I smile, not even she called me that.
“He knows we’re close, and he’s manipulating you. He’s probably getting away as we speak.”
“No,” I stretch out the word while I grab her gun. “He’s not manipulating me. I know you shot me, and I know it had something to do with Kace, but I don’t understand, why not just split us up? Why not sleep with him and show me pictures? Like normal, sane, manipulative bitches.”
Her eyes narrow on me and the phone. She thinks she’s being recorded, but she’s not. I am smarter than that.
I dig the barrel of the gun deeper into her chest. “Because he didn’t want you?” I ask as I grab the phone and show her the pictures of her nude body. Using the one of her unshaved cooch, spread wide to the camera. I expand and carelessly tilt the phone to the side, to see her face clearly. “Kace isn’t a jungle lover, in case you didn’t know.”
The whites of her teeth flash between the gnarl and the growl. “Eleanor!”
With a click of my tongue, I scroll up to find one of her topless and in purple lace panties. “These are nice,” I point out, then scroll up to the other one of her sprawled out on the bed, ass in the air. “But I like the black ones better. They match your black heart.”
“Stop. Looking. At. Those!” she punctuates every word.
To annoy her, I don’t even acknowledge her by looking up. “Says the woman who watched Kace fuck me on the floor of her office … Don’t bother denying it, I saw the pictures on your album.”
“I didn’t take those.”
“Were they magically delivered by the Leprechaun?” I flip my hand in the air, displaying indifference. “Come on, Frank. I think we’re past being shy.” Now, I glance up at her, the cheeks of her face are splotched with red, and there’s a whole lot more white in her rounded eyes.
Nearly there.
“Did you use a timer for these photos sessions? It must’ve taken a long time to figure out how to get it just right. How many shots does it take to get you looking decent?”
“Kace took them,” she fires back a lie, in a scathing tone.
“No, he didn’t.”
She knows it’s true. “Untie me, and I won’t tell him you lost your mind.”
Oh. We’ve got to the bargaining stage. “I could do that … but I don’t really fucking care what Kace thinks. Right now, I’m interested in your porn star poses.” I flash her another one. “Really, with a dildo? He hates shit like this. You know him, right? I mean, you say you do, so you know he loves live-action, rather than screenplays.”
More than my words, it’s my tone of voice. The pity used to dress up an insult. Bless-your-fucking-wicked-heart style.
I finally give up on the phone, and blankly stare at her. With a flat voice, I ask, “He’s a voracious kind of guy… so he really didn’t have sex with you?” I bite on my teeth and turtle my neck. “Not boding well for you.”
“This is pathetic.” She curls her lips at me, flipping the conversation to me.
She’s good, but I’m better.
“You’re pathetic. Weak. Thousands of women lose their children every day—stillbirths, miscarriages, abortions—yet it takes you three months and therapy to get over it?”
It’s going to take me a lifetime, and even then, I don’t know. “You have no idea what it’s like to lose a child!”
“YES. I. DO!” she shouts back at me.
Whoa. For a second, I’m caught off guard.
“Guess, you don’t know everything, huh?” The wicked grin cautions me to tread lightly. She likes the upper hand, and if it facilitates a confession, I pretend to be shaken while she rattles her chair back and forth. “Tyler wasn’t Kace’s first child,” she enunciates.
I snap my head toward her. “WHAT?”
“I was pregnant, right out of the police academy. I found out a couple of months later while we were both working with other partners.”
“You lost the baby?”
“Kace asked me to have an abortion.”
My heart nearly explodes. My rational brain tells me she’s lying, but nothing about her body tells me otherwise.
She stops rattling to deliver the blow with clarity. “We were twenty-two, just starting our lives together. He said we’d have all the time in the world to have kids. So he made me kill my own baby. But with you, he asked you to marry him.”
“He didn’t make you do anything. The choice is always yours.” I shake my head. “All of this because of Kace? Because you wanted him back?”
“He’s not yours! We had something.” She adjusts her tone and rubs her chin against the material of her shirt. “It was something special.”
“Something that lasted six months isn’t special.” I scoff. “It’s temporary. Negligent. That’s why he never mentioned you.”
“He didn’t tell you because he wanted to keep being my partner. He trusts me with his life. We were friends, capable of turning a one-night stand into passion. We would’ve been lovers again,” she screams, “if you hadn’t come along.”
“No.” I shake my head, ruining her dream the way she ruined mine. “Kace would never be with you. You’re not his type. He had girlfriends before me and after you, but he never went back to you.”
Months of looking into everyone, and I overlooked the person with the most motive. She had only been with him a few months in the past, and years later, she’s targeting me. “You could’ve told on him. Uncovered a lie. Taken your relationship public.”
“Oh, I wanted to! He threatened to stop being my partner if I told you.” She topples herself over, and I contemplate leaving her on the floor, but help her back up.
“Reach into my front pocket,” she says and I do. “Kace left it at my place.”
I glance down at a wide-sized stack of sticky-notes, each numbered like mine. But his handwriting was on about twenty different ones. Looks like Nolan had given him homework too.
“Number fifty, the way she clutches my heart when she looks at me. Number forty-nine, she never sleeps with pants on. Number forty-eight, she snores like a baby bear. Number forty-seven—”
“You memorized these?” I realize she’s saying them verbatim. The back of the sticky pack reads ‘Reasons why I love.’
“Not one time did he say he loved me when we were together, but I knew he loved me. I felt it in my bones.”
“Yeah? Did you feel crazy in your bones too?”
“He was meant to be with me! He would’ve come back if you hadn’t interfered. Sleeping with him at the precinct, threatening his job by spreading your legs where you both work!” She curls her lip in disgust.
“You’re the one sending naked photos to your partner, so I wouldn’t be so quick to judge.”
“Why you?” She shakes her head, not expecting an actual answer. “You have nothing on me. I’d help him forget you in a heartbeat.”
“I must have something better than you, because he chose me.” I check on her zip ties. “So why not kill me? Why not put a bullet in my head and use me as an incubator? You could have raised my baby with Kace. You could have given Tyler a chance to live.” Tears swell in my eyes. “Why him and not me?”