Page 2 of Not Your Body

Your Body… My Choice.

“Sheriff?”

The eeriecreakingof the ropes straining against the thick tree limbs sifted across the brittle air, adding to the haunting atmosphere of the misty woods.

The phone recording. Women crying and screaming. Men laughing.

Thesemen? The male voices hadn’t been identified.

Maybe someone identified them.

This crime scene reeked of premeditated acts of violence.Revenge.

“We can’t rule it out,” Kate mumbled, her voice hollow.

Someone out there was pissed. But who…?

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

Kate’s heart thumped against her ribs, gaining speed and force.

I know who did this.

You could be wrong.The worst mistake a cop could make was jumping to conclusions. How many times had a prime suspect turned out to be innocent? Kate couldn’t allow herself to make assumptions without irrefutable evidence. Simply because this person had the most cause for revenge… it didn’t mean they acted on it. What happened to those men…

Kate shuddered.

Not everyone—regardless of howangrythey were—could go so far, andcommitsuch brutality, even for revenge.

And what if they did? What if you’re right? What then?

Kate would do her job. That’s what thecopin her insisted. Thewomaninside… struggled with the answer.

Are you sure there isn’t more to your struggles?

Kate put the thought out of her mind as she drove back to town. She couldn’t allow anything to get in her way of exacting justice on the guilty.

The guilty.

Images of the dead bodies filled her head.Castrated.Genitals stuffed in their mouths.

Your Body, MY Choice.

Perhaps the trulyguiltyones had already been punished.

“You can’t look at it that way,” Kate whispered. “Despite what they may have done…”What?The letter of the law must be followed? Vigilante justice could not be condoned? And when the law failed to uphold its end? What then?

Stop justifying violence.

Not a decade ago, Kate had walked away—ran away?—from a world that justified violence, that used brute force to settle debts. She hadn’t wanted that to be her life. Kate wanted stability, structure, and lawful solutions. But she had learned early on that the law was flawed. Badly so, in many cases. Recent events on a political scale revealed such flaws in frightening clarity, leaving an entirenationat risk… endangering women and other minorities.

Now, more than ever—the “marginalized” could not rely on thepowers that beto defend or protect their rights ashuman beings.Rather, those rights were in grave danger of being stripped away one by one, and in terrifying haste.

Was it so hard to understand why some “at risk” people fought back, refusing to surrender to a new, abusive master?

“You can’t make excuses for this,” Kate whispered. “Thiscan’tbe the way to justice.”

Kate wanted to believe there was another way. But as a new, ominous leadership loomed over the nation, about to wage war on democracy… would this become theonlyway to establish liberty and justice forall?

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