When Mr. Westley snaps at her to “choose a channel for heaven’s sake,” she throws the remote aside and stomps upstairs. I watch her go, and suddenly I have an inkling of what she might try to do.

At eleven p.m. there’s no light showing under her door and all seems quiet on the other side. I close my bedroom door loudly, brush my teeth and turn out the lights. I wait for a moment, then open the door and peer out.

The landing is silent and dark. Mr. Westley’s retired for the night as well. I close the door quietly behind me and head downstairs. The garden is walled and there’s no door onto the alley out back, so I wait in the hall. I’m only there twenty minutes when I hear a small sound above me, and then a minute later the scuff of shoes on carpet. I snap on the light.

Suddenly illuminated, Adrienne jumps. She’s got a backpack over one shoulder and she’s wearing a coat. Her eyes are wide with fright. When she sees me, the fear turns to anger. “You were waiting for me,” she accuses.

“I was.”

“Am I a prisoner in my own house?” She stares past me, wanting her freedom.

I stand aside and give it to her. “No. You can leave if you want to. I’m just here to tell you it’s a bad idea.”

Her mouth parts in surprise and she hesitates, uncertain. Will I really let her leave, or am I bluffing? Even I’m not sure what I’ll do if she walks out into the night, but it’s the only thing I can think of to convince her I’m not the enemy. This could be my last chance. If she leaves now, or her father finds out she tried to, they’re going to have the mother of all arguments. Slowly, as if talking to a cornered animal, I say, “I know you don’t want me here—”

“I don’t,” she says. “I don’t want you following me around and I hate everything about you.”

I nod. I’m well aware of that. “That’s fine. You can hate me, but you can also let me do my job. If you do, I can figure out whether you actually need me or not. How does that sound to you?”

She frowns as if she hadn’t considered that those two things, hating me and letting me get on with things, were mutually exclusive. The hand gripping her bag strap loosens a little.

“I need to assess whether there are ongoing risks in your life, and to do that I need there to be no games. No drama. No snark or sneaking out. The sooner I establish that you’re safe the sooner we go our separate ways.”

Adrienne gives me a long look, as if she’s liked what I’ve said but isn’t sure she can trust me. Getting rid of me is her number one aim, but complying with me seems to go against that.

She opens her mouth to ask a question, perhaps to bargain with me, but a peevish voice cuts across what she was going to say. “What the hell is going on down here?” Mr. Westley has appeared in the hall wearing a dark blue dressing gown and his hair mussed from sleep. He spies Adrienne’s

backpack and me standing by the front door, then rounds on his daughter. “Where do you think you’re going?”

I watch as the moment of breakthrough slips away.

“Anywhere but here! I’m sick of living under this roof, I’m sick of you and I’m sick of him.”

As they argue, I close my eyes briefly, savoring the temptation to quit. I want to, badly. This isn’t working and I can’t see how it will.

But something stops me. It’s not just that I pride myself on never quitting even when the going gets tough, and it’s not the guilt I’ll feel if I leave and something does happen to Adrienne. Professionally, this is an untenable situation. But like the decision I made not to show her the hate mail, I’m not acting entirely out of professional instinct. Something else is at play, and whether it’s pity or sympathy or something else, I don’t know. I just can’t leave her alone with this.

“...Now get up to your room and stay there.”

Adrienne runs for the stairs, angry tears coursing down her face. Mr. Westley turns to me and mutters, “Never have children.”

It’s one of those stupid, throwaway lines parents say when they’re overwrought, but I watch him balefully as he walks up the stairs. He goes comfortably to his own bed, but I take the duvet and a pillow from mine and go back downstairs and sleep on the couch.

In the morning I’m bleary with exhaustion and my eyes feel gritty. I slept fitfully, waking at every small noise in case it was Adrienne trying to sneak out again. After my shower, I walk heavily back down to the kitchen and stab the On button on the coffee maker with my forefinger.

Adrienne clumps downstairs in black platform lace-ups and a black lace dress at eight-fifteen. Her silver jewelry looks like it’s about to strangle her. I’m noticing a pattern: the more angry or vulnerable she’s feeling, the more dramatic her appearance is.

She doesn’t speak to me while she eats her cereal and drinks her coffee, and when she’s done she picks up her bag and folio and heads for the front door. Just before she opens it she turns to me and says, “You think you’ve got me all figured out, don’t you?”

I suppose this is a reference to me trying to make a deal with her the night before, and she’s ashamed now to find that she almost gave in to me. I want to tell her it’s not weakness, letting me do my job, but I don’t think she’d believe me. I don’t have the energy to butt heads with her, either, so I hold out my arm, waiting for her to lead the way out of the house.

There are just two journalists outside, both from the Gazette. As the Herald’s direct competitor I’m not surprised they’re the last ones hanging on, hoping for even a morsel of gossip or scandal. With any luck they’ll be gone tomorrow, too.

We’re on Piccadilly edging through traffic when Adrienne leans down and starts rummaging through her backpack. After a moment she finds what she’s looking for and sits back with two small, zippered cases on her lap. She’s fiddling around with them, and I’m trying to watch the road and her out of the corner of my eye at the same time. A device clicks and beeps and she checks a reading. Then she takes out something that looks like an EpiPen, which doesn’t make any sense.

Then I realize what it actually is: an insulin pen. My hands tighten on the steering wheel. “Do you have diabetes?”

She screws a needle to the top of the pen, twists a dial and flicks the barrel with a forefinger. Her movements are practiced but her hands are shaking slightly.

Tags: Brianna Hale Erotic
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