The picture shows her in a form-fitting baby-blue dress with short scrunched up sleeves and a low neckline. Her hair is now down and curly instead of in the bun she had it up in when she left this evening. Her smile is big and bright, and her eyes are a little nervous, but her expression conveys both excitement and determination. She’s so set on her goal, and it’s completely admirable, but fuck my life, I wish she’d just let me take care of her.
“Do you happen to know Randy’s full name?” Seth asks Heather, and she lifts her eyes to the ceiling as she thinks.
“Um… I think that’s actually short for his last name. Let me look at his Facebook really quick to see if it has his full name. I’m not friends with him, but I know some of the girls are, so that’d pull him up as a mutual friend.” She scrolls, and for some reason, I hold my breath. I don’t know why, other than the fact that she’s looking up the name of a most-likely killer who happens to be my woman’s boss. But something is tickling at the back of my mind. “Oh, here it is,” she says, and she slides the phone across the desk to Seth, who types the name into one of his databases.
“Oh, I know him,” he murmurs, leaning closer to the computer monitor and blocking my view.
My stomach drops. “You do? Who is it?”
“Well, I don’t know him, know him. But this dude tried to become a member of Club Alias years ago. You wouldn’t have met him though, because he didn’t pass our first-round inspection. Background check came back with all sorts of red flags, so his application was denied,” Seth tells me, and my skin prickles. I knew it probably wasn’t the most honorable man in the universe running a strip club that looks like A Secret when Astrid first wanted to take the job. But as a fucking mercenary who owns a BDSM club myself, I didn’t think I had much room to judge. Yet this is absolutely different. If he couldn’t even get past the initial application background check, then this guy is bad news, and that’s even before we know for certain he killed Alison. And I have a stinking suspicion he did. Because in order to not even be sent to me for the four therapy sessions, he’d have to have—
“Aggravated assault. Accused of first-degree sexual assault, but got probation. Battery—”
“So the fucker wasn’t lying,” Heather interrupts Seth. When both our eyes meet hers, she explains, “We heard him boasting once that even if he were to fuck any of the girls and didn’t pay them, he wouldn’t be convicted of rape if they tried to accuse him, because he’d been tried before and only got his hand slapped. He said he was untouchable, that we should count ourselves lucky that he’s so generous and willing to pay us instead of just taking it like he’d done before.”
A shiver works up my spine, knowing I’ve heard… and read those words before.
So many of my patients have confided that their attackers said the same thing about not getting into trouble for what they do or did before. But one girl stands out in my mind, and my stomach feels hot as her face fills my mind.
Heather continues, “So we’ve learned just to get it over with when he picks one of us for the night. Especially when the last two or three girls who turned down his offer ended up… well, we thought they just lost their jobs, fired, but after Alison—” She shrugs. “—who knows if that’s what happened, or if they’re out in those woods somewhere? All we know is we want to keep this job. The pay is more than any of us girls could make anywhere else. So we do what he wants and take home the extra cash. All I’m saying is sweet little Astrid doesn’t know any of that shit. If she takes the dancing job and Randy wants her after Crystal tells him about the referral money, then—”
“She took the job.” I cut in, my vision tunneling. “When… when would Crystal tell Randy?” And as I ask the question, I’m praying he isn’t there tonight. Maybe he doesn’t work every night and he won’t be there to see my goddess dancing in the nightclub, looking like a fucking angel in the light-blue dress with her long, flowing blonde hair and silvery makeup. Because I know, I just fucking know, that any man who sees her like that, especially in her element, dancing and allowing the music to take over her perfect body, wouldn’t be able to resist her. There is no way he won’t want her.
“Oh, within the hour she dances, for sure. Crystal will go get him and point her out while Astrid’s in the nightclub doing the job, proof that she won the referral contest. Oh my God, you said she took the job? How—”