She followed me into the bedroom and then the master bath and I regretted that because being in there with her the sexual tension was real. There was a tube of first aid cream in my medicine cabinet. Sarah kept that stocked, too. I smeared some on the back of her hand. I examined the burn. It didn’t look too bad; she probably wouldn’t blister. Our eyes met again. Okay, I had to make this stop.
Letting it go there was not an option. I wasn’t taking advantage of this girl. I wasn’t ever gonna be a choir boy but I didn’t wanna abandon my new motto of Man Whore No More. To take advantage of her in her current state of mind was lower than man whore. It was scumbaggery.
I heard my cell text alert go off so it broke the tension and I headed to grab it, saying, “Put that ointment on your legs or stomach if you’re burnt there, too.”
It was Zack and he’d pulled in to the underground. I replied to tell him I’d be down in two minutes. I cleared the broken cup and spilled coffee from the kitchen floor and then poured a new coffee and brought it into my bedroom. Felicia was still in the washroom. I called her name and she peaked out from the opened door.
“There’s a clean robe or clothes in my closet if you wanna grab something to wear for now. I brought you another coffee. Take a bath or shower if you want. Can you hang in here and watch TV or something for a bit? My PI is here and he and I are gonna sweep our belongings for bugs down in my Explorer and then we’ll be up. When we come back up I’ll have him double check your bag, shoes, and that necklace.”
She nodded, looking shell-shocked, still. I put the coffee on the nightstand and left the room. I set the alarm on my way out. Just in case.
*
* ** **
Zack had proven himself invaluable over the last several months to the point he’d become a buddy to me as well as our PI. He checked and said that everything was clear of bugs and tracking devices, including the sapphire necklace, which was genuine and worth a small fortune. I had my luggage checked as well while I filled him in on the details of the trip.
Maybe they weren’t suspicious of me. But I wasn’t taking chances because I knew they could be watching. I also knew that a select few were at least somewhat aware of the rift in the final days of Pop’s life and news could travel that far and if it did, even as a rumor, we’d be under suspicion eventually. As far as Stan went he knew too much and was too far away for me to keep an eye on so I had to bear that in mind. With Pop gone his loyalties could easily change, particularly if he had no ties to me because I’d stopped using him. I needed to retain him as a lawyer at least until all this shit was over with. Pop had another local lawyer and that’s who he worked with when he temporarily froze me and Tommy out. He hadn’t made any changes to his will so all of that overwrote the temporary orders that had been put in place in the few weeks before Pop died.
Me and Zack talked to my brother on webcam in my den and agreed that depending on how we played out exits from the businesses we did not want to be in this could mean that transition would take a whole lot longer than we’d hoped. And if it all started to go to hell the whole damn family would have to slip off the grid. Tommy said he’d work on that contingency plan.
Fuck, Pop; you’re still fucking with us, even from the grave.
Zack was gathering intel about the people on the list of names I gave him and we were gonna re-group later to come up with a plan. After we said goodbye to my brother I saw Zack to the door and then I checked on her. She was in my room, watching television in my bed. She was in a pair of my grey on grey checked flannel pajamas, a pair I’d never worn but got given for Christmas last year. They were huge on her. She was watching cartoons, looking small in my big dark wood sleigh bed buried under my big wine-colored comforter.
I sat on the the bed, “How you doin’?”
“Fine.”
She probably wasn’t fine.
“Is it okay I chose these to wear?” she asked, looking up innocently at me, giving me a pang of something, I didn’t know what.
“Sure; I brought your things up. They’re in the den and everything is clean, no surveillance or GPS devices. Listen, we have to talk about a few things. You feelin’ up to that?”
There was no big rush provided she wasn’t in a huge hurry to move on. She winced.
“Will you try for me?” I asked.
She looked at me with what looked like stars in her eyes.
I gritted my teeth for a sec and then forced myself to continue, “I know you’ve been through a lot. I don’t know but I do know, you know? Fuck, okay, first question, are there people looking for you? Family?”
She was quiet a moment but then answered me.
“No,” she whispered.
“No family?” I asked.
She shook her head and looked to the comforter, tried to mask her pain, but I saw it. I wasn’t sure if she was telling the truth or not.
“Did they kidnap you while you were on vacation in Thailand or something? Is that how they got you?”
She shook her head. My stomach churned. Did this girl volunteer? There were those that did, those who wanted to be looked after, who came from poverty or who were so damaged they thought that someone making all the decisions for them was their anecdote.
She must’ve read my sickened expression as she shook her head vigorously, “I was there for work, taken in, blackmailed, and there was no escape.”
“Ah,” I felt relief. Maybe I shouldn’t have but I did. The idea that I’d brought back someone who wanted that for herself? That’d be beyond my comprehension. And for a split second before she said she’d been blackmailed her behavior flashed in my mind and I was glad to have confirmation that it was a product of her so-called training rather than her behavior being something that was a result of her preferences.