Chapter Five
AURELIA
The sheriff’s strategy is pretty effective. By the fifth hour, I’m ready to crack.
He’s just returned from his third coffee break after interrogating me for half an hour, and like the other times, he quietly reads over my written statement while taking slow sips of his coffee and once he’s done, he sits back in his chair, folds his hands over his belly, and asks me to recount my story again from start to finish.
It’s obvious that he’s looking for holes or any small change in my story, but I’m media trained, so it never wavers.
“Okay, you’re right. You got me. I was abducted, Sheriff Kelly.” I wait until he straightens with a jerk, flips his notepad to a blank page, and plucks his pen from his shirt pocket, the ballpoint poised over the page in preparation to take my statement. “By aliens.”
“Ms. George…” The sheriff sighs before dropping his pen and pushing his notepad to the side.
“Refusing to cooperate will not help you or those boys. I also feel obligated to remind you that I’m still deciding whether or not to charge you with obstruction of justice.
It’s in your best interest to take this seriously and answer my questions honestly. ”
“I have answered you honestly. Several times. Your refusal to accept the truth is the only obstruction I see.”
“Perhaps I should keep you here over the weekend. Give you time to consider what you remember before we speak again.”
My blood runs hot as I study the sheriff silently. He waits patiently for me to decide my next course of action. “No,” I finally answer. “We’re done here. I’d like to call my lawyer now.”
The sheriff is visibly startled before he nods in disappointment and stands from the table to leave. “I’ll get you a phone.”
He leaves and comes back immediately, carrying a landline inside and setting it in front of me along with a steaming cup of coffee before leaving the room again.
The door closes with a quiet snick, and even when the sound of his departing footsteps fades, I don’t move. I stare at the black phone for ten solid minutes before I sigh and snatch up the receiver from the base.
As I dial, I draw forth the image of the tiny black numbers printed on the face of a crumpled business card.
It was passed to me in secret nine years ago at one of the many industry parties my uncle dragged me to.
I was newly eighteen and should have had control over my life, and apparently it had been obvious to all—or maybe just the shrewd and no-nonsense A&R rep at Savant—that I had no say, no autonomy, and certainly no control.
She’d slipped me her card and told me to use it when I grew a spine.
I remember thinking what a bitch and liking her immediately.
Still, I’d nearly thrown out her card right then and there—partly out of misplaced loyalty to my uncle but mostly out of fear.
But something had stopped me, and whatever it was, I’m grateful for it now.
Instead, I clung to her card over the years like a life raft while I drifted hopelessly in the endless sea of my uncle’s tyranny.
This is the first time I’ve ever dared try to kick my feet and swim for the shore, and as the line rings and rings and rings, I squeeze my eyes closed and pray that I’m not too late.
That she hasn’t lost interest. I’ve never dialed the number—not even once.
I have no idea if it still even works or if the music exec, who’d been my uncle’s fiercest rival at the label, would even still deem me worthy.
Suddenly, the ringing stops, and I hold my breath as I wait to hear the recorded message for her voicemail.
A moment later, her voice comes through, but it’s clear by the sound of her clicking heels in the background and the sharp bite of her rushed greeting that it isn’t a recording.
“Oni Sridhar and make it quick. Whoever this is, you get the first two minutes free and then I start billing for my time.”
I pause twirling the coiled cord of the landline phone around my finger and snort. “Seriously? Are you that money hungry or is Bound paying you so little?”
The click-clack of the music exec’s no doubt designer heels stops, and I hear her shaky exhales before she whispers uncertainly, “Aurelia?”
Feeling my eyes overflow with grateful tears that she not only answered but remembers me, I wipe them away and smile. The dam was broken when I almost lost Seth, and now I can’t seem to stop. “Yeah… It’s me.”
After my phone call with Oni, the sheriff makes good on his promise and keeps me in custody.
I also meet his wife, who is possibly the sweetest human I’ve ever met, and I’ve met Seth.
She brings me a change of clothes, a hand-knitted blanket, and some of the lasagna she baked.
The tiny woman really is too sweet for the gruff, overbearing sheriff, who I will only grudgingly admit in secret isn’t so bad.
He doesn’t throw me in a cell like I expected.
Sheriff Kelly treats me like the victim he believes me to be, escorting me into a small private room with a single twin bed, a small table, and a window shielded behind blinds.
The door doesn’t even lock, but thanks to my mountain men, I know better than to think that means I can leave.
It dawns on me then that the sheriff isn’t just being thorough.
He still believes what I confessed in the dell.
I have to put my game face on because I know he’ll do whatever it takes to ease his conscience.
The night bleeds into the morning, but the sheriff doesn’t question me again. Instead, he escorts me into a conference room where a woman wearing a pantsuit and blue-rimmed glasses with her hair styled in a sleek bun waits for me on a chair placed before an empty sofa.
“Hello,” she greets cheerfully the moment we enter. Standing, she steps forward and offers a hand. “I’m Dr. Watts, and you must be Aurora.”
At first, I assume she simply pronounced my name wrong until the sheriff catches my eye and he nods.
Okay, so he gave the doctor my alias the guys thought up for whenever I visit town, but why?
I look the doctor up and down like she’s here to torture me rather than help me. “I’m not injured.”
“Well, that’s good to hear since I’m not that kind of doctor.” Dr. Watts laughs like she told a hilarious joke.
Meanwhile, I feel a deep stab of betrayal and annoyance when I catch on to what kind of doctor she must be. The sheriff clears his throat and has the good sense to look guilty.
“I called her and arranged this appointment after our interview yesterday.”
“You mean the interrogation?”
Ignoring that, he plows on. “Dr. Watts is a trauma counselor. I think she can help us both.”
“Also, I’d like to make it clear that I’m not here to offer an official diagnosis, as I have explained to the sheriff here that I can’t guarantee an accurate one within the strict timeframe I’ve been given.
” Her friendly mask drops a little, revealing some of her frustration at the time constraint, but then she recovers just as quickly and is back to beaming.
“Three sessions, Aurora,” the sheriff pleads. “If you want me to send you back up that mountain, you’ll give me three sessions. If you still want to go with them come Monday morning, I promise this will be the end of it.”
“Sounds…fair.”
After all, I don’t have Stockholm syndrome, so what do I really have to fear?
“Please…sit.” Dr. Watts reclaims her seat before waving toward the couch four feet away.
Reluctantly, I sink onto the sofa, but the megawatt smile the good doctor flashes only serves to make my stomach roll.
“Great!” When she leans in, I feel like I’m already under a microscope. “Let’s get started.”
Nodding, I suck in as much air as I can and slowly release it all in one shuddering breath. It feels like I’m going to war for them—Thorin, Khalil, and…Zeth.
But if war is what it will take, then so be it.