Page 55 of Ten Kisses

"What? Has he done that before?" Salem asked.

Molly looked nervous, and Salem felt tight chested, like he could break the next thing that came into his path.

"A while back… there were a couple of times when he… he made me uncomfortable, and I said something. He stopped doing it."

"Why didn't you tell me this, Molly?"

"I thought I took care of it. I knew you would be mad, and I don't have anywhere else to go, and obviously this place is too perfect to screw up."

She looked sad and apologetic, and Salem was trying to understand, but he was angry. She stood next to him looking up at him, looking for his approval.

"I didn't tell you because I didn't want to make you mad if there was nothing to worry about. That, what you just saw, that was the first time that's happened since way back."

"Way back? You've confronted him about this before? Is it because he was touching you?"

"I mean, yeah, I guess, stuff like you saw right there. And he would say stuff."

"What do you mean he would say stuff?"

"I don't know, Salem, hints. You're making me feel bad. I talked to him about it. I thought I did the right thing. Anyway, all the stuff he would say, it could almost be taken a different way. None of it was ever blatant."

Salem turned away and ran his hand through his hair, feeling frustrated. "I knew that guy was a jerk, Molly. I knew it months ago. Did it happen the whole time you were living here? When you were cleaning his house?"

"No, it was fine for a long time. It didn't happen until… more recently. It was after I got those machines. But like I said, even then."

"If it was bad enough for you to tell him to stop, then it must've been bad." He said, trying to understand where she was coming from.

"It wasn't, though. Even when I told him to stop, he acted like he didn't know what I was talking about. He said that he would try to be sensitive to my feelings about it, but he never admitted any wrong or anything. I'm sorry, Salem. I didn't think I had anything concrete to tell you."

Salem didn't feel good about this at all. Darren's touch was intentional and completely inappropriate. He had seen it with his own two eyes.

Then he had an idea.

"Was that his office that we passed on the way out of the house?"

Salem knew that it was when he asked, and ten minutes later, he found himself inside that office.

He had seen this office before. He knew the door was open… and it was still like that when he went back into the house.

Molly stood in the hallway to look out, and her plan was to run interference.

He hated this office. It was positioned to face the back of the house, and the windows gave him a good view of the back of the property. Molly's apartment door was visible as was the swimming pool.

Salem knew he didn't have much time. He didn't even know what he was looking for. Everything he was doing at this moment was by gut instinct and intuition. He shifted a few papers on the desk glancing over them briefly.

There was a screensaver on the computer, and he reached out and shook the mouse.

Salem felt frozen and panicked the minute he looked at the screen. It was a split screen with surveillance taking place all over the house. There were several angles of multiple locations.

But the section on the upper right corner of the screen is what had him frozen.

Molly's kitchen. It was also the biggest square on the screen, double the size of the rest of them, as if it was the most interesting. The man was filming inside of Molly's apartment, and he didn't even bother hiding it. One shake of the mouse had brought this to the screen. Salem blinked at the screen, making sure he was seeing the right thing.

There was a clock on her wall, and he squinted at it and compared it to the current time. He took out his phone and snapped a photo of the screen before sliding the phone back into his pocket.

He heard her give two little knocks, and he walked over to the door, feeling like he was outside of his own body as he moved. She peeked her head around the half-open door.

"Let's go," she whispered.

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