Three miles. In the rain. In shock. Covered in blood. Holding a knife. With a dead man rapidly cooling beside her.
Absolutely not.
“It was se-self-defense,” she whispers.
“Jubilee.” She snaps her head up. “You can put the knife down. It’s alright.”
“So I c-call the police, ri-right?”
Yes. The practical question. The reasonable one. If answered incorrectly, it will ruin both our nights and possibly my carefully curated brand.
Because the last thing I need is the Chicago PD digging too deeply into this particular dead man’s history. His routine. His route. His charming little pattern of selecting isolated women and assuming fear made them compliant. I’ve been stalking him for weeks. Learning him.
This job was supposed to be mine. Quiet. Clean. No body. No questions. No tearful goth witness with a bloody knife, perfect lips, and a praise kink. A mess within a mess. Not just traumatized or unlucky. There are layers there. Old scars. The last thing she needs is a legal dumpster fire.
“The police are an option,” I agree, slow and even.
Her eyes narrow slightly. Smart girl. “An option?”
“Yes.”
She studies me through the rain, her grip flexing around the knife. “Not your favorite option.”
I shrug. “My favorite option involves warm pastries and not kneeling in the rain beside a dead rapist, so the bar is currently complicated.”
She glances at the body and immediately back at me. Interesting. I set her up with pastry. But there’s no trace of recognition. My ego takes a small, dramatic bullet. My curiosity applauds.
“I’ll handle it,” I assure her.
She parts her lips. Then slowly, she asks, “You’re not going to contact the police, are you?”
Fuck. Not an ignorance-is-bliss kind of girl, then. Of course not. I couldn’t get a sobbing, compliant, grateful little witness. No. I get the one with dangerous curiosity.
“I may not know you,” I choose my words meticulously.
Her gaze sharpens.
“Jubilee,” I add, because I do know that much, and the way her name sounds is another problem I’m ignoring until I can schedule a proper existential crisis. “And please don’t take this the wrong way. I’m not judging you. I’m simply being realistic.”
Her throat moves, working its way around a knot, no doubt.
I level with her. “The cops will take one look at you, hear your story, and automatically conclude what kind of girl they think you are before you finish the first sentence.”
She doesn’t speak, but she isn’t offended. Worse. She is listening with every fiber of her being.
“They’ll ask why you were alone on an isolated trail in the middle of a storm,” I continue, keeping my voice calm and clinical. “They’ll ask why you had a knife. They’ll ask why you used that instead of mace, or a taser, or running, or screaming, or whatever magical self-defense option meaty law enforcement officers invent when they weren’t the ones pinned under a man twice their size.”
Her breathing thins. She doesn’t move a muscle.
“The knife matters,” I state. “Stabbing feels intimate to people. It’s messy, violent. They understand a gun from a distance. They understand panic when it’s clean. But a blade means force. And you…”
“…went Ghostface on him,” she sighs out. God, I like this girl.
“Unlike guns,” I explain, “they don’t require loading or safety checks. With the several stabbings, any prosecutor would argue you used excessive force before your clothes are even dry.”
She chokes on a gasp. Not fear of me. Fear of the story. Good. She needs to understand the unfair but likely consequences.
“They could push manslaughter,” I inform her. “Imperfect self-defense, if they decide you genuinely feared for your life but used more force than necessary. Can you afford an attorney good enough to control the story?”
