Witsec

[TimTimTyner]

WITSEC

The Massi-O'Brien Case​

Marshall Timothy Tyner dropped into the seat opposite his supervisor, Marta Lee, and was immediately met by a file sliding across the glass topped desk. He opened it to find a photo of an attractive woman paper clipped to the inside front. His boss, Marta Lee, asked, "Recognize her?"

"Of course," Tim said simply. "Elizabeth O'Brien."

The long building RICO case against the Massi Crime Family had been the purview of the FBI. But Tim -- a US Marshall with the Witness Security Program -- had been involved off and on over the years as he and his fellow Marshalls provided protection for witnesses against the Family. And now, obviously, it was their turn to watch over Beth.

"Do we have custody of her yet?" Tim asked, flipping through the pages of the file. "And how long will she be in our care?"

"Yes, we do ... and ... a very long time," Marta answered. When Tim looked up to her, she was wearing a sly smirk. She donned a bit of a guilty expression as she explained, "The case won't go to trial for at least six months."

Tim just stared at his boss for a long moment, the expression on his face telling her all she had to know about his excitement over being assigned to a six month babysitting job. He finally said, "I transport. Point A to Point B. I don't--"

"You do now," Marta cut in, her playful expression hardening just a bit as she stood to circle around her desk, continuing, "I don't have anyone else available. Vacations, maternity leave, Army Reserve call ups, Workers Comp' ... I've got nine people out right now. You're all I've got, Tim."

"Six ... months...?" he questioned.

Her response didn't ease his concern. "Minimum."

He looked to the picture again and realized that it was folded over, midway down. He pulled the lower half of the image out, causing his eyes and lips to widen a bit at full picture. It looked like a professional photoshoot or, at the least, one helluva lucky amateur pic. Either way, it made him wonder the same thing about which his boss quipped a moment later.

"Think you can suffer watching that for six months, Marshall?"

Tim closed the file, stood, smirked, and said, "Show me to her. I'm ready to, um ... suffer."

 

[heartofcourage]

It was entirely too quiet here, Beth thought to herself as she lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. A nice little house in the suburbs, a dead end cul-de-sac, with children running and playing outside. Sure, she saw herself in this kind of setting in a few years, but she had always imagined that it would be with her husband and a few kids of her own. Now...well, life was completely different from how she had first imagined it.

Beth had known Marc Massi since she was 16 years old. She had loved the tall, dark Italian since the first moment that she had laid eyes on him. His smile was charming, his dark eyes sparkling, and his black hair tumbling to his shoulders in a sexy kind of way. They were soulmates. Now, she was terrified of him.

Eight years of knowing Marc had proved that she didn't really know him at all. He was wealthy and he had doted on her. If she wanted to pursue modeling, he had paid for her photo sessions. If she had a want to go to Europe, he would whisk her away to Paris for a romantic get away. He paid for her apartment, her car, her clothes. Anything she wanted, she got without hesitation.

Beth let out a long sigh as she pushed herself off the bed and moved towards the window, peeking outside at the sunny, tree lined street. She hadn't been outside on her won since she had gone to the police two weeks ago. On the night of her 24th birthday, Marc had rented out his uncle's nightclub. It was suppose to be a night of drinking, dancing, and a possible engagement...until she had walked in on him committing a horrible act.

He had disappeared halfway through the night. She had no idea where he had gone and as the DJ announced that it was nearly time to wrap things up, she had gone in search of him in the back rooms of the club. The sounds of the gunshot were still loud in her ears after she had opened the door and the sight of blood rushing from the man's head would stay with her forever. Marc had killed someone in cold blood. He was standing there with the literal smoking gun in his hand, staring first at the body and then at her.

She would never forget the way that his eyes showed surprise then a slow realization of what she had seen. Swearing to him that she really hadn't seen anything, Marc had calmly replaced his firearm and escorted her back to the party. From the moment on, she was never alone. He never let her out of his sight or she was with one of his cousins. It had taken a moment at a crowded shopping mall for her to slip away from his side and on to a bus that had taken her to the police.

Since then, she had been moved around, finally ended up in the quiet little house three days ago. She was told that no one could know where she was. Her family was told that it was for her own protection and she worried for them. She was also fearful that Marc would somehow find out where she was and take care of her as he had taken care of the man that evening.

