Page 153 of Long Way Down

Dana was hysterical.

“He’s back!” Her voice was a ragged, trembling whisper through the phone. “He’s here, he’s here, and he’s staring at me. I called Ben, but he can’t get here, and I’m sorry, I’msosorryIdidn’tknowwhatto–”

“Dana.” Melissa sat up, fully awake, now. “Dana, it’s okay. Take a deep breath. Breathe. What’s happening?”

Dana made an anguished sound through clenched-teeth, part frustration and part terror. “He’sback. He’shere.”

Melissa stood, crackling with fresh adrenaline. She was aware of Toly glancing at her sharply, but ignored him. “Okay. Where are you? Where in the apartment?”

“In my bedroom. I locked myself in the closet.”

“Okay, good.” She’d left her boots just inside the front door, and went now to step into them and do up the laces with the phone clenched between cheek and shoulder. A few days ago, she would have written this off as paranoia on Dana’s part and called in a couple of uniforms to do a wellness check. But after the blood she’d found, and Tobias’s insistence that someone else was in fact stalking her, she wanted to catch the bastard herself. “I’ll be right there. Stay in the closet, okay, Dana? I’m on my way.”

Dana sniffled a reply, and Melissa hung up.

When she lifted her head, Toly stood right in front of her. “Shit! You scared me.”

He frowned. “Where are you going?”

“I’m–” She frowned. “That’s not really any of your business.”

His expression turned mulish. “Pongo says you’re his old lady and Mav says that means you get treated like family. Family doesn’t get to go running off on their own after someone threatens them,” he said, and sounded bummed by the whole idea, as if she was a chore he really didn’t want added to his to-do list. “You can either stay here, or I can go with you.” Said in the voice of a man who’d rather take a power drill to his own hand.

She folded her arms. “That’s a potential victim who called. She’s being stalked. Someone’s been out on her fire escape.”

He stared at her.

“She reached out to me for help. Her stalker’s there right now.”

More staring.

“I have to go!”

“I’ll get my jacket.”

“I can’t take you.”

“Then you can sit back down.” He nodded toward the couch.

“You can’tkeep mehere.”

He made a deliberate show of cracking his knuckles which would have been cheesy coming from anyone else, but a little bit terrifying from him. “Yeah,” he said, simply, “I can.”

She propped her hands on her hips and attempted to return his stare, for all the good that it did, which was none. A half-dozen, half-hearted retorts, a few assertions of her independence, formed and died on her tongue. A-man-can’t-tell-me-what-to-do, that sort of thing. None would be of any use. She was no longer operating within the boundaries of the world she’d always known. This was Lean Dog Land, and she’d landed herself there willingly, a little farther in each time she let Pongo into her apartment; had had her passport stamped each time she welcomed him between her readily-parted thighs.

She sighed. “Well,” she said, defeated, “Iamgoing.”

“Cool.” He headed for the front hall, and the leather jacket hanging on the peg there.

She couldn’t call and request backup, then, like she’d intended. Getting one of Pongo’s brothers arrested wasn’t the best way to start her career as an old lady.

But given Toly’s stare, he might be more effective than backup, anyway.

~*~

“Talking about our innermost thoughts and feelings can be a struggle, at first, but all of our members have said that, once they learned how to truly share, much of their shame was alleviated. That’s what’s so important for healing: acknowledging our feelings without shame. Shame, you see, is a roadblock to self-love.”

“Uh-huh,” Pongo said, and slid a look across the shop toward Contreras, who was watching them openly, now that Ben had become so animatedly absorbed in his topic. He had his notebook out, and was jotting stuff down, but his frown echoed what Pongo was thinking: that they hadn’t learned anything of any value.