The Arrangement

Chapter 19

Detective James bursts into the room making the door hit the wall hard. The sound frightens me and I look up to see him running down the stairs his gun pointed at Chris. Michael rushes down the stairs looking from Chris to me, his expression is unreadable. He should be resting. He is followed by a couple of uniformed officers. Michael reaches me and I drop the pipe, quickly I put the safety back on of the gun and toss it away from me. I throw my arms around him and he hugs me tightly lifting me off of the ground. Over his shoulder I see Lilly at the top of the stairs. She came back. When Michael puts me down I pull out of his embrace and walk to the stairs. "Thank you, Lilly." I tell her and Michael turns around.

"I should thank you." She replies giving me a little smile. She descends the stairs and Chris yells, "That bitch attacked me! I'm pressing charges!" He is pointing at me. Is he serious? Before I can respond Lilly says, "She was only defending herself." She pauses and frowns, "And me."

"Well it is your word against mine." Chris says getting up and point to the pipe and the gun, "She attacked me with that."

"There is a camera, it recorded everything." Lilly squeaks and points to the far corner, "I know where he keeps the footage."

A horrible thought crosses my mind. Did he videotape her in here? Michael looks down at me and takes my hand. His hand is warm and trembling.

"Peters, cuff him." Detective James says to one of the officers. He turns to Lilly and says, "Please show us."

Lilly leads us up the stairs, Michael doesn't let go of my hand. He is worried. Worried about what he'll see. I want to tell him that Chris didn't touch me. I wouldn't have allowed him to. The words won't form. How can I assure him? I squeeze his hand and he looks down at me, "I'm okay." I mutter. He doesn't look convinced and he swallows hard.

We follow Lilly up a set of staircases and she opens a door, presumably to Chris's bedroom. It's big a lot of dark colours. Lilly walks up to a laptop and after clicking a couple of times a video pops up. We all take position to watch. Chris appears, he is holding me in his arms as he walks down the stairs. I shiver and Michael puts his arm around me and pulls me closer. We watch as Chris puts me down. "So beautiful." He says stroking my cheek then stands up and looks me up and down. I'm nauseous. I anxiously watch to see what he does next. He cuffs me then ties the cuffs to the chains, his hands are on me too much but thankfully he doesn't touch me anywhere that I can't recover from, he makes sure I'm secured and leaves.

Lilly speeds the video along, from what I can tell I was out for about an hour and a half, I start coming around and Lilly sets the speed to normal. I watch everything play out as I lived it. Michael tenses up when Chris hits Lilly and he stays that way throughout our entire conversation. I know he had no idea what happened, if he did he would have done something. I'm feeling extremely good about the gasps of amazement that Detective James has. Michael occasionally glances at me in surprise. I have to admit seeing myself kick Chris's ass in such splendour gives me pride. My dad would have been so proud.

Detective James stops the video after they've arrived.

"Well Miss Henderson, I for one wouldn't dare mess with you after seeing this." He chuckles. "Where did you learn to pick a lock like that not to mention your fighting skills?"

I can't help it, I beam at him. "My dad. He always said that if he couldn't be there to protect me he'd rest easier knowing that I could protect myself."

"Your father was a very good man." Detective James nods.

"He was." I say more to myself.

"Well then Miss Rosenburg, we had a deal, after we have come to help, you'd turn yourself in freely."