Page 112 of The Wicked

Garrett shouldn’t have gone behind my back, but he’d been trapped too, trapped between a man he thought was a family friend and my hazy memories. If I threw away our relationship, Mandell would win yet again.

“I already have.”

I kissed him. It was only meant to be a quick peck, but he tunnelled his hands through my hair and suddenly, the atmosphere got a whole lot hotter. I finally felt whole again, complete, back where I was meant to be. At least, I did until Blue made a gagging noise behind us.

“Okay, we get it, you’re back together. Congratulations. But we have work to do, hotshot, so put her down. Is that coffee?”

“Help yourself.”

“And you brought Danishes too? Fine, you can stay.”

Garrett kept an arm around my waist as we followed Blue back to Aaron’s study, the scene of so much drama last night. Brooke and Deck were both working today, so there were only six of us present, and Aaron opened up the files one at a time for Garrett to view, first the letter and then the videos. With each clip, Garrett’s fingers dug harder into my hip. By the time we got to Mandell, I had bruises and Garrett had a face like a thundercloud.

“Do we know who any of the women are?” he asked.

Blue shook her head. “No. But if we release the tape, they might come forward.”

“I can see some of those girls being paid players as Samantha alleged, but not the woman with Mandell. She wasn’t acting.”

“I don’t think so either.”

“And if you release that tape, her picture’s going to end up all over the news. If she’s been working through the trauma as Gracie has, seeing herself like that will set her recovery back years. Maybe even forever. We want revenge, but I don’t want another woman to get hurt in the process. People will never look at her the same way again.”

“So we blur out her face. This is how we get payback, Dorsey. Graham Mandell had three people killed to prevent this tape from seeing the light of day, and if it’s out there in the public domain, he’ll have no reason to come after Sara anymore. Plus everyone will know what kind of man he is.”

“If you blur out her face, nobody will see the tears. And without a witness coming forward, he’ll say it was consensual or some sort of role play. He’ll twist it and play the victim. Someone recorded a private moment, he’s the innocent party, yada yada yada.”

“What about the voters?”

“Maybe they’ll care, and maybe they won’t. Politics has changed in the past sixteen years.”

“Enough for rape not to matter?”

“Capitol Hill has more drama than a soap opera, and Congress, the Senate, and the White House are a three-ring circus. President Harrison’s ass has its own TikTok account. A dead guy got elected to the state senate in Wisconsin. Folks in Texas chose an ex-gym teacher who got fired for spying on teenage girls in the shower as their mayor, and the polls barely moved when a congressman from Georgia took his mistress on a luxury vacation in Bermuda while his wife was having chemo. There are conspiracy theories about conspiracy theories, and if Mandell put out a statement saying the Deep State had faked the video, too many people would believe him.”

I recalled the Bermuda scandal. The papers had been full of pictures of the congressman’s pasty white pot belly as he frolicked in the ocean with a girl barely out of high school, and he’d still kept his seat. Unless the Mandell video was released a day before voters headed to the polls, I had a horrible fear that Garrett might be right. There was a scarily large cross-section of the population who would pat Congressman Mandell on the back for acting like a Real Man and vote for him anyway.

“And Seth Harless would get off scot-free,” Aaron pointed out. “There’s no evidence against him here.”

“What’s the penalty for homicide in Oregon?” Garrett asked Aaron. “Ballpark?”

Blue snorted. “Asking for a friend?”

“A premeditated double murder in the first degree? Even with your father’s connections, you’d be lucky to see freedom again. Ditto if you’re thinking of hiring someone.”

I tensed because Garrett sounded alarmingly serious. “No, no, no. Don’t even consider it. I just got you back, and I don’t want to lose you again. And what about Gracie?”

Garrett sighed. “I’m frustrated, that’s all.”

“We all are.”

“Someone hired the man at the pool house. Is there any news on his identity?”

“Not yet,” Colt told him.

“We’ll get Harless on something,” Luca said. “He’s committed two serious crimes that we’re aware of, and with the way Mandell acts, there are bound to be more. If we’re not trying to maintain the same degree of secrecy now, we can speak with the police in Roseburg and see what shakes loose.”

“I can take a look too,” Blue offered. “Speak with my guy in DC again.”

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