29. Bronwyn

29

brONWYN

Every head turned to me. My stomach dropped forty floors to the basement. What the fuck did I just do?

Detective Winwick looked at Radimir. Then she glanced back and forth between the two of us, maybe trying to figure out our real connection. “Are you sure you have the right night?” she asked. “Think carefully, now.”

She was giving me an out. All I had to do was shake my head and walk away. And Radimir was glaring at me, furious. He wanted me to walk away, too, and let him take the heat.

But I couldn’t do that. Not just because the guy he killed had been a rapist. Because I didn’t want Radimir to go to jail. “I’m sure,” I said.

Detective Winwick pressed her lips together. “Alright,” she said. “Why don’t you sit down and tell me about that night?”

Oh shit. Naively, I’d been hoping that he was with me would be all she needed. On legs that were suddenly shaky, I walked around the couch and sat down next to Radimir, directly across from Winwick.

“What’s your name?” asked Detective Winwick.

“B—Bronwyn. Bronwyn Hanford.”

She smiled encouragingly at me.

Oh my God, I’m about to lie to the police. I’d never even spoken to a cop before. I knitted my fingers together. Wait, that looks guilty. I gripped my knees instead, my palms sweaty. “Um…”

Detective Winwick leaned forward, a slinky cobra ready to strike. I was way out of my depth and she knew it.

I fumbled for a story, my heart crashing against my ribs. We stayed in and watched a movie. No, then she’ll ask which movie. He was working late at the office. He’s a workaholic, that fits. I opened my mouth. No, idiot, I said he was with me and why would I be at his office? I clamped my mouth shut again.

“In your own time,” said Detective Winwick sweetly.

Oh shit, I can’t do this. Nothing I came up with sounded remotely convincing. “Uh…” I saw Winwick’s lips twitch in victory?—

“We were in his car,” I blurted.

Everyone stared at me. “In his car?” asked Winwick.

“Yeah. I’d been to visit my grandmother at the care facility she’s in. A little before ten, I was walking home and... Radimir drove up beside me and offered me a ride home. Except he didn’t take me home. He parked in a side street and fucked me in the back seat.”

Winwick stared at me, not even trying to hide her disbelief. “You and Mr. Aristov were...making love at the time of the murder?”

“I mean…” I swallowed. “I wouldn’t call it making love.” I knew my face was red, but I just went for it, letting the memories spill out. “He ripped my bra off. Licked my breasts. Shoved my jeans and panties down and started fucking me. Hard and deep. But we didn’t stay like that. After a while he turned me over onto my hands and knees—well, just my knees, really, because he was holding my wrists behind my back. By the time we got our clothes back on, it must have been more than an hour.” I stared right into her eyes. “Is that okay, or do you need a blow-by-blow?”

Now she was blushing. “No, that’s...um…” Her eyes searched my face, confused, as if she was convinced by my lie but knew something was off. At last, she sighed. “I’ll be in touch if I need anything else.”

The two detectives filed out. When the door closed, I shut my eyes and flopped back on the couch, a limp jellyfish. The couch creaked as Radimir twisted around and I felt him glaring down at me. I grudgingly opened one eye.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he told me.

“If I hadn’t, you’d be in handcuffs right now.”

He cocked his head to one side. “How did you lie like that?”

“I wasn’t lying, exactly…” I avoided his eyes. “It was a fantasy. I had a fantasy about you, the night we met.”

His voice roughened with lust. “A fantasy with all those details? Me ripping your bra off?”

I got up and stomped over to the kitchen area. “Yes.”

I heard him get up and follow me. “You on your hands and knees and?—”

“ Yes, okay?”

The room went very quiet. I didn’t look at him, but I could feel the glow of pride and lust coming from him. Then: “I had fantasies about you, too.”

My feet turned me around without me willing them to. I looked up at him and his gray eyes were scalding, melting me…

And then suddenly, I shook, a whole-body shiver that left my stomach churning. My whole life, with my folks and then with Baba, I’d always been raised to stay out of trouble. The police only chased the bad people, the criminals, and now suddenly I was one of them, an accessory to fucking murder, I could go to jail, for years and?—

Radimir rushed forward and grabbed me, and I slumped against him. My heart was going faster and faster, out of control, and the shaking wouldn’t stop. “ What’s—Why am I…?”

Radimir crushed me against him. “It’s the adrenaline,” he told me. I could hear the pain in his voice, the guilt that he’d put me through this. “It’ll pass.” And he began to stroke his palms up and down my back. It wasn’t sexual, it was calming. Caring. He pressed his chin against the top of my head and cursed in Russian. Then, “I’m sorry I got you into all this,” he muttered.

He held me like that for a long time and I gradually felt my heart slow. I moved back from him, looking up in wonder. There was another side to him, one nobody saw. I thought back to what we’d been talking about, just before the police arrived. What happened to him and his parents...and was that why he was so cold? I wanted to help him, but he’d made it clear the subject was off limits. I’d have to wait until he chose to go there.

“How did they know?” I asked in a small voice. “The police. How did they know it wasn’t an accident?”

He squeezed my shoulders. “I don’t know. But I’m going to find out.”