Page 71 of Tangled
“No,” Brad said. Scarlett shifted her gaze from the phone to him. His reaction wasn’tunexpected, but it also wasn’t helpful.
“Why is that the best way?” she asked. Brad opened his mouth to protest again, but she shot him a quelling look. His eyes sparked with frustration, but he kept his thoughts to himself. At least for now.
“He’s a criminal and a crooked cop. A man who thinks he has power and likes to wield it over anyone he can. He thinks he beat Gracie. He thinks he got away with rape and murder and that no one knows he’s on the take. If you let him know that none of that is true, it will shake him.”
“Enough to lash out and incriminate himself?” she asked.
“I think that’s highly likely, given his psychological makeup,” Jessica answered.
“Why can’t you do it?” Brad asked.
Jessica didn’t answer right away, and Scarlett knew she was giving her the opportunity to answer. With a deep breath, she did. “Because I’m Black,” she said. “And from the same neighborhood as Gracie.”
Brad’s brows dropped. “I don’t understand.”
“He will see me as powerless,” Scarlett explained. “He won’t think I’m a real threat, because what could a poor Black girl from South Central LA ever do to him? He’ll think he can bully and scare me the way he does other people he sees as beneath him. He’ll think he can treat me the same way he treated Gracie.”
Brad’s lips thinned and his jaw ticked.
“Unfortunately, it’s the truth, Brad,” Jessica said. “If I confront him, he’s going to be on the defensive. A well-known white reporter with a solid reputation and a lot of investigations and awards under my belt? He’s not going to give anything away. But if Scarlett confronts him, especially if she plays up her and Gracie’s friendship, he’s going to make assumptions about her, and he won’t feel nearly as threatened.”
“In other words, he might talk to her because he believes that even if she had the guts to bring it to the authorities, no one would believe her anyway?” he said more than asked.
“Or that he can take care of me the same way he took care of Gracie, because no one will be bothered much by the loss of one more Black girl from the ‘hood,’” Scarlett said. Then felt bad being so blunt about her possible murder when Brad turned green.
“But he won’t get the chance to do any of that,” Jessica jumped in. “We will set the time and location of the meeting. She’ll wear a wire and we can have HICC all over the place.”
Brad ran a hand over his face and crossed his arms, still unwilling to consider the option.
“Can I call you back, Jessica?” Scarlett asked, her gaze fixed on Brad.
“Of course. And please call me Jess.”
“Thanks, Jess. We’ll talk about it and let you know,” she said, then ended the call.
They sat in silence as the pancakes grew cold. When a few minutes passed, she reached for his hand and spoke. “I want to do this. I think Jess is right and that it’s the best way. It isn’t only about me anymore, though.” She set her other hand on her belly. “We have this little boy or girl to think about.”
“We haveusto think about, Scarlett. I hear what you and Jess are saying, but I can’t wrap my mind around you confronting a man weknowis a rapist and murderer. Of course,I don’t want anything to happen to our baby. But I don’t want anything to happen toyou,either.”
“It won’t. Not if we do this right. Not if we do this the way Jess envisioned. I can arrange to meet him at a coffee shop, somewhere public. We can have HICC fill the place up if Chad and Sabina are willing.”
“They’d be willing,” he interjected.
“And I’ll wear a wire. Maybe Chad and Sabina even have some federal contacts who can join in,” she said.
“I’m sure they do.”
She’d said what she needed to say; now she needed to give him some time to get comfortable with the idea. If he couldn’t, she wasn’t sure what she’d do. Sheknewit was the right approach, but was it worth risking her relationship with Brad over? She’d been focused on catching Gracie’s killer for months, but as he’d said, she now had an “us” to think about. The kind of decision Jess set before them wasn’t one she could make on her own.
“What happens if youdon’tdo this?” he asked.
She lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know. I’m sure HICC and Jess would keep working on it, would keep trying to find enough evidence to bring charges against him. But I don’t know if they’d succeed. Not on the murder, anyway. Or if they did, how long it would take.”
“Or how many more people he might hurt between now and then,” Brad said, his voice quiet. “There’s no certainty that this will work either, though.”
“There isn’t,” she agreed. “But it is the best option.”
Again, he ran a hand over his face, then huffed out a breath. “I know we don’t have a lot of time to think about this, but can you give me an hour? I need to take a walk and…”
