Page 101 of Hunter or Hunted

The day I first looked at that questionnaire, I’d scratched my head at many of the questions. What did it matter if we’d met a year ago, or five, or ten? Why did his age matter?

After meeting Evan and comparing his age to Allie’s, I understood. Those details impacted the level of trauma the relationship caused.

“We try to help all of them,” Rhiannon explained. “But help looks different for everyone. Sometimes it’s connecting them to another facility. Sometimes it’s writing them a check big enough to get out from under their partner’s thumb. And, on occasion, it’s inviting them here. Do you know what questions here give us the best idea of what kind of help they need?”

I pointed to the one I’d found most strange when I filled it out. “The last question?”

Rhiannon tilted her head. “That’s an indicator of whether the ranch is a good fit for someone’s healing, sure. But this is the most important question.”

She pointed to number 14.

How many times have you left?

“On average, it takes seven attempts before a woman leaves for good,” Rhiannon said. “Anything over five, she’s probably ready. Any under that, we refer her to another facility.”

Thinking back to all the times I’d left Troy before I left Troy, I saw the point she was making.

“Is that the primary question we look at?” I asked.

“Number 14 and number 13.” Rhiannon pointed to it. How often did violence occur in your relationship, and what was the nature of it? “Do you know what I’m looking at here?”

I shook my head.

“Immediate risk assessment. Frequency doesn’t matter to me. Once is enough. The nature of the violence matters most. If she says he ‘choked’ her, even if it was only one time, we need her out now. Strangulation starts a clock. It’s not a matter of if he’ll hurt her again. It’s a matter of how long we’ve got before he kills her.”

My throat thickened at those words. “That’s what I said on my application, right? He ‘choked’ me.”

Her warm brown eyes met mine. She frowned. “That’s why Simone got on the road a few hours later. You were high risk.”

I pressed my lips together, nodding.

She gave me a pat on the back and returned to the questionnaire. “I’ll write you a list of the big red flags. Decision-making won’t be your job anyway. Me and my psych team make those calls. You’ll read the questionnaire, make contact, and get on the road for an in-person meet. I just want you to understand the weight of what you read in these files.”

That took the weight of a truck off my shoulders. I nodded and kept listening.

She explained some more stats. Threats with a weapon were up there with strangulation. Head blows concerned her, but because of the psychological escalation. If he didn’t mind leaving her with a black eye, it meant he didn’t care about leaving marks. Not because it carried the risk of lethality the way strangulation or weapon threats did.

We were twenty minutes into the conversation when a knock sounded at the door. In walked a familiar face. Eve.

After the greetings, Rhiannon explained that Eve would walk me through the ins and outs of communication with the victims.

What did that look like?

Validate, but don’t coddle. Offer kindness, but don’t therapize.

My job wasn’t to heal her. My job was to give her a way out.

Eve put it best when she said, “I think you’ll be good at this because you’re kind, but you’re not nice. It’s not our job to fix them. They have to decide to end it. We just remind them that their wounds can’t heal when they’re still taking blows. Then we offer a sanctuary where the fists stop flying.”

I agreed. I was very far from nice.

33

GWEN

A Few Weeks Later

The Hearing