Page 8 of Katie 3

Because it could give Brad a motive.

I massage my temple. I hate this. All he had to do was control himself. I don’t go after every student I see make eyes at Katie. Brad managed to control himself before I was at the university too. Katie finds girls flirting with me funny.

Why is he this reactive?

How can we bring a baby into this when he’s this intense?

When I get home, I see Katie doing homework while Brad rubs her feet. He’s been more dedicated to her comfort, determined to protect her, even from raised voices. He can’t protect her from the consequences of his actions though.

I jerk my head towards the kitchen when he meets my eyes.

“I’ll be right back, Katie. You thirsty, hungry?” Brad asks.

“I’m okay. Thank you,” she answers, lifting her legs so he can stand. She gets right back to work on her laptop, focusing intensely.

Brad follows me into the kitchen and clears his throat. It’s been three days since we had our first conversation about the charges and now it’s time for round two.

“He fold?” Brad asks.

“No.”

“Put me in a room with him and he will,” Brad assures. “There’s no evidence of me on him. Gloves, a hat—yeah, I wore a fucking hat—and nothing else. No physical evidence.”

I glance at his still ripped-up fists. He flexes them and shrugs. “I like boxing.”

“Witnesses saw you assault him the first time, Brad,” I inform. “It’s not a large leap.”

“Yeah, I’ll own that. I punched him. Because he was threatening my girlfriend—ourgirlfriend,” he hisses. “You didn’t hear what he had planned for her.”

“Then enlighten me,” I challenge.

He glances back at Katie, then hands me his phone. “You’re not going to like what you hear.”

With that in mind, I go to my room and use my earbuds to listen to what he recorded, starting at the beginning.

“Really, she’s that kind of dirty?” someone asks. “You’re full of it, Dan. You’ve been watching too much porn.”

“You haven’t seen her, man. In a lecture, she watched that guest speaker or whatever with twice the lust the other girls had. She tried to hide it, but it was like she was picturing him bending her over his desk with everyone in the room there.”

“So?”

“And she has some guy who obviously thinks he’s her boyfriend sniffing around. She looks innocent, but she’s a whore and I’m sure a few drinks, maybe a little… relaxing, and she can take all of us.”

“If she’s got a boyfriend, hell no,” someone else says. “Plus, I don’t want to see all your dicks.”

“I bet you’d like to tape it. Imagine the money we could make pushing that around. The realGirls Gone Wild. Seeing her take dick after dick. We could run a train on her, use her all night, see what else we can fit inside her. I bet we could do a whole lot with a whore like her,” Dan says.

I pause the recording. There’s another seven minutes of this. I skip ten seconds and hear Dan again.

“It’s settled. I’ll flirt a little, get her all curious, then we can have her where we want her. Sam, you’ll get the drugs, and therest of you, just be ready. We’ll have a good night and make sure other people get to enjoy it too, for a price.”

I turn off the recording and a heavy sigh falls from my lips as I don’t see this helping us. Not enough to get Brad off the hook.

And I don’t want Katie dealing with the stress of it. I don’t want it weighing on her shoulders. I pull out my ear buds and send the audio file to my work email. I round the corner to the living room, find Brad, and return his phone. He’s quizzing Katie for a test.

His eyes flick to me in question and I nod. I get it. I would’ve hurt Dan too to protect Katie, but probably not in the way Brad went about it.

Brad’s always had a wild temper. Add enough reasoning for a normal guy to punch another in the face and there’s the setup for what he did to Dan. Dan deserved plenty and obviously wasn’t going to give Katie a say in what he had planned, but it’s still an uphill battle. The only positive is we have evidence of a crime we can use against Dan. It might get his attorney to settle, but if they’re focused, this is going to be hellish. And I don’t see it helping in court.

---