Mistrusting a Memory
by Lubrican
Chapters : 1-2 | 3-4 | 5-6 | 7-8 | 9-33 & Epilogue Available On
PLEASE NOTE: This is a preview of this novel. It is available for purchase in its entirety via
Chapter Three
There was an uncomfortable silence in the booth, as they waited for the
waitress to come and take their drink order. Once she was
gone, Lacey looked at him, obviously waiting for him to speak.
"It's like this," said Bob, starting in on a speech he'd given
countless times, to countless women like this one. Well...not
quite like this one. This one was a lady. She had
class. He rarely dealt with women of her class. But
all he had was the speech, and some facts and figures, and that usually
helped them understand what had happened to them and why it wasn't
their fault.
"Rape isn't about sex." He waited for her to disagree, but
she just stared at him, one eyebrow raised. "It's about
domination...control...it's about making the victim helpless and
degrading her."
"And that makes him feel..." her voice quavered.
"Powerful," said Bob. "It makes him feel like he's the most
powerful person present—that's what gets him off.
He wants to feel like he owns you...can make you do anything he wants
you to, and that you are completely helpless to stop him."
"So I should have fought harder," she said.
"Not necessarily," he said, caution in his voice. "Some
rapists are so weak and insecure that resistance unhinges
them. The typical tactics taught to women like you, in the
classes you've probably been going to, are to make noise, draw
attention, use your keys on his face, or your knee in his
groin. With that kind of rapist, that works. The
problem is that with some of them, it doesn't work. That just
makes them mean, because you didn't enslave yourself
instantly. They punish you for your uppity
behavior. The parallels between how a rapist feels about his
victim and how a slave owner felt about his slaves, in the 1860s, are
startling."
"But how can you fight? How can you prepare?" she asked,
clearly upset.
"Sometimes you can't," said Bob. "That's why it's so
important to find these men and lock them away. Most rapes,
of the kind you suffered, where the woman doesn't know her attacker,
are committed by very few of the total number of rapists."
"Some women KNOW who raped them?" she asked, aghast.
"Most women know their rapist," said Bob. "Statistically, if
you removed the women who get into trouble with a man they know, we
wouldn't have a rape problem in the United States."
"You mean date rape," she said.
"Yes…and drunk victim rape, and women who have a rape
fantasy and it gets out of hand, and women who want to believe what
happened was rape when, in fact, it probably wasn't."
Her body language suddenly screamed at him. She was so tense
that she looked like she might actually jump up and run. Her
hands gripped the edge of the table until there was no blood in her
fingers.
"Calm down," he said immediately, soothingly.
"I'm calm." Her voice was so tight it had risen an octave.
"No you're not," he said gently. "You're screaming
inside. What's wrong?"
She sat, rigid, for moments longer. He wanted to touch her
again, but didn't.
"Look," he said finally. "This isn't easy to
understand. Sometimes things happen that don't make sense."
Still she sat, frozen. The horror was back in her eyes again,
but she wasn't looking at him. She was looking at something
that wasn't even in the same building they were in.
"Is there something else?" he asked quietly. "Something else
you didn't tell me?"
Her eyes cleared and then filled with tears. One ran over and
trickled down her cheek.
"Tell me," he said. "You need to understand, and I can help
you do that."
"You can't help me," she whispered.
"I think I can," he said. "You can't tell me anything I
haven't heard before." He leaned forward. "Things
happen that women are ashamed of and think is their fault.
That's almost never true, but they THINK it's true. Something
like that happened to you...didn't it."
Her eyes went down to the table. "Yes," she whispered.
"Tell me," he said.
"I can't," she moaned. "It's so terrible."
"I already know you had an orgasm," he said. "You think
that's terrible, but it isn't. I can explain that,
too. What else happened?"
"Paul and I..." she said and then faltered. "We used to
play...games."
"Rape games," said Bob.
Her eyes snapped to his. She was horrified again, but this
time it was the horror of being unmasked.
"How can you KNOW that?" she panted. "How did you know I had
an orgasm!? It's like you can see into my brain!"
"Calm down," he said. "I told you, I've heard it all
before. You're not as strange as you think you are, and you
did NOT let yourself be raped."
"If only I could believe that," she moaned. "Paul is sure I
did it on purpose...that I let a man in, while he was gone...that it
got out of hand, like you said." More tears were coursing
down her cheeks.
Bob handed her his napkin, and she took it and dabbed gently at the
streaks.
