Page 30 of The Enforcer

“We’re down in the living room. Why?”

“Turn on your TV. I found something you need to see. I’ll stream it to your television.”

“Can he do that?” asked Alicia.

“He can. He’s tapped into all of our cable and internet stuff.”

Brock grabbed the remote and booted up the large television over the mantle.

“This is from four years ago,” said Seth as a video of a newscast began to play.

“Today, fire department investigators revealed that the cause of the fire they had been called to contain at the bottom of the ravine was the result of a horrific automobile accident. Investigators found a late model SUV that crashed through the railings on the Portsmouth Bridge where it hurtled to the bottom of the gorge and apparently burst into flames.

A closer inspection revealed the remains of a body which was burned beyond identification. The SUV is registered to Ewan and Alicia Rennault. Mr. Rennault has reported his wife is missing, and both police and fire department officials are presuming the victim of the single car motor vehicle accident is Mrs. Rennault.”

“Is Alicia there with you?” asked Seth.

“She is, and given the look on her face, my guess is we’ve found out what she’s been hiding.”

“I can explain,” said Alicia, feeling as though the bottom had just dropped out of her life and she was in freefall.

“I wish you would,” said Brock, who had pulled away.

Alicia did the same, feeling more alone in her life than she ever had. Before coming to Chicago and joining Cerberus, she’d been alone, but she’d rarely been lonely as it had been so long since she’d had any friends.

“Obviously the body isn’t me. Ewan Rennault is a sadistic bastard who made my life a living nightmare. He beat me bloody on a regular basis…”

“Why didn’t you go to the police?”

She laughed bitterly. “He was the police. There was nowhere for me to go. The one and only time I tried to go up the food chain to get to someone else, he almost killed me. That’s when I made my mind up that Alicia Rennault had to die.”

CHAPTER 12

BROCK

“You’re married?” he asked, a bit stunned.

He was trying not to feel betrayed, but it was hard not to. He was pretty sure he’d been falling for Alicia. He’d begun to imagine a future with her. She was married, though, and hadn’t said a word. He was glad they hadn’t had sex. Even what they’d done last night was out of line for him if the woman was married.

“Not as far as I’m concerned. What happened to the guy who wanted to kill whoever gave me the scar on my side?”

He didn’t respond. She laughed bitterly and continued, “The first time I had to apply extra makeup to cover the bruises he left from using me as a punching bag, he quit being my husband. When he beat me up so badly after I spoke with an attorney that I ended up in the hospital, I decided if I was going to live, I had to get away from him. And if I was going to do that, I needed to fake my own death.”

There was a pause where no one said anything, and the silence between them was painful.

“Alicia, honey,” said Seth. “You did the right thing. I know that may sound weird from a guy who gets off on using a flogger on women or binding them in elaborate rope patterns, but any man who inflicts any kind of damage on a woman she doesn’t want is no man at all. He ought to have his balls cut off with a dull spoon and have them shoved down his throat so that he chokes on them.”

That at least made her smile, but where did Seth get off comforting his woman? The answer was clear: because he hadn’t done it himself. Okay, so maybe she should have told them. Maybe she should have learned during her time with Cerberus that they could be trusted and would protect her. But in all honesty, she’d only begun to understand the lifestyle in the past six months or so. Before that, she may have grasped that it was consensual, but still didn’t understand what either side of the slash got from it.

But still, she should have known he would never touch a married woman sexually without her husband’s consent. In fact, he wasn’t even inclined to play with or discipline married women without coming to an understanding with her husband.

“We need to put a plan together to have Alicia’s husband arrested,” said Brock.

“Do we know for certain he was behind the attack this afternoon?” asked Seth.

“We know he was at the Majestic—that was him, wasn’t it?”

“It was,” she said quietly.

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