Page 5 of Fearless
“You say that like you’d rather say ‘it’s been hell.’” Standing up, Noah moved to the far end of his small boat and away from the low, rumbling hiss of the angry crocodile. Propping his foot up by the resting motor, he looked out over the night-blackened water. “What’s the trouble? It’s not the ol’ ladyluv, is it?”
“No, Hadlee’s fine.”
“The roommate, then?” The stars were out, the moon was full, and there were no houses along this stretch of the river. Something that suited his immediate needs just fine. “Are both girls still living with you? I thought you once said Hadlee has her own place.”
Garreth snorted. “She does, but with Ethen stalking their shadows like some psychotic serial killer? I’m not letting either one of them out of my sight.”
Noah couldn’t argue. He could see himself doing the same thing. “What was her name again?”
“Kitty’s all she claims,” his American friend said, but Noah detected notes of bitterness. From Garreth, that was saying something.
Garreth was a dungeon monitor he’d met in D.C. almost two months ago, while he’d been touring the United States. At the time, Noah had been bouncing from one BDSM club to another, teaching others not only how to crack a bullwhip, but how best to use it without flaying the flesh from their submissive’s back. Black Light had been the last club on his tour, and never had he met a dom more silently tortured by the pangs of love as Garreth. He didn’t know Hadlee’s story, but he’d gotten to scene that night with her and halfway through the first session, he knew there was some trauma in there somewhere. Still, Garreth had been ass over teakettles in love with her, and Noah never could resist a chance to play cupid. Privately, he was sure he’d never visit another playspace that was half as much fun—or half as much drama—as that one.
Plus, he’d come away from the experience with one good friend and a special lady he wouldn’t mind kissing on the cheek if ever he saw them again.
“So what’s the issue now?” Noah asked, settling in to be a good agony aunt, if nothing else. “That feller you were telling me about, he hasn’t found her, has he?”
“Oh, I’m pretty sure he knows exactly where she is,” Garreth growled. “He wouldn’t dare come anywhere around here. So instead, he’s made his displeasure known in other ways.”
“Yeah?”
“You remember how I told you she left with nothing, right? No clothes, no shoes, no wallet, nothing. Right?”
“Right.” Noah nodded, though no one but the croc was there to see it.
“Okay, so she has a car. But when she signed a contract with Ethen, he made her put his name as co-owner on the title. First thing I did was drive out to his property to get the car, only to find out he’d sold it months ago. Did she get any of the money for it? No. Will police do anything about it? Of course not, because he was on the title and it only takes one owner’s signature to sell a car.”
Noah tsked.
“She’s got her own house, used to be her grandfather’s, been in the family for years. All this time, she’s been working and putting money in her bank account to keep up the insurance and maintenance fees on it, but guess what? She signed the house over to Ethen too and I’m pretty sure you can guess what that bastard did with it not two months after they got together.”
Noah was pretty sure he knew too.
“He sold it!” Garreth snarled. “We walked up to her front door only to find another family living there, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Ethen was registered as the legal owner! And that bank account she’s been putting all her money into?”
“The asshole had his name put on it,” Noah guessed grimly.
“And closed it out! She had thousands in there, by her estimate. Thousands! And that jackass… that… what is that sound?” Garreth asked, anger audibly diminishing, before in a startled tone, the American suddenly accused, “Dude! Are you peeing while we’re on the phone?”
“Nah,” Noah said, shaking off before stuffing himself back into his pants. “I’m on the river. That’s just the gentle sound of waves lapping at the boat, mate.”
He could hear Garreth’s frown in his voice. “Like I haven’t stood in front of a urinal every single day, multiple times a day, to the point that I don’t recognize that particular sound?” Garreth let it go. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we had to order her birth certificate from the state so we could get her a new driver’s license. I paid the fees so she could get copies of her teaching license and certificates, and college degrees. We put her up in my spare room while she tries to rebuild her life and for the last five weeks, I have spared nothing in the attempt to make at least this one small corner of the world feel safe to her. What does that son of a bitch do?”
Returning to sit on his perch by the croc, Noah was almost afraid to guess.
“Monday, she went into work. She’s a teacher at Deal Middle School, been there since she graduated. Ethen hasn’t let her have friends, but she knows these people and they know her. And yet she gets met at the front doors by security, taken directly to the principal, who starts to show her all the private videos that Ethen anonymously messaged the school system during the night. Everything he’s forced her to do, including a bukkake party with half a dozen men coming on her face and the words ‘dirty cum slut’ written on her body. There is no more intimate way of attacking a woman in public than that.”
Garreth spat.
Noah agreed. He’d never met this Kitty woman, but his heart went out to her.
“She was fired on the spot for behavior unbecoming.”
Swearing under his breath, Noah bowed his head. He stared at his hands, loosely clasped between his knees.
“She’s done nothing for the last three days but sit in her closet and cry. That son of a bitch has her convinced that, one way or another, he’ll get her no matter where she goes. And I still can’t get her to go to the police. And I can’t get her to understand that while the contract she signed to Ethen might hold meaning in certain BDSM circles, it’s the next best thing to useless out in the real world, especially considering the abuse she’s suffered at his hands. She’s convinced she earned it, that she deserves it, and she’s even starting to say things like, if he’s going to get her anyway, she might as well go back. I’m halfway tempted to go to the police myself, except it would piss Hadlee off, Kitty would lose what little trust in me that she has, and Ethen is one of the best God-damn civil lawyers in his God-damn field. He’d happily ruin me, Kitty, Hadlee, our families and friends, and even Black Light. If he finds something he can’t do himself, then he’s got plenty of friends in high places to guarantee it happens anyway.”
His friend’s frustration was so palpable, Noah could feel it hanging in the air around him from all the way from America.