"But I DIDN'T!" Frustration was in her voice. "I
DIDN'T let him in. Not like that. I never saw him
before! He was just a repairman...except that he wasn't, and
I couldn't do anything!"
"That's right," said Bob, his voice soothing. "You were
helpless. He'd have killed you if you'd have struggled too
much. Rapists with knives mean what they say. You
had no choice."
"Then why did I have an ORGASM?!" Her voice was a hoarse,
shouting whisper.
"You couldn't help that either," said Bob.
"You're just trying to make me feel better," said Lacey.
"Teresa tried to insist that I didn't have an orgasm...that it was pain
that I mistook for an orgasm, but I know the difference between pain
and an orgasm. I felt both that day."
"I'm sure you did," said Bob. "As I said, Teresa is young and
inexperienced. She's also poorly trained, as a lot of rape
advocates are."
"So explain it," she said. She was calmer already, with the
hope that he could do just that.
"An orgasm, whether it's in the male or female, is a physical
process. The sexual organs are stimulated during the sex
act. When the stimulation reaches a certain threshold, the
body does things to relieve the situation, and an orgasm takes
place. It's simple biology. The man ejaculates and
the semen sooths the penis, causing it to deflate. In the
woman, it causes her to want to lie still and rest. All that
is nature's way of making babies happen. If the body is
stimulated, it reacts. There's nothing you can do about it."
"But some orgasms come with less...stimulation...than others," she
objected.
"That's the mental aspect of things. Your mind can supply
some of the stimulation required. But even if your mind is
totally against what is happening, the body can be manipulated in such
a way that an orgasm HAS to take place, whether you want it to or not."
"So it was a fluke. He just happened to go long enough that I
couldn't help it," she said.
"I suspect not," said Bob. She gaped at him and he went
on. "For some rapists, who know what I just told you, part of
the domination of the victim is to MAKE her have an orgasm.
He knows she will be humiliated beyond anything else he could do to
her, especially if she doesn't understand what's happening, like you
didn't. It is the ultimate debasement of the
victim. He makes her believe she wanted the whole thing to
happen. Some women, who are repeatedly attacked by the same
man, actually form a bond with their attacker. They come to
believe that they just didn't know they wanted this kind of
treatment. They voluntarily become enslaved."
She sat back. Her wine was untouched—he pushed it
toward her.
"Take a sip. Do you see what I mean when I said none of this
is your fault? You were manipulated all the way. He
was an expert in making you feel that way. You really do have
nothing whatsoever to feel guilty about."
"But what about the rape games?" she moaned. "That's why Paul
thinks I did all this on purpose. He's sure that I
was cheating, and that the man I was cheating with got carried away."
"I don't know Paul," said Bob. "But I do know he's an
idiot. Your fantasy—the one you played with
him—didn't involve knives, or hitting...did it?"
"Of course not," she said, flushing. "I can't even believe I
HAD that fantasy now, but it wasn't anything like what happened to
me. After what happened, I feel perverted for ever thinking
that fantasy was hot."
"Your fantasy wasn't about rape," said Bob. "It was about
playing at rape...pretending rape...pretending to be helpless when, in
fact, you knew quite well that you were NOT helpless. You
could stop it anytime you wanted to and, if you're like most other
women, you did stop it on one or more occasions."
She shook her head. "How do you DO that?" she asked, her
mouth open. "It's like you've been looking into my life with
a secret video camera."
"You're not as different, or as odd, or as perverted as you think," he
said, shrugging his shoulders. "You're just a woman, trying
to understand why her world is falling apart."
She sipped her wine.
"So it really wasn't my fault." For the first time she made a
statement of it, rather than a question.
"Nope," he said.
"I opened the door," she said softly.
"You should be able to open your door any time of the day or night."
said Bob. "When someone chooses to victimize you, because you
are trusting, THEY are victimizing you. You aren't inviting
them to do anything."
She was quiet for five minutes, during which she finished her
wine. Her eyes were far away again, but she wasn't tense this
time.
Finally she focused on him again. "Are you going to catch
that son of a bitch?"
"It probably won't be me," said Bob, truthfully. "I just make
traffic stops these days."
She looked shocked. "That's my fault!" she moaned.
"No, it's not. It's Tracie's fault, and Dillworth.
They're both so misguided that they think they did the world a favor."
"You know her name is Teresa," said Lacey, softly.
"What I know is that, since I got booted out of Sex Crimes, the man who
raped you has raped two more women."
She was horrified.
"How do you know that?" she asked.
