Chapter 141
1152 Words
Four days later
“I want to tell you,” Jenny said. “What happened to me. I want you to know.”
Chris looked up, totally shocked.
Wow. This Saturday morning has taken an unexpected turn.
“You do?” he asked cautiously.
“Yes.” Her face was tight and pale, but she had a determined set to her lips and eyes. “I want you to understand. I want you to know why I panicked the other night.”
He leaned back, his hand clutching his cup of coffee. “You can tell me as much as you want, or as little. I’m listening.”
She nodded, took a deep breath. She f*****g hated talking about this, and no matter how many times she’d been over it with Lori – and they’d discussed it ad nauseam over the previous six years, to the point that it was almost like pushing ‘rewind’ and then ‘repeat’ – parts of it still made her physically weak and ill.
Chris was feeling pretty weak and ill himself. He knew that she’d promised to tell him the whole horrible story, but he was sure it would be later, maybe when they were moving closer to the bedroom. The panic attack had clearly motivated her to say something, though, and so he held on and braced himself.
Whatever it is, you can help her get past it.
“It was six years ago this past summer,” she said. “I had worked late at the restaurant and I was walking out to my car. I never saw them coming… they hit me from behind.”
“They?” Chris asked, his voice thick.
Holy f**k… there was more than one guy who did this to her. I don’t want to hear this; I don’t want to hear this at all.
“Yes.” She looked down at her hands. “There were four of them.”
“Oh, my God. Jenny.”
“I woke up tied to a bed. Blindfolded and naked.” She stopped. “One of them was inside me.”
Chris stopped breathing.
“When he finished, another one climbed on top of me, then another, then another. Or maybe the same ones, I don’t know. It went on like that for two days – I was raped between being beaten. Or maybe I was beaten between being raped. I’m not sure. I was bound and blind the whole time… I never saw any of their faces. I never knew when it was coming, or what was coming.”
She dared to glance up at Chris, and she was shocked at the look on his face. She knew that Chris had killed people in Afghanistan, she knew that he’d been trained to do exactly that. She didn’t know much about Ranger training, but she’d seen movies about it, and she assumed it was brutal and torturous. This man had gotten through it all, though, and he’d been shipped off to one of the most dangerous places on the planet, and he’d done his job. He’d killed people. But she’d never actually seen him as a killer. Not really.
Not until this second.
The expression on his face now, though. My God. He’d kill them if they were in front of him, without a second of hesitation, without a moment of regret.
“Chris?”
“Please tell me that they went to jail for a long, long time.” His voice was coiled, quiet. Almost a hiss.
She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to keep her body from shaking apart. “No. They didn’t.”
“Why not?”
She exhaled, hard. “A few reasons. First, one of them – the youngest guy, he was only sixteen – started to freak out, and he called the cops himself, gave them very clear directions to the cabin up in the Rockies where they were holding me. So he got credit for being so helpful, and also for being a minor.”
Chris clenched his hands.
“Second, they always wore condoms, so there was no physical evidence of any of them raping me. I mean, it was obvious what had happened, from a physical and medical point of view, but there was no way to prove who actually did it.”
“But you told the cops, right? I mean, you’d have heard their voices…”
“Yeah, well. The DA decided that I wasn’t the most reliable witness,” she said. “I was blind, so I had no way to confirm anything visually. And…”
“What? Jenny, what?”
“… I drifted in and out of consciousness the whole time.” She swallowed hard around the lump forming in her throat. “I was badly beaten, and I had head injuries, and that made it… difficult to remember things. I was confused about lots of details, and the DA knew that any defense attorney could rip me to shreds on the stand. I had no concept of time or sequence of events. I remembered voices, laughing. But I didn’t always know for sure who – who did what and when. What was real and what was a nightmare when I passed out.”
Chris was silent.
“They didn’t get away with it scot-free, but it was pretty damn close. The one guy got three years, and only because his friends kind of turned on him. The others got two each, and the youngest guy got sent to a juvenile detention school. They were out in a year, and the first guy was out in eighteen months.”
“Where are they now?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” She wiped at the tears running down her cheeks. “I was informed when they were released from prison and juvie, but that’s the last I heard.”
“Jenny?” He fought to stay in control of his rage, to be there for her. “You want me to hold your hand?”
“No.” She shuddered. “Not now. Please.” She stood up. “I want to go and have a shower, actually. I always – I need to wash after I tell this story. Every time.”
“OK, baby.” He took a breath. “I was supposed to go to Jim’s for a couple of hours to see the boys. You want me to cancel, stay home?”
“No. I’ll be upstairs for the rest of the day anyway. Go out… it’s OK.”
He watched her head up the stairs, listened as the water started to run in the bathroom. Mechanically, numb and cold, he put on his coat and boots, found his car keys. And he stayed numb and cold until he got to Jim’s house. That was when he lost it.
- Writer