All of those thoughts made her head hurt in the worst way. Another migraine was forming behind her eyes and with a sigh, she turned from the window to find the two cops that were her guardians. Perhaps one of them could get her some medication to sleep, to forget, to make everything go away.

 

[TimTimTyner]

New York City:

Marc Massi crossed from one of the Family's restaurants on Broadway to one of the Family's bars kitty corner to it. He was greeted all along the way by men who knew, respected, and/or feared him; and by women who either knew who he was and what his money and power could do for them or women who didn't know who he was but were anxious to correct that problem. After stopping to greet or sometimes hold court with a couple of dozen people, he finally entered the back of the bar after passing two heavily armed goons. Inside the conference room, Marc found six more goons protecting Marc's father and two uncles, as well as the father of the three men, Umberto, the head of the Massi Crime Family.

"We haven't found her yet," Marc reported after a long silence of hard stares. "But I've got everyone working on it."

Marc wasn't a man who typically showed nervousness or fear, but his fuck up in regards to Beth was total and potentially devastating. Upon reporting to his father, Alfredo, that his almost-fiancée had witnessed him execute a traitor in cold blood, his father's cool, calm, and casual reply had been, "What a shame. She could have presented you with beautiful children."

Marc had talked his father out of disappearing Beth and had been waiting for a final decision from Bert when the beauty disappeared. Now, instead of a redo on his love life and postponement of the beginning of his own family, Marc was possibly looking at walking into a room like this one day only to be carried back out with a small caliber bullet deep inside his brain.

Marc was no idiot. He was a beloved member of both his family and the Family. He was a made man. That meant that if any other man -- made or not, Family or not -- ever harmed him, let alone killed him, that man would see his wife killed and his children -- male and female -- raped repeated before his very eyes, right before all of them were killed and dumped in a shallow grave or murky lake.

And while Marc had no reason to fear that any such man would ever harm him, he knew that if his Father or Grandfather deemed it necessary to protect the family, Marc's status as a made man would mean nothing. Essentially, he had two choices: find Beth before she was able to testify against him to protect himself and the Family; or be killed to protect the Family alone.

He recapped to the others the efforts of his hundreds of contacts, on the streets and in all of the various policing agencies. "I assure you, Father ... Grandfather ... I will find Beth ... and I will take care of this ... personally."



The 'burbs:

Marshall Tim Tyner stopped three blocks from the cul-de-sac where the safe house sat, exited his car, and entered a small coffee shop. He sat there for nearly an hour before using his assigned burner phone to text his imminent arrival and car description to the assigned burner phone of the FBI agents watching Elizabeth O'Brien. He headed for the hallway off which were located the bathrooms but instead exited through the rear door to hop into a second car.

Two minutes later he was standing inside the little but comfortable house, chatting up the Agents as he stared through the open bedroom door at Beth.

"How is she?" he asked almost in a whisper. "Is she going to be able to handle this?"

One of the Agents handed him a partially filled bottle of strong pain relievers while the other said, "Migraines. This stuff'll work until we can get an anonymous prescription for her."

"I'll take care of it," Tim countered. "Anything else?"

Once these men walked out the door, Tim didn't want there to be any connection between other Law Enforcement Agencies and Elizabeth O'Brien, even one as small as a medicine bottle with prescription information on the outside. If history had taught Tim anything, the biggest threat to a Massi Family witness was not the Massi Family but was the protecting agencies. He hated to admit it, but the Massi's had infiltrated every agency, even his own. That was why once he and Elizabeth walked out this door, no one but Tim would know where she was from moment to moment ... not even his boss, Marta Lee.

The three men chatted a moment more, then after the other two left, Tim made his way to the open bedroom door and looked in on Beth. She was even more beautiful in person that her sexy beach side bikini picture had shown her to be. He smiled to her, saying, "My name is Marshall Tim Tyner. I'm with the US Marshall's Service. I'll be watching over you for a while. Is there anything I can get you before we move you to another location?"

(OOC: I wanted to move this forward more but I just got called back to work.)

 

[heartofcourage]

The painkillers were working, slowly but surely. Her mind felt slightly fuzzy, but her brain no longer felt as if it would burst free from her skull. The throbbing ache was a dull thud as she sat in her room, blankly staring at a book in her lap. She'd tried to read it, but nothing stuck. Beth didn't even know the name of the author nor the title. One of the two agents had offered it to her as a way to pass the time. It was a sweet gesture, but her mind was too jumbled to focus.

