by K. J. Dahlen
“Max became obsessed with Jolene because she stood her ground and told him no,” Bastian explained. “He called me and tried to get me to kill you all that time ago. But I told him I didn’t murder anyone without cause and his obsession wasn’t a just cause. But you went away after that. I got curious about what kind of woman Max was after, so I came to Rochester to find out. I saw Jolene and I saw Sawyer.” He looked down at the woman in his arms. “She doesn’t even know this but I watched over them all this time. I watched your daughter grow up but it wasn’t until I saw her in that damn warehouse, a woman full grown that I fell in love with her.” He released a heavy sigh.
Calico watched him closely as he revealed a truth, he’d held for a long time.
“I got there too late to prevent those animals from beating her. Too late to get her out, but her brother got to her and helped her get out. My rage that day got the best of me and that alone scared me. I’d never had feelings that strong for anyone before. I grew up in the foster system. My parents died when I was very young. I learned quickly how to become self-sufficient. I took what I had and turned it into a profession. I learned how to read people very young. I knew when someone was lying and when they were telling me the truth. Then I watched the people around me. I learned more about how they thought. How they acted when stressed and when they had something to hide. Then I learned how to get their deepest darkest secrets.” He shrugged. “Thus the Priest was born. I got very good at finding everyone else’s secrets but I kept my own. From the very beginning, I kept my own secrets, my own identity from the world. No one knew who I really was or what I really looked like. That was my protection. It worked so well, I could walk down the sidewalk in any city or town and no one would know me. That was how I protected Sawyer the last year. From a distance. But I didn’t protect her or her mother well enough to prevent what happened to them through Micah.” He looked over at Jolene. “For that, I apologize. I was out of town that day and by the time I got back, you were with Max and Sawyer and Jordan were already gone. By the time I found them again, they were in Troy and Calico was with them.”
Jolene smiled. “You couldn’t have stopped what happened any more than Calico could have. What happened had to happen, so he could come back into our lives. It was my stubborn pride that kept us apart all those years.”
Bastian shook his head. “No it was Max and his damn threats that kept your family apart. He would have killed your husband and daughter just to keep you in line. The world is a better place now that he’s gone.”
“So what are you planning on doing next?” Jordan asked. “Are you going to take my sister away again?”
Bastian shook his head. “No I’m not.”
“You’re not?” Calico stammered.
“No, I’m not.” Bastian smiled. “Sawyer’s family means something to her. But…” He glared at Calico. “I’m not going away either. My child is growing in her belly and I’m claiming them both.”
“Dad,” Sawyer spoke from the safety of Bastian’s arms. “I love the fact that you came back for us and that you and Mom are together again, I do. But like Bastian said, I’m a woman full grown about to have my own child. I want to be with him. He never hurt me but instead he gave me something I fell in love with. He let me see the real man behind the mask he was forced to wear. I knew from the beginning what kind of man he really was. He assured me from the start that he would never hurt me and he didn’t.”
“He left you along a busy highway drugged up so much, you took hours to come out of it,” Calico argued. “Anybody could have taken you then.”
“Daddy, he was there the whole time.” She raised her chin up in defiance.
“How do you know that?” Calico fought her logic.
“Because he told me he would be there and he’s never lied to me.” Sawyer shook her head. “I had no expectations of ever seeing him again after that day. So I memorized every single moment I spent with him. I remembered every word he said during those three days.” She glanced up at the man in question. “I could feel him when he was nearby. There were some days when I was back home I felt safe and I knew he was there watching over me.” She lifted the necklace from inside her shirt and held it in her hand. The metal was warm and it felt good to finally be able to tell her family about it. “When I came to back at home I found this around my neck, hidden under my shirt. I knew it was from him, so I never told anyone about it. It was like only he and I shared a secret. This necklace was my connection to him and I knew I had to keep it. It hurt not to share it with you guys but I didn’t want to lose it. At least, I still had a tiny piece of the man I fell in love with in those three days.
