Mistress

Chapter 57

“It’s Ben,” I say to the door. “It’s me. Open up.”

When Anne opens her door, my heart sinks. Her shirt, a button-down long denim thing, is ripped at the collar, and most of the buttons have been torn off. Her eyes are bloodshot, her eye makeup smeared, her lip bloody. Behind her, the living room looks like a tornado swept through it.

She quickly closes the door behind me and double-locks it.

“Let’s sit,” I say to her in the calmest voice I can muster, but my heart is shredded and my blood is boiling.

“O-okay,” she says, but she collapses to the floor before she can make it to the couch. She bursts into tears, her petite figure shaking uncontrollably. I sit on the floor and take her in my arms, as if I were rocking an infant to sleep. It’s a long time before she can speak, and I don’t rush her. I keep repeating, “It’s okay, I’m here,” as if that’s any comfort at this moment.

“It was…two of them,” she says, audibly gulping between sobs. “They said they were from…the government and…and they just wanted to…talk.”

“Did they have credentials? Badges?”

She shakes her head.

“You let someone in without-” I cut myself off. The last thing she needs from me is a lecture. I don’t know her all that well, but from what I’ve discerned so far, it seems just like her to be trusting enough to let strangers into her apartment.

“Go ahead,” I say. “Tell me what happened.”

The story comes out amid sobs and deep breaths. She stumbles around it, but I get the point. They forced their way in. They put a knife to her throat. They ripped off her shirt and pulled down her pants.

“They said, next time-they’d-they’d rape me and then slit my throat,” she stammers. “They said if Benjamin Casper doesn’t stop poking his nose where it doesn’t belong, it will be me who…pays.”

I hold Anne for a long time, my jaw set in a death lock, my body trembling with rage.

“You want me to stay?” I whisper. “I can sleep on the couch-”

“I want you to stop,” she blurts out. “I want all of this to…stop.”

A door closes in the apartment upstairs. We both jump at the sound. The goons who delivered this message probably won’t be back tonight. But maybe they knew I would come.

Anne looks up at me. “I know I don’t have a right to ask that. I know Diana was important to you. She was to me, too. But is it worth the cost?”

She’s right. It’s one thing to risk my own life. I don’t really have a choice in that. But I’m endangering people I care about. First Ellis Burk, now Anne-innocent victims, punished for nothing more than listening to me and trying to help me.

“I’ll think of something,” I tell her, which is about the emptiest promise I could give.