Karen Rose - Kill for Me

“I didn’t want to hurt you.”

She studied his face, then shook her head. “No, you didn’t want to be hurt.”

He looked away. “You’re right.”

“I know,” she said dryly.

He dropped his head. “I’m so tired,” he said. “And it never stops.”

“I know,” she said again. “Go to sleep. It’ll still be there when you wake up.”

“Will you?” he asked, and one side of her mouth lifted.

“Be here when you wake up? Where am I gonna go? I’m out of clothes.”

Reluctantly he withdrew from the warmth of her body, repositioning her so that she snuggled, spooned against him. “There’s always the outfit Stacie bought you.”

“I gave it back to her. Besides, I can just see me wearing that to my arraignment if Chloe decides to charge me. The judge would think I’d been busted for hooking.”

Her wry tone didn’t fool him. “What will you do?” he murmured, tightening his arm over her waist. “Can they really disbar you?”

“Sure. I can appeal it, but Chloe’s right. A room full of reporters was the wrong venue to break the law. I’ll be on the front page of the morning paper in a few hours. I was already all over the TV last night.” She sighed. “I’ll be the subject of discussion over coffee and water cooler breaks. And I knew it would be so from the moment I stepped on that plane Friday morning. I’ll be okay. The worst that can happen to me is a lot of publicity and maybe a misdemeanor. Chloe’ll cut a deal, no time served. It’s what I would do.”

“You didn’t find that gun in your father’s house,” he said quietly, and she said nothing. “Susannah?”

“Some things are best left unanswered, Luke. If you know, you could be subpoenaed. You’d have to tell. Either way, I wouldn’t change a thing. Would you?”

“No. Except now Leo gets an even better Christmas present for the rest of his life.” He tugged at the shirt she wore, kissed the shoulder he’d bared. “So what will you do if you can’t be a lawyer anymore?”

“I don’t know. I was thinking about what I said to that reporter today, about every woman having the right to disclose her assault or not. I push these women to disclose every day as a prosecutor.”

“That’s your job, to get convictions.”

“I know, and I’ve served the state well. But during the trial… I always think about what it would have been like had I come forward. I would have been so scared. They are, too. They have to live it all again. The state stands against the perpetrator, but nobody really stands for the victim.”

“You’re thinking of victim advocacy.”

“If I get disbarred. Even if I don’t, it’ll be hard for me to go into a courtroom and not have the focus be on me and not on the victims. I’m going to have to do something different, no matter what Chloe decides. Hell, maybe I’ll set up a Kool-Aid stand.”

He yawned hugely. “Will you sell cherry flavor?”

“Grape,” he heard her reply sleepily. “Nobody hates grape. Sleep, Loukaniko.”

His eyes popped open. “Excuse me? What did you just say?”

“That nobody hates grape. And go to sleep,” she said, annoyed. “So go to sleep.”

“No, the Loukaniko part.”

She craned her neck to look up at him over her shoulder. “Leo said that was your real name. That’s why your mama calls you Lukamou.”

Luke bit his lip to keep from laughing. “Um. Lukamou is like… ‘my dear.’ Loukaniko is a big fat sausage.”

She winced, then her eyes narrowed. “Oh. Sorry. I blame Leo.”

“Brother Leo just dropped a rung on the Christmas present ladder.”

She snuggled back against him. “Although, I suppose under certain circumstances Loukaniko could apply, too.”

He snickered. “Thank you. I think.”

“Go to sleep,” she said quietly. “Lukamou.”

His arm tightened around her, and on a contented sigh, he let himself drift off.

Atlanta, Monday, February 5, 7:45 a.m.

What’s in these boxes?” Susannah asked, sitting in Luke’s office the next morning.

Luke looked up from his reports. She looked fresh and beautiful in the black dress Chloe had loaned her the Saturday before. The dress had magically appeared in Luke’s closet while they slept, free of the dirt, blood, and clay she’d accumulated at Sheila Cunningham’s funeral. It was nice to have family in the dry-cleaning business.

“Yearbooks,” he said, “from all the schools in a twenty-five-mile-radius of Dutton. We used them last week to identify the victims in Simon’s pictures.”

Kneeling on the floor, she opened the box. “Is my senior annual in here?”

“No. I gave it to Daniel. It’s probably in his office. Why?”

“Just curious to see if I looked like I remember. Perspective is an interesting thing.”

“You don’t have any pictures of your senior year?”

She leveled him a look. “Why would I? I just wanted to forget it.”

“I have your picture. Kind of.” He pulled his wallet from his pocket, feeling foolish. “I was going through the yearbooks and saw your picture. I’d been thinking about you for days, since I first saw you at your parents’ funeral. I… photocopied it. I even thought about going to New York to meet you. Priced airfare and everything.”

She sat back on her heels, grinning delightedly. “You didn’t.”

“I did.” He gave her the folded photocopy and watched as she opened it, tentatively.

Her smile dimmed. “I look sad.”

“I know,” he said softly. “I thought so, too.”

She swallowed hard and gave him back the copy. “So why did you copy it?”

“Because I thought even sad, you were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.”

She blushed, charming him. “That’s sweet.” She went back to the box and he returned to his paperwork. All was quiet for minutes, then she spoke again. “Luke, I know why Kate Davis was called Rocky.” She put a yearbook on his desk, looking over his shoulder as he studied the page. It was a picture of a young girl with a very bad overbite and thick glasses. “That’s Kate Davis,” she said, “aka Rocky.”

Luke tried to reconcile the gawky child with the sleek woman Kate had become. “You’re kidding.”

“Nope. It’s a wonder what braces and a makeover will do. I’d forgotten about it until I saw this picture, but the kids used to call Kate ‘Rocky.’ For the squirrel. You know, the one on the cartoon. With Bullwinkle,” she added when he looked up at her blankly.

“Oh. Why?”

She frowned, thinking back. “It started at one of the plays back in high school. Our private school was K through twelve, so they had little kids, too. They did Snow White and cast some of the younger kids as woodland creatures. Some thoughtless teacher cast Kate as a squirrel. She couldn’t have been more than eight or nine at the time.”

Luke looked at the buck teeth of the young Kate in the photo. “That was cruel.”

“They started calling her Rocky Squirrel after that, and because Garth was so big, they called him Bullwinkle. He didn’t mind, but Kate did. I remember her crying.” She sighed. “I should have said something then, but that was right after… well, after Simon and the others did what they did. I was keeping to myself a lot then.”

“I can see why.” Luke swiveled in his chair and looked up at her, deciding to confront his question head on. “Susannah, how did you know Simon raped you?”

She winced. “He showed me a picture. Somebody must have taken the picture, because it was definitely Simon, artificial leg and all.”

“What happened to the picture?”

“I don’t know. He made his point, then took it back. But I saw it, and for Garth Davis to call me a liar… It makes it worse.”