by Jo Raven
Poor fucker. We rattled him.
Then he swivels back toward us, and I swear he looks kinda pale around the mouth. “Yeah,” he says into the receiver. “Yeah, let me know.”
We look at him expectantly as he puts the receiver down and grimaces as if he has just bitten into a cupcake and found it stuffed with lemon cream.
Hey, it has happened to me. I bet I made that same face.
“Do you remember what Tyrese Weir wore the last time you saw him?” he asks.
My turn to frown at the randomness of the question. “Not really. Same shit we all wore, I guess. Jeans, hoodie, sneakers. There was this red baseball cap he loved, always wore it.”
Wesley nods. “Were you good friends with this boy?”
“Why are you asking me this?” I barely feel Dakota’s hand drawing circles over my now pounding heart. “What did you find out?”
“The house in Wausau was searched. No incriminating evidence of any kind was found inside. The house was renovated relatively recently. But.” He grunts. “But the force also dug up the yard and found a skeleton of a child. He’d been wearing a red cap. I’m sorry, Mr. Madden.”
I draw Dakota closer to me. Can’t get her close enough. I’m not gone, my mind isn’t lost in the maze of my memories. I know exactly where I’m sitting, but a hush has fallen over everything.
Kenneth Shaw killed Tyrese.
At last I know the truth.
***
“You sure you’re okay to see them now, man?” Rafe asks. “We could come back later.”
“We’re here. And I’m okay.” As long as Dakota remains by my side, I’ll wing it. There’s no telling whether seeing those kids will flip the switch, especially after finding out about Tyrese, but I’ll take the chance.
Can’t hide forever. I need to do things, live my life. Do what’s fucking important.
“Where’s Lee?” Megan asks as we follow Wesley into the building.
“With Dylan and his brothers,” Dakota says.
I hope that fucker takes damn good care of my kid, or I’ll ink “I’m an idiot” on his forehead. Thinking about the design of the tattoo keeps me distracted. Maybe I’ll add a heart. A pink one.
Wesley calls over one of his colleagues and tells her to take us to the location where the children are kept.
“You will not disclose the location to anyone else, understood?” He’s back in full authoritative mode, and we let him have his moment in front of others.
“Of course we understand,” Rafe says. “Keeping them safe from that madman should be your number one priority.”
“It’s a private clinic. Officer Delaney will drive you there. And we’ll talk another time about the other topic you raised.”
The adoption.
I’m the one who brought it up, back at home. It was Dakota who suggested a solution. We can’t realistically think of adopting them. We have a baby, the Damage Boyz to care for as well, and it’s not like we’re millionaires or something.
But Dakota has a huge family and many ideas.
“If you’ll follow me,” Officer Delaney says, flashing us a bright smile. “People who save children are my favorite.”
“Lead the way,” Megan says, smiling.
I hang back and turn to Wesley. “You really are Superman,” I tell him and leave him looking confused.
Well, he found Tyrese’s bones. He made it happen so we’ll meet with the children. And he promised that we’ll talk more. That’s already a whole damn lot in my book from a guy who owes me nothing.
And now it’s time to officially meet the kids. There’s a sick fascination churning in my gut. I wanna know if he did to them what he did to me. Fuck, I wanna know, and I don’t. But one thing’s for sure, I need to fucking see them now that my mind’s clear. See that they’re alive, that they’re okay.
That we got there in time to rescue these lost brothers of mine, and if what we went through doesn’t make us blood, I don’t know what else could.
Chapter Thirty One
Dakota
Learning of that boy’s fate was a shock. Tyrese. Bones and a red baseball cap buried in the yard of a house where who knows what other horrors might be unearthed.
The knowledge that Zane came so close to meeting that fate has me shivering. I’m grateful for his hand around mine, his grip strong and warm, reminding me he’s here with me and not laid in the cold ground.
He’s right here and fighting back, fighting to win the crippling battle with his memories, and my chest swells with pride. Yeah, I’m so damn proud of this guy. My fairytale warrior, with his tall hairdo, the pretty uptilted eyes, the foul mouth and bad attitude, the many scars.