A third male voice sounded in the living room and Beth glanced up curiously. The agents hadn't mentioned another person would be joining them. For a moment, she thought that Marc had found them and her eyes were quickly cast towards the window in the room, contemplating escape. When the tones remained hushed, she slowly settled, her heart racing behind her ribs.

This entire situation had been a nightmare. She still expected to wake up one morning, Marc on his side of the bed and snoring away, and the entire horrible incident had never happened. She had never seen the man that she loved murder someone. She had never known terror when she looked into his eyes. That was the toughest part to swallow. She didn't want to fear Marc. He had never been anything but kind and gentle to her, but knowing that he had a darkness to him was something that she would never be able to ignore.

A new voice at the door had her jerking her head towards the source, staring at the man who introduced himself as Tim with the US Marshall's Service. She knew that the agents had been talking about a new point man coming in on the case, but she didn't think it would happen so soon.

"We're moving?" Beth asked, closing the book in her lap and standing from the chair. "They didn't say anything about moving. Where are we going to go?"

 

[TimTimTyner]

"They didn't say," Tim said with a friendly tone as he moved to the dresser upon which her purse was sitting. Lifting it in her direction, he clarified, "Because they didn't know. I need you to put your things together. We're out of here in five minutes."

He wanted to explain to Beth that the urgency was due to potential security risks, but Tim knew that would only frighten her more. He finished before heading to the living room to make a quick call, "I will explain it all once we are on the road ... okay?"

 

[heartofcourage]

"Five minutes?" Beth asked as he moved towards the dresser and offered her purse to her. "That's not a lot of time."

He said he would explain once they were on the road and then left the room to make a call. There was little she could do. If he wanted to leave in five minutes, she had to be ready to leave in five minutes. Beth moved to the small suitcase that the agents had given her, filled with a few items of clothing that were in her size as well as some basic toiletry items. It was a far, far cry away from the designer clothing that Marc had lavished on her.

Once she was packed, she tucked the book into her purse and lifted the suitcase into the living room. She missed her cell phone. She missed being able to talk to her brother and her mom whenever she liked. They insisted that it was a small price to pay to know that she was safe.

 

[TimTimTyner]

While babysitting was not his forte, transport was. In a decade on the job Tim had never lost a witness in his care so long as he had made all of the arrangements. Once Beth was ready to go rather than walk her out the front and into his second vehicle of the day, he walked her out the back instead. They crossed through the fenced yard to and through the back gate to where a dark windowed sedan was just pulling up and stopping.

"Back seat please," Tim told Beth as the driver -- another witsec Marshall in civilian clothes -- stepped out and handed him the keys. Without exchanging any words the other agent went through the gate and back into the house. She would be taking the second car and going for a nice long little drive through the city just in case it had somehow been tagged by the bad guys.

Once he had Beth loaded up, Tim hurried them down the driveway, out on the Avenue, and straight for the freeway. Just as he had been since bright and early this morning he was constantly checking in front of him and in his peripherals and in his mirrors. And once he knew that there was nobody within sight of them, he looked into the rearview mirror and said, "I need you to strip please, Beth. Do you mind if I call you Beth? or do you prefer Elizabeth."

He nodded his head back towards a seat and said, "Bag on the floor. Sweats, undergarments, pair of slip on shoes. Probably not what you're used to but it'll all fit for now. I need everything off. Jewelry, too."

He hesitated for a moment making eye contact with Beth in the mirror before saying, "If you have any jewelry in any ... let's call them personal places... I need you to remove those as well. Anything and everything on you goes back into the bag."

He shot the car onto the freeway onramp...

 

[heartofcourage]

Beth followed behind dutifully, glancing from side to side as if Marc might appear out of nowhere. It was silly to think that he would, but that thought in the back of her mind was always there. Her brother, Joe, had told her shortly after she went to the cops that Marc had shown up at he and his partner's house, asking if they had seen her. Alan, his husband, had sent Marc packing with some choice words. It put a fear in her that he might show up out of nowhere for her as well.

As Tim showed her to a black sedan, she paused when she was directed towards the backseat. She gave him a nod and slipped into the car, her suitcase and purse pulled in beside her. As he started the car and pulled away from the house, she knew that they were on to another adventure.

She was startled when he told her to strip, directing her towards the bag that was at her feet. She could understand changing cars, but stripping out of her clothes? That seemed a little odd.

"Beth is fine." She said as she picked up the bag and looked through it, listening to his instructions.

