by Ragan, T. R.
She’d done her best, Harper told herself. But that was just another lie to make herself feel better, wasn’t it? She could have done better. She could have returned to River Rock at some point and tried to talk to her little sister, but she’d been in survival mode, and the idea of going back to a place where so many bad things had happened had been out of the question.
The self-hate that lived within expanded. Most days she saw her self-hatred as another person who constantly looked over her shoulder, criticizing and pointing out flaws. Her inner critic could be exhausting and isolating. Instead of practicing forgiveness, though, she’d doubled down on dishonesty. Her husband, kids, and both sisters thought she was enrolled in school at California State University, Sacramento. The lies were stacking up, growing bigger and scarier, taking their toll, wearing her out emotionally.
A clanking sounded from below, reminding her that she wasn’t alone.
Cleo was supposed to have been here with her today, but nobody had seen or heard from Cleo since their email conversation before the reunion.
Cleo was married and had two children. Maybe she had grown disenchanted by The Crew’s desire for revenge. If Harper had made a guess when they’d first gotten together who might go AWOL, Cleo would have been her last choice. Cleo was fierce. All five foot five inches of her. Every time The Crew went after someone, Cleo was the first to volunteer to be used as bait. Nobody wanted to make these men pay for what they did more than Cleo.
Maybe she cared too much.
Maybe she’d hit a wall and decided she’d had enough.
Another loud bang brought Harper to her feet. Robotically she put on her wig and mask and then grabbed a sandwich from the cooler she’d brought and made her way downstairs.
Earlier, when she’d first arrived at the house and had gone downstairs to check on QB, the man had begged and pleaded for his release as she slid a McDonald’s bag through the bars. When his cries for help didn’t work, he’d switched tactics, yelling and screaming every obscenity in the book, calling her names she’d never heard before in her life, which was saying a lot.
The second her foot hit the landing, he caught sight of her. “Please,” he said. “Your friend is wrong about me. She’s got me all mixed up with someone else. I would never harm a flea.”
“You’re wasting your breath.”
“Seriously. I can prove it.”
She wasn’t falling for his act. She thought about all the times her father had begged for her forgiveness only to physically assault her that same night. Visions of her father coming into her room still replayed in her mind. Sometimes her father’s face would be distorted, which she preferred. She wondered if the images would ever go away.
Years ago Harper had met a woman in group therapy. She was seventy-five years old, had been in therapy most of her life, and was still trying to find a way to deal with the trauma her parents had caused. Almost everything reminded the woman of what her parents had done to her. The flick of a light being turned off was a major trigger. Barking dogs, loud footfalls, rustling paper, and water faucets being turned on were also triggers. Every little thing upset her because it reminded her of the suffering she’d endured. She would visibly begin to shake and shiver. The woman knew she would never forget what had happened to her, but she was desperate to find a way to forgive them in hopes she could then move forward and find peace.
What a load of shit.
Harper wanted peace, but not forgiveness. She didn’t need to forgive, she just needed to forget. Her parents’ deaths were a good start. Harper bent low and slid the sandwich between the bars.
“Bitch! I’m talking to you!”
QB’s voice yanked her from the tangle of thoughts that had invaded her mind. But it was too late. She’d hardly straightened before his arm shot through the metal poles and hooked around her neck. Her head hit the bars. The pain was excruciating. She screamed, but no sound came out of her mouth.
She sucked air in through her nose and then the room fell silent.
No choking or coughing.
Nothing escaped her lips as her airway was cut off.
She grabbed his arm, dug her fingernails into his skin, but he had a good, strong hold. It was no use.
She was going to die. She would never find peace.
“What the fuck!”
Harper’s body went slack as she imagined hearing another voice.
The bars rattled, and that’s when she realized somebody was here. Through half-lidded eyes she saw Cleo. Her long black hair and the black mask covering the upper half of her face contrasted with the sharp white teeth that chomped into QB’s arm, eliciting a painful cry. His arm loosened around Harper’s throat, long enough to let air into her lungs.
Thank God.
Too weak to free herself from his grasp, Harper reached her arm up and over her shoulder through the bars and blindly clawed at his face, digging her fingers into his eyes. Another piercing cry emerged as he turned his head from left to right in an attempt to disengage her fingers.
Her lungs were on fire, but she could breathe.
Adrenaline soared as she burrowed her fingers deeper until finally he pushed her away so that he could free his arm of the teeth ripping into his skin and muscle.
Harper staggered away from the cell and dropped to the floor, gulping in air.
The cries coming from QB were deafening now. Cleo had ripped a chunk out of his arm. Blood dripped down her face and chin. She spit out a piece of him.
Bloodied and in pain, QB shouted incoherently.
Cleo came to where Harper had fallen and held out an arm to help her to her feet and up the stairs, where Cleo sat her down in the folding chair, removed her mask, and made her drink some water.
Harper’s throat was on fire. If Cleo hadn’t shown up, she would have died. She was sure of it. “You saved my life,” Harper said, her voice hoarse.
Cleo used paper towels and water from a five-gallon jug to clean her own face. “We should kill the asshole and be done with him. What’s the point of keeping him here, other than putting ourselves in jeopardy of being caught?”
