Lily shrugged. “She’s being abused? I don’t know how that’s possible considering she and Alain are… Wait.” The expression on my face gave it away. “Are you saying Alain Domingues is abusing his wife?”
“How often do you trip over a sock you dropped and end up in the hospital for X-rays and stitches?” I asked. “I’ve dropped socks on stairs. It doesn’t usually cause me to go ass over teakettle. She also drove herself because she left in her own car. The nurses all think the same thing—he’s abusing her. Fischer talked to the nurse, the aide, and the doctor and they all said the same thing. Classic domestic abuse and classic denial. Even if you could get her to say she was being abused, there was little chance we could get her out because…well, more bullshit I’m sure. You get the idea.”
I still wasn’t going to say anything about the pregnancy. We’d all agreed on that. No one needed to know.
“Paige? Is being abused?” Miriam’s eyes darted back and forth between me and Lily.
Lily was no help to her because she was staring at me open mouthed as well. “Paige? Domingues? The world’s most driven woman in the foster system?”
“Oh, please, you all know that appearances aren’t everything.” I looked between them, and shook my head. “We all put up fronts. Paige is good at hers. Very good. Fischer and Lincoln were trying to make sense of all this, and did you know that she was raised in the foster system?”
“Raised?” Miriam said.
“Made it all the way through with no home lasting more than a year, and being kicked out at eighteen and one day by the last family.” I sipped the coffee I was holding. “Went to college on a full ride for social work, opened the foster agency when she was twenty-three and met and married Alain at twenty-six.”
“Met and married?” Lily asked.
“Six months.”
The two of them got it right away.
Miriam ran a hand down her face. “First sign of love, she bought in, and let it ride.”
“Exactly.”
“He saw her vulnerability and charmed the panties off her,” Lily whispered.
I nodded. “This is all typical psychology for someone raised totally in the system, but finding an abusive predator is shit luck on her part.”
Grimacing, Lily stared at her drink. “This is all terrible, and made worse by the fact that we can’t do anything about it at all until she’s ready to leave or ask for help.”
Miriam had an elbow on the table and the heal of her hand pressing against her forehead, holding her head up. “How did she let this happen?”
“She would never have seen it,” I answered. “You were in the system, Miri. You know that understanding real love isn’t easy when you’re constantly surrounded by conditional affection. Be good, we’ll love you. Be smart, we’ll clothe you. Behave, we’ll feed you. Be unseen, we’ll give you heat. Bring us a check, we’ll allow you to bathe. It’s all conditioned. Alain probably has the same thing running through her head, but the adult version. Which is just as bad, but for someone used to the conditions, she’d never see it for what it is: control.”
Lily scrubbed her hands over her face. “Shit.” She snapped up and looked at us. “All those bruises, all those cuts, the little winces she would make if she hit a bruise. Even the way she flinches a bit if you move too fast around her. All of it.”
Sipping the coffee, I sighed as I let it wash down and warm me. I put the cup down, and tipped my head up to the ceiling. I’d been thinking about this for a while, and I didn’t want to test my theory on just anyone. But the two people at the booth with me would be the best litmus test I could find. Since they were immortal and knew a hell of a lot more than I did about this right now.
“Paige is number four.”
The air was beyond still at the table. I found the two of them staring at me.
“Isn’t she? She’s the fourth sin. Pride.”
Lincoln
I dropped the binoculars on my lap. “I feel like I’m in a cheap spy novel.”
Fischer looked over at me, and raised an eyebrow. “Cheap? Those are the best binoculars that I could buy.”
“We’re sitting in a car, behind a mansion, spying on a woman we know is abusing her employee.” I blinked at him a few times. “This is almost an Archer episode.”
“Save for that whole Deadly Sins thing,” Bastian mumbled.
“Clam it, Woodhouse,” I grumbled.
“Hey, watch it. Who’s the sharp shooter in this car?” Bastian raised an eyebrow.
“Who’s the one who put succinylcholine in the CPAP?” Fischer asked.
“Are we going to compare murder methods?” I picked up the binoculars again. “Oh, there she is. Jesus Mary and Joseph what is she wearing?”
Bastian and Fischer had their glasses up in the next moment and both of them made gagging noise.
“Oh, honey, that flower print is so not good a look for you,” Bastian said.
“Oh, God, I didn’t even realize, I was too busy gagging on the Crocs she was wearing,” Fischer said.
“Christ, orange? Does she think that coordinates?” Bastian lowered the binoculars. “Thanks, I’ve seen enough. Anyone have a melon baller for my eyes?”
As horrible as her bathing suit-beach robe-croc thing was, I wasn’t taking my eyes off her until I saw poor Hector. The kid was a rail, and while he might have been good looking in the speedo a year ago, he looked like death warmed over now.
The pictures we’d caught on the remote cameras that Reid and Lily had helped us rig up—how was that woman a detective? She was always skirting the law—were absolutely incriminating. For any other situation they would have been perfect for court and a guilty verdict.
But Mrs. Worth was wealthy. Or her husband was. There was no doubt in my mind she’d used that to pay her way out of this, and once she was out, find another pool boy to start in on.
Fischer had done his due diligence on the woman, and this time he was thoroughly disgusted by what he found. She’d been treated more than once for syphilis, which just grossed me out. STI happened, but when you kept getting the same one, you were being stupid.
In the photos from last week, we had all seen the rash on Hector. Which meant he’d caught it from her, because once I dove into who this kid was? There was no way he caught it from someone else.
Both Fischer and Bastian were willing to help Hector with his treatment, so it was time to stop this woman from spreading her diseases all over the neighborhood. While the other two didn’t believe me, I had known women like Mrs. Tricia Worth, and she was rich enough to not give a shit that she was full of germs. I was about ninety percent sure she was spreading her bacteria like some people spread butter on toast.
So here we were, the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future, to scare her out of her filthy ways.
I had added an addendum that if we could prove she was raping Hector, we’d be a little more than frightening to her. Best part of that?
Reid agreed.
Ever since we found that not only did he have a lovely, filthy side, but wasn’t afraid to use his demonic powers for good, I was all about that. Because being a demon meant that he had no qualms about flexing his abilities and moral standards.