Eventually her chin dropped to her chest. For a few minutes she even slept.
The sound of a door opening alerted her to the presence of someone entering the room. She kept her head down, her eyes closed.
Something touched her cuffed hands behind her back. Fingers brushed her palm, caressed her wrists. She heard a click and the cuffs came off. In any other room under any other circumstances she might have enjoyed the sensation of large warm hands on her cold skin. Some cop touching her in such a personal way made her stomach turn.
She heard the rasp of a chair on the floor and the sound of the metal handcuffs landing on the table.
If she opened her eyes and raised her head, it would start. The whole ugly mess would start. Interrogation, investigation, accusations … Her eyelids were a wall, and until she opened them the world would stay behind that wall. But she couldn’t hide forever.
She opened her eyes expecting to see a cop or a lawyer or maybe even her mom.
But no, it was her priest. He didn’t speak, not a word. She brought her arms around in front of her and started to rub her wrists. It had been him touching her fingers and chafing her skin as he’d removed the handcuffs, not some creepy cop.
Eleanor hated that he’d been dragged into this mess. Her mother had probably called him in a panic the second after the cops had called her. Anytime anything bad ever happened, her mother’s first call was to Father Greg. Had it been Father Greg she’d called, the old priest would have prayed on the phone with her, offered her words of advice and comfort. He never would have dragged himself out of bed in the middle of the night to go to a police station in the city. But Søren had. Why?
He continued to stare at her in silence and Eleanor felt like she’d unwittingly entered into a staring contest. Fine. Staring contest it was then. She knew how to get him to blink.
“So,” she began, “since our last talk about rules and priests and sex and stuff, I’ve been meaning to ask you a question. Are you one of those priests who likes to fuck the kids in the congregation?”
She waited.
He didn’t blink.
“No.”
Okay, so he was good at this game. She was better.
She raised her chin and gave him the sort of smile she’d dreamed of giving a handsome older man but never had the guts or the chance to try it.
“Too bad.”
“Eleanor, we need to discuss the predicament you’re in at the moment.”
She nodded her agreement.
“I’m in a real pickle.”
Smile? Laugh? Withering glare? Nothing.
“You were arrested on suspicion of grand theft auto. Several luxury vehicles with a combined value of a quarter of a million dollars were stolen tonight. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
“I take the Fifth,” she said, proud of her legal knowledge. “That’s what I’m supposed to say, right?”
Now she received the withering glare she’d been hoping for.
“To the courts, yes. To me, never. To me, you will tell the truth always.”
“I don’t think you want to know the truth about me, Søren.” She dropped her voice to a whisper at the moment she said his name. It seemed like a magic word to her, his name. Like knowing his name meant something special like it did in fairy tales.
“Eleanor, there is nothing I don’t want to know about you. Nothing you tell me will shock or disgust me. Nothing will cause me to change my mind about you.”
“Change your mind? You’ve already made up your mind about me? What’s the verdict?” She braced herself, not wanting the answer. They had nothing in common, she and her priest. He looked like money, talked like money. He had the whitest fingernails she’d ever seen on a man. White fingernails, perfect hands like a marble sculpture of a Greek god. And her? She was a fucking train wreck. Chipped black nail polish, soaked clothes, dripping wet hair and her entire life over in one night.
“The verdict is this—I am willing and capable of helping you out of this mess you’ve gotten yourself into tonight.”
“Can we call it a pickle? Pickle sounds less scary than mess.”
“It’s a disaster, young lady. The car they caught you stealing belongs to a very powerful man. He’s already demanding the police try you as an adult and put you away for the maximum sentence. You could spend years in juvenile detention, or worse—an adult facility. At the very least, this man doesn’t want you seeing sunlight until you’re twenty-one years old. Blessedly, I have some connections in this area. Or, more accurately, I have someone who has some connections in this area.”
For the first time since they started speaking, he broke eye contact with her. He glanced away into the corner of the room. His face wore the strangest expression. Whoever this powerful person was, Søren didn’t seem all that excited about asking him. In fact, if she had to guess, she’d say he was dreading it.