Have you ever been betrayed by someone? Someone you continued to trust even when everyone and everything told you not to, but you loved them so much that you couldn’t stop believing until the truth came smacking you full across the face? That was how I felt as I watched Heather allow Ray Fortini to chain her, hit her, and debase her in multiple ways as if she were a kind of personal blow-up doll.
I hadn’t wanted to believe that Heather had lied about her relationship with Viktor, even after Alison found the evidence. I’d excused her behavior the way we all do with our friends—brushing away the inconsistencies in character, finding plausibility in the implausible because we want to believe that the people we love are incapable of ugliness. She had to have truly feared Viktor in order to shoot him, that’s what I’d told myself. He’d brutalized her for so long that these particular dates and times that Alison was so hung up about were just that—particulars that didn’t matter.
Except they weren’t, not when they were attached to these videos. Alison clicked open video after video, going back in time, proving from the dates affixed to each that Heather had been in the relationship for months. Alison was furious, but eager to make a connection between the lies she’d already uncovered and this new information, determinedly checking the dates on each clip.
I could only stare, fascinated, at the footage of Heather with her lover. Who was so ordinary, so uninteresting, with his over-the-top bed and cheap box of toys. It was like watching a low-budget porno, and after seeing a lot of clips, I thought that was probably exactly what they were. If we searched long enough I was sure we’d probably find some PayPal site set up to commoditize Ray Fortini’s home movies.
And any attempt to paint Heather as a victim of this second man didn’t work. It was clear that she was a willing and eager participant in this relationship, and I was surprised to realize that I was as much disappointed by the tawdriness of the whole thing as I was by the deceit itself.
“Look, this one is from September,” Alison said, pausing another video. “See what he’s doing?”
She’d paused on a frame of Fortini holding Heather’s arms above her head, zooming in on his hands gripping her wrists.
“I’ve seen more than enough,” I said, turning away. “Just delete them.”
“This is just before I saw that bruise on her wrist,” Alison said in a low voice. “Jesus, I was so wrong.”
What was the point in rehashing it? We’d been duped. The whole thing was sickening. “Delete them,” I repeated, going back to finish searching his fire safe for anything else incriminating. “We need to get out of here.”
“I will in a minute,” Alison said, distracted.
In the back of the fire safe, in a manila envelope, I found print versions of the photos that Fortini had taken of us, as well as a USB drive. “Look, you were right, the bastard had backups,” I said, taking them to the alcove to show Alison. She had her own phone plugged into the side of his computer. “What are you doing?”
“Taking some insurance,” Alison said. “If we delete all of this she could just deny knowing him.”
“You’re copying her sex tapes?”
“And some of his others,” she said, nodding at the screen, and that’s when I realized that the woman in this one was different.
Alison said, “Do you suppose Heather knows that he’s done this with a lot of other women?”
I shouldn’t have been surprised; of course there were others. Men like Fortini never have just one lover if they can manage two or three. Other women, but the same sex acts, the same bad camera angles and centerfold close-ups.
My phone suddenly rang, startling both of us. “Hello?”
“Get out now!” Sarah screamed, so loudly that Alison heard her. “He’s chasing me—I need help.”
Alison yanked the cord from her phone and began hitting keys, windows closing, one after the other, on Fortini’s computer screen, while I said to Sarah, “What happened? Where are you?”
“I’ve got the phone, but he saw me. I’m hiding in an alley, but he’s looking for me—he’s on his motorcycle.”
“Oh, shit,” I said, panicking as I watched Alison typing as fast as she could, windows disappearing and new ones reappearing. “Just stay hidden. We’ll be there soon.”
“Are you kidding me? I need you now!” Sarah cried. I heard a noise in the background, the revving of a motorcycle, and then the line went dead.
“Sarah?” I tried to call her back, but it went straight to voice mail. I grabbed the file with Fortini’s personal information and stuffed it back in the safe, then locked it and shoved it back under the bed. “We have to go,” I said to Alison, “just delete those files.”
“It’s better if his whole system crashes.” She sounded distracted. I ran the key back to the kitchen, stuffing the drugs and the money back inside the fake head of lettuce and ramming the plastic ball back in the fridge.
“Are you done?” I called, quickly surveying the apartment. “We need to leave.” I thought I heard an engine in the distance and ran to the window that overlooked the street to check, but I couldn’t see anything.
“Done!” Alison called from the other room. I ran back to see her powering off the machine.
“Everything’s erased?”
“Yes, let’s go.”
We set the door to lock behind us, clattering down the metal steps as fast as we could, no longer caring if anyone heard us, so anxious to get away that I tripped as we came down the last step, twisting my ankle and falling hard on my right side.
Alison was trying to help me up when we heard the rumbling noise of a motorcycle and saw a single headlight racing toward us down the street. We couldn’t get across the street to our car without being noticed.
“This way, quick.” Alison hauled me to my feet, and with her arm under my shoulders she pulled me into a row of scraggly trees and overgrown bushes that ran along the back of the property.
The engine noise got louder and then the light was coming down the opposite side of the house. I’d forgotten about the parking out back. We pushed farther into the scrub, Alison yelping as she brushed against a prickly bush, both of us trying to hide from the blinding light of Ray Fortini’s Harley.
The light switched off as the engine stopped, and there was nothing but the silent dark and both of us breathing a little easier. Until we heard the low growl a few feet away. There was a dog chained in the backyard next door. We hadn’t noticed him when we’d gone inside the apartment; maybe he hadn’t noticed us. He saw us now or smelled us, pulling hard against the chain that tethered him; we could hear it slither and clank against the ground. The growl got louder, a sound that made the back of my legs tighten in anticipation of his jaws.
We couldn’t see Ray Fortini, but we could hear his feet crunching on the gravel driveway. “Shut up, King,” he said, crossing close to the place we were hidden on his way around the side of the house to his apartment. The dog barked, a small yip to start with, as if King were warming up, and then louder and progressively more aggressive. There was a light on the edge of the building and we could see the silhouette of Ray Fortini, shielding his eyes and trying to peer into the trees. We were crouched behind an overgrown evergreen shrub, holding as still as we could, although my ankle was throbbing so much that I rolled forward onto my knees, feeling the ground, hard and icy, beneath my fingers.
The dog kept barking, we could hear it whipping itself into a frenzy, and we saw Ray Fortini dig in his pocket for something, and we both tensed. I felt Alison’s hand on my arm and thought she was trying to steady me, but then I realized she was scared.
He stepped forward, out of the light, and we had no idea what he was doing until we spotted a tiny red glow. A cigarette. I could smell it as he stepped closer, and Alison’s hand tightened on my arm. I tried to breathe shallowly and silently, hoping that the dog’s incessant barking would cover any noise we were making.