morales wasn’t biting. She’d seen Julie Edwards sobbing as her mother cried more wildly as the details of her daughter’s captivity came into play. And she’d met Ethan Graff. His one arm was weak as he asked about Julie.
“She’s down the hall, Mr. Graff. She’s receiving the best care.”
It wasn’t home, but it was sterile. Her family was with her, and everyone, suspect Bowen included, would return to the city to face the consequences of the night. Ethan Graff relaxed when he heard that Julie Edwards was near and safe, and he started to pull out his IV in what had to be an effort to get back to her side.
“Mr. Graff, you should stay still.”
She lowered Ethan back to his pillow, and he groaned at his bandage. Morales took his hand.
“She’s fine, Mr. Graff. She’s with her family. It’s over.”
Morales saw Ethan relax even as she could tell that he just wanted to see her. He cried, and Morales felt strange as she patted his neck and told him that Julie Edwards would be okay.
“She’s with her family?” Ethan asked.
Morales nodded.
“Good,” he said as he settled under his sheets.
“I… can I see her before I leave.”
“Sure.”
Ethan Graff seemed pleased, and he gave into exhaustion as she left the room.
“So?”
Morales was back with Leo. Like a dog who’d tasted a bone, his muzzle was wet with the hope of landing a millionaire and his spawn by association. Leo had to be dreaming of others who’d fight and plead from the defense table, and she knew that Leo would look each and every one of the bastards in the eye until they were all sent to cells with no hope of escape.
“Who else?”
Julie Edwards was soft-spoken, and she trembled as Morales clenched her fists and reminded her that it wasn’t just the indicted men, holed up in a lavish penthouse, that had laid waste to her.
“Can’t you just leave her be. She’s told you all she knows,” her stepfather cried.
That was the problem. Geoffrey Troxel and Carter McCord were already launching a defense as this girl and the broken man down the hall spun tales of months of torture. In some circles, the praises of Ethan Graff rang out as heroic even as there was nothing to show for his efforts but two names, one raped girl, and a body that had yet to be uncovered. Search teams were looking for the r
emains of one Kim Beyer, and her mother called daily for updates.
But there had to be more to tell.
“So we don’t know how deep this thing goes.”
Leo leaned over the table and took her Styrofoam cup in his hand.
“Yet.”
This was why she liked Leo. He was an arrogant asshole in suspenders and a bowtie, but he wouldn’t stop until he saw justice done, and a rape ring was right up his alley of the worst things ever done to another person.
“And the shot creep?”
“He’s starting to talk. Says this thing is bigger than we even know. He’s…”
Morales’ voice trailed off, but Leo pressed his palms into the desk.
And he continued.
“What, Connie?”
She wished she hadn’t even heard it. The son of a bitch with shattered legs promised to reveal all if, and only if, his scared victim was left alone with him so that he could tell all and thus close the case.
Morales had spent several hours in the company of Julie Edwards. She was a broken frame that shook off all human contact, but she kept asking for Ethan.
“He’s okay, Julie. He---”
“He was there,” her mother yelled as she pulled their hands apart.
“He was one of them. He was----”
“Mom?”
Julie Edwards took her mother’s hand.
“He saved me. I… I want to see him.”
Sharon Heller, the mother who kept asking how much of this would get out, shook her head. But Morales took Julie’s hand.
“He’s been saying the same thing. You’ll see him soon.”
“Do you thing that’s wise?” Sharon asked.
Leo scanned the files. Morales knew that rapists needed to be put away so that they could know the pain of their victims. Bum legs aside, she knew that Peter Bowen had led the victim into months of despair, and she wanted him to suffer.
Leo’s eyes told another story.
He wanted Troxel and McCord. He wanted to expose the upper crust and send them down into the deepest pit. Morales didn’t protest his intentions even as she wanted to know how this had happened to two girls who planned a trip and found misery.