So in love with him.
We follow Officer Delaney’s car outside the clinic, somewhere in the outskirts of town, and park.
Officer Delaney—she hasn’t told us her first name, and the guys seem too distracted to strike a conversation with her—leads us inside, flashing her badge to the guard at the door and then talking in a low voice to the uniformed man behind the reception desk.
She motions at us to follow her, and we hurry down long hallways, silent, as if bracing for this meeting.
And yet, when we enter a room and I see them, I find I’m not prepared. At all.
They’re sitting in a small group on two beds facing each other. They glance up as we approach, and their wide, wary gazes remind me of the basement and how they looked when we found them. I’d been too worried about Zane then to pay much attention. He’d zoned out completely, lost inside his head.
Now here they sit, real blood and flesh, the five teenage boys we freed.
My first thought is that they aren’t as young as I’d originally thought. Not as young as Zane had been when he was abused. Though skinny and hunched over, their hair cropped short and their eyes huge in their thin faces, they seem to be closer to fourteen or fifteen.
I wonder if that means Kenneth Shaw’s tastes changed, or that he took what he could, and holy crap, my thoughts are turning my stomach.
“Hey, guys,” Officer Delaney says cheerfully, “remember me? I was here yesterday, talking with the doctors. I am Officer Delaney, and these people here are your rescuers.” She glances at us. “Some of them, anyway. From what I understand, they want to talk to you, make sure you’re okay. One of them in particular—”
“I remember you,” one of the kids says, a dark-haired boy with bright blue eyes, pointing at us.
At Zane.
“Yeah,” another says, in a lower voice, peeking from behind the first one’s back. “That Mohawk. I remember you.”
Zane steps forward, his dark eyes hooded. “I’m Zane Madden. I was fucked over by Kenneth Shaw, too.”
Officer Delaney gasps. “Mr. Madden—”
“Literally fucked over,” Zane goes on, ignoring her, and I see the kids leaning forward to see him, hanging on his words. “I was younger than you were. Maybe eight or so. Lived with the motherfucker for months. Still dunno how I made it out of there alive, but I’m here now, and I wanna know that you guys are gonna be okay.”
“Boys,” Delaney turns toward the kids, “is this okay? Do you want to talk to these people? I could escort them back out.”
“No.” A boy with short blond hair and a sore on his cheek nods at Zane. “I wanna hear what he has to say.”
I fight a smile.
Officer Delaney slumps back on one of the other beds, folding her arms over her chest, huffing. I want to tell her I understand her concern, that she cares for these kids, too, and I’m sure she won’t budge from her position, guarding them in case we say or do anything to upset them.
But they’re gazing at Zane like he’s their leader or their long-lost brother, and the way they lean into each other tell me he was right in thinking they’d want to stick together after their ordeal. Their experience bonded them in deep ways we can barely understand. Pain, it seems, can be stronger than blood.
They shouldn’t be separated, thrown b
ack into a system that will spin them around, then deposit them far from one another. I remember how close Zane was to his adopted sister before she died—a girl he spent part of his tortured childhood with, a girl who stood by his side. How devastated he was when he lost her.
These kids have never known a real family—until now.
“This is my girl, Dakota.” Zane tugs on my hand, and I wave at the boys. Not sure I should bother. They’re outright staring at him, eating up every word falling from his lips. “And this is Rafe and Megan, and their baby Zay. Well, his name’s Zane, too, but apparently we look too damn similar, the baby and me, so they changed it.”
Impossibly, that gets laughs from the boys.
Officer Delaney’s eyes are about to bug out of her head.
Yeah, Zane doesn’t look cuddly and nurturing, but she doesn’t know him. Under that hard, bad boy façade there’s a warm, sensitive guy who cares for everyone around him. He’s the soul of the Brotherhood for a reason. He convinced Rafe to take in the Damage Boyz because he knows what it feels like to be alone in the world, with nowhere to go.
