It was now or never.
Five minutes later, he found himself in a box room sat behind a table with a police officer who introduced herself as police constable Pauline Viney. Her blonde hair was up in a high ponytail, and whenever she turned her head, it swished against the top of her back and Scott got a hit of strawberries. Her eyes were mahogany, soothing as she gazed at him, but he knew they’d only sharpen when she found out what he did as a profession and why he was concerned about this particular individual.
Most people when retelling a version of events began at the beginning, but Scott wasn’t most people, and he started with that day, and everything that led up to the moment of him running down the street in bare feet while the sun was setting.
“A shock collar?” Pauline said.
Scott nodded, touching his throat where the red mark had been from the weight alone, and she peered at his skin before tapping something on her laptop.
“Do you have the collar?”
“No. I wasn’t going to take it with me when it was electrocuting my hand, was I?”
Easy, Scott repeated in his head,easy.
“It’s probably best you didn’t try,” she murmured.
No fucking shit.
“And the man who’d hired your services for the night…”
“Was outside waiting in his car.”
Pauline nodded. “And you’re sure the footsteps you heard on the stairs weren’t his?”
“Not unless he could teleport.”
“I understand your frustration,” Pauline said. “But these are questions I need to ask.”
“The footsteps I heard on the stairs didn’t belong to Anthony, nor did the hand that grabbed me when I was climbing out of the window.”
“Yes, you said ‘grabbed you’, but is there a chance they were actually trying to steady you or feared you might hurt yourself?”
“No. There’s absolutely no chance of that.”
Pauline nodded. “You sound as if you have an idea of who this person was.”
“I know who it was…”
“Name?”
Scott bit his tongue before admitting, “I only know the name he gave me.”
Pauline’s eyebrows tugged together. “And what was that?”
“Warren,” Scott said. “He said his name was Warren.”
“Warren who?”
“He didn’t tell me his last name. He hired me seven years ago. He booked me for the night. It was ahomevisit. I went tohis place, or the place he’d hired at least. He cooked. We watched a movie. Then we went upstairs.”
“Went upstairs?” She peered at him almost guiltily.
“To have sex.”
“And…”
“What do you want? A step-by-step,” Scott snapped before gripping his head in both hands. “Sorry, I… We had sex. He asked if he could be rough with me. I said he could.”
