Sparrows & Sacrifice

by Nellie K Neves

  Sparrows & Sacrifice

  Lindy Johnson Book 3

  Nellie K. Neves

  Sparrows & Sacrifice Copyright © 2019 by Nellie K. Neves. All Rights Reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Cover designed by Nellie K. Neves & Sariah Hathaway

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Nellie K. Neves

  Visit my website at www.nellieknevesauthor.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing: July 2019

  ISBN-9781075229596

  CONTENTS

  Sparrows & Sacrifice

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Author’s Note

  For my Dad, Banky.

  Because my love of stories started with you and black bear sundaes, talking donkeys, and fire called down from heaven. I grew up on your stories and naturally wanted some of my own. Thank you for always encouraging me.

  Three taps on the doorway -I love you, Dad.

  “The truer measure of sacrifice isn’t so much what one gives to sacrifice as what one sacrifices to give.”

  -Lynn G. Robbins

  Chapter 1

  I could feel the cold glass beneath my fingertips. That was a triumph all on its own. It rattled as I pushed it across the wooden top of the table.

  “Lindy, are you done with dinner?”

  I looked up to see my mother staring at me. Her long brunette hair fastened back in a tight knot. She wore the apron she bought me the previous year for Christmas. I suppose someone ought to wear it. Dinner, she’d said something about dinner. I looked down and saw a plate of food. I touched the mashed potatoes—cold as my empty glass.

  Every sentence I spoke was like a quilt I had to stitch together piece by piece. Even then, the words were slow and calculated. “It’s cold.”

  Her smooth skin wrinkled between her eyebrows for a moment, then relaxed again. “You’ve been sitting there for half an hour staring at your glass. Your uncle and I finished the dishes.”

  Another time lapse.

  At least I’d only lost half an hour this time. She told me the day before that I’d stared out a window for three hours. For me it was only ten minutes.

  She pulled the plate from the table. “I’ll warm it up for you, sweetheart.” The edges of her mouth pulled down and in. I thought I saw her chew on the inside of her lip. She only did that when she worried. Had I done something wrong?

  “I’m not hungry.” I pushed away from the table. I shuffled from the room, but I pretended not to hear her sigh. Uncle Shane sat in my living room. I decided to take my chances with him. My body ached as I lowered it to the chair. Too much trauma, hard to tell where the injuries ended and my relapse damage began.

  “You want to watch the game?” Uncle Shane asked.

  “What game?” I asked.

  He knew I meant more than what teams, I meant the sport. I meant what season was it? I meant how much time have I lost? I’d only ventured from my room in the last couple days. And everything before that, everything I remembered, was disjointed and dark.

  “The Colts and the Titans play tonight. Colts are the obvious favorite, but it’s early in the season, so you know anything can happen.”

  It was a test, his way of checking my memory and reaction. Colts meant football, early in the season meant it was autumn.

  “September fifth?” I asked, knowing that I was likely wrong.

  His mouth twisted before he corrected me. “Close. September eighteenth.”

  My long-term memory remained intact. I remembered my childhood, both the good and the bad, or, in my case, the real and the implanted. I remembered college, criminology courses, and psychology internships. I could remember the cases I’d worked as a private investigator, the close scrapes, and the solved puzzles. I even remembered last summer with ease. Dallas and his quick smile tore at my psyche and threatened my resolve not to cry.

  The violence popped into my mind with ease as well. I knew why my skin still carried the marks from a madman’s blade; there was no forgetting my captivity in the cabin. I just added it to the dark pit of nightmares that consumed me when my guard fell. Though I wished I didn’t, I could remember the way the knife felt when I took his life to save mine. A desperate act for survival, but it didn’t lessen the filthy feeling that gouged out my soul every time I thought about it.

  After that, it was hazy snatches, brief images I could pull up, or feelings and impressions of the time. Red flashing lights, the feeling of rain on my face, and Ryder’s words. Cotton brushed against my face as my head collapsed onto my chest.

  Ryder pled with me. He held me. He kept me anchored so that I couldn’t slip away. How had I repaid him? With one phrase, “I don’t.”

  Such a tiny phrase to carry so much.

  I don’t want a relationship.

  I don’t want help.

  I don’t want you.

  I lied.

  I wanted him. I wanted him so badly that my stomach ached and my head turned foggy, but I’d lied to protect him, to keep him from the hardship I knew was crashing down around me. He didn’t need to be a part of my vacant stares and empty days. He was better than that. What could I give him emotionally? I’d been the victim of something horrific, and at the hands of a person I’d trusted and cared about.

  What did I have left?

  I’d wanted to spare him my inevitable demise because, at the time, I thought I was dead.

  Somehow, I was still alive and it surprised me every day. But the phrase had worked and, after the rain and the wet sidewalk, I had no memory of Ryder.

