11. BRECIA

Boulder, Colorado

2 years before

He got ready for his date while April took the girls to McDonald's for dinner.

"Bye, Daddy!" Kimmie called as she and Emma skipped down the hall toward the garage door.

He popped his head out of the bathroom, where he'd been shaving. Then he lifted his hands above his head and growled. "You'd better get in your booster seats before the tickle monster can catch you!"

Kimmie and Emma squealed with delight, and April laughed as he chased the girls out the door and caught them in his arms when the wall of labeled boxes blocked their path, tickling them both until they begged him to stop and promised to eat all of their Happy Meals.

I watched in disbelief.

Grudgingly, I admitted to myself that I understood a little better why April didn't know.

Because if I didn't know what he had done—100% for sure, because well, here I was—I never really would have believed he was capable of hurting someone.

It made it worse, somehow. That he could be the tickle monster and the monster waiting with an extension cord in my side yard at the same time.

I wanted him to be one or the other. Not both.

When the garage door had shut and the house was silent, he opened his phone and turned his music up loud. A playlist called "60s party."

Neil Sedaka.

Roy Orbison.

Paul Anka.

Again, not what I would have expected. Metallica, yes. Korn, definitely. But peppy 60s hits? I watched his eyes as he tapped a razor on the side of the sink and ran a hand over his freshly shaven face, then practiced his smile in the mirror.

Satisfied, he checked his in-app messages—nothing new from Nicole—and grabbed the keys to the blue Kia in the garage.

But as his fingers closed around the doorknob, he suddenly shook his head and turned around.

I followed him downstairs and into his basement office, where he opened the latched top drawer of his desk and pulled out two containers of Tic Tacs.

He opened one of the containers and tapped a few white capsules into the mostly full second container.

I took a few steps closer to get a better look. He whistled "Pretty Woman" as he closed the Tic Tac container, gave it a little shake, and inspected it from the side.

That's when I realized that the capsules he had added weren't shaped like the others. They were round and white instead of oblong and white. And they were scored down the middle.

Rohypnol. I'd seen enough episodes of SVU to know the name by heart.

It was one of the most common date rape drugs.

I felt a sort of fuzzy numbness as he tucked the Tic Tac container into his corduroy jacket. Whistling to himself, he hurried back upstairs and into the garage.

When he opened the driver's side to the Kia, I brushed past him and sat in the passenger side. From atop the neatly stacked boxes in the semi-darkness of the garage, Oscar sat perched, flicking his tail back and forth.

James/Jamie connected his phone to the car's bluetooth and joined in with the last chorus of "Sweet Sixteen" by Neil Sedaka as we pulled away from the house, east toward Denver.

I studied his face, looking for any indication of a red flag. Anything that would tell Nicole not to leave her drink alone. Not to take her eyes off it for a second. Not to trust the chiseled, clean-cut jawline or the warm smile.

There was nothing. Not right now.

It had been exactly one week since he'd slipped through my side gate and waited for me to appear. And it had been almost one year since I had screened his last call.

I never could have imagined the price I'd pay for rejecting him.

That little bottle of Tic Tacs was apparently the price she would pay for inviting him into her life. The price for hoping that maybe he would be the one.

Were there more people like me who had paid that price? More women who didn't want him? Or who didn't realize they wanted nothing to do with him until it was too late?

I forced myself to focus on the road in front of us and kept the rage bubbling inside me at a simmer.

I couldn't afford to waste it.