She knew that she had to follow what he said. It was his job to keep her alive and if that meant getting momentarily naked in front of a strange, that was the way it had to be. She pulled off the t-shirt she was wearing before shimmying out of the jeans that the agents had give her. She was naked for a moment before she pulled on the undergarments and sweats, the new tshirt pulled on in short order as well.

"My necklace has a lot of sentimental value to me." She murmured, hesitating with the silver bell that she wore on along chain around her neck. "My dad gave it to me before he died. Can I please keep it?"

 

[TimTimTyner]

The rule was, of course, that it all went. Most people would never have imagined that they could so easily be tracked but this was an age of incredible technology, and trackers to be put in even the smallest of items. Ironically it was the most sentimental items more often than not ended up with trackers in them. The bad guys knew that the good guys would always want to keep what was important to them. But it was also hard for Tim to force Beth to give something like that up.

He held his hand back over the seat and said, "Give it to me. I'll make sure it is clear and I will see that you get it back."

As he leaned to offer her this way out, Tim got a quick look at Beth sitting there in the sweat bottoms and her brassiere. He pulled his eyes away quickly but not quickly enough to prevent his penis from doing a little shimmy inside his boxers. This is going to be one hell of a long 6 months...

 

[heartofcourage]

"Thank you." Beth said as she took off the necklace and handed it to Tim, a little anxious to see it passed off to someone else.

She had always worn it since it had been given to her. She never, ever took it off. Growing up she had been a daddy's girl and losing him in a car accident just before her 11th birthday had been a crushing blow. That little bell symbolized so much in her life and gave her strength that she wouldn't normally have had. She had to trust that she would get it back in the end.

Pulling on the shirt that had been given to her, she sat back and enjoyed the ride. It was miles of miles of nothing but landscape and soon her eyes were closed, dozing as the car continued down the road. Soon enough, she was stretched out on the back seat, sound asleep as nights of stress and sleeplessness caught up with her.

 

[TimTimTyner]

Tim had expected Beth to take a bit of a nap. She'd had some very long, very hard, very stressful days of late. Combine that with the gentle vibration of the wheel on the pavement and it didn't surprise Tim that after darkness had fallen, his traveling partner was still passed out cold in the back seat of the sedan.

It was time to take a break, though, and just before midnight Tim pulled gently off the freeway and into the parking lot of a major truck stop. He flipped a switch under the dash, killing the power to the interior lights and door chimes, allowing him to get out quietly without waking Beth. He quietly stuffed her purse inside the FBI-provided carry bag and closed the door just enough to make it click.

He turned to deal with her stuff, then noticed the book one of the Agents had given her. Tim set Beth's bag on the hood under the harsh light of a street lamp and studied the book inside and out. He felt a ridge under the back cover and pulled the glued-down paper out enough to find the micro-antennae for the GPS locator hidden inside the binding. He smiled, both happy and disappointed to have found the tracker.

Tossing the book back into the bag, Tim waited until a big Freightliner with two trailers was passing by, then tossed the bag up into the other wise empty trailer. He waved and mouthed Bye bye, wondering how long Massi's men would follow the bug before realizing it was leading them to a safe house containing him and Beth.

Returning to the car, Tim stopped suddenly at the sight of Beth sleeping on her side. That firm, youthful, firm butt was so well displayed by the street lamp, making Tim want to just sit her and stare for an hour to two. But, there was work to be done.

 

[heartofcourage]

Beth woke up to the sound of the engine purring back to life. She had no idea how long she had been sleeping or how long they had been stopped for, but as she pushed herself back into a seated position, she saw that it was pitch black outside. The terrain looked completely unfamiliar to her and she knew that Tim had taken her far, far away from the life that she had once known.

"Can we stop for some food soon?" She asked as she rubbed at her eyes, stretching and yawning as she realized that the things that she had taken with her from the safe house were no longer there. "I haven't had anything since breakfast."

He must have dumped everything while she was sleeping. It was a good thing she had asked him about the necklace, because knowing that it might be gone forever would have had her in a pile of tears in the back seat of that car.

He briefly pulled over for a quick burger at a drive thru and she ate in the backseat as he continued to drive. The silence was heavy between them, but she supposed that was his job. To get her to a safe place without any interference. There might as well be two new agents waiting for her at the other location. It all made her very confused and slightly lonely.

