Page 153 of One More Heartbeat
Athena’s fear-widened eyes meet mine. “Bernard.”
55
GARRETT
“Bernard who?”I ask Athena, confused what he has to do with Peony’s and Zara’s disappearance.
Is Bernard her father? And what does he have to do with everything?
It’s probably nothing.But her ramblings could end up taking the investigation in the wrong direction.
“According to him, it’s German and French for ‘brave as a bear.’ But I don’t know if it’s his real name.” Her accent slips into the Texan drawl I’ve heard from her one other time, and her gaze goes to the living room window overlooking the backyard. “Like Josiah probably wasn’t my boyfriend’s real name either.” Athena laughs a humorless, shaky breath. “Or rather, Josiah was my boyfriend before I was honest with myself.”
“What does all of this have to do with Peony’s and Zara’s disappearance?”Shit. Please tell me she isn’t taking us down the wrong path.
The twisting in my gut though, tells me to listen to what else she has to say. Like the iceberg that sankTitanic, there’s more to her words than what’s on the surface—as confusing as they might be.
Her eyes jerk to mine. “Josiah wasn’t really my boyfriend. He just pretended to be one in the beginning. He pretended to care about me.Told me he loved me—unlike my parents. My father was an abusive asshole. To me, anyway.”
She crosses her arms like a shield, Poppy pressed against her chest. “Josiah was never my boyfriend. Not like I had originally believed. He was…” She closes her eyes for a beat and releases another shaky breath. “Josiah was my pimp.”
She watches Noah’s and Officer Hunt’s reactions, fear glossing her eyes. She’s just admitted to doing something illegal. Something that could, in theory, get her arrested.
Arrested or not, she now has all of our attention.
“How long ago did you leave him?” My near-quiet voice echoes in the pin-drop silent room.
She walks to the bookshelves behind the couch and picks up a framed photo of Peony smiling at the camera. “You make it sound as easy as walking out the door and never looking back.”
None of us say anything. We just wait to see if there’s more to her story.
“I didn’t clue in at the beginning what was going on. Josiah encouraged me to run away from home. He knew about my father. He pretended to be a concerned friend. Told me he loved me.” Her Texan accent remains strong, and her mouth lifts into a one-sided smile, sadness drowning out any hint of humor. “I was so desperate for someone to love me, I fell for his lies. We didn’t have much money. So he convinced me to have sex with a friend of his. Just this one time.”
Hugging Peony’s picture and Poppy, she returns to the windows overlooking the backyard. “I didn’t want to. He told me I would do it if I loved him. So I did. The next week, it was a different friend he wanted me to have sex with. Again, if I loved him, I would do it…for us.”
She traces her fingertip over the glass, as if drawing a small picture. “And then came the threats. If I didn’t keep having sex with his friends”—she stops drawing to one-handedly finger quote “friends”—“he would tell the police I was selling my body for money, and I would go to jail. He then pressured me into doing other things that would get me in trouble if I was caught. Like stealing.”
She leans her temple on the window. “I wanted to escape, but I didn’tknow how. I tried to leave him once. He beat the living shit out of me and told me the next time I tried that, he would kill me.” Her voice grows steadily distant, like she’s back with the man she once thought loved her. “He introduced me to another of his friends. Only this friend, he didn’t want me to have sex with. He was Josiah’s boss. And now The Bear—Bernard—was my boss. But I wasn’t his only girl. He had a bunch of other girls he pimped out.”
Christ.Once I get my daughter back, I’m never letting her out of my sight…until she’s at least fifty.
I’ll make sure she knows every day that she’s loved, so she doesn’t fall prey to assholes like the ones Athena is describing.
Even though what she’s telling us has nothing to do with Peony and Zara, it’s like watching a train wreck mid-collision. I can’t turn away.
“I was stuck in this hell for years. Day in, day out, never knowing what to expect. Sometimes, I was beaten so badly by a john, I couldn’t work for a week. Other guys weren’t so bad. They were just there for the sex. One guy…” A soft smile lifts the corners of Athena’s mouth, but she still doesn’t look at us. She continues tracing on the window. “One guy was worried about me because of the bruises on my body. He asked me if I was okay. I thought maybe he would help me escape. He didn’t. He walked out the door afterward and never looked back.”
The movement of her finger against the glass slows, becomes more delicate. “And then one day I met Kenda. I was at a party, and she was there. I didn’t know at the time she was doing research for an investigative piece she was working on. She’d hoped this would be the big break she needed and was planning to expose the sex trafficking ring I was part of.”
“Investigative piece?” I frown. “Why not tell the police what she suspected? Or had she planned to do that too?”
“She would have told the police, but she didn’t know who to trust. Some of The Bear’s best clients were cops.” Athena draws a heart on the window.
“What is Bernard’s last name?” Noah asks her.
Her shoulders twitch with a small shrug. “I don’t know. I never heard anyone say it. Like I said, it’s probably not even his real name.” She fogs up the window with a long breath. “Kenda convinced The Bear he hadnothing to worry about with her. He had no idea she was a reporter, which is why she was allowed to talk to the girls, even though she was hired as the housekeeper.”
Athena erases the heart on the window with the heel of her hand. “I’d known for a couple of years by that point I was gay, but it took time at first for me to realize it. I thought my disinterest in men was due to my situation. I never said anything about it to The Bear. It wouldn’t have made a difference. As long as I did as I was told, as long as I still brought in money, he didn’t care what my sexual preference was.
