Page 108 of Little Deaths

Officer Lambert took note of that in his little black book. “Anything else you want to tell us that you maybe didn’t tell us before?”

“Well, I’ve been seeing . . . flashes,” she said. “White flashes in the corner of my eye. And sometimes, little pulses of red light.”

“See an eye doctor,” Officer Corcoran suggested snidely.

After a few pointless courtesy phrases about being in touch, and a reminder to come down to the station if they remembered anything else, the officers left. Donni leaned back against the kitchen island, feeling as if her strings had been cut.

“Why didn’t you want to show them the flashdrive?”

“What if it’s more photographs?” he asked. “Flashes of light—I saw them too, once. Did you ever stop to think that it might have been from a camera?”

The floor heaved violently beneath her feet. “Oh, God.”

“Yeah.” His voice was grim. “That’s what I’m thinking.”

He put the flashdrive into the laptop. Just like before, a window popped up with the loaded files. This one had two videos on it: Adonica3.mp4 and Adonica4.mp4.

She wondered, sickly, how many more Adonica files there were.

The first one, she couldn’t watch. It was her and Rafe having sex, filmed in her bedroom from the other night. The video itself was grainy, shot in what looked like night vision, but the audio quality was good. After just a few seconds, she closed the window, a cry escaping her throat.

“They must have filmed that from my old bedroom.” Rafe walked closer, frowning. “If they were standing there, from that perspective, you would have seen them.”

“Powderpuff was growling,” Donni whispered. “She must have.”

“It all keeps coming down to photographs and videos.” He shook his head. “Could they be a paparazzo? An interviewer? There’s a sick and deliberate artistry to this.”

“There’s still one more video.”

Her finger shook when she pressed play. Even though she suspected it was going to be the worst of all, she still had a nasty shock when an image of her sleeping filled the screen.

It was the night she had gone out with Rafe to San Francisco. She’d gone to bed so drunk that she’d forgotten to take off her makeup. Her heart stumbled when she saw a black-gloved hand appear in the frame, holding a knife.

Slowly, the hand pulled up her shirt, baring her to the lens, and traced every inch of her body with that wickedly curved blade, before plunging it abruptly between her legs.

A shriek escaped her and she fell back against Rafe, breathing so hard that the kitchen began to develop a gray haze. She knew she was fine—she wasfine—but seeing herself violated like that on film did something to her head. Her belly twisted like crumpled metal and if Rafe’s hand hadn’t come around her waist, holding her steady, she would have fallen to her knees.

“It’s just a prop knife,” he was saying. “It didn’t go in. It’s not real.”

Donni shook her head, her eyes still on the screen. It had shifted to a quilted leather bag propped up against the wall. She knew that bag well; it was a mirror to the one that she had carried around with her all the time in the aughts. A big black hobo bag with a thick chain strap.

And just like that, she understood why they wanted her to die.

They knew.

“Johnathan’s trial,” she said, pointing. “I wore that bag to the trial. Someone knows.”

She had waited in the crowd outside with everyone else. Despite the mounting testimony, the judge and the jurors had all been so dismissive. And the tabloids had been so cruel. When he looked her up and down, with that familiar look of cruel satisfaction, something inside her had broken. Because that was what this society did to women like her: it broke them.

And she knew—she fucking knew—that he’d do it again.

To her.

To anyone.

“The bag?” Rafe sounded puzzled. “What does that have to do with anything?”

She spun around in his arms and had to grip his shoulders to steady herself.