It seemed like hours later when he pulled up in front of a nondescript motel, all the little rooms on one side of the building facing a parking lot that was mostly empty. She stayed put as Tim got out and entered the lobby, getting them a room and then escorting her towards the end unit. Once inside, Beth looked at the large queen bed and the quaint furnishings. They were past their prime, but everything was clean. That was an added bonus.

She sat down on the edge of the bed with a long sigh, listening to him lock the door behind them. There was nothing more that she wanted than for this entire situation to be over with. She wanted to be free to do what she wanted and to go back to her family before she lost her sanity completely. Marc knew that her family was important to her and he had never begrudged her time with them. He had slipped seamlessly into their routine and never made a fuss. She wondered if he had been sincere the entire time or if it were an act.

With another sigh, she flopped down on her side, her head finding the pillow and her eyes closing. She didn't know if she could sleep, but she didn't want to be awake any longer. She didn't want to think about Marc or the situation. She simply wanted to drift.

 

[TimTimTyner]

"I'm very sorry you have to go through this," Tim said out of no where at all. A moment later when Beth gave him her attention, he clarified, "What you're doing ... giving up every thing ... family ... home ... career."

He looked to the keys in his fingers as he fumbled with them. He wasn't nervous about explaining about what Beth's future held or about his part in it. He was nervous about Beth herself. Tim didn't spend much time with beautiful women, and knowing that he'd be with Beth for weeks at least, months most likely ... well, it was difficult for him to fathom. His boss had said six months. Six months spending time around such erotic beauty with no chance of ever being erotic with that beauty!

Fraternization with a witness was a termination event. Tim knew four other Marshalls -- three men, one woman -- who had lost their jobs for getting too close to their Charges. And he liked his job too much to risk it for a few minutes of pleasure between the sheets. Minutes? he thought to himself, feeling his cock twitch just a bit. A horny voice in the back of his brain hollered, Hours!

"I want you to know that I will make this as ... well, I don't know if enjoyable is the right word," he laughed, looking back up to her. "But Beth ... I'll try to make you not hate it any more than necessary ... okay?"

After a bit he asked, "Is there anything I can do for you right now...?" He looked off toward the bathroom door, saying, "If you need to shower..." Then back to the bed, "Or sleep." Hell, she'd been asleep for almost seven hours! She wouldn't be closing her eyes again until sunrise, Tim feared. He glanced toward the windows as if able to see through the shades he'd already pulled shut, saying, "I noticed that the Café has beer. You wanna get a glass ... maybe sit ... talk. I can explain more about what's ahead."

 

[heartofcourage]

He seemed nervous, almost like what he were telling her would make her lose her mind. She knew why things had to be this way but it still didn't stop the fear that Marc would find her. They had a job to do and she had to let them do that job. Beth pushed herself up on her elbow, considering what he was offering to her.

"A glass of...something might be nice. Maybe another burger? I don't know what else I'm suppose to do besides sitting around and getting fat." She murmured, glancing towards the door.

"I really want to talk to my brother. My mom is probably worried sick about all of this. I haven't talked to them since the police station." Beth said, glancing towards Tim with a little bit of hope in her clear gaze.

 

[TimTimTyner]

Tim donned another one of his solemn expressions that told all. He said in as sympathetic a tone as he could muster while still sounding professional, "Listen Beth, I understand that you want to talk to your family, but ... I just can't allow it. I don't expect you to understand this, but..."

Tim hesitated knowing that no matter what he told her, Beth was not going to be happy with what he had to say. "What I can do for you is ... I can get messages from you to them. I can let them know that you're safe. But other than tell you that they are getting your messages, I can't have any more communication flowing from them to you. I know that that doesn't probably make much sense to you but there's a reason for it. If Massi ... if Mark Massi or the Massi family where to put pressure on your family ... and you were to learn about that, you might be tempted to reverse your direction. You might be tempted to not testify against him. We need you to testify. There are other innocent people like you yourself whose lives depend on us convicting Mark Massey ... on us taking down the Massi family."

 

[heartofcourage]

Beth deflated slightly as she was told that she couldn't talk to them. This was the longest that she had ever gone without talking to either her mom or her brother. Even Alan would call her out of the blue and ask her how she was. They were tight knit, even more so after her father had died.

"It's alright." Beth said, trying to make it seem like it really was alright. "They know I'm safe and that's all that matters."