"I still talk to some of the boys," he said. "Your
rapist...the one who knows how a woman's body works and uses it against
her? That's called a modus operandi—an
MO. There are other things he does too, like the use of a
knife and propping doors open, so he can sneak in. These
other women...their cases have everything yours did...except that they
can't admit to the orgasm part, or some of the other things he made you
do. They think if they admit to that, no one will believe
they didn't want it to happen."
"That's what I believed," she said, nodding her head. "But
what does it matter? I mean if you catch him, you catch him,
right?"
"It matters because it ties cases together on much more than mere
circumstantial evidence. Say we catch him for your
rape. He goes away for ten to fifteen. He'll be out
in six, on good behavior. But, if we can tie him to all
three, and any more he's done or going to do before we catch him, he
becomes a serial rapist. Now he's going away for life, with
no possibility of parole. See why I ask those
questions? See why it matters?"
"Yes!" she said excitedly. "I understand perfectly.
So why don't you educate the advocates?"
"Because they won't listen to us. We're the enemy.
We're the bullies who re-victimize the poor women and force them to
remember what happened to them. They don't want to believe
that a woman can have an orgasm during a rape. Their
definition of orgasm has to include pleasure."
"What can I do to help?" she asked. Her attitude was upbeat
again.
"Well, you could become a rape advocate yourself," said Bob,
smiling. "You'd be a lot better than Tara." He
grinned. "We have to stop talking about her. I'm
running out of names that begin with T."
She stood up.
"I have to go. But I want to thank you for explaining all
that to me. I really do feel much better."
"No problem. Keep your door locked. I don't want to
worry you, but if you tripped his trigger, he might actually want to
see you again."
"What do I do if I do see him again?" she asked, a little fearfully.
"If it's on the street, do nothing. Act like you don't
recognize him at all, but go into a store or someplace, like you're
shopping. Ask the clerk to call 911. If he or she
won't, then hide behind the counter or start screaming your head
off. Draw as much attention as you can. Your rapist
will want none of that and will take off."
"But you won't catch him!" she moaned.
"It will unnerve him. He won't feel in control. If
we're lucky, that will make him lose interest in you and pick another
victim."
"Great, now I'm responsible for him picking some other poor woman to
put through what he put me through."
"Well, you could always gouge his eye out."
"What!?"
"If you're close enough to reach his face, stick your middle finger
into his eye socket, on one side, and hook your finger around behind
his eyeball. Jerk like you're trying to start a lawn mower,
and his eyeball will pop right out of his head. It will hang
there, by the optic nerve. He'll fall on the ground, and
somebody will come and arrest him."
"That's horrible!" She blanched.
"What he did to you is horrible. His eye can be
fixed. Nobody can fix what he did to you."
"I really have to go," she said.
"Sure."
She started off, her bag hung over her shoulder. Ten steps
away, she stopped and turned.
"Detective?"
"Yeah?"
"Racquetball? Wednesday? Same time and place?"
"Make it six PM and you're on," said Bob.
"Six, Wednesday," she said. "I'm going to embarrass you."
"Don't bring any friends to watch," said Bob. "You might be
the one who gets embarrassed."
"We'll see," she said, confidently.
He was smiling as she walked away. This time, he got to
watch, and she was pure joy to watch. She had that
unconscious sway to her hips that announced she was passionate and
relaxed. He was surprised, in a way. Most women
took a lot longer to learn to relax again, after something like Lacey
had been through. They had to learn lots of things over
again...if they could.
Bob checked his watch for possibly the hundredth time. He'd
been checking all day, as he patrolled and interacted with the
public. It had worried him, because he was distracted, and
being distracted was dangerous. Traffic was pud duty, but it
was still dangerous. You never knew when some motorist would
snap and do something stupid...to someone else...or to you.
He was distracted by Lacey Fetterman. He couldn't get her out
of his mind. Young, healthy,
beautiful—she'd had everything going for her, until
she was raped. Then her husband had tossed her away, like a
used tissue. Her world had been destroyed. She was
trying to cope, but her internal demons weren't helping. He
was going to play racquetball with her in six hours...five hours and
ten minutes...five hours... four and a half hours... It went
on and on. The last thing Lacey Fetterman needed was a horny
detective...ex-detective...ogling her and wishing he could see what the
rapist had seen.
He walked forward to the car he had stopped for weaving in and out of
two lanes, cutting off and almost hitting a car. When he
approached the driver, she was still talking on her cell phone, one
hand up, telling him to wait. The conversation was about a
sale she'd just been to.