Harper held the cool water bottle to her throat. There was something different about Cleo since she’d seen her last. She looked as if she hadn’t slept in a week. “What’s going on, Cleo?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Cleo’s dark eyes narrowed. “I just bit a chunk out of that idiot’s arm, and you’re asking me what’s going on?”
“Yeah, I am,” Harper said, undeterred. “When The Crew was first formed, you were game for anything. As long as we went after the people who had destroyed our lives, you were the one who suggested we should each be in charge of how these predators would be dealt with. But you clearly don’t agree with how Bug is handling all of this. You didn’t show up on Saturday night, but you’re here now. So what’s your problem?”
“It’s true. I was excited at first. The idea of finally taking action got me fired up.” Cleo gulped down half a bottle of water, then looked toward the ceiling. “That feels like a lifetime ago.”
It did feel that way, but Harper said nothing, in hopes that Cleo would go on.
“I’m angry,” Cleo finally said. “Taking care of Brad Vicente was invigorating. Knowing what he’d done to Lily and having full control of what would happen to him felt right. And then came Otto Radley, a beast of a man who hadn’t been out of jail for twenty-four hours before going on a hunt.” She took a breath. “I thought burying him ten feet under would change everything. We were doing what we set out to do. One man is dickless, Otto Radley and your parents are dead, and yet I don’t feel any different than I did before I joined The Crew.” She met Harper’s gaze. “Now that your parents are dead and buried, do you feel better? Did anything change for you?”
“I’m relieved that they’re gone. But lately, more than anything else, I mostly feel numb.”
Cleo unfolded another camping chair and took a seat across from Harper, their knees only inches apart as she lean
ed forward and said, “I thought things would change. But it’s only gotten worse. I can’t sleep. I can hardly eat. I don’t see one face in my dreams, but six. Six fucking frat boys. Not one of them cared that I was tied to a bed. They just climbed up and fucked the shit out of me.”
Cleo’s eyes glistened. “They were young and foolish,” Cleo said, every word dripping with sarcasm. “That’s what my best friend told me recently. ‘Let it go!’ she said. Sadly, she’s not the first person to give me that advice, and she won’t be the last, but every single time someone tells me to let it go, I want to strangle them.”
Harper recalled her husband saying something along those lines. He’d regretted saying anything, of course, after she proceeded to lay it all out for him and tell him every detail of what had happened to her: the sound of her father’s footsteps in the hallway. Her rising body heat and the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach when he entered her room, the heaviness of his body, his hands, his fingers, his dirty mouth on her bare skin. When Harper had finished, her husband was crying for her and never suggested she let it go again.
Cleo wiped her eyes. “A day doesn’t go by that I don’t feel an intense hatred. And do you know who I hate more than anyone?”
Harper shook her head, but she did know the answer.
“Me. I hate myself more than I hate those boys who patiently waited their turn to stick their dicks inside me. Boys I can still smell. That’s fucked up. And now,” she continued, “drumroll, please. My husband, the only man I’ve ever loved, is talking divorce.”
“I’m sorry,” Harper said.
“Yeah. You and me both. We’ve been married eight years. We have two great kids, but he says he’s not sure how much longer he can live with my anger and sadness.”
Harper thought of Nate. She couldn’t remember the last time the two of them had gone on a date, let alone sat down and talked about life. She’d been so wrapped up in getting revenge that she never stopped to think about her husband. Nate had saved her after she’d started drinking and doing drugs to make the pain go away. If not for him, she never would have experienced the unconditional love she had for her family. Two beautiful children. Why hadn’t that been enough? Would she ever get her life straightened out, or was this as good as it got?
Cleo anchored strands of hair behind her ear.
Not only was she beautiful, Harper thought, Cleo was a good person. And yet, like Harper, she obviously didn’t feel whole and couldn’t find her way to any kind of normalcy.
“How do you do it?” Cleo asked. “How do you go on, day after day, after everything that’s happened to you?”
Harper thought for a moment before she said, “I clean.”
Cleo gave her the side-eye. “What?”
“I scrub dishes and sinks and cupboards until they shine. I spend hours every day on the bathrooms alone. Every morning before the sun comes out, I get down on my hands and knees and dust my bedroom floor.” She’d never talked to anyone about her obsession with cleaning.
“What does your family think about that?”
“That’s a very good question.” For the first time ever, Harper tried to imagine what she must look like to Nate and the kids. “They probably think I’m crazy.”
Neither of them laughed.
“All that scrubbing and elbow grease, for what?” Cleo questioned.
Harper said nothing because she didn’t have a good answer. And it was probably time for her to stop.
“I don’t know what I’d do without my family,” Cleo said. “But I also know I have to see this thing through. Those rapists are adults now, and I bet you they don’t give what happened to me a second thought. Do any of them regret what they did? Does one fucking frat boy relive that time and wish he’d put a stop to it?” She exhaled. “I feel as if I’ve spent my entire life frozen in time. I just pray I’ll find a way to move on when this is over.” Cleo rubbed her hands over her face. “What about you? Are you going to spend the rest of your life fighting the fight, one douchebag at a time and all that?”
