Nice place. Okay. That ruled out some of the horrors he’d been imagining.
And where she chose to be. Which was not with him.
“You’re a good friend,” he told the woman who was giving him so much of her time when he hadn’t tried once to see her in more than four years.
“You’re a good man, Maxwell Bennet,” she said in return.
And he worried that they’d just turned onto a road he didn’t want to travel.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
IT WASN’T STEVE at the window. Jenna was still reeling from the news.
“You’re going to be fine, now,” she said softly, sitting on the sofa in the bungalow with a still-shaking Carly.
They were close, curled up with cups of green tea laced with just a hint of brandy, given to them by Lynn Bishop. Their feet were touching.
Latoya was there, too, in a chair next to them, sipping on the same brew.
“They got him, girl. I saw them haul him away.”
Carly nodded. “I know. Lila told me.”
Lila, Lynn, TLS security, the Santa Raquel police had all been there. Sara, too. And they were all gone now. Because the three women had assured them they’d be fine.
As fine as any of the three of them were ever going to be.
They talked for another hour. Reliving the horrifying experience of having one of their abusers invade their safe place. Carly’s ex-boyfriend. He was being held not only for trespassing, breaking and entering with intent to harm, and attempted kidnapping but for stabbing a security guard and knocking out another, as well as tampering with security devices. Jenna wasn’t the only one with an ex who’d had special training. Carly’s had been a marine.
Latoya, who had an early session in the morning that she still intended to attend, finally excused herself and went off to bed, leaving her door open as they’d all decided they would do for the next couple of nights, at least.
“You can go, too,” Carly told Jenna. “I’ll be fine. You have that little girl to help in the morning, and then a couple of appointments here.”
She’d told her housemates a bit about her work when she’d returned that day. Latoya had seen her come in, before she could clean herself up and put on fresh makeup, and she and Carly had both wanted to know where she’d been. In another situation their curiosity might have been considered nosiness.
But at the Stand, it was an inherent part of their sisterhood that they watch out for each other. Victims of domestic violence couldn’t always trust themselves, and, like any kind of an addict, needed a support group. Except that it wasn’t alcohol or drugs that held them captive. It was the need to love and be loved that did it to them.
So when Latoya had asked where she’d been, she’d told them about Yvonne and Olivia. Fellow sisters.
“I wouldn’t sleep if I went to bed,” Jenna said, more for Carly than for herself, but knowing the words were true just the same. She wasn’t going to sleep, but she’d be okay in her room alone.
Carly wouldn’t.
“I just can’t believe you did that for me. That you risked your life like that.”
“I thought it was...someone else.”
“At my window?”
“He could have been at the wrong window.” But she had wondered, as had Lila and the others, how Trent Compton, Carly’s dishonorably discharged marine ex-boyfriend, had known which bungalow was hers.
As it turned out, he’d been watching them from a rooftop for the past week. And had seen Carly come and go. He must have seen her at her window at some point, too, to know which room was hers.
Carly was shaking her head. “He used to watch my window in L.A.” Her voice was soft as she shook her head. “My folks were...I don’t know...they, neither one of them had careers, you know, but just worked as store clerks and my dad worked in a factory for a while. They were into motorcycles, smoked and drank a lot and hung out with a pretty tough crowd. My brother got into riding, too. We lived in a rough neighborhood and when they’d take off on weekend rides, I’d be home alone.
“And there was Trent. He lived in the apartment across from ours and he promised me he’d keep a watch on me, to make sure I was safe. He had all these sight things, like for guns, but they were more like binoculars. He’d ordered them off the internet. He said he was into stars and wanted to study space travel.
“I thought it was cool then....”