"Sign here," he said, pointing to a line on the ticket with his pen,
which he offered the woman.
"I'll call you back in a sec," she said into the phone and flipped it
closed. She turned to Bob. "You're actually going
to write me a ticket?" she whined. "I didn't hurt anything!"
"You almost caused an accident," he said, patiently. "The
ticket is for inattentive driving. I'd suggest you leave your
cell phone in your purse while you're driving."
"WHY DO YOU HATE ME?!" screamed the woman, her face twisting into a
mask of rage. She ripped the pen from his hand and threw it
at him.
"Ma'am, you need to calm down," said Bob patiently.
"FUCK YOU, PIG!" she screamed. She reached for the ignition.
"If you drive away from here," said Bob, his voice suddenly heavy,
"I'll have to stop you again, and THIS time you'll be going downtown in
the back of my car. Just sign the ticket. It's not
an admission of guilt. You can still plead not guilty in
court."
"Fucking pigs!" spat the woman. "Harassing citizens...I PAY
YOUR FUCKING SALARY!" she yelled. "YOU WORK FOR ME!"
Her phone rang, on the seat beside her.
"Don't answer it!" warned Bob. "We're not quite done here."
The woman picked up the phone anyway, looked at it and flipped it
open. As she was putting it to her ear, he reached in and
pulled it from her hand.
"Shirley can't come to the phone right now," he said, into the
mouthpiece. He slapped it closed and threw it past her to the
other side of the car. While she was still shocked, he leaned
down and picked up his pen.
He stood up to find she hadn't been as shocked as he'd thought she
was. Her hand was coming out of her purse, and there was a
hunk of nickel plated .25 automatic in it.
He reacted without thinking. His left hand reached through
the window and grabbed the slide of the weapon. He twisted it
away from him, toward the front of the car, bending her wrist
painfully, until she had to let go. Her finger was stuck in
the trigger housing, and she pulled. There was a sharp report
and the plastic lens covering her speedometer cluster starred.
Bob wrenched the pistol from her finger, eliciting a howl of pain as
her finger was jerked loose, and then pulled the door open.
Thankfully, she wasn't wearing a seat belt. A small part of
his mind said it would remind him later to add that to the
ticket. He pulled her out by her hair, stuffing the pistol
into his left pants pocket.
The woman struggled, screaming constantly, but was no match for Bob,
who got her on the ground and put a knee in the small of her
back. He cranked one arm up behind her until her fingers were
at the back of her neck. She wailed, as he got the other arm
and pulled it back. Her pretty dress was pressed into the
dirty, oil-soaked pavement, and her legs kicked, showing nice thighs,
as he cuffed her.
"You're under arrest for assault on a police officer in the commission
of his duties," said Bob, breathing deeply, to avoid panting.
He went through the rest of the spiel, as she continued to scream at
him. He didn't question her. He just pulled her up
and tossed her, still screaming into the back of his patrol
car. She started kicking at the windows, and he got a shot of
peach colored panties under the dress.
His radio call, which included "shots fired," got some
attention. Four more cars screamed in. One had the
patrol supervisor in it.
"Let me get this straight," said the beefy man. "You stopped
her and wrote her for inattentive driving, and she tried to kill you."
"That's pretty much it," said Bob. He pulled out the pistol
and handed it to the supervisor, who sniffed the barrel and shrugged.
"OK," said the man, handing the pistol back to Bob. "We'll
cover your turf. You have a shitload of paperwork to do."
Bob checked his watch. Three hours and forty-five minutes.
He might just make it.
Chapter Four
He was, in fact, five minutes late. Jeff Quincy, the patrol
captain, had been just as incredulous as the patrol supervisor, and had
used up half an hour being convinced that this wasn't some kind of
mistake. When it turned out that the woman was the wife of a
city councilman, it got more interesting, but the gun and the bullet
hole in the dashboard pretty much told the story. This would
be extremely difficult to sweep under the carpet.
It helped that the woman insisted she had only been trying to defend
herself, as "that corrupt cop" tried to extort money from her at
gunpoint. It didn't hurt that two witnesses had identified
themselves to the detectives who responded to the scene,
either. Their story matched Bob's, though neither one had
seen her pull the gun. They were, however, quite positive
that Bob never pulled his, even after they heard a gunshot.
As he arrived at the gym, he saw Lacey, waiting for him. She
was already dressed for play.
"Sorry," he panted. "Got held up at work."
"You'd think criminals would be smarter than to try to stick up a cop,"
said Lacey, smiling.