And he’s here, pushing down his own pain, using it as a stepping stone to reach these boys and help them, tell them they’re not alone.
From the looks of it, they’re listening.
***
We find ourselves pulling out chairs and sitting by the two beds. The boys introduce themselves in low, raspy voices that remind me too much of Zane’s voice after a night of bad dreams.
Quint is the first boy who spoke out. He seems to be slightly older than the others, or maybe just more self-assured.
Sawyer is the only blond of the boys, with the darkest eyes, and a scar across his collarbone he won’t talk about. He’s the one who said he wanted to hear what Zane has to say.
Beside him sits Niko who has the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. He doesn’t say much, but his gaze is hard, and the white lines around his mouth tell me he’s in pain. Nobody has talked about the boys’ injuries and I make a mental note to ask Officer Delaney later.
Jericho’s face is bruised, his gray gaze hard. His earlobes are encrusted with blood. Looks like he had earrings that were pulled out. He hasn’t spoken a word yet, but he keeps glancing at the last boy sitting next to him, Tanner.
Tanner is more talkative. He tugs on his short chestnut curls as he tells us that he was the third boy Kenneth Shaw brought into the basement, after kidnapping him from an abandoned lot where he’d been practicing football moves on his own one afternoon.
From the bits and pieces contributed by all boys, we find out that the basement door opening inside the house was bolted shut by Kenneth Shaw after one of them—Niko—managed to get into the house one day and tried to get the attention of anyone passing by. He said a woman saw him through the window but didn’t seem to realize he’d been calling for help.
The house was locked so he wasn’t able to escape. Kenneth Shaw found him later, punished him, threw him down into the basement and blocked the door, leaving only the door to the yard so he could come and go, or throw down food and water bottles to them.
I’m squeezing Zane’s hand, just as a fist seems to be squeezing around my heart, but I doubt he feels it. On second glance, I realize he’s got a faraway look in his eyes I know well, and I lift our joined hands up, shaking them.
“Zane.” He blinks slowly, and I don’t think he’s seeing me—or anyone in this room. The crushing feeling in my chest grows. “Come on, Zane.”
I kind of expected this to happen, but I’d been hoping it wouldn’t. Flashbacks are tricky, as I’ve found out. Triggers are tricky. Sometimes you can predict them, sometimes you can’t.
“What’s going on?” Tanner asks, glancing from me to Zane and back. “Why are you calling his name?”
Megan looks up from her sleeping baby. “Sometimes his mind flashes back to the past,” she explains calmly. “Sometimes it can’t distinguish the past from the present.”
The boys seem to think about this.
“Like time traveling?” Quint eventually says.
“Not exactly.”
“Like dreaming with your eyes open,” Zane’s gravelly voice says, and I jerk a little. I hadn’t realized he was back. “And having a really fucking bad dream.”
The boys kind of cough-laugh, but I can see on their faces that they don’t really find it funny. Not surprisingly, they appear to be mature for their age. They look… concerned.
And it warms me up inside. I hardly know them, but they seem like good kids. They didn’t deserve what happened to them anymore than Zane did.
Their concern, their sadness, their quiet manners, they’re tugging on my heartstrings. I think I could come to care for them, given time. After all, I’m used to having a huge family. What’s five boys more?
Chapter Thirty Two
Zane
“Did he lock you up, too?” the blond boy—Sawyer—asks and I force myself to focus. My mind keeps slipping into the past as the memories crowd in. “In a basement?”
“It was a goddamn attic,” I growl and have to take a deep breath before I continue. “An attic. He’d lock me up for hours at a time, sometimes days, but…” My voice is cracking, and I have to stop again. “But then he’d release me, and I’d be going around the house with the other kids.”
“Z-man, maybe that’s enough for today,” Rafe says, and I shake my head.
Not yet. These kids are craving this. They need to hear they weren’t the only ones this happened to. I owe them this.
“He locked you up alone? Not together with others?” That’s Nico, the one with the intense blue eyes.
