Tonight, with the rain falling down, quickly accumulating beneath our boots and creating rivers over what had been hardened packed dirt, the light was gone.
Darkness won.
I now knew hate—to my core.
As Laurel removed objects from her first-aid kit and injected something into Lorna’s arm, my heart hardened. As my finger skirted over my wife’s bruised and battered face, the organ that had recently beat in my chest metaphorically stilled. As I scanned her body, covered in more contusions and lacerations, my once-functioning heart cracked, its shards shattering as I asked my sister-in-law the question I wasn’t certain I could handle being answered.
My eyelids blinked away the rain and my nostrils flared as I worked to keep my rage from the woman tending my wife. “Was she...?” I forced the words. “Was she sexually assaulted?”
Laurel’s blue eyes met mine. “Reid, I can’t answer that without a rape kit.” Lorna’s shirt was now raised as Laurel applied an antibiotic lotion to the multitude of bites. We both turned our attention to the panties Lorna was still wearing.
“Do you want to see if she’s injured?” she asked.
Exteriorly, there was no blood on the material.
I shook my head. “Fucking...I can’t.”
“Do you want me to?”
Inhaling, I nodded and turned away toward the blowing storm. The precipitation pelted my face and skin as punishment for my failure to protect the woman I loved.
My gaze went out to the vast landscape. I couldn’t continue to watch Laurel as she cared for Lorna. It wasn’t that I hadn’t seen my wife naked a million times. It was that if I turned and saw visible signs—any sign at all—that not only had my wife been battered almost beyond recognition but also raped, I knew that I would never escape the dark. I would be captive in it forever.
It wasn’t that I’d love Lorna any less if Laurel’s answer was affirmative. That never even occurred to me. It was that the red currently shading my vision in waves of crimson would be nothing compared to the blood I’d spill for her.
Laurel’s hand came to my arm. “You may turn back.”
When I did, Lorna appeared as she had seconds earlier, except that now her shirt was again over her breasts and torso. I didn’t speak but instead turned to Laurel. I swallowed as emotions mixed with rain blurred my vision.
“I can’t be one hundred percent certain without a kit,” she said, “but while Lorna has bruising on her hips, I don’t see obvious trauma in her perineum.”
I gulped large breaths as if I’d just breached the surface of the water after descending into a deep underwater dive. “I-I would still love her.”
Laurel nodded. “I know that. You’re a good man.”
Would she believe that if she knew my thoughts of revenge?
“Lorna’s going to need that,” Laurel went on. “She and Araneae both. I hope and pray that with all they’ll face and deal with going forward, rape isn’t one of them.” Her lips curled upward into a grin that forgot to tell her eyes she was smiling. “No matter what they face, they won’t do it alone. From the first time I met Lorna, when we were kids, I knew she possessed the strength to survive whatever life threw her way. She already has overcome so much. She isn’t alone. You’ll help. We all will.”
I swallowed, trying to push away too many emotions.
How could a cold heart also have feelings?
“She’s alive,” I said as a reassurance to myself. “That’s what matters.”
“Yes, and she’s going to stay that way. After I get her comfortable, we need to get her back to the ranch. I have some medications back there, and I know Seth also does. There’s a regular mini-hospital setup by the bunkhouse. You wouldn’t believe the injuries that can happen on a ranch—from broken bones to snake bites. We’ll get Lorna on an IV with what she needs and call the doctor back.”
I nodded.
Laurel turned to me. “We can also have the rape kit done if you want.”
My thoughts were all over the place.
I wanted to know for certain, and at the same time, I didn’t want to know.
The one thought that prevailed was untainted hatred for whoever did this to my wife.
I couldn’t answer Laurel’s question—if you want.
Was it a matter of want?
The moment the kidnappers took Lorna, their death sentence was sealed. Due to the additional evidence of her injuries, creative techniques of painful torture would precede their death, one that would eventually be their relief.
I watched for a moment as Laurel continued her work. When she looked up at me with her hair and clothes now as drenched as mine, I asked, “If it were you...” I tilted my chin toward the back seat of the truck. “If you were there, the one injured, would you want the kit done? Would you want to know?”
As rain dripped from her long hair, Laurel’s lips formed a straight line and her blue eyes blinked against the rain. “I can’t make that decision for you or Lorna. We could wait until she wakes, but by then there’s a chance it would be too late.”
“I’m not asking you to decide for Lorna. I’m asking what you would want. Would you want to know?”
She took a deep breath, the fabric of her dress pulling the wet fibers tight. “Even knowing what I know about the invasiveness of the kit, I would want to know.”
“When we get back,” I said, making my decision, “ask the doctor to do it but not to give me or you the results. I want them sealed, and when Lorna is better, if she, like Araneae, doesn’t remember and wants to know, we’ll have her answer.”
Laurel nodded.
“The result will not fucking make a difference in how I feel about her. I don’t want her to ever question that. But if she wonders, she should be able to get the answer.”
“We can do that,” Laurel said. “When do you think she’ll be ready for that answer?”
I looked again at the beautiful, battered woman I loved more than life itself. “I don’t know. Will she be like Araneae and not remember, or will she wake with all the horrible memories of how she ended up like this?”
“I guess,” Laurel said, “we won’t know until she wakes. We’ll all take this a day at a time.”
I watched Laurel gather more items from her kit. “Will it be much longer before we can head back to the ranch?”
“Not too much longer.” Laurel looked past me to the capos’ car. “What’s happening with Mason?”
I turned, knowing immediately what Laurel meant. Tension rippled off of him as he stood with his arms crossed over his chest, his neck stiff, staring into the back seat. It was then that I remembered the other woman found with Lorna.
“Maybe it’s about the other woman,” I said.
Trudging through the mud, I stepped closer to my friend. “Is she...” I bent down and looked at the other woman. Placing my fingers on her cold neck, I did as I had done in search of Lorna’s pulse.
This time there was none.
Not only was this woman dead, but with her emaciated appearance, it seemed as if she were a skeleton who death had finally claimed.
“Fucking dead,” Mason replied.
The dome light in the car illuminated the woman’s gaunt features; indented dark circles caused her eyes to appear sunken and her thin skin looked translucent. It took me a moment to see beyond her obvious gaunt exterior to the woman as a whole. I turned to Mason. “Why does she look familiar?”