"Ha, ha," said Bob. "Be ready in a minute."
An hour and a half later, they were sitting against the wall of the
court again, gasping for breath. She had won six games, he
had won five. He was impressed.
"I'm...embarrassed," he panted.
"You...should be..." she panted back. "I
was...only...playing...at half...speed."
He grinned. "You should...have brought...your friends after
all," he gasped.
A look of pain flitted across her face.
"Haven't...got any...left," she said. She breathed deeply
several times. "They all act...like I have AIDS or something."
"I'm sorry," he said.
"There is the support group," she said sadly. "But I don't
think any of them are into racquetball." She brightened, but
not much. "I did find an apartment."
"Good," he said. "Lock your doors."
She looked at him, her mouth open.
"I'm sorry," he said. "Habit."
"Thank you," she said suddenly.
"What for? You won fair and square."
"No, for caring," she said. "Of everybody, you've been the
nicest to me. You treat me like I'm normal."
"You are normal," he said.
"You know what I mean," she said.
"You're welcome."
"I'm having some trust issues...with men." Her voice was dull.
"Gee," he said. "I wonder why?"
"See!" she said, smiling a little. "You're willing to talk
about it. Everybody else just tells me to forget it and move
on, like it was just a broken fingernail or something."
"It's uncomfortable to talk about," said Bob. "They want to
put a Band-Aid on the owie, so they can think about something less
troublesome."
"Anyway, I just wanted you to know I trust you. You're the
only man I think I can trust right now."
Bob groaned. "Thanks a LOT!"
"What?" she looked hurt.
"You trust me? That's the kiss of death! Next
you'll be telling me you just want to be friends!"
She blinked, then laughed. "Are you FLIRTING with me?!"
He shook his head. "Wouldn't be ethical. You're
vulnerable right now. Add that to drop dead gorgeous and
kickass talented on the racquetball court and I'd be a heel to take
advantage of you."
Her eyes narrowed and then her brow furrowed.
"You didn't let me win."
He laughed. "You got THAT right! Nobody's beat me
six games in one session in YEARS!"
"You know what happened to me. You know about
my...past. But you just treat me like a friend."
She looked confused.
"See?" he chuckled. "There's that word...already."
"You treat me like a normal woman," she said, not smiling.
"You are a normal woman."
"Other men who know...there aren't many…but they won't even
look at me," she said. "Yet here you are...flirting with me."
"OK, maybe a little," said Bob. "It's probably just an
aftereffect of almost getting shot, so don't pay any attention to it."
"Shot?"
He told her about the councilman's wife.
"You're KIDDING!" she squealed. "She tried to kill you over a
TRAFFIC TICKET?"
He shrugged.
"You're taking this awfully calmly," she said.
"No I'm not. It drove me to flirt with you. I'm
almost out of control." He grinned. Then his grin
faded. "Really, I'm sorry…about the
flirting. I know you don't need that."
"That's all right," she said. "At least from you."
As Lacey walked to her car, she thought about what had just
happened. For an hour and a half, her mind had been
clear. Trying to keep up with Bob on the court took all her
concentration. It had been wonderful to do something that
made her forget. And afterward, sitting there. She
had said it was all right for him to flirt with her, but she wasn't
sure about that. It had felt good, for a few
seconds. Then everything had rushed back into her mind.
She shuddered, and took inventory again, for possibly the thousandth
time. Her body was healing. Soon, there would be no
trace to show what had happened to her. She had spent almost
an hour, sitting in front of a mirror, staring between her
legs. It didn't look any different. It didn't feel
any different. The pain when the man had first forced himself
into her had been excruciating. There had been no natural
lubrication to ease his entry, and it had felt like he was tearing
strips of skin from inside her. It didn't look that way,
though. Of course, then her body betrayed her and the
lubrication came, bringing with it horror in her mind as she felt her
body coming alive under his thrusting hulk. She had hated
herself then, not knowing what to think—thinking that she was
so perverted that she was actually approving of this horrible man and
the horrible thing he was doing to her. Thankfully, most of
the details were just a haze in her mind. But that orgasm
couldn't be forgotten.
Now, at least, she understood why it had happened. Thanks to
the detective...no...she thought of him as "Bob" now.
"Detective" was so formal...so distant. He was so different,
in so many ways, from any other man she'd ever met. He seemed
dangerous, but not in a scary way. She knew he'd played
hard. He hadn't cut her any slack at all. His
flirting had brought with it instant suspicion that he was gaming
her...setting her up. But he hadn't made any moves.