  I’d lived in darkness after that, memories weren’t stored in my brain as I relapsed, though I carried impressions of what had happened. Whether they were real, or whether I’d fabricated them from stories I’d heard, I had no way of knowing. Strong impressions of doctors without faces clung to me. There’d been steroid infusions to stop the active destruction of the disease in my brain. I was sure I’d heard the beeps and clicks and buzzing sounds that had gone along with a hospital stay. The one distinct memory I had was someone holding onto me, the weight of their forehead pressed hard against the back of my hand, and the feeling of love that had spread like honey through my body.

  There were snatches of arguments, not the words, just the feelings: desperation and anger, betrayal and compromise. I must have co
me home at some point, though I couldn’t recall when. My mother told me the day before that I’d been coherent for a couple weeks, but I had no memory of it, at least nothing solid. My words improved slowly, and the memory followed. I was climbing up out of a valley, and every day pulled me away from the fog.

  “Lindy,” my mother said, drying her hands on a towel, “Lindy did you hear Uncle Shane?”

  She talked to me as if I was a child. I tried not to resent her for it. To her, I looked helpless. I spoke in quick sentences that took time to formulate. I had a short attention span and lost track of conversations as they were happening. But, in my mind, I was sharp, coherent, and eager to put my life back together. I wanted her to go home and let me do the hard things. My cottage was too small for both of us, and I needed space to find my independence again.

  “I’m sorry, no, I didn’t hear you,” I admitted to my uncle.

  My mother shot him an expression that I knew carried weight, stern eyes and elevated brows, matched with a tight lip. My ability to process facial expressions still hadn’t fully returned, but my gut told me it meant, “I told you so.”

  As usual he ignored his older sister and asked again, “So that was a no to the game, then?”

  “No, I think I’ll go lie down.” I arranged the words in my mind and said, “I’m a little sleepy.” I started to leave the room when something silver caught my eye. Two arm crutches, stored at an angle by the door, as if they belonged there.

  They didn’t.

  “Why are those here?” I asked as I raised a hand and pointed to the offending objects.

  “We talked about that yesterday,” mom said, as if it was an answer.

  “No, we didn’t,” I said.

  Uncle Shane stepped between us before our argument could escalate. “Dr. McAlister sent them home with you from the hospital. He was afraid your mobility would be limited, but you’ve surpassed expectations as usual. I’m taking them back tomorrow.”

  “Maybe we should store them in a closet,” mom suggested, “in case you need them later.”

  It was as if the crutches were watching me, taunting me with their presence.

  “I won’t need them,” I said. The ‘ever’ was implied and hung in the air unspoken.

  “I’ll take them back,” Shane re-stated with emphasis.

  I nodded and took a step toward my room. My foot slipped on something slick. I bent to pick up the plastic bag. Small grains of sugar gathered at the bottom, clear and white miniature cubes. My heart quickened with excitement.

  “Was Ryder here?”

  They looked at each other, and I hated how they could talk without speaking.

  “No,” my mother said, “Ryder doesn’t come around.”

  “But, this is sour sugar. It goes with those gummy worms he likes.”

  She snatched the bag from my hand and crumbled it into a ball. “I had those yesterday. We shared, don’t you remember?”

  Uncle Shane turned away and walked to my window that looked out to the street. His arms clenched tight across his chest. My mother rubbed her shoulder as if it had released a sudden twinge of pain. Lying causes pain. Amos taught me that. Something felt off, but the haze thickened, fatigue rolled over my mind. I let it go and shuffled to my room.

  I shut my door, but turned the knob and let it fall open again. I wasn’t helpless. I was cunning and strong, and I refused to let her lie to me. Their voices seeped through the crack in the door as I listened.

  “You can’t keep things from her, Pamela. She’s grown, and she has clawed her way out of worse than this.”

  “I can shelter her from whatever I want. I’m her mother. If I think she needs protection from the world, or her job, or that boy, then I will protect her.”

  “This case needs her, whether you like it or not. She has a gift and when you stand in the way, you are sacrificing someone else’s daughter.”

  “I don’t care.” She flung the words at him. Then, as if she realized I might hear, her volume dropped again. “It is my right to protect Lindy. She’s too weak to—”

  “She’s stronger than you give her credit for, stronger than either of you have ever given her credit for.”

  “If this is another lecture about Germany, Shane, you can keep it to yourself.”

  I knew the sound of my uncle’s aggravated growl. It was always louder and deeper when he was arguing with my mother. “Stop controlling everything. Let her find her way. The chief has waited for two months on this case. He’s never going to find his daughter without Lindy.”

  “She can barely walk,” mom argued.

  “I’m sending someone with her.”

