Chapter Nineteen #2
Before I can carry on, the door slams open and in struts Jen. She looks us up and down before she folds her arms, cocks her perfectly arched brow, and taps the toe of her red-bottomed shoe. “I’m sorry,” she drawls. “Should I come back?”
Shepard nods, “Yes.” As I tell her no and slap his chest with a huff. He helps me straighten my clothes before lifting me to my feet. “I’ll leave you two ladies to it. I’ll be in my office when you’re done.”
“Is my client under arrest, Sheriff?” Jen asks.
Shepard shakes his head. “She was just brought in for questioning.”
“In cuffs?”
“What can I say, my girl’s kinky.”
Jen’s lip twitches, but she controls herself until Shepard gives me a wink and leaves. She whirls on me. “What, and I cannot stress this enough, the fuck?”
“First off, how the heck did you get here so fast?”
“Chopper. How else?”
“You have a helicopter at your disposal?”
“Of course, darling, doesn’t everybody?”
I open my mouth but close it again.
“Relax, I was with another client when I got the call. He’s very wealthy and insisted I take it as he has a whole fleet at his disposal.”
“Who the hell needs a fleet of helicopters?” I rub my temples at the waste of money and take a seat in one of the empty chairs, swallowing when my wet panties press against me.
“It stinks of sex in here.”
“What can I say? I resisted arrest, and Shepard was forced to use excessive force.”
“Which resulted in him impaling you with his nightstick?” She cocks that damn brow again.
“I plead the fifth.”
“Of course you do.” She sits down and sighs, crossing her ankles together before she lowers her case to the floor. She laces her fingers together in her lap and looks at me. “What happened?” It’s the calm, no-nonsense tone that steals the humor from the room.
I sigh and fold my arms over my chest, even though I know I’m being defensive. I open my mouth and let it all out, even down to having sex with Shepard on the desk, minus the breeding talk.
“This is such bullshit.”
“I know. Even Shepard knows, but his hands were kind of tied,”
“Yes, I’m aware. I’m less pissed at him than I was before.” She waves me off, pulling out her iPad from her case. “Okay, first things first, do you know Sarah’s details?”
“Only her name, that she works at the library, and has shitty friends.”
“I know you like her, but could she be in on this?”
I want to deny it straight away, but I’m smart enough to keep it in check. I’ve been fooled before. Truth is, I don’t really know Sarah. The fact that Porter, Derek, and Judy were so confident Sarah wouldn’t be an issue makes me question myself.
“I don’t think so.” I think back to her defending herself to Judy, and I just can’t see it. “Is it possible? Yes, but I’m not buying it. You’d have to talk to her to understand.”
“Don’t worry, I will. As for Porter and Derek, I’ve reached my damn limit with those two.” I wince before I can stop myself, but she misses nothing. “Why do I get the feeling more has happened that you’ve been keeping from me?”
“I wasn’t keeping it from you. It just wasn’t worth telling you.”
“Tell me now, and I’ll be the judge of that.”
Reluctantly, I fill her in on my encounters with first Porter and then Derek, including the stunt he pulled at Jackie’s house, where I had to pull Austin off of him.
“Wait, you’re back in contact with Austin?”
“It’s in its early stages.”
“What? How?”
“He had no idea his brother was the one who raped me. All this time, he thought the drugs had started to wear off early and that I came home, got raped by my dad, and then shot him in retaliation.”
“He still drugged you, Calliope.”
“I know. He did it to protect me. He didn’t want me to go back home. He had a bad feeling something would happen…” I hedge. “He thought if he could keep me at his place overnight, I’d be safe until he could come up with a plan. And well, we know how that turned out.”
She looks at me skeptically, and I can’t say I blame her.
If I were hearing this from someone else, I’d be searching them for a brain injury.
The problem is, she doesn’t know the urgency Austin felt because of my powers coming in.
I wonder, and not for the first time, if I should tell her the truth.
She might be a no-nonsense kind of woman, but she’s always been my biggest advocate.
With others already knowing the truth, it’s starting to feel wrong keeping it from her.
“There’s more to it, isn’t there?”
Dammit, I need to stop surrounding myself with perceptive people. “There is, but now isn’t the time or place.”
“But you’ll tell me later?”
“Yeah, Jen. I’ll tell you everything.”
“I’m going to hold you to that. Now, let me go talk to this sheriff of yours so I can spring you from this joint.”
“You are a goddess.”
“You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.”
I laugh as she leaves and shake my head at how different things are from the last time I was in a police station. As much as I don’t want to jinx myself, it’s impossible not to feel hopeful about what’s to come, especially when I can see the positive changes happening around me.
Who knows, maybe I have more sunshine in me than I realized.
Even after the stunt that Porter and Derek pulled today, I’m not feeling particularly murderous.
I’m more pissed about what happened to Sarah than what happened to me.
Would I still like to see my dad dead? Of course, but mostly on principle.
Truth is, the less I’m around him, the less I want him infecting any part of my life.
I don’t know if that’s part of me healing or maturing, but I’m not going to question it. When I made the plan to kill my dad, I had nothing to lose. But now I have everything, and the thought of it all getting torn away from me is what wakes me up at night.