Other than the flirting, anyway. And only a teensy little bit
of that. She tried to remember where he had looked at her, on
those few occasions she had been with him. She couldn't
remember. She'd had too many other things on her mind, then,
to think about where he was looking.
Most men looked at her body. Except those who knew she'd been
raped. Those men wouldn't even look at her at all.
At first, she thought they somehow felt responsible for what had
happened to her, but soon she realized they viewed her as something
tarnished...sullied...not worthy of their evaluation or interest.
That caused her more anguish. She didn't WANT men to evaluate
her or be interested in her. Not yet, anyway. At
the same time, she still wanted to be desirable. It
frustrated her, because she couldn't decide what she wanted and no one
would help her sort it out.
The girls at work seemed to be pretending that nothing had happened,
but they couldn't meet her eyes anymore. The women in the
support group just droned constantly about how it wasn't their
fault. She knew that. The prick that had done this
to her was at fault. She hated him, with a white-hot
anger. She wasn't concerned about what he'd done to her
body. That would heal—was already mostly
healed—but what he'd done to her spirit...for that, she
wanted revenge.
She sat there, in her car, and the urge came over her. She
got into the console and pulled out a cigarette and her
lighter. She hated smoking, but sometimes she had to do
it. She had managed to get to where she only smoked one every
other day or so...before the rape. Now, she was back to five
or six a day. After taking three deep drags, she lowered the
window and threw the butt out. She started the car and pulled
out of the garage, into traffic. She had to wait for one of
the city's finest to move from in front of her, and it made her think
of Bob again.
Of them all, Bob treated her most normally. He said whatever
was on his mind and didn't sugar coat it. He treated her as
if she weren't diseased. With him, she felt almost
normal. He'd given her his card, in the beginning, in case
she remembered anything. He'd even written his home
number on the back. She remembered being astonished that
he'd give her such personal information. She felt
the impulse to call him and reached for her purse to find the card and
her cell phone. Then she remembered the story about the
councilman's wife and left the phone where it was.
When she got home, she put her stuff away and showered.
Then she dug out his card and called him.
"Duncan," came the almost gruff voice on the phone.
"Bob? Detective? This is Lacey Fetterman."
"Are you all right?" came his immediate question.
"Yes," she sighed. "I'm fine. I don't know why I
called."
"You wanted to talk to somebody," he suggested.
She realized he was right. She still didn't know what she
wanted to talk about, but he was right. She just wanted to
hear a friendly voice.
"I guess so," she said.
"You want to talk on the phone or in person?" he asked.
She hadn't thought that far ahead.
"I don't know," she said, feeling helpless.
"Well, you haven't had time to eat. Do you like shrimp?"
"I love shrimp," she said. "But I'm trying to learn how to be
a vegetarian."
"Why on earth would you want to do that?" he asked.
"Paul is..." She stopped. She had been trying to
become what her husband—her soon to be
ex-husband—had become. "I love shrimp," she said,
impulsively.
"You want to meet me there, or pick me up, or have me pick you up?" he
asked, his tone businesslike.
She was silently amazed. He didn't just decide
anything. He gave her options. He gave her too many
options, in fact, and her mind stalled, trying to figure out which one
to take.
"We should probably drive separately," she said. "You have to
go to work tomorrow."
"Actually, I'm off tomorrow," said his steady voice. "I'm
moving to swing shift tomorrow night."
"Oh," she said, not knowing how to respond.
"Why don't you pick me up," he suggested. "The place I'm
thinking of isn't far from my place."
He gave her instructions on how to get to his building, and they hung
up.
On the way there, Lacey realized he had intentionally put her in
control. By having her pick him up, she would know where he
lived. She would be in control of the car. She
would control how long they spent together and could end it any time
she chose, and not be dependent on him to get home. She
wondered if he had done that on purpose...or if it had just happened
that way.
These were the kinds of things that were driving her crazy.
She read into every situation...analyzed everything around
her. Even at work, she wondered if people had ulterior
motives. Her attacker had planned his assault. She
knew that now. He had fixed the door, downstairs.
He had chosen her. He may have even known that Paul was out
of town. He had manipulated her at every turn, taken every
shred of control away from her. He had even made her body
betray her. She felt the rage well up inside her again, and
noticed she was speeding.
She had to pull over to get her composure back. By the time
she saw Bob, standing on the curb, she was breathing
normally. Her stomach hurt, but she knew that would pass, too.
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