“Now, I need to ask you a question.”

“What?”

“You aren’t going to like it.”

“Yeah, so why should my day suddenly start getting better?” I returned sarcastically. “What’s the question?”

I heard her take in a deep breath, and a second later she hit me with the last thing I expected. “Is Felicity guilty? Did she kill those men?”

“Hell no! How can you ask me that?! What happened to being on my side?!”

“It’s my job, Rowan. I have to know what I’m up against and whom I’m defending. You’re absolutely certain she’s innocent?”

“Yes,” I returned harshly. “And don’t ever ask me that again.”

“I won’t. Not you. But you need to understand that I’m going to have to ask Felicity the same thing.”

“And you’ll get the same answer.”

Here we had a slight problem. And, that problem came in the form of the fact that I wasn’t entirely sure I was telling the truth with that last comment. The night Felicity had been taken into custody at the East side motel, the suspicious fingers were already being pointed and the investigation underway. When I discussed it with her, she had told me that she wasn’t even certain in her own mind that she hadn’t committed the crimes. The Lwa possession had caused substantial blocks of time to be missing from her memory, and that frightened her. It didn’t do much for me either, but I still knew she was innocent. Why, when the police apparently had evidence to the contrary, I couldn’t say; but the fact remained that I knew it beyond any doubt in my mind.

Unfortunately, something else I knew was that my wife was still harboring distrust in her own sanity. And, because of her personal history within the bondage and D/S subculture, she was finding it easy to convince herself that perhaps she really was the killer. The truth was, when Jackie asked her the question, she was very likely to say, “I don’t know.” What was even more frightening was that it was going to be a bit before Jackie got there. Given Felicity’s mental state, depending on what she was told by the police between now and then, her answer could well be “Yes. I think I’m guilty.”