His expression didn’t change. Nor did his posture. But she knew he was changing tactics even before he spoke. Because she was trained to hear the things people didn’t or couldn’t say. To see the things that they didn’t know were there.
Except for where Kenneth Freelander was concerned. That’s what love had done to her. It had used her to prove the truth in the old adage “love is blind...”
“My plan doesn’t end with getting you to a safe house.”
She was listening.
“A batterer will batter if he’s met with the provocation that brings out that tendency in him,” he continued.
Now he was in her territory. “Unless he’s had counseling and learned how to redirect those tendencies,” she said. “Or to recognize the circumstances that prompt them and distance himself from them before they get out of hand.”
Not all abusers were destined to lives of abuse. Science told her that. And she believed it, too. On a professional level. Personally, she couldn’t be objective...
“Kenneth has had no counseling.”
He’d know what she’d had no way of finding out.
Bloom looked at his shoes. Those uneventful black loafers. And flashed back to a gray-and-white-tiled floor. Industrial tile. Hospital floor tile. She’d been in the emergency room. Unable to make herself look up from the floor. She’d been too drugged to care enough to try.
And too embarrassed by what had happened to her to face another human being eye to eye. She’d listened as medical personnel spoke to her. She’d heard the voices. The kindness in them had only made everything that much more difficult to bear. She hadn’t felt like she’d deserved their kindness. She’d been a fool. The worst kind. Because she’d had the intelligence to know better...
His shoes had been her indication that someone else had entered the room. He’d said something about being on call for the High Risk Team. It was the first she’d heard the term. And had thought he was a doctor. Called in either because she was suspected to have brain damage and could hemorrhage. Or because they’d thought she was a suicide risk.
“I’m Detective Larson,” he’d said then. “And I need you to look at me.” There’d been no kindness in his voice. No demand, either, really. She’d never understood why that voice had moved her. Why she’d raised her head.
Or why she’d instantly trusted him.
“Bloom?”
She looked at him.
“I’m going to see that Kenneth is met with the provocation that will force him to hang himself.”
“That’s entrapment.” She was in his territory, but she’d learned a lot since her debut in the court system. Knowledge was power. And inner power led to healing. With her IQ Bloom had had a head start to healthy living.
“Not if it’s done right,” he said. “I’ve already spoken with a detective who is also on the High Risk Team...”
She knew the term now. Intimately. The team, comprised of industry professionals—if you could call intimate partner abuse an industry—was designed to prevent death due to domestic violence.
She’d been in danger of death. At Kenneth’s hands. The thought came with the same internal hiccup as always. It was possible her mind would never completely wrap around that truth. She could live with hiccups.
“...Chantel did some undercover work for the team a few months ago...” Sam was saying.
Bloom didn’t like that she’d missed part of what he’d been saying. A residual from her drugged days. Already he was sending her back.
Kenneth. And Sam, too.
“I read recently about this village in Northern Kenya,” she said, consciously switching focus, taking control of her thoughts. “Umoja, that’s the name of the village...”
She looked Sam Larson in the eye, challenging him to leave her alone.
“It’s fully inhabited by women and children, only. No men allowed.”
His eyes narrowed.
“And before you doubt its veracity, you should know that it’s thriving, as much as any village in that region thrives. It was founded in 1990 by fifteen women who’d been victims of rape. In Kenya, when a woman is raped, she is blamed, considered unclean and unfit for marriage. If she was unlucky enough to be married at the time of the rape, she is oftentimes subjected to beatings by her husband...”
Drawing a shaky breath, Bloom turned her head, focusing on the flowering bush several yards away. Filled with reds and oranges, the plants reminded her of the paintings in her office. Bold. Vibrant. Sunrise and sunset. The circle of life.
“Women are survivors, Detective,” she said when she could speak calmly. “Many of us have not yet learned our strengths. We aren’t raised to know about the core of steel inside of us. But it’s there. We nurture. We spread softness, and care for our own, but don’t mistake us as being incapable of taking care of ourselves.”
“When I first met you, you said there was no one I could call,” he responded immediately. “That you had no family close by. But I need to know if you have any family, period. Anyone Freelander might contact.”
The tiny voice crying out inside her had to be diminished. She would not crumble. Would not allow Kenneth to have squeezed the heart and soul out of her. She was smart, but she was so much more than a mind that made people curious. Her whole life people had concentrated on that part of her. Her own parents had shipped her off to a university to be raised as a lab rat.
No...she reined in her thoughts again. Those were Kenneth’s words, hurled at her in one of his many verbal attacks when she’d been to blame for something he’d done. Carl and Betty, as she’d always called her parents, had loved her to distraction. And had given her some of the best memories of her life during her summer vacations and holidays with them. Betty had sobbed every single time they’d had to say goodbye. And there’d always been moisture in Carl’s eyes, too, as he’d stood there with one hand on the big golden retriever they’d purchased the year after she left and who’d been a “child” more suited to the older couple, and the other hand at his wife’s waist.
Maybe, if they’d been younger when they’d had her...or prepared to ever have a child...
“My parents are both alive. And I have an aunt and uncle and some cousins. All older than me.”
She never talked to anyone anymore about who she’d been before she’d attracted the attention of the handsome and charming star of the university psych department.
“Are they local?”
She stared at him. Thinking of Ken contacting Betty and Carl. And knowing he wouldn’t.
“Because if they are, we need to make certain that they’re safe, too...”
“They live in Oklahoma,” she said now, still watching him. “They have a house, and a couple of acres on the farm my father’s family owns.”
Her father and father’s older brother jointly owned and worked the farm. The final decision to ship her off had been made by the two of them. She’d been six.
Sam nodded. “Good.”
She nodded, too. It was good. And maybe in the fall, if her schedule slowed a little bit, she’d make time to spend a week on the farm. To get back to her roots and know that, no matter what, she was okay. Because she mattered to them all.
They didn’t understand her. They were always afraid they were going to do or say the wrong thing. They were intimidated by her. At least her father and uncle were. But they did love her.
And she had to get to