A California Christmas (Silver Springs #7) - Brenda Novak Page 0,41
street again and was lucky enough to find a spot to park where they could see the house but didn’t feel they were too conspicuous.
“So now we wait?” she asked when he turned off the engine.
He adjusted his seat so that it wasn’t as close to the steering wheel. “Now we wait. Hopefully, Tommy will show up instead of Ethan, and we will have the chance to approach him.”
“That would be awesome.” She looked at her phone again. “I still haven’t received a response on Facebook, and even though I left my number for Thiago to give him, Tommy hasn’t called.”
“I haven’t given up hope that he will. In the meantime, we’ll do what we can.”
Her face looked pinched, nervous, as she studied the house.
“How long were you and Ethan together?” Dallas asked.
“We started dating about ten months ago. He tried asking me out before that, but I didn’t want to get involved with anyone at work. I’d signed that agreement and meant to honor it.”
“Were you ever in love with him?”
She took a few seconds to consider the question. “I thought I was. I was in love with his potential—but the man he is on the inside doesn’t match the handsome package. I finally had to admit the truth and quit making excuses for him. Whenever he’d be a jerk and we’d argue, he’d blame me for setting him off. It took me a while to realize he was manipulating me, making me feel responsible for his own bad behavior.”
Dallas shifted to get more comfortable. “I looked up revenge porn on the internet while you were in your interview at the coffee shop.”
“And? What’d you learn?”
“That posting a digital image in an attempt to harass someone is a crime.”
She leaned back and put her feet up on the dash. “Revenge porn is called cyber-exploitation. It’s a form of nonconsensual pornography, and it’s illegal in California, but the penalties aren’t very big. And proving what Ethan did was a willful act meant to cause me injury isn’t that easy.”
“How could anyone argue that it wasn’t a willful act meant to cause you injury? You lost your job because of it.”
“But if push comes to shove, he could claim consent—that I knew about the recording and gave my permission for him to do whatever he wanted with it.”
“What woman would give permission for something like that?”
“Someone who wanted the attention. Someone who thought that being in the spotlight might bring future opportunity. Someone like a news anchor who was just a little too eager to ‘make it.’”
Dallas felt his eyebrows jerk together. “Can he change his story after the fact? He’s claiming he didn’t put it up in the first place, not that you gave consent.”
“Because he doesn’t know the defenses that are open to him yet. It’s possible, if he gets the right attorney, they might go that way.”
“I’m pretty sure if the police confiscated his computer, they could prove it came from his IP address.”
“If only they would expend the time and resources.”
“If he was smart, he’d get rid of it right away, just in case. Maybe he already has. That would be a small price to pay to maintain his innocence.”
“It’s possible he didn’t use his computer. If he knew it was a crime, he might’ve been careful enough to use Tommy’s. Regardless, the police are so busy working on bigger cases—rapes and murders and bank robberies—that they aren’t going to search his house, confiscate every computer connected to him and bring in a forensics team to take a look at the hard drive. That would cost taxpayers a fortune, and, from their perspective, it would come with very little reward, even if they nailed him. The crime is called ‘harassment by means of an electronic device,’ and it’s only a misdemeanor. So nothing will likely happen from a criminal standpoint. My attorney said the worst Ethan would get on the criminal side would be six months in jail, a fine of up to a thousand dollars or both.”
Dallas rummaged around in his console until he found a pack of gum and, after offering Emery a stick, which she accepted, he put a piece in his own mouth. “Six months in jail would be serious for a pretty boy like Ethan. I can’t imagine he’d fare well with the type of men he’d meet in there. It would also publicly embarrass him the way he embarrassed you, and he’d lose his job for real this time.”