Nothing Sacred. Tara Quinn Taylor
ARE THEY DOING?”
The pastor was waiting for her in the kitchen when Martha pushed her way wearily inside an hour later.
“Okay for now,” she said. “I gave them each one of the sleeping pills I got from Dr. Anderson.”
“Sounded like Rebecca took it hard.”
The girl, in her childhood innocence, had done the things Martha had denied herself. She’d yelled. Denying Martha’s words. She’d paced. She’d spat words that Martha hadn’t even known she knew. She’d wished a man dead, over and over again. And, eventually, she’d sobbed her heart out.
“I’m more worried about Shelley,” Martha confessed, sliding into a chair at the kitchen table. The same chair Keith Nielson had sat in almost a year before, after they’d returned from a trip to the same hospital in Phoenix.
Tim had broken his leg. And Martha’s boss had taken over, helping her through the crisis. In spite of the fact that, with his wife thinking about leaving him, he’d been in a crisis of his own. Keith and Martha had kissed that night.
“I was impressed with her sensitivity and maturity,” David Marks was saying.
“She’s scared to death.”
“That’s understandable,” he said, bringing Martha a cup of coffee and sitting down opposite her. It had to be at least two in the morning. “It’ll pass.”
Martha shook her head and took a sip, hoping it was decaffeinated. “Life scares her. That’s why she always acts so tough.”
“She’s lucky she has you.”
Martha smiled tiredly, thanking him for that trite little statement. Because it didn’t feel little at all.
Silence settled over the kitchen. Martha wasn’t ready for it. But knew that it had to come anyway. Activity was over for now.
“I don’t think this was an ordinary incident—if there is such a thing.”
His words fell into the quiet of the night, inciting an anger that had been usurped by exhaustion.
“I’ll agree with you there,” she said, some of the rage infiltrating her tone. “Nothing ordinary about having your daughter attacked.”
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, the lateness of the hour showing in the slump of his shoulders, the redness of his eyes.
Tapping her knee with one finger, he said, “I mean the attack itself,” he said quietly. “It’s suspicious.”
She couldn’t take any more tonight. Ellen had been raped. Couldn’t it just be an ordinary rape? Couldn’t they leave it at that? Martha was too worn out to consider anything more.
“How so?”
She should offer him something to go with the coffee. Toast. Eggs. A good stiff drink.
Except that he was a minister who taught the benefits of moderation.
Did that mean someone who went to his church couldn’t drink in front of him?
Not that she had anything in the house. She’d thrown all the stuff away the day Todd left. Afraid her kids might get into it.
Or that she might.
David Marks was still sitting there staring at the floor, wrinkled shirt untucked from his jeans, not looking like any preacher she’d ever known. He seemed to be choosing his words with care.
“When Ellen didn’t play rough, he stopped being rough on her, as though he only wanted to do that if she did.”
Yup, Martha had been right. Her mind couldn’t take this in, couldn’t analyze, couldn’t even consider what he seemed to be saying.
“Generally speaking, rapists are cowards,” he said next.
And she’d always thought cowards were harmless.
“They pick on victims weaker than them, which gives them a feeling of strength.” He spoke slowly, softly, lulling Martha’s exhausted mind into listening.
“They use that strength to keep their sense of power alive. It feeds on itself. If there’s a break in the adrenaline rush, fear can just as easily take over and feed them, too. That’s why they tell women in self-defense classes to be firm and unafraid. Their show of confidence will often serve to disconnect the attacker from his strength, giving the victim a chance to escape. Sometimes it’s even enough to make the rapist turn tail and run.”
Great, so he was saying that Ellen only needed to yell at the guy instead of getting scared and she’d have been spared the atrocities that had changed her life forever? If Martha had taught her daughter self-defense, then Ellen would still be young at heart and innocent and relatively carefree?
God, Martha didn’t even know if her daughter had been a virgin. She hadn’t been able to bear asking.
“In the same vein, being rough keeps the adrenaline going, gives them courage.”
He wasn’t done yet?
This was far more than she needed to know. Did preachers take some course in Rapist 101? Or maybe Criminal 101? “So what’s your point, Preacher?”
“Ellen’s attacker treated her gently when she quit fighting him.”
Oh. Well, leave it to him to find something to be thankful for. She’d feel irritated with the whole idea—except that she was thankful.
It wasn’t much. But it was something.
“There’s another fact that’s bothering me,” he said.
Now what? Resting a head that felt twice its normal weight on her hand, Martha looked at him. She should be going to bed, letting him get to bed. Just as soon as she could manage to stand up.
“I’m not sure Ellen mentioned this to Greg, but when she first told me the story, she said something about the man trying to give her money when he dropped her off.”
“She told Greg,” Martha said. “He found it odd, too. But not as odd as the guy dropping her off in the first place.” At Ellen’s request, the bastard had driven her daughter to the church when he’d finished with her. Two things to be thankful for on this god-awful night. The preacher was having an effect on her.
But only because she was so weary.
“So we’re dealing with a guy who commits crimes and then feels remorse about them,” she continued. “Greg says it’s almost a classic composite of one of the four basic criminal types.”
David didn’t say anything. Just refilled her coffee cup and stayed with her.
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Being here.” She didn’t know what she would’ve done without him tonight. And didn’t know who else she could have leaned on so completely. He was a man whose job was to see to his parishioners; it was nothing personal. He’d do the same for anyone. A paid professional, just like the doctor who’d attended to Ellen that night. And the sheriff. And the counselor who’d stopped in briefly and was seeing her again tomorrow.
Martha told herself she was at no risk of making more of it than it was—depending on someone again, the way she’d depended on Todd.
She glanced at the clock on the wall. It was six in the morning on the East Coast.
“I have to call her father.”
David grabbed the cordless phone off the wall cradle. Handed it to her.
She stared to dial, then hung up. Tried a second time. She hadn’t talked to her ex-husband since his call weeks before to tell them about the baby. She rarely spoke to him anymore.
But every single time, he made her crazy.
Crazy with pain.