Page 190 of Renard's Deliverance

“He was breathing. He was breathing.” She rocked back and forth. “This is so bad, isn’t it? I killed him.”

“Why did you do it?” he asked.

“Because he was raping my mother,” she said dully. “I was nearly at the end of my shift when one of the girls came running to grab me. They all knew about my mother. The user. She would come in sometimes, trying to get more money from me even though I’d taken a job at the club to help pay off her debt. She’d obviously decided to take on some . . . clients to help fund her addiction.” She swallowed back bile. “The owner of the strip club, he didn’t give a fuck what happened in the back rooms so long as he got his cut. And Marcus, Mark, was a good client, but he preferred to have the girls come to him for private dances. My mom wasn’t supposed to be there. She didn’t work there. But one of the girls said that they’d seen her enter through the backdoor of the club with him, and that after they entered the room there were screams. I kept a baton in my locker at the club. I’d had a few near misses with overzealous customers. So I grabbed it and I ran to help my mom.”

“No one mentioned this in the reports. None of the girls said they’d seen you run out with a baton.”

“Well, none of them liked or trusted cops.”

Jardin nodded. “That’s good unless the FBI have questioned them again and gotten them to change their testimony.”

“Right,” she whispered.

“What happened when you reached the room?”

“Everything had gone quiet and I wasn’t sure if that was a good sign. The door was locked, but we all knew the code. I punched it in. When I went in, he was over her, he was . . . in her and she was crying and pushing at him to get off. And I just lost it, I rushed up and I hit him in the back of the head with the baton. He fell unconscious and I pushed him off her.”

“What did your mom do?”

“She ran.”

He blinked. “She just left you?”

“Why would she stay around? Oh, wait. No. She took his wallet and then she ran. My bet is she took all the cash and dumped it.”

“Yes, the wallet was found in the back alley. The cops believed that someone lured Mark into the club, had sex with him, then hit him over the head and stole his wallet.”

“And they think that person is me,” she said. “They got it half right.”

Jardin tapped his fingers on the desk, thinking. “You were defending your mother. Would your mom back up your story?”

“Hard to do when you’re dead,” she said. “Stefan told me that he got her into rehab, but that she snuck out and died of an overdose about six months later. I don’t know if that’s true. However, he did have photos of her body.” Photos he’d almost delighted in showing her.

“What happened to the baton?” he asked.

“Stefan took it. I don’t know.” Her head was starting to thump. God, she hoped this wasn’t the start of a migraine.

“Were there cameras in the club?” he asked.

“Yes, but they didn’t record and most of the time, the person who was meant to be monitoring them was getting a blow job instead.”

“So what did you touch? The keypad on the door? Which is something you’d touched before.”

“Yeah, when I was delivering drinks to that room,” she said.

“Which would also explain why your hair was in the room. Hair is tricky to clean up and some of it got on the bastard’s clothes when he fell to the floor. They’ll try to say you had sex with him, but your DNA won’t be a true match to what was found on his body.”

“It will be Mom’s,” she said.

“Right.”

“What does this mean?” she asked.

“That their case against you is pretty weak without a witness, a weapon, and a good motive. Your DNA wasn’t found on the wallet.”

“But don’t I look guilty? I left that night and never went back.”

“A criminal forced you to become his girlfriend. Changed your identity because he kidnapped you. Makes you a victim.”

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