With Jackery’s purchase of Simitri, Barb’s holdings made her a fabulously wealthy woman. Even after she’d donated half of her newfound wealth to a slew of political and charitable organizations, she need never work another day in her life. Her mother and brother had long since passed on, leaving her with no one to support. She was free to have anything money could buy and do anything she pleased—or nothing at all.
The first thing she did was move south, fleeing the fishbowl of Silicon Valley. She bought herself an ocean-side condo in Pacific Palisades, a three-bedroom, 4000-square-foot penthouse with loft ceilings and a large picture window overlooking the beach. She could have afforded a showplace mansion. But what would that have gained her? Public visibility and the troubles it brought.
No, thank you.
She redecorated the place to suit her tastes: muted tones and an eclectic collection of furniture chosen for comfort rather than style. At each step, she consulted with her roommate and sounding board, a skinny orange tabby she’d named Marmalade. Only 20% of gingers were female, and Barb felt a connection as a woman similarly outnumbered in the world of tech.
Once she was settled in, she found herself in the unfamiliar circumstance of having nothing to do. To her surprise, it plunged her into a state of near depression that had her struggling to get out of bed in the morning. Some days, it was all she could do to shower and dress herself and tend to Marmalade’s needs. To fill the time, she began to obsessively follow the national news, which only made things worse. It seemed that powerful men like Peter Jackery were becoming more and more like medieval tyrants. Barb couldn’t bear to sit back and let them crush innocent people to feed their lust for power. She applauded the political organizing that others were doing, but politics moved at a glacial pace, and people were hurting now. There had to be a way for her to devote her very specific gifts to helping them.
She began by forcing herself to go out in the world again, keeping her eyes open for any opportunity to be useful. The first thing she learned was that her doorman Fernando had a son and daughter-in-law struggling with infertility. It was a simple matter to track down the couple’s GoFundMe page and contribute 100% percent of the remaining goal. She’d thought she was doing so anonymously, but somehow Fernando found out. He was almost painfully grateful and became obsequious in a manner that grated on her nerves. Finally, she took him aside and sat him down.
“You’ve been treating me like some kind of saint, and frankly it’s beyond annoying,” she said. “If you don’t stop immediately, I’ll be forced to stiff you when it comes time for your Christmas bonus.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, with a twinkle in his eyes that said her message had gotten through.
After that, he was polite and professional and only occasionally overattentive. But she’d learned a valuable lesson, and from then on, she did her best to keep her efforts anonymous.
The next recipient of her assistance was Ronnie, her favorite server at the little cafe she frequented for lunch. His elegant posture, precise diction, and graceful movements outed him as an aspiring actor. She wasn’t a talent scout by any means, but she saw promise in him, so she took a town car to a small showcase he was appearing in. She wore a scarf over her hair, sat in the very back, and left immediately after curtain call, now convinced of his talent. But there were plenty of talented actors in LA. Without a lucky break, most of them would struggle for years before finally giving up and slinking back home to Iowa or Connecticut or Georgia.
While luck couldn’t be manufactured, it could be nurtured. On the ride back to her condo, Barb scrolled through the contact list on her phone until she came to a young woman named Gina, who’d worked as her assistant a while back. The last she’d heard, Gina had taken a job with a casting agency and was now a junior casting agent. After a quick call to drop Ronnie’s name, along with the details of the showcase, Barb hung up, satisfied she’d done what she could. Her reward came two weeks later with the news that Ronnie had quit his server’s job, freshly cast in a small supporting role in a big-budget superhero movie.
These accomplishments were satisfying, but they demanded little beyond her bank account or her contact list. More importantly, they didn’t address the abuse of power. What she needed was an opportunity to bring her full talents to bear to help someone being victimized.
#
She found it at a coffee shop, of all places. Barb had gone there to get out of the house and ponder her next move. As she sat blowing on her espresso to cool it, a girl behind the counter cried out. Barb turned to look at her, as did everyone else in the place. What they saw was a female barista in her mid 20s her face contorted in pain, her arms wrapped around her sides. Beside her stood a male barista a few years older. He was frozen, as startled by the young woman’s outcry as everyone else. After a heartbeat, he reached out a hand to tentatively touch her arm.
“I’m sorry, Danita,” he said. “Did I hurt you?”