“When we first got together, if you had asked this same question, I would have told you that I’ll never stop going after men like QB and Otto Radley and Brad Vicente.” She rubbed her stomach, thinking about the life growing inside her. Her family deserved better. “But after we take care of your frat boys, I think it might be time for me to put it all behind me and concentrate on my family.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Within an hour of arriving at work on Monday morning, Sawyer was called into Palmer’s office. He wanted to see her about the write-up she’d emailed him last night on the Black Wigs.
“Shut the door,” Palmer said after she stepped into his office, carrying a couple of files.
She did as he asked, then took her usual seat in front of his desk.
“I read what you emailed me last night, and I noticed you included the recent abduction of Myles Davenport.”
“Yes,” she said. “I’ve watched the video clip of the van pulling out of the school parking lot. It does look to me as if the driver is wearing a wig, but I couldn’t make out a license plate, and the video is grainy. So I thought you might prefer to leave out the Myles Davenport story until we have more information.”
“Which is why you sent over two versions,” he stated.
“Correct.” She wondered if he was going to lecture her for including information about Myles Davenport’s rape trial ten years ago. “I found it interesting that both men have been accused of sexual assault. I didn’t name any of Davenport’s accusers since they were minors at the time.” She cleared her throat. “I did my best to keep an unbiased view.”
Palmer nodded but said nothing.
“Originally, I was planning to focus on Brad Vicente, but everything about that man has been told dozens of times, so I decided to concentrate on public opinion instead.”
“I see.”
“It’s been a month since the Brad Vicente incident, and yet social media is still talking about it,” Sawyer went on. “Commenters are split down the middle; half are saying the women being assaulted in the videos obviously enjoy rough sex, and the other half are calling for Brad Vicente to be locked up for life.”
Sawyer kept her gaze on Palmer. It was difficult to tell whether he was happy with what she’d written or not. The suspense was killing her.
And then he reached across his desk and handed her a USB drive.
“What is this?”
“There might be more to this Black Wigs story than we think,” Palmer said. “A source of mine got ahold of security video from outside an apartment building in West Sacramento. The camera faces the park. It looks to me like the Black Wigs have been busy making the rounds.”
Sawyer held up the USB. “More footage of Brad Vicente in action?”
Palmer shook his head. “According to my source, the person in the video could be Otto Radley, a man who spent twenty years behind bars for kidnapping and holding a young woman captive for three years.”
“Why do they let guys like that out of jail?”
“Beats me. Although it was nighttime when the video was taken and difficult to see, I thought maybe you could find someone to lighten it up.”
“What does this have to do with the vigilante group?” she asked.
“The man in the video appears to be approaching a woman wearing a black wig. If the man is in fact Otto Radley, you might be interested to know that he hasn’t been seen since his release from prison.”
“So Otto Radley could be getting a taste of his own medicine.”
“He could be dead for all we know.”
“Why didn’t your source take this to Channel 10 News or another local station?”
“He owed me a favor. If you can make sense of what’s on the video, we might have a story worth telling.”
“I’ll do my best.” If both videos had indeed captured the Black Wigs in action, that would mean the ladies were keeping busy, Sawyer thought. This story could end up bein
g exactly the sort of break she’d been looking for professionally.
“There’s more,” Palmer said.
She waited.
“The lab reports have come in. Postmortem data reveal the bones belong to a missing ten-year-old female. Relatives were unable to identify the clothes found at the grave site, but an old-but-healed fracture of her left arm and dental information were a positive match.”
Sawyer’s insides thrummed. “Name?”
“Cora O’Neal.”
“Cause of death?”
“Broken neck.”
Goose bumps prickled her skin. “She’s on my list of girls who went missing.” Sawyer opened one of the files she’d brought with her, pulled out the map that she and Aria had marked up last night, and placed it on his desk in front of him. “Each red X reflects the area where a child went missing,” she told Palmer. “Although the girls weren’t all taken in Sacramento, they all disappeared within a fifteen-mile radius of here.”
He looked the map over.
“I talked to Paige Owens, the one who got away,” Sawyer went on. “She’s sixteen now. She suffers from repressed memories, but guess what?”
Palmer frowned, making it clear he didn’t like guessing games.
“Every once in a while, repressed memories that have been blocked are triggered when another girl goes missing. In this case it was the disappearance of Riley Addison that sparked a new memory—an image of the woman’s face. From the very beginning—it’s all in the police reports—Paige stated that it was a woman who tried to stick a needle in her arm.”
Palmer tapped his fingers against the edge of his desk.
“If we could have a composite drawing done,” Sawyer went on, “we could put the woman’s image on the front page, maybe plaster it all over social media and hope someone recognizes the woman.”
“Even if everything Paige Owens told you was the absolute truth, what makes you think the woman who failed to kidnap her is responsible for every missing female on your list?”
“I do not believe that one woman is responsible for all these missing girls. But I do think publishing her image will get attention and hopefully put our readers on alert and maybe bring forth new witnesses concerning old cases and new ones.”