“Then I found out I carried his baby.” Sawyer’s hands went down and covered her still flat belly. “I was so happy. I never expected to see him again, but it was okay because I had another tiny piece of him growing inside me.” She smiled a secret smile. “Then he came back for me. I don’t know how he knew where I was but he found me again and now I’m not going to let you chase him away. If you make him leave, I’m going with him. Like I said before, this time it will be of my own free will.”
Calico stood there, his hands curled into fists. His entire body radiated with his rage.
Then Jolene came over to him and laid her hand on his shoulder. “Let it go Clancy,” she whispered to him. “She’s not your little girl anymore. If you want to keep her, you have to accept him and the baby cuz I know our daughter. She’s just like you. With her, it’s all or nothing. I lost your for twenty years and it about broke me but I will not lose her too.”
Calico listened to her whispered words and slowly relaxed. He turned his head to look at her standing beside him. He saw the woman he loved all this time and she wasn’t an illusion she was real. Her hair was a little greyer than it was all those years ago, but then so was his own. It was the love shinning in her eyes that told its own story. The love in her eyes today more than matched the love in her eyes all those years ago.
Finally, he exhaled and said, “Our little family is about to get a bit bigger isn’t it? Sawyer and her husband,” he paused and turned to Bastian. “You do plan on marrying her don’t you?”
“Yeah, that’s been the plan all along.” He glanced down at her and smiled. “I’m claiming both her and the baby and giving them both my name.”
Calico nodded and turned back to Jolene. “Sawyer, her husband, her babies and someday Jordan will find his own girl and then our family will get bigger again.” Then he frowned and glared at Bastian. “Only one thing though. I ain’t ready to be called grandpa. The kid can’t call me that. He can call me bumbpa but not grandpa. My dad is old enough for that title.”
Sawyer laughed out loud at his declaration. “Okay bumbpa, now that we have that settled, don’t we have another problem to work on?” She nodded toward the others.
Bastian turned her around and still holding her in his arms he told her, “I found out somethings last night form both Tomas and from Enrique. Some of those things concerned this family and some concerned the man they were both working for. I’d like to say that I took care of this family’s problems with the Barrone brothers but I don’t think I did.”
“You didn’t take care of all the Barrone problems, but I had felt before that I had,” Calico admitted. “Twelve years ago, I sent Tomas to prison. He was supposed to be there for the rest of his miserable life. Tomas thought his baby had died with his mother. But I took the baby and I placed him with some friends of mine. That boy will never know the horror his mother went through nor will he ever know what an ass his father was in his lifetime. He has a good life now and I check on him from time to time. That boy is a great kid and he has a good life ahead of him. I told his parents and I’ll say it here and now, if anything happens to threaten that boy’s happiness I assured his mother, I would take him back. For Susan’s sake, not for Barrone’s sake.”
Jolene smiled. “He’s more than welcome with us. We may not have much but what we’ve got we’ll s
hare with him.”
Bastian rubbed the back of his head. “Yeah, about that. I have more money than I could ever spend in this lifetime or ten others. Not only that but I own several homes all over the nation. Pappy said I was welcome to stay here with you all and now I no longer have to hide who I really am. I know Sawyer wants to be here with the rest of her family and that’s fine with me. We can build our house here as well as the next place but I will give my residences out there for anyone who needs them.”
“How many places do you own?’ Sawyer asked.
“I own fifteen houses and seven farms. Some of them are set up for surveillance but most of them are simple houses I use when I need to be in the area. The only house I’d like to keep is the one in Watertown, New York. That was where I lived in my down time, so it’s basically home for me.” He turned to her. “When we do build our house there are some things I need to have in there. I’m sure you can say the same but a secure room in essential.”
Calico nodded. “Yeah, Trudy has something like that here as well.”
