Friends help you move, real friends help you move bodies.
[TW: Rape, violence]
“Ari, what the shit?”
“I told him. I warned him. I said. You heard. I said. I told him. I’d survived one. I escaped two. I told him. Never again.”
There was no doubt she’d been defending herself. The RapeX was still clinging to his shriveling and bleeding member. Ari bore the bloody evidence of a struggle. She clung with a white-knuckled grip to the kitty-cat key ring that had very obviously been used to stab her attacker multiple times.
Were it anyone else on the floor… there wouldn’t be a problem.
Except this was the high-note senator who had championed Shelters For Survivors. Who used the cause of ending rape in all its forms to gain the women’s vote.
Ari had got in a lucky shot to his neck.
He’d bled out before he could kill her.
Ari was going into PTSD tremors. She got between her and the body. Blocked her sight. “You did good. You survived again. He only got it in once, right?”
Ari nodded.
She didn’t question that Ari wore the RapeX all the time. After the first encounter, it had been her best friend. After the second time… her security blanket. After the third… well… Ari knew and kept all the legal concealed weapons that a person could own.
Senator Whyte had used her story. He knew it. How the hell he thought he could get away with trying something on her and then ignoring every ‘no’ that must have come out of her mouth… was a mystery for the ages.
And then his wife walked in.
“John,” she sighed, “you stupid piece of shit.”
Well. Someone said it.
Pauscha Whyte bit her bottom lip, then turned around and locked the door behind her. “Right. We all know the press would never let this rest until Ari was in jail. They’d hound her to suicide. So. My stupid-ass husband has had a sudden illness. We’re going to sequester ourselves in our private resort for his health. I have lookalikes for the paparazzi. We can fake a gradual decline. Help me with the desk.”
She leaped to action. Shifting the desk away from the rug. Helping Pauscha wrap the rug around the body and, when necessary, gently steering Ari out of the way.
Then she and Pauscha shuffled the body in its rug into the panic room and the freezer therein.
Senator John Whyte insisted on panic rooms. In case his life was in danger. He didn’t think for one second that a paranoid survivor could be any kind of hazard.
Stupid shit.
Pauscha called a lookalike, also called John. “Remember that thing you warned me about? I owe you a box of doughnuts. We need you in here with a big cup of chamomile. Yeah. Ari. There’s still a spot on the carpet.”
She was busy scrubbing it out when the other John arrived. He came bearing tea, a fresh suit, makeup and a squirt bottle with a lable that read Wet Spotter.
She got the tea off John and gave it to Ari. The last thing she needed was someone who looked a hell of a lot like John Whyte in her field of view. What she needed was time apart from the world, therapy, and someone special to help her feel safe.
She and Pauscha would get Ari out. And put up enough of a smokescreen to make sure that murder was not on the menu.
Only once everything was set up and the press was watching the other John lying around in a private retreat… they’d come back and make certain his body was ready for the state funeral following his inevitable demise.
That was what friends were for.
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