Page 15 of Room Nine: Masters of Control

I exchange a look with Dem and follow suit, setting our coffee cups into the sink. “Yeah, meet you in the car.”

We’re pulling into traffic and heading downtown toward the Townsend Agency, an innocuous office building that would shock the neighbors if they knew what kind of arsenal we housed inside the secure vaults within.

“Alright, man. What happened?” Dem leans forward between the seats, breathing down Kerr’s neck.

“She came on to me.” Kerr frowns. “Aggressively. Well, more aggressive than I’d expect from her.”

“Really? And what did you do?” Dem narrows his eyes.

“Fuck you. I backed away, of course. We have an agreement,” Kerr grumbles. “Another reason why you didn’t hear me come in last night. I had a raging hard-on and a need to punch both of you in the face.”

Dem snorts and slides back into his seat.

“I’m not surprised she initiated consider her trauma response to her assault,” I say, pulling off I-94 into thick city traffic. “She has to be in control—of everything.”

“Did you guys figure out what happened to her?” Kerr asks.

“Yeah,” Dem sighs, crossing his arms over his chest. “Some college boy, Brolin Mann, drugged, raped, and dumped her in the backseat of her car a block from the club where he slipped her the HBG. Even though she knew him from school, she didn’t report him since she couldn’t remember clearly what had happened, or if she’d given consent. What she ended up reporting was that he’d been harassing her at school—which might be the reason she dropped out. A few weeks later, he broke into her apartment. He beat and raped her over a weekend, telling her she was his to do with as he pleased. He made her say it out loud before he finally left, and at that point, he thought he had her beat. Instead of running scared, our girl took more than enough evidence to the cops who put him away for twenty years.”

“Twenty years for aggravated assault, rape, and imprisonment?”

Dem shrugs. “His family has money. They tried to buy her off, but she said no.”

“Good for her. Tell me we know where this fucker is?” Kerr grits his teeth, going through all the emotions we went through last night. We’re lucky we weren’t awake when he got home, because both Dem and I were itching for a fight, too.

“He’s down south at Menard. He’s got his first parole meeting coming up next year.”

“Oh, he’s not making that meeting,” I state, my hands tighten around the steering wheel.

My partners don’t respond. Instead, we sit in silence for a few minutes, each of us no doubt fantasizing about the pain we’ll inflict on Brolin and Bobby someday.

“She’s a rock, but she started to crumble last night,” Kerr states, his gaze out the window. “The reality of what she’d done was weighing on her. She didn’t say so, but I think she was thankful we followed her home.”

“You should have talked her into coming back to our house,” Dem throws out.

“Nah,” I say. “She needed the praise you gave her. I suspect you commended her on her home security system?”

“I did.”

“Yeah, she needed that. Especially from guys like us.”

Kerr clears his throat as we pull into the garage under Townsend Agency. “One more thing. When I begrudgingly declined her advance, she asked if it was because of Dem. Then she guessed we might like to share our women. I told her if she really wanted the answer to that, it would be a discussion for another time.”

“Did she seem into it?” Dem asks.

He tilts his head and shrugs. “She didn’t seem turned off.”

I take in a big breath and let it out slowly while killing the engine. “Well, boys, we have a lot to do before we can act on that. Let’s get this meeting over with, and then we’ll go from there.”

* * *

“Gentlemen,” Victor Townsend greets us from the conference room where Reese and Lee both sit. Damn, I guess he called in all his leads.

We walk in and shake hands. “Guess you two are pissed at us.”

“Actually,” Reese chuckles, “we got to sleep with our fiancées last night, so we’re happy. The rest of the team—yeah, you guys should watch your backs.”

Lee grins. “Heard you guys had some fun yesterday.”

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