“It’s like with Jenks, Lindsay,” she said. “You just don’t let it win.”
Chapter 95
IN THE COLD, CRAMPED CELL,Nicholas Jenks paced anxiously.
He felt as if dynamite were about to explode at the center of his chest. He hadn’t done anything. How could they destroy his name, attack him with those wild fictions, disgrace him all over the news?
It was dark and he was freezing. The cot in his jail cell wasn’t fit for a monk. He was still in the damp clothes they had brought him in. A cold, unrepentant sweat began to break out on his palms.
He’d make the little inspector-bitch pay. One way or another, he’d get her in the end. That was a promise.
What was his fucking poodle of a lawyer doing? When would Leff get him out of there?
It was as if all reason had been sucked out of his world.
What the hell was going on?
Or at least, Phillip Campbell thought, that’s what Jenks ought to be feeling. What he thought the bastard would be saying in his mind.
Campbell sat in front of the mirror. Time for you to go away. Your work is finally done. The last chapter’s been written.
He dabbed a wet cloth in a bowl of warm water.
It was the last time he would ever have to play the part.
So how does it feel, Nicholas?
He pulled out the pins that held his hair and let his locks shake out.
How does it feel to be a victim, a prisoner? To feel the same degradation and shame you cast on others?
Slowly, he wiped the dark makeup off his eyes, dabbing with the cloth, feeling a sheen begin to return to his face.
How does it feel to be helpless and alone? To be kept in a dark space? To feel betrayed?
One by one, Phillip Campbell tugged at the hairs of the reddish beard on his chin, until they came out and a new person was revealed.
Not able to recognize in the mirror the person you once were?
Scrubbing the face until it came out clean and smooth. Unbuttoning the shirt, Nicholas’s shirt, and soon, from underneath a bodysuit, a well-defined woman’s body came to life: the outline of breasts, shapely legs, arms rippling with lean strength.
She sat there, newly revealed, a bright glow in her eyes.
This is rich.
How does it feel, Nicholas, to be royally fucked? The tables turned for once.
She couldn’t restrain the thought that it was fitting and funny that in the end he had been trapped by his own twisted mind. It was more than funny. It was absolutely brilliant.
Who’s laughing now, Nick?
Book Four
THE WHOLE TRUTH
Chapter 96
THE NIGHT FOLLOWING JENKS’S arraignment, Chief Mercer had gotten the skybox at Pac-Bell from one of his wealthy buddies. He invited several of us, including me, Raleigh, and Cheery, to a Giants game. It was a warm summer evening. They were playing the Cards. My father would have loved it.