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My jaw was slack, and so my first assumption was that I'd been drooling on myself, but as the drip, drip, drip continued, I realized there was too much of it, whatever it was, for that.
Had I thrown up on myself? I wondered. It seemed as likely as anything. My mouth tasted foul enough for it, acid burning in my throat.
I kept my eyes trained straight ahead, at the stained yellow wall in front of me as I took a shaking hand and wiped my chin. I held it up all the way to eye level, not lowering my gaze even an inch to see what it was.
Red. So much red, but as I saw it I was not completely surprised. I felt at my lips, and to this day I wonder, I honestly have no recollection, which one of us had ravaged them, bit them bloody, that monster in his depravity, or me, in my anguish?
What do I do now? I thought. Call the police? Bitterness filled me at the thought.
Someone was pounding on the front door. I went from numb to trembling again.
But then I heard a frantic Dante calling, "Scarlett! Are you in there? Scarlett!"
I broke. Into a million pieces. In relief. In renewed horror.
I started sobbing and made my unsteady way to the door, fumbling with the lock in my rush to let him in.
Some part of me had shut off, slipped inward, gone dead, perhaps, for the duration of the nightmare.
It took seeing Dante's face to bring me back, to realize, and start to deal with the horror of what had happened to me.
A dozen expressions flitted across his face as he took me in. First shock, then horror, then anguish as he started to connect the dots.
I looked down at myself. I was naked, which I'd as good as forgotten, but that wasn't the worst of it.
Bruises were already mottling my torso, my wrists and ankles raw, open wounds from struggling against the ropes.
And there was blood, a lot of it, all over my thighs.
I crumpled with a sob.
With a low sob of his own, he caught me.
He didn't ask me anything at first, just held me, stroked me, carried me inside, sat down on the couch and tried, around his own helpless sobs, to calm me down.
And when I'd quieted, and was just lying against him, hoping that I never had to leave his arms ever again for my whole miserable life, he asked me only one thing.
"Where is he?" His quiet voice bled like murder into the air.
Of course he'd connected the dots as soon as he'd seen the state I was in. Harris's car was right outside.
I started trembling anew. I shut my eyes and leaned heavily into him. I couldn't bring myself to answer him, and after a time he tried to stand, but I clung to him and cried.
It had sunk in. What had happened to me.
But more than that. What I'd done.
Who I was and what I'd done.
Eventually he had to pick me up and take me with him. I didn't make it easy for him to search my grandma's house, but at least there wasn't much to search.
It took him extra time to get my door open while still holding me clutched to his chest, but he managed.
I didn't look, but his reaction was far calmer than I'd expected.
His breathing barely changed as he took in the cop I'd killed.
"I'm going to jail," I said wretchedly.