“I was alone.”
“That sucks,” he says, and the others nod.
Does it? Again I wish I knew what Ken did to them.
“The things he did to me… I’d have fucking died if someone saw,” I admit, and see Rafe’s eyes narrow. “I was very young.”
“Ah yeah,” Nico says, more quietly this time, and the other kids hang their heads, looking at the floor.
This cinches it. I really need to talk to the police about this. Need to know the goddamn details.
“Did he beat you?” Quint asks, lifting his chin at me, as if in challenge. “He used his belt on me until the buckle broke.”
Shit. I’m glad Ash isn’t here. His dad used to give him the belt and his scars are pretty bad.
“He burned me with cigarettes,” I tell Quint, holding his gaze. “And cut me with a fucking knife.”
There’s a tiny flinch. “Where?”
“My back.”
“And those scars on your arms? Did he cause them, too?”
I freeze, involuntarily glancing down at the thin scars on the inside of my arms. “No,” I whisper. “He didn’t.”
I made those. Cutting myself when I was younger to let out some of the rage and sadness and hollow frustration.
“He cut your back?” a new voice asks, and I look up, searching for its source.
Jericho. These are the first words he has spoken.
“Wanna see?” I hear myself say, and when the boys nod enthusiastically, I release Dakota’s hand and stand up, lifting my T-shirt.
I expect gasps. I expect comments. I expect some damn sound to let me know their reaction. The silence is odd, and as I turn my head to look, I feel hands on my back.
Cursing, I step away, then make myself stop.
Damn, these kids are tall. Soon they’ll be as tall as I am. I hear them shuffle behind me, but they don’t touch me again.
Just as well. Not a good time for a real flashback, one of those that send me plodding through the memories for hours, where I’m lost with no way out.
“These are bad,” Quint finally says, awe in his voice.
As I turn, pulling my T-shirt down, I take in their faces. “You know, my friend Asher who was with us that night when we found you in the basement, he has lots of scars on his back. And you know what that fucker always says?” They shake their heads, and I go
on, hoping I’m telling them the right things. “He says that scars are beautiful because they mean you survived.”
They scoff at that, and I agree with them. Never bought into Asher’s mantra, but then again I mostly ignored my scars. Ignored my past.
No wonder I have flashbacks and nightmares. The therapist told me it’s because I never accepted what happened to me. So I let it haunt me like a malevolent ghost.
“Pretty or not, the fucking scars are there,” I tell Quint, and the other boys. “It doesn’t matter if they’re ugly. The point is...” I try to gather my thoughts, find the best words, but I’ve never been good at this shit, so fuck it. “You made it out alive, and I fucking swear to you that me and my friends, we’ll do everything we can to keep you safe.”
***
“That was good, what you did for those kids.” Rafe thumps my back as we step outside. “They opened up to you.”
“But they have no clue where Kenneth might have gone to,” I grumble.
I went and asked outright. That was part of the purpose of our visit. But he never told them anything about his whereabouts. Why would he?
Tough kids, though. Respect. Can’t even think of a tattoo badass enough to mark them with, and that’s saying something.
The fact I’m thinking of inking them doesn’t escape me, either. Marking them with a distinctive symbol. In my mind, they’re already members of the Brotherhood.
How did that happen? It took me a while to accept the Damage Boyz as a part of our tightly-knit group, to trust them enough to let them in.
I should cool my guns, take a step back. Just because they were abused by the same man who abused me doesn’t mean we’re meant to be one happy family. Doesn’t mean anything at all.
And the man is still free. Jesus F. Christ. That raises my hackles and sends my heart into overdrive. I don’t feel safe while he’s out there. The kids don’t feel safe.
A plan starts to take form in my mind, and it terrifies me so fucking bad I shoot it down instantly.
No. Let the police catch him. That’s what they do.
“I think talking to you did the kids good,” Rafe is saying as we return to our cars. “Talking to a psychologist is one thing, but talking to someone who’s been through the same ordeal is different.”