Page 48 of Every Broken Piece
The small group of friends talk and drink, dance some. I keep my eye on ball cap man.
At 10:53pm, Tess peels away from her friends and stumbles toward the bathroom. It’s clear she’s tipsy. She talks and laughs with what appears to be a bachelorette party. Some dickface grabs her ass, then disappears into the crowd. Another mancatches her when she stumbles. She smiles at him before moving on. My anger reaches disproportionate levels when I realize that no one in her party is concerned that a drunk Tess is wandering around alone. Someone should have been looking out for her. If I’d been there I sure as shit wouldn’t have let her go to the bathrooms by herself. Conor remains at the table, shoving popcorn in his mouth while talking to one of the other guys.
At this point the view switches to the hallway cameras by the bathrooms. Sinking dread fills me because drunk Tess has no idea what she’s walking into, but I do.
Gut tightening, I watch ball cap man enter the camera’s view. Has no one taught Tess situational awareness? She doesn’t even know anyone else is in the hallway with her. He glances over his shoulder before rushing forward to grab her. They have words. Tess tries to break free. He wraps her in a macabre hug and drags her into the closet that has no cameras. The door shuts behind him.
Seventeen minutes and fifty-three seconds.
Seventeen excruciating, horrifically long minutes, and fifty-three heartbreaking second’s pass.
We all know what’s happening behind that door. There’s nothing I can do but hold my breath and wait for the server to enter the storage room and disrupt the attack.
Almost immediately, ball cap man runs out. The server follows for a few steps then abruptly stops to return to Tess.
I pour over his statement, the description of how he found her almost impossible to read. Unconscious, bloody. He thought she was dead until she whimpered.
I force myself to watch it again.
I want a copy, but the detective says it’s evidence. So I call Jack and tell him to get me a copy however he can.
It’s clear Tess was deliberately targeted. Other women entered that hallway alone all night long but only Tess was attacked. Why?
Why her?
Was it bad luck?
Did the asshole see something in her that he didn’t see in the others? She was with a group who would obviously notice she went missing. She was with a man who’d been paying close attention to her all night. Yes, she was drunk but so were ninety percent of the other women in the bar that night.
Why choose Tess?
“Don’t blame him.” Amelia breaks into my quiet seething.
At first, I think she’s talking about Tess’s attacker. “Who?”
“Conor. He’s had a crush on her for ages and I thought they’d make a cute couple. I pushed the two of them together.”
My fingers flex on the keyboard but I keep my eyes focused on the screen. Why does it bother me, thinking of Tess with Conor?
“I see now that I was wrong in trying to force them together,” Amelia says. “Tess tried to tell me she wasn’t interested. She always says she can’t have a serious relationship, but I never understood why. Don’t you think it’s weird that she claims she has no family, and she won’t make friends? I mean I practically had to force her to go out with us in the beginning.”
“Why did you force her if she didn’t want to go?” Amelia’s right. It is weird. Not to mention the presence of the woman in the lobby my first night here. We don’t know for sure if she was here to see Tess, but it feels too coincidental.
“She seemed lonely. Like she wants friends but doesn’t know how to be a friend. Plus, she’s just super nice and took me under her wing at TaskGenius when I first started there.”
I play back all of our texting conversations. The cat she wanted. The nights she sat at home reading. I get what Amelia’ssaying. Tess leads a solitary life and yet you can almost feel a yearning for more.
“Does she know TaskGenius let her go?” I ask.
Amelia’s head jerks up. “Let her go? They let her go?”
Oh, shit. “You didn’t know?”
She closes her laptop with a snap. “Those shitheadsfiredher?”
“On Sunday. I found out when I was assigned a new VA Monday morning. I called the company and spoke to a Mary. She told me that information came to light that Tess had been fraternizing with a client.” I pause. “That would be me.”
“That bitch.” Her hands ball into fists on top of her computer. “I can’t believe... I called Mary Sunday morning to tell her that Tess had been attacked and was in serious condition and would be taking sick time. I even told her I was going to file for FMLA on Tess’s behalf.” Her face flushes. “I guess they didn’t want to deal with all that.”
