A Harmless Little Game (Harmless #1)
By: Meli Raine
“They really never prosecuted anyone,” I say. It’s not a question. I know the answer. I have to say it, though. Say it to someone. I don’t ask it like a question, but the inquiry is still there.
She shakes her head slowly. “No. You were taken to the hospital. They did a rape kit.” She paused, composes herself, then continues. “Once your mom and dad were called, everyone was shooed out. Me, Mandy, Jenna and Tara tried to see you.”
“And Drew?”
She frowns, her nose wrinkling a little. Suddenly, she looks nothing like Anya at all. “I don’t...” She shakes her head, as if trying to recall a memory. “I don’t remember him being there.”
“Is it true that Mandy, Jenna and Tara turned against me? Said something about me to the press?”
She pales. “You know that. Good.” She cringes. “I mean, good that I don’t have to break it to you.”
Oh, there’s no good here. “So it’s true.”
She mutters an expletive. “I figured someone else would have told you by now. That maybe that’s why you were in that...that place for so long.”
“Huh?”
We frown at each other.
“I think we need to start at the beginning,” Jane says slowly.
“I thought we were.”
“Yeah,” she says, tilting her head, studying me. “So did I. But I think I need to go way back. Back to finding you.”
My jaw clenches. “Right. Go ahead. I can handle it.”
She blinks hard, then says, “I was at the party, but left right before the police say the attack happened. I got sick, and needed some food, so Mandy, Jenna, Tara and I all went to get tacos. We asked you if you wanted to go with us, but you were on the couch with Drew and just gave us this half-hearted wave.”
I rack my brain to remember. “I did?” I have no recollection of that. I can close my eyes and remember everything up to a certain point.
Then it all goes blank.
And then I wake up on the island.
“I’ve run through that night in my mind a thousand times, Lindsay,” she says, wrapping her palms around her cooling coffee, her eyes unfocused. She leans closer and lowers her voice. “There was no reason to worry about leaving you. It was you and Drew on the couch. Stellan—”
I flinch. I haven’t heard his name in four years. Stellan, Blaine and John.
There. I thought their names. Stacia would be so proud.
Jane frowns. “Er, they were there. They’d never—I mean, no one had ever had a problem with them, and your boyfriend was graduating from West Point. Drew’s not exactly a wimp.”
“Right,” I say weakly.
“I wish I could go back in time and make you come with us.”
“Me, too. But we can’t rewrite the past.” Stacia taught me that phrase. Funny how it comes out now.
“We went out for tacos,” Jane continues. “We were gone for a while. The place was busy. But I had left my car at the party. Mandy, Jenna and Tara dropped me off. I ran in to use the bathroom and found the place empty. I rushed to pee and get out of there. The vibe in the house creeped me out. Then I heard a weird...” Her voice chokes off. “A weird groan.”
Someone has put an elephant on my chest.
Her eyes narrow, questioning me. Then she asks, “You sure you can handle this?”
I take a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Yeah.”
Her eyebrows pitch down with skepticism, but she continues. “You were naked.” Her face flushes with embarrassment for me. “And tied up with all these brightly-colored scarves. It was disconcerting. And then I realized you weren’t wearing a red scarf. You were covered in blood.”
She closes her eyes and looks like she’s holding her breath. She bites her lower lip. Seconds pass. When she lets it go, I see deep tooth marks.
“And?”
“And what I later realized was semen.”
“Oh.” The word comes out of me like someone has blown, lightly, on a dandelion gone to seed, as if all that was needed was that one puff, enough to spread scores of seeds into the wild.
“I screamed and rooted through my purse for my phone.” Jane puts her hand over her heart. “My mom yelled at me, later, when I told her the story. She said the scream could have brought the attackers back.” She snorts. “Like I was thinking clearly at the time?”
I don’t know what to say. I feel like I’m watching me and Jane from ten feet above us, floating on the ceiling, looking down.
“I called 9-1-1. When emergency services asked me what the problem was, I couldn’t really say it. I just said I’d found a woman tied up and bleeding, and I thought she’d been s-s-sexually assaulted.” Jane’s hand that isn’t holding mine is now shaking. I see it tremor on the table top.
I see it from ten feet away.
“Oh.” A thought occurs to me. “How did you know?”
Jane’s entire body leaps a fraction of an inch into the air. “How did I not know, Lindsay?” she hisses. Then she closes her eyes. “It was, um...” She’s trying to compose herself. I feel sympathy. This must be so hard for her. All my sympathy is radiating to her. I squeeze her hand.