“I’m sure Jim will want to set up his own room as well,” Bastian added. He lifted the necklace off her chest. “I wanted to give you some little part of me when I had to give you back. This was the only thing I had from my real mother. I took it from her things before I went into foster care and I kept it safe through all the homes I was placed in. I kept it with me all the years I was on my own too. Now it’s with you and I hope you will wear it every day as a reminder of the man who loves you.”
“I will never take it off,” she vowed her eyes glimmering with tears.
“Good but as you said before…” Bastian turned his head and watched as the group of people worked nearby. “We do have work to do.” He smiled. “But think about the wedding. I want to have that in the next few days. I don’t want anyone to doubt for a moment who you belong too.”
By the time Calico and Bastian joined the others, Trudy had made enough copies of the book from Enrique that everyone had a copy.
“What are we looking at here?” Bastian asked as he picked up the loose pages from the book.
Jim grunted. “We’re looking at a hell of a mess.”
“Does any of this shit makes sense to anyone yet?”
“The dates fit a timeline that Trudy started.” Jim shrugged. “So we do have a starting line. The rest of it not so much. We are only starting and without a reference point, we don’t yet know where we are. We’ll get there but it’s going to take some time.”
“Maybe time we don’t have,” Bastian stated.
Jim snapped his head around to stare at the other men. “Since when do you give up so easily?”
“Since now I have a family to protect,” Bastian grumbled.
“The best way to protect them is to find this guy and stop him,” Jim told him. “But you need to pull yourself together and plan this like you do any other mission you’ve ever been on. You need to shut out the rest of the world and give this your all, your everything. You can’t go into this halfcocked. That’s how he wins and you lose.”
“What if I don’t want to tune the rest of the world out anymore?” Bastian asked. “That worked very well in the past because there was no one to care about, but now I have Sawyer and the baby to think about.”
“Then get yourself a new mindset.” Jim snarled at him. “You are the best at what you do because you can think like these people. You can get into their minds with little or no information. You can think the same way they do and sink your own personality so far into theirs that they willingly tell you their deepest darkest secrets. You know which questions to ask because there are the ones you thought of. That’s what we need here, control not chaos. Right now, we have chaos.”
Neither of them noticed the quiet that surrounded them until it became so loud it couldn’t help but be heard.
Bastian looked around the area and found everyone looking back. He stared back at all of them, then looked back down at his papers when he saw them turn their gazes away. He never backed down from anything, but Jim was right, he needed to be the Priest for a while more.
Studying the meaningless phrases and notes Enrique had jotted down he began to see a pattern after a while. Following it, he noted the pages were out of order. Enrique had done that on purpose. For just this sort of occasion. In case, someone other than himself ever found the book. This was his own safety net of sorts.
Pappy was just down from where he was sitting and one after the other every man or woman sitting there had pushed the papers away frustrated beyond belief. Looking around, he caught Trudy’s eyes.
She held his gaze for a long moment then winked at him. “You see it don’t you?” she finally said out loud.
Everyone looked up at her and then between the two of them.
Bastian nodded. “Yes, I do.”
“See what?” Dewey demanded to know. “What do the two of you see that the rest of us don’t?”
Bastian stared at Trudy then spoke to the room in general, “Enrique mixed up the pages on purpose. He wanted to make sure no one would be able to find what he was hiding.”
“Show us what you’ve found,” Pappy called out.
Bastian gathered the papers in the correct order and walked over to the board they had set up. Tacking them up in order, he stood back and let everyone see the patterns both he and Trudy saw.
“When did you see the patterns?” he asked her.
“Just about fifteen minutes ago.”
“How did you see it?” He was curious.
“I followed the numbers.” She shrugged. “I sometimes see words as numbers then once I do, I can pick up a pattern and fit it together as an overall map of sorts. It’s complicated to explain and not everyone sees what I do.”
“That’s for sure.” Dewey wrapped his arm around his wife’s shoulders and pulled her close to him. Looking over at Bastian he told the other man, “This woman found a map where all we saw was a bunch of squiggly lines on paper. She’s good but I have a feeling so are you.”
