“But I wasn’t fucked over by the law. I was in a clusterfuck of a situation and the military did what they thought they had to in order to protect the woman that was already victimized.”
“Are you really that fucking blind? The military didn’t do anything to protect your rights. They used you as a fucking scapegoat.”
“And you really think that I’m going to somehow redeem myself by trying to help you take down some senator? I need a Presidential pardon to get my name cleared. I have a dishonorable discharge. The chances of this working out in my favor are slim to none.”
“Then what the fuck are you doing here?” he snapped.
That was a good question. I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing here. What he was suggesting for me was highly unlikely to ever happen, and even if he were to get someone to look at my case, what were the chances that Kiera would suddenly decide that I hadn’t been the one to rape her? And if the phone records didn’t show me making those calls, they wouldn’t magically appear now.
“You know, I came to you because I thought you had more grit than this. You’re just rolling over and letting them shit all over you. And for what? Do you really think you deserve this shit? I’ve seen the files. It’s all bullshit!”
“Yeah? And how are you going to prove it? No one else believed me when the evidence was laying right the fuck in front of them. It was her word versus mine and I lost out.”
“So you keep fighting! You don’t lay down and take it when you’re accused of shit like that.”
“I have no way to fight back,” I argued. “This isn’t a civilian court. This is the fucking military. They could have thrown my ass in prison if they wanted. I got fucking lucky last time that they didn’t decide to send me away. And now you think that I should fight harder? For what? For the chance to go to prison?”
“Better to fight for the freedom that you served to defend, than to accept what was unjustly handed down to you. I’ll never bullshit you. This is an uphill battle, but I’m willing to fight it with you. But you have to believe that you can win and you have to be willing to fight for what you know you deserve.”
“My phone records are gone. That was the one thing that would have cleared my name.”
“That and the testimony from the victim,” he added.
“Well, I’m not seeing her suddenly changing her story and getting a perjury conviction for her trouble.”
“Then you’re in luck, because there are two things that I do really well. First, I’m very good at getting information, and second, I happen to be very good at convincing people to change their minds.”
I shook my head slowly. He just didn’t get it. “I can’t intimidate a victim so that I can get my sentence overturned. If I were to do that, I’m no better than the man that raped her.”
His lip twitched and he huffed out a laugh. Frankly, I didn’t see what was so funny. I watched as he paced the room. When he turned to me, he was pissed. “You believe her.”
“What?”
“You believe her. You think that- Parker, this was a setup. She didn’t ID you because she thought you raped her. She did it because she was forced to. I thought you fucking knew that!”
“No, I saw her face on that stand. When she identified me as her rapist, she believed it one hundred percent.”
“Didn’t you ever wonder how your friend, the woman that you were closest to in your unit, could think you would rape her? Don’t you think she would have known that’s something you would never do?”
“Of course I wondered that. That was running through my head constantly, but the fact is, she was raped and she wasn’t in her right mind. She could have seen a fucking lion on top of her for all I know.”
“She was fucking Colonel Barrow!” he shouted.
I stepped back like I had been hit. What he was saying couldn’t be true. I would have known if she was sleeping with our commanding officer. She would have told me.
“No, she would have told me-”
“She couldn’t have fucking told you. Do you realize how much shit he would have been in for having a sexual relationship with an enlisted Marine? He would have been court-martialed. Open your fucking eyes. You were accused to take the heat off him!”
I couldn’t believe it. All this time, I thought for sure that she really believed that I raped her. “But she was raped.”
“By him!”
“Are you sure?”
“Like I told you, I’m very good at getting information.”
“You saw her,” I said quietly.
“I paid her a visit, because nothing was adding up, and if you had been in the right frame of mind, you would have fucking seen that. Didn’t you wonder how your phone calls that would have proved your innocence suddenly disappeared? Or how your entire unit believed that you could rape a woman that you had served with for two years? You’re goddamn right that I saw her. I made her tell me exactly what the fuck happened, and then I took her and hid her under lock and key until she fucking tells the truth.”
“You can’t just fucking kidnap people,” I yelled. God, this was all spiraling out of control. If I was linked in any way to Kiera’s disappearance, I was fucked. I couldn’t afford any of this.
“That’s your first reaction? I just told you that I made her tell me every last fucking thing that happened and you’re concerned that
