Vicious Carousel (Suncoast Society #25)(40)

“Maybe I should apply to stores,” she said. “Get something while I’m waiting.”

“For starters,” Eliza said, “it’s too soon. You need to heal up. Even if that’s what you end up having to do, no offense, it’s going to be hard to talk someone into hiring you when they see that goose egg. That might sound harsh, but it’s the truth. They don’t know you or your history, or that this is a one-time occurrence that won’t happen again. They might worry that you’ll be calling in more than working because of an abusive boyfriend or something.”

“True.”

“And what did Tilly tell you to do?”

Betsy smiled. “Keep applying online.”

Eliza pointed at her laptop. “Then get to it, young lady. This is the Tilly Says show until she says it isn’t.”





On Friday, Betsy dressed in one of her few pairs of older jeans and a T-shirt before Ross and Loren drove her out to the industrial complex Kel owned. He and Mark Collins met them there, in the vacant unit where they’d left all the stuff they’d moved from the apartment.

“Okay,” Mark said. “All you do is say keep, or toss. Let us handle the rest.”

Betsy sank onto one of the two scarred dining room chairs that matched the discount-store table. Piled near the unit’s door, there actually didn’t look like there was a whole lot. Yes, the apartment had been small, but dwarfed by the cavernous empty bay, it looked like less than she’d even had at her previous apartment, which had been even smaller by comparison.

Trying to think ahead, knowing there were some things she might need to keep, she helped them whittle the pile down to about half its previous bulk. The discarded items went into a large Dumpster, with a few going into boxes for Kel to drop back by the apartment and leave locked inside, with her key. The remaining items Kel was going to move into the unit where his office and spare apartment were because he had a prospective renter wanting to look at that unit tomorrow.

Ed had joined them to let her know he’d been interviewed by a Tampa TV station. He also assured her that even though her name wasn’t on the apartment lease, since she’d changed her driver’s license to that address and had lived there for several months, she met the legal definition of being a resident. As such, while Jack could try to come after her legally and sue her, it was doubtful he would be able to because she could claim the items were hers. And yes, some of them were. Or, had been, before he’d confiscated them and claimed ownership of them, and her.

Retribution would be especially difficult for Jack now with the restraining order against him. An attorney would have to go through Ed to contact her, and Ed had already promised her that he would thwart any attempts along those lines in the most expensive, costly, and time-consuming ways possible, so that any attorney Jack might be able to afford to hire in the future wouldn’t even want to touch the case.

“Realistically,” she asked, “what are the chances of him getting out on bail?”

He shrugged. “Doubtful,” he said. “But I’ve seen strange things happen before. The judge already denied one bail reduction request. I can promise you that I will do my damnedest to make sure the prosecutor buries whatever poor PD he draws under a mountain of paperwork. I know the woman assigned to your case. She’s got a great track record of negotiating pro-victim plea deals for domestic violence cases. And the few that go to court, she nearly always wins them.”

“Jack’s not going to want to just roll over.”

“Maybe not,” Ed said, “but if he doesn’t, he’ll wish he had by the time this is over.”





Betsy had been sitting on the couch with Loren and Ross and watching the local evening news when Kenny and Nolan arrived home almost at the same time.

That was when a story caught her attention.

“In Sarasota, John Adams Bourke was arrested early Sunday morning on charges of domestic battery, assault, and false imprisonment.”

Her blood chilled, everyone falling silent as the female anchor from the Tampa station continued. An evidence picture of the chain, where it had still been bolted to the wall, flashed on the screen as the voiceover continued.

“Police reports state he’d kept his live-in girlfriend, Elizabeth Lambert, chained against her will like a slave. She was finally able to escape from the apartment late Saturday night after allegedly suffering a brutal beating by Bourke, and called friends for help.”

The screen changed again, to video of Barbara Stallings being interviewed. “The victim in this case is in hiding out of fear, and rightfully so,” Stallings said. “In addition to past injuries, in the most recent attack she’d suffered a concussion, facial lacerations and injuries, and other wounds consistent with a brutal assault. Our office plans on prosecuting this case to the fullest extent.”

The reporter interviewing her noted, “The public defender representing the defendant states this is a case of Fifty Shades kind of consensual sexual play.”

Stallings looked like she wanted to slug the man interviewing her, but she pursed her lips together before finally answering. “There was nothing consensual at all about the kind of severe facial injuries the victim suffered. She had a concussion, required stitches, one eye swollen shut. There is a huge difference between some rough consensual sex play and being beaten up and chained against your will. And I’m sure there’s not a jury in the world who will disagree with the state’s case there.”