  “No, you’re not doing that to her. You heard what she said to him. She was very clear.”

  “She was dying!” I swore his voice shook my walls.

  Mom’s voice went tense, but hushed, like sound forced through a tight space. “Lower your voice.”

  I slid down the wall and pressed my hands against my temples to stop the confusion in my brain. My mother spoke again, “I want to take her home to California, away from all of this. She needs a quiet life, no more guns and knives and death.”

  “She’s good at the guns and knives and saving people, Pam. She doesn’t want to go anywhere. This is her home.”

  Uncle Shane was right about that, I wasn’t going to California.

  “If she does this favor for the chief, it wouldn’t just mean a consulting job for her. There’s a good chance he’d let her on the force. You know that’s what she’s wanted for a long time. Could you really hold her back from that?”

  There was silence for nearly a full minute before mom finally replied, “Fine, but give her three more weeks to recover, maybe then she’ll be strong enough.”

  The front door popped open and rattled the frame of the house. “Lindy is already strong enough.” Windows shook as it slammed behind him.

  Three weeks, I thought, three weeks to put my life back together.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  It was easier said than done. And my mother was the hardest part. Though there’d never been strain between us, she and Eleanor were closer, while dad and I were buddies. I suppose when your brain self-destructs, it’s your mother you want, but only while I was convalescing. Her constant need to cater to my every wish, typically before I ever expressed the need in the first place, wore me thin. I tried to hint to Shane about cases, and his work, hoping that whatever the chief had for me would slip into conversation, but he stayed quiet.

  I finally convinced my mother to drive me to purchase a new phone. Having her taxi me from place to place humiliated me, but until my physical reaction time caught up with my mental capabilities, and until I stopped having time lapses, I knew I wasn’t safe to drive. But, the phone protected in a red metal housing, perhaps my own subconscious desire to stop any bullet if possible, felt like freedom again. That night as I loaded PI Net and scrolled the database, my mother frowned.

  “Do you have to do this sort of work? Maybe you could get a nice desk job. I worked as a receptionist through most of college.” She wiped the table as I scanned the list of new investigators that had been added in my absence. “And no one ever shot at me.”

  She thought I didn’t hear her, but I was ignoring her. The PI Net app had gone through at least one major update since I’d last logged in. I was surprised to see investigators chatting with each other on message boards. I recognized a few of the handles, Sleuth42 was Avery Jones, a local hotshot, and QT-PI was the only other female investigator within fifty miles of me, Stacy Winslow. Other names were unfamiliar and the feeling was off putting, like showing up at a high school reunion and realizing you didn’t know half your graduating class. Still, they were the closest thing I’d ever had to friends. What did it say about me that my competition was all I could count for friends and it wasn’t because we were friendly?

  “I’m going to start a load of laundry, Lin. Do you want me to wash anything else?”

  I knew what she was
referring to. All of Cassidy Billings’ clothes had been returned to her father, presumably while I was a vegetable in the hospital, except for the clothes I’d worn the day I escaped. Those, Shane had set aside out of my mother’s reach. I kept them hidden in the back of my closet.

  They were still stained with blood, mine and his. They were torn from the abuse and still smelled of sweat and fear. My mother had tried to wash them the day before, but I’d rescued them. I wasn’t sure why I wouldn’t let them go, but, for whatever reason, it was important.

  “No.” I waited for the words to order themselves in my mind. “I’ll wash what I need later.” She’d seen my defiant glare before, and it didn’t faze her in the least. So that she knew I appreciated her help, I tacked on, “Thank you, though,” at the end.

  She’d never known quite what to do with me. As usual, she left me to my own world and left to wash her clothes. My phone buzzed in my hand, and I saw that Avery Jones had messaged me from one of the chat rooms.

  “Heard you were out of commission, but now you’re on PI Net again. Does that mean Lindy Johnson is back?”

  I ran my teeth over my bottom lip as I considered the answer. I was certainly not in the full swing of things, but I was ready to work, even if it were small cases.

  I typed out the words faster than I could ever hope to speak them. “I’m back. Perhaps not full time, but before long, Avery, I’ll be snatching up every offer before you have a chance.”

  Avery responded quickly, “Background checks from the safety of your own home, huh? Have you lost your nerve?”

  A user with the handle, Gumshu, seemed to share Avery’s distaste for me. “I heard you got chopped into little bits. Maybe you’re too hideous to go out in public.”

  I’d wondered how much had spread within the community of PI Net about my last case. It was obvious that they’d heard the juiciest parts. I wanted to respond, to retaliate with some personal hit on Gumshu’s prowess or lack thereof, but most of my fight had been stolen in the relapse. Even more had been taken when my scars were inflicted. How could I hurt people when I knew what pain felt like? I just wanted to do my job again.