The young woman, her face flushed with shame at all the eyes on her, backed away from the counter and the young man. When she reached the back corner of the service area, she ducked through a doorway and disappeared from sight.
With the young woman gone, all eyes turned to the male barista. He reacted to the attention by holding out his hands and shrugging his shoulders.
“I just bumped into her with my elbow,” he said. “Not even that hard.”
Gradually, when nothing further happened, people returned their attention to what they’d been doing before—reading, working on laptops, carrying on small conversations. The only exception was Barb. Her curiosity piqued, she stood and walked to the doorway through which the young woman had vanished. On the other side, she found a narrow storeroom. In the middle of it stood the young woman who’d cried out, along with another young woman. They were engaged in a tense conversation and thus did not notice Barb.
“For God’s sake, Danita,” the second young woman was saying. “You can’t go on like this. Just look at you.”
She lifted the first women’s T-shirt. Beneath it, the girl’s rib cage was an ugly rainbow of bruises. Danita pulled down her shirt as if ashamed of the display.
“What can I do? He said if I try to leave again, he’ll kill me.”
Barb studied the girl, noting both her natural beauty and the bone-weary defeat weighing her down. She saw hints of the vibrant young woman she must have been before the abuse, and she felt sympathy for this girl, as well as a quiet rage for her abuser. More importantly, she felt intrigued by the challenge the situation presented.
Could this be the project she’d been seeking?
Danita caught sight of Barb standing in the doorway.
“Can we help you?” She said with an edge to her voice.
Weighing all the factors and trusting her instincts, Barb made her decision.
“No,” she said. “But I can help you.”
#
The girls closed ranks against the intruder upon their private business, but Barb refused to be put off. Her combination of no-nonsense persistence and maternal solicitousness wore down their defenses, and she soon had the whole story.
Danita had met him about six months before when she’d almost run him down with her bike. She apologized profusely, but he laughed and told her not to worry. In fact, he’d insisted on buying her a lemonade at the nearest cafe and sitting with her while her nerves settled. As they talked, she found him to be surprisingly sensitive for such a stereotypically masculine figure. He was an attentive listener, and she found herself telling him things she didn’t usually offer up to strangers. He responded by asking for her number, and to her surprise, she gave it to him.
Next came a whirlwind courtship like something out of a romance novel. He’d showered her with flowers and candy and cards telling her how smart and kind and beautiful she was. But what really drew her in was the vulnerability he showed to her. She’d felt like she was seeing the real man beneath the exterior he presented to the rest of the world.
And that exterior was one she’d never in a million years have considered as a potential romantic partner.
“He’s an ICE agent,” said Danita.
His name was David Evers. Big Dave. Ten years Danita’s senior, he was a former member of the LAPD, a swaggering man’s man.
“But with me, he was kind and gentle. He told me I was the only person he trusted to be his true self with. What really hooked me, though, was when he said he needed me. I felt truly special in a way I never had before. And I have to admit, knowing he was a cop made me feel safe, too. Like he’d protect me.”
Four months after their near collision, she moved in with him. The rest of the story was depressingly familiar to anyone familiar with the abusive personality: after the love bombing and romance lured the victim in, there began a cycle of alternating possessiveness and remorse, gradually building to threats of violence—and ultimately violence itself.
“It all happened so fast,” said Danita. “By the time I realized I was trapped, it was too late.”
He controlled every detail of her life, dictating what she could do and how she could dress. He forced her to drop out of school and cut off contact with her friends. Her world became small and focused entirely on him. She learned to walk on eggshells, never knowing what would set him off.
“I kept hoping that I’d see the side of him again that I’d fallen in love with. And I would catch glimpses of it, but the other part would only come out stronger and shove it back down. In a horrible way, I felt sorry for him. Isn’t that pathetic?”
The more Barb learned, the more intrigued she became. This was suffering of a deep and unjust kind. To relieve it would mean facing down an adversary not easily vanquished. Money alone wouldn’t solve Danita’s problem. Neither would the names in Barb’s contact list. She’d have to bring all her wits and resources to bear. The fact that her target was a law officer meant she’d need to take extra care that all the methods she used were acceptable in the eyes of the law. That wasn’t to say they’d be honest and aboveboard. In fact, some of them would by necessity be deceptive—and even manipulative.
But there was no law against that.