“Should I sit?” Rook asks.
Ronin looks up at me. “We can’t just sit back and take it, Spencer. We gotta try, at least. So she’s gonna talk and you’re gonna find the holes. Got it?”
I nod.
Ronin turns back to Rook. “I want all of it this time, Rook. Not the bits and pieces you’ve told us so far. OK?”
She looks terrified, but Ronin grabs her hand and pulls her onto his lap. “Gidget, we’re on your side. OK? We’re not gonna judge you. But we need you to be honest with us, because if we don’t get this perfect, we might all go to jail.”
He stresses all and when I look over at Ford I can tell he’s picturing what might happen to Ash and Kate if he goes away to prison. At least I’ve kept Ronnie out of this. If I go away, yeah, she’ll be upset. But she’s independent. She’s a fighter. A survivor. Ronnie will be sad, but she’ll be able to move on. She won’t fall into a depression and be left with only her criminal family to rely on. And Rook in prison? God, she’ll never make it.
“Understand?” Ronin asks Rook.
She buries her face in his neck and nods.
“Now,” Ronin says as he lifts her off his lap and sets her down on the couch next to him. “Tell us why you stayed when that guy said he’d help you. Were you pregnant?”
“No,” she says in her small, scared voice. “It was after I lost the baby.”
“Were you scared?”
She shakes her head again. “I was scared,” she says, contradicting her body language.
That’s not gonna fly at all. The jury will pick up on things like that. The defense will jump on that shit so fast. And it’s intuitive. Whether people know it or not, they pick up on the lies with these small cues.“I was scared,” she continues, “that Jon would find me if I left. Come take me back and be even more violent. But the truth is—” She looks over at Ford, then me. “I was embarrassed that I was in this situation to begin with. I was embarrassed that I let him turn me into that person I was back then. I was ashamed that I was part of this sleazy underground world of sex slaves. Even if those girls were there willingly in the beginning and I was duped into believing they were all there because they liked that stuff, I was ashamed to be part of it.”
Ronin looks over at me.
I just shake my head no. Not good enough. “I get it, Ronin. It makes sense. And they can call in experts to testify that Rook’s reaction was normal, because it is. After years of abuse like that, her mind was not right. But we don’t want experts convincing the jury she’s OK. We need Rook convincing the jury she’s OK. We need them to trust her. And this explanation makes her look weak and stupid.”
We sit in silence. Each of us thinking about her mistakes. About all our mistakes.
“I thought he’d do the same things to me,” Rook admits a few seconds later. “I thought that guy was lying and he was gonna take me somewhere far away and sell me. Or rape me. And yeah, Jon was a monster. But he was the monster I knew. He made me have sex with him and he beat the shit out of me, but he never let anyone else abuse me. So I thought this cop friend was just another one of Jon’s business associates. I mean, probably deep down I knew he wasn’t. But the paranoia took over and once that idea got in my head, I couldn’t get it out.” She looks over at me. “I swear to God, Spencer, I know it’s sick, but I just figured I was better off understanding my place in Jon’s world than taking a chance on this stranger. I didn’t want to go through that again. I didn’t want to have to accept that my life was changing and it was only getting worse. I could deal with the fact that one man raped and beat me, but anyone else doing it but Jon would break me completely. I just couldn’t take the chance that he’d be nice.”
Ronin pulls her close and wraps a protective hand around her head. Then he looks up at me with questions in his eyes.
“Better. That’s better. Much better than the first one. It’s still a pretty bad answer, but it makes her look sympathetic instead of weak.”
“Pam.” All our heads collectively turn to Ford as he talks into his phone. “Find me the best witness prep specialist you can. I need them delivered to Fort Collins by Friday.” He stops to listen. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll cover all costs.” He presses end on the phone and then lets out a deep breath.
“I don’t want to cheat,” Rook says. “I don’t want to have to lie to win anymore.”
I agree. And I think Ford and Ronin feel the same way. We can’t go on living like this. We can’t. This shit needs to be settled.
“It’s not cheating,” Ford says calmly. “The defense is using the same tactics. And I’m sure the Feds will have you talk to witness prep anyway. We’re just gonna get our own. To protect our interests only and f**k the rest of them. OK?” He looks over at me, then Ronin. “Because those guys in that courtroom do not give two shits about Rook and how this will affect her. They want to win. And if they have to make her look like an evil slave seller and put her behind bars in the process, they will.”
No one says anything after that, just a few awkward moments of silence.
“OK, on to new business,” Ford says. “Enough of this ‘we’re out’ crap. We’ve got a new job going down tomorrow, Spencer, come up with a plan.”
It’s absurd. It’s just totally absurd to talk about honesty and truth in one breath and then plot out how we’re gonna slip a spy cam out of my competitor’s garage in the next.