Page 9 of A Spy is Born

"Okay."

"Are you okay?" she asks, standing and approaching, her eyes running over me. I shake my head. She turns back to the couch and grabs a throw that lies rumpled within the pillows. Nancy holds it out to me. When I don't move, she takes a tentative step closer. She licks her lips, clearly nervous.Is she afraid of me?

Nancy holds the blanket open and, leaning down, wraps it around my shoulders without letting her skin touch mine. The blanket is soft, so soft. My eyes blink closed, and when I open them she's stepped back again. "I'll go call the police."

I don't answer. I just sit there under that soft blanket, my dog in my arms, Oscar in my grip, and wait for the next person to find me. There is no point in moving. I survived, but I’m as over as Jack.

The police arrive silently,the whisper of engines and the soft fall of feet barely reaching me through the shroud of fear and regret that cloak me along with the soft blanket.

A woman crouches in front of me, bringing her dark eyes in line with mine. "Miss?"

I raise my gaze to her. She has an unlined face, almond-shaped eyes, and skin the same camel and gold as Jack's marble entry way. Her thick, black hair is parted in the middle and pulled back, simple and elegant, almost severe. However, there is a softness to her, sympathy in her gaze, as if she's been where I am. Or seen it enough to know the trap I've fallen into…there is no good way out of this one.

The pit I sit in is deep but also provides a kind of safety.What can happen to me now?

"Miss," she says again. I blink and give a small nod that I heard her. "My name is Maria. What's your name?"

"Which one?" My voice comes out gruff, as if there is sandpaper in my throat. As if I've been screaming for days.But the loudest sound was my heartbeat. Jack doesn't have a heartbeat anymore...

Maria cocks her head slightly. "Your real name."

"Stacy Melon is what my mother named me. Angela Daniels is my stage name."

She nods and looks down at Archie in my lap then over at the Oscar still gripped in my hand. A flash of light behind Maria draws my attention. There is a photographer standing over Jack, capturing him in death. The flash goes again, burning the image into my mind anew. The pale glow of his backside in the dark is joined by this new, stark image of bloodless skin under bright lights.I came here to be under the lights.

Now I'm deep in a pit. I shake my head and swallow. I don't want to be in a pit. I climbed out of one to get here and fell right back in.You're a slut.Grandma's voice seethes in my mind.

I'm a killer.

The truth vibrates through me, seeming to change my very cellular structure and reassemble me in some new way.

I return my attention to Maria. Is this the first time she's been called out to Jack’s house? Couldn’t be the first time she's seen this scene.It's a cliché.Not Jack's death, but the hungry starlet getting more than she bargained for…

There is a twitch of humor in my gut. This time the director got more than he bargained for. He thought I'd lie there and take it.

"He drugged me,” I say.

A man behind Maria answers me. “You sure you didn't just have too much to drink?"

Maria shifts, looking over her shoulder at the guy who spoke, a deep scowl darkening her face. The man is wearing a long overcoat—another cliché in a room filled with death. He's even got a fedora in his meaty fists. Where's his cigarette? Oh right—wrong era.

I meet his gaze. Smug assurance infuses him. He is a white man in a world controlled by men just like him. He is the law, the judge, and the jury. He is the ruler of this society, and I am a naked, beaten woman—hardly more than a girl. He knows me.He knows everything.

"I can handle my liquor," I say, swallowing away the gravel in my throat to speak clearly—to speak like a queen, a priestess—the only feminine energy in the world that can control men like him. "I drank one glass of wine. And I blacked out. Woke up with him on top of me. I fought him off. I didn't mean to kill him."

He sneers, this man who thinks he knows so much. "Pretty brutal."

"Yes," I agree, my voice strong now, accented with something almost English, certainly not a whisper of Southern or Western, which would hint at my true nature. "It is a brutal thing, trying to rape me like that." I hold his gaze, prepared to forcehimto look away.

I just killed one of you; I’m not going to back down from another.

Time ticks by. Maria looks between the two of us, and out of the corner of my eye I can see her lips twitching into a smile. Archie stirs in my lap, spinning once before resettling himself.

"Detective." A uniformed officer comes into the room, addressing my staring contest partner. His jaw clenches. I raise my brows and let the barest hint of a smile tug at my lips, which are still swollen from the rough kisses Jack forced upon them.

"You've got a call." The uniformed officer holds out a phone. The detective takes it and brings it to his ear, keeping his eyes locked onto mine.

We stand on our citadels, neither willing to climb down and fight in the mud.

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