Bastian shrugged. “Like Jim suggested I can sometimes get into the mindset of the men I have been asked to find their secrets.”
“So you know this guy then?” Pappy asked as he joined them.
“No.” Bastian shook his head. “For this, I got into Enrique’s mind.”
Trudy shuddered. “I can’t imagine that.”
“Yeah,” Bastian admitted the truth of what it was like. “Not a very pleasant place to be.” Looking over at the board, he did tell them, “I think there’s more here than we realize. All we have to do is be open and look for the answers.”
“Not we,” Pappy commented. “You. You and Trudy need to look at this crap and find the answers we need. The rest of us have other work to do, plus we have to get ourselves ready for battle. Whether that is only one battle or several smaller battles on different fronts, we need you two to figure it out and let us know.”
“Why just us two?’ Trudy whined.
“Because the two of you saw what we couldn’t,” Pappy explained. “And you both found it at almost the same time using totally different methods.” Shaking his head he said, “It’s too bad we can’t just ask Enrique what he wrote down but that can’t be helped now.”
Bastian harrumphed. “Fat lot of good it would have done to ask him anyway. He wouldn’t have been able to remember anyway.”
“What do you mean by that?” Pappy asked.
“He told me he didn’t really know what his notes meant. To him, they were fragments in time but he didn’t know what they were telling him. He was never privy to anything he felt was important. He said no one person in the group was. They all had menial jobs but weren’t allowed to get close enough to build a bond with whoever was in charge.”
“That must have caused some hard feelings,” Trudy commented.
Bastian nodded. “Yeah, none of the men were happy about the grunt work and the fact that not one of them was in charge caused discontent between them.”
<
br /> “So who did they take orders from?” Dewey asked. “There had to be one person to hand of the boss’s orders.”
Bastian nodded. He pointed out several spots in the notes. They were initials H.B. Looking at the dates, the initials were evident and they began to see a pattern emerge. “It seems every twenty one days, the person H.B. showed up and gave them orders. Enrique never mentions who this person is by name only by the H.B.”
“Do we know where Enrique was living at the time? H.B. could be someone from the area.” Pappy suggested. “Maybe we could figure out who he or she is.”
Bastian shrugged. “As far as I know, he was living in this area. They told me when Tomas escaped from jail, he joined his brother here in Sabine Pass. This was the area Enrique covered and did business from. He’s been here for about ten years now.”
“That would be about a year, year and a half after we busted up the El Diablo gang in New York,” Calico told them as he and Sawyer joined the group.
Bastian nodded. “Makes sense, he told me it took him a long time to recover from his injures. He said he was barely able to get away from the fight that took his brother and the gang down. He said only three people survived the battle. Tomas and Payne Thomas were hauled off to jail and he disappeared underground to recover. He made his way cross country and crossed the border to go back to the safety of his family’s holdings. When he recovered enough to hold his own again, he slipped back across the border and made some connects here. He built up the gang again and waited for Tomas to escape prison. Meanwhile, he went to work running barges and tugs up and down the river. He claims he never knew who was signing his paycheck.”
“Hence the notes he collected.” Dewey looked over at the boards. “Was he even close to figuring out the man’s identity?”
Bastian shook his head. “The best he ever did was confirm that wherever the shipments were going they went up river and branched off on the Ohio River. That he got from another captain when he was drunk. Enrique said he got the other man drunk on purpose and started asking question. Questions, they were never supposed to ask each other. Before they started working for this person, they had to sign a paper for nondisclosure. This guy H.B. explained it all to them. He also told them any act of breaking the trust, would result in their immediate firing. But Enrique thought no one would find out what he’d done, so his questions were put in a way that no one else would be able to tell what he was doing. He said the other man didn’t know that much, only that the boats went up to and crossed into the Ohio River. Where they went after that, the captain didn’t know because his boat was off loaded to yet another boat.”