Page 42 of Secrets Within Us

She huffed and held her head up as she straightened her spine and adjusted her jacket, “Did you two have any conversations while working at the firm?”

“He stopped me once in the lobby. A month ago, he said he recognized me as one of his girls from the shelter.” I threw air quotes up at his name for me, “Like he’d had some sort of relationship with me back then. He asked me how I was doing, I told him I didn’t remember him and that I was late for court and left. I didn’t like the vibe I got off of him, so I told Tim and he told security to monitor him.”

“What vibe was that?” She asked pensively. She leaned back and crossed her arms across her chest. Almost like she was showing me she was judging me and didn’t believe my version of it.

“Like we were close; like we were old pals when, in reality, I had never said more than ten words to the man before.”

“Okay, let’s fast forward. How did you come to be in his home here in Utah?”

Instantly, images and memories from his home flooded my system. My pulse picked up, and I fought to control my emotions, even as I felt the red flush of anger creep up my face.

“I was at The Port Authority in the city, waiting to board a bus for Florida, where I was moving to. It was the middle of the night, my trip was a red eye, I went to use the bathroom in the main terminal, but it was closed for cleaning. So I went to use a secondary one by the main drop-off area.” I paused then. Trying to articulate my words through the panic, I felt just talking about him. “By the time I saw him, it was already too late. I was at the sink washing my hands when he ran up behind me and smashed my face into the mirror. I fought back, clawing at him, kicking and elbowing anything I could get a hold of, but I couldn’t get his grip out of my hair. He threw me to the ground and sat on my back with his knee between my shoulder blades and put a cloth over my nose and mouth. Then everything went black.”

Panic swelled in my heart.

Deep breath Hadley, just breathe.

It was like I could hear Kip in my head, coaching me to stay calm.

“Then what?” She asked.

I swallowed the bile threatened to rise in my throat, “I woke up tied down in the back of an SUV. All the seats were gone and there was a mattress on the floor. He stopped at a rest stop, and I woke up, it was nighttime again. He said we’d made good time.” I said bitterly. “Like we were on a road trip.”

“Do you know what rest stop? Was there anyone around?”

“I don’t know, I was tied down in the back. I couldn’t see anything out of the windows other than the sky.”

“What happened at the rest stop?” Her tone changed slightly as she asked the question. She uncrossed her arms and leaned her elbows on the table, leaning closer. “Did he go anywhere? Take you out of the car?”

I dropped my gaze to my hands in my lap and picked at that stray thread on my sleeve again. I didn’t answer out loud, just shook my head no.

“So what happened?” She asked again.

I looked over to the mirror on the wall, trying to see through it at all, trying to see if Kip still stood behind the reflective surface.

“Hadley. What happened when he stopped at the rest stop?” She asked again, more forcefully.

I turned my head back around and looked her in the eye. “He raped me.” I could hear the blood rushing through my ears and could feel the way my chest got painfully tight as I said the words out loud.

She didn’t respond right away, just leaned back into her seat slightly. Tim dropped his hand off the table and gripped my good one on my lap, squeezing the hell out of it until l looked away from her to him.

He remained silent, but his eyes were sad as I looked back into them. A single tear dropped over my lower lid and slowly rolled down my face. I swallowed and unclenched my jaw a couple of times before looking back at her.

It surprised me to see compassion on her face. “I’m sorry, Hadley.” She said softly before clearing her throat.

“He put the cloth over my mouth again and I blacked out. The next time I woke up, we were at his house, and I had an IV line in my arm. He sedated me for the trip, I guess.”

“What did he say or do when you got to his place?”

I held her stare as I went through the images in my head, “He put me in my grave.” I said evenly and then took a couple of deep breaths, remembering how hard it’d been to breathe when I realized what he’d thrown me into. “He dug it before coming to New York and taking me. Said he’d wanted to make me dig it myself, but that I probably would have used the shovel as a weapon against him. Because he could tell I’d fight back.” I looked over to the mirror again, remembering Kip’s words when we’d first met, about how he didn’t take me for the type of girl to just allow someone to beat on me. He’d been right. “I tried desperately to climb out of it, I clawed at the walls for hours trying to get out. I screamed until my voice broke.”

“Where was the grave? Did he keep you in there the entire time you were there?” She asked as she motioned to the agent behind her. He quietly left the room as she continued to look at me, waiting for my reply.

“No. He took me inside when the sun rose again.”

“What did he do when he took you inside?”

I couldn’t do the back-and-forth all day. Not at that pace. I couldn’t sit there and walk through six days, move by move of what he did to me. I’d die before I could finish.

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