She glanced up as he mentioned that there were a lot of people counting on the Massi family being taken down. How had she never know that Marc played such a large role in everything? Never once had she questioned him or what he was doing or how he had made his money.

"How many people has Marc killed?" Beth asked, wanting to know the honest answer. "That man couldn't have been his first."

 

[TimTimTyner]

"Are you sure that this is something you want to know?" Tim gave Beth a moment to consider her answer, then told her, "Three. This is the first in which we can put the gun in his hand ... but we have strong evidence ... or I should say had strong evidence, until the cases collapsed around us ... that he had been involved in the murders ... the executions of two others. Of course that's not even taking into account the Massi family as a whole. They are suspected of being responsible for as many as two dozen murders over just the past decade. We've just never had a witness come forth and get all the way to the trial phase--"

Tim stopped there, his stomach turning over as he realized the mistake that he had made. The one thing that you didn't tell a prospective witness against an organized crime family was that the witnesses before them never made it to trial. That meant that either the witnesses were killed before trial, and the criminal got off; or the witness backed out before trial, and the criminal got off; or the charges were dropped, and the criminal got off . Either way you looked at it, telling Beth that kind of information was just the same as saying you're wasting your time here, as well as risking your life, so why bother?

He moved a step closer to Beth and with all this sincerity and honesty in his heart said, "I will not let anything happen to you, Beth. If it comes down to it, I'll give my life to protect yours. I want you to understand that ... believe that ... count on that. You're in my hands, now. I'll take care of you."

 

[heartofcourage]

Three? Had she heard that right? Beth knew about the one...had seen it in person, but the other two were a mystery. When had he done it? Had it been while she was with him? A moment that he had slipped away while she were sleeping? How could she have almost married a man that she hardly knew at all?

"I know that I'm in danger." Beth said as he trailed off. "I knew the moment that I ran that nothing would be the same again. You don't have to sugar coat anything. Marc won't stop until he finds me. When he does...well, I just have to hope that he really did love me as much as he said he did."

It might not even be Marc's choice. His father, Al, had always been an intense individual. He was quiet, always watching, and he had put Beth ill at ease. Bert, his grandfather, was a happy man, always with a kind laugh or a hug for her. She would have never guessed that the entire family was involved in crime the way that they were.

"As long as you're not here to kill me, I'll just have to trust that you'll see me through to the end." She said with a shrug of her shoulders.

 

[TimTimTyner]

Tim couldn't help but laugh at her comment about his killing her. He'd been questioned by many a person over the years what it would take for him to turn to the Dark Side just once. Let a witness wander into a bullet ... how much...? Ten grand? Fifty? A Hundred? The mention of such sums of money led to Tim often wondering why it was so easy for some cops, agents, Marshalls, and others seemed to betray their oaths for cash.

"You don't have to worry about me, Beth," he said, not sure whether he really needed or whether she would take him at his word. "I'm one of the good guys. Quite possibly the last honest to goodness one."

Tim removed his jacket and offered out to her as he said, "C'mon. Let's go get a beer."



They barely made it in time. Although the café was open 24 hours to serve the freeway travelers and late night truckers, this particular conservative state's law restricted the establishment's alcohol serving time from noon to midnight. With an extra twenty slipped to the waitress, Tim was able to get an extra beer for each of them before they were cut off.

"So, what can you do?" Tim asked after they'd sat for a while. He could see that Beth didn't understand the question. He smiled, then chuckled. "Sorry. What I mean it, when we get you to a safe location, you're gonna want something to do. Hobby ... job ... whatever. Gotta have something to keep you busy, or you'll do just as you were worrying about earlier ... get lazy and fat."

 

[heartofcourage]

Beth glanced up from her side of the table, her plate of fries sitting untouched in front of her. What had sounded appealing at first simply wasn't any longer. She was in a diner in the wee hours of the morning, wearing clothing that wasn't hers, a jacket that was another man's besides Marc, being hunted down by the man that she had loved. None of it made sense to her.

"I haven't had a job in a long time. I didn't have to have one with Marc." She said as she picked up a fry, dipped it in ketchup and took a bite. "I like to read. Maybe write a little bit. Nothing serious to keep me going, though. I honestly don't know who I am now."

"I've been with him since I was 16. I never went to college. I wasn't a great student in the first place. I never really thought about what I would be in life beyond a wife and a mother. Nothing horribly special, I suppose." She shrugged her shoulders, knowing that Tim probably already knew more about her than she could tell him.