by Tracy Sharp
I needed to get Susan out of there.
Susan pulled back on the bed. She was grunting and screaming now.
“Just enough to let me in,” I said. “And for you to come out.”
She finally opened the door, just a crack at first, her eyes so frightened they were almost bulging.
“It’s okay. Look.” I pointed to Noel and Rina lying on the floor.
She started crying again, pushing her way out, her belly brushing against me as she moved.
“I have the gun. They aren’t going to hurt you.” I placed an arm under hers and helped her navigate around Rina and Noel.
Bent over and moaning, she climbed slowly up the stairs.
I sensed movement behind me. I turned.
Noel had opened her eyes.
I shot her in a leg. She screamed. An enraged wail that went right through me. I booted her in the head for good measure.
Her eyes rolled up in her head and they fluttered closed.
We made it up the stairs and I looked quickly for a coat for Susan to wear. I stepped away from her for a moment and found a hall closet behind the stairs. I pulled a large winter coat down from a hanger for her. Scanning the floor, I found her some boots, hoping they were big enough for her. I silently thanked God that I still wore my own. Rina hadn’t taken them from me. A bad mistake on her part.
I ran into the kitchen and found my jacket still draped over the chair.
Ran back to Susan and opened the coffin door. Helping her out the door, I led her to the stairs, looking up to see how far away my truck was.
My heart froze. The truck was gone.
* * *
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” I turned my head, looking around the drive way for my truck.
“Is there a garage,” Susan asked, her voice high and reedy with labor pain.
I felt like I’d lose it, panic spreading through me. We didn’t have time to go searching for a garage. “Hell.”
“It must be here. Let’s look for a garage,” she said, keeping her voice as even as she could.
If she could keep calm with agony radiating through her belly, then by Christ, so could I.
I helped her down the stairs and into the drive way.
“There,” she said, pointing.
She was a right. A small, white garage sat slightly behind the house, near the back of the large yard. The doors were closed.
“Stay here,” I told her. “I’m going to go see if I can get into that garage. If you see Rina or Noel come out of that house, scream bloody murder. I’ll come running. Okay?”
She nodded, wincing as another labor pain shook her. She bent forward, almost buckling over. She sat down on the snowy drive way. “I can’t stand right now.”
“Okay. It’s okay. I’ll be right back,” I told her. “Keep a close eye.”
She nodded, looking at the house, her eyes wild and rimmed with dark circles.
I made my way to the garage, shivering. My body was beyond tired but the fight or flight instinct helped me keep moving. If I didn’t get my truck out of the garage, Susan would have her baby in the freezing cold. I really didn’t want to go back into that house.
I tried the door. Not surprisingly, it was locked. “Sweet Jesus.” I sighed, about ready to cry. I looked up to the sky. “If anyone up there is doing anything other than laughing their asses off at me right now, I could sure use a hand.” I paused, realizing that I had to be half out of my mind to be talking to the sky. To anyone who could be listening, who would give a damn. “This isn’t just about me, okay? Can you cut Susan a little break? Bring her baby into this frightening world safely? Huh? Do you think you could do that?” I was rambling, but it felt like there was nothing else I could do.
I thought of my little sister, whose ghost I was certain had come to me during a violent life and death struggle I’d had not so long ago. “Susie,” my throat tightened around her name as I whispered it, a tear sliding down my face and stinging as it seemed to freeze there. “Please help me.”
I walked around the garage, looking for a window. At the back of the structure I found one. I peered in.
My truck wasn’t there. Awesome.
There were two cars in the garage. I could hotwire one of them.
Susan moaned loudly. “Please, the baby is coming. Please help me.”
I covered my face in my hands. We wouldn’t have time.
I ran over to where she was laying back in the snow. “The baby is coming. I can feel it.”
We had no choice. “Susan, we have to go back into the house.”
“No.” She shook her head. “No, please.”
“My truck isn’t in that garage. Your baby could freeze to death.”
She wept softly. “Oh, God. Oh, God.”
“Come on. I won’t let anything happen to you.” I helped her up. We moved as quickly as we could back to the house. Each of the four stairs was terrible for her, making the pain worse. We finally got to the door. “Stay here.”
I went into the house, opened the basement door.
Noel was just on the other side of it, about to try to open it herself.
I shoved her in the chest. She began her fall down the stairs. I didn’t watch her get to the bottom before I closed and locked the door again.
They could bleed to death down there. I really didn’t give a rat’s ass.
This is what I’ve become. This is why Callahan couldn’t say. And this is why I try to run away from myself.
This is my life.
I went back out and helped Susan back into the house. I took her coat off, led her to the living room floor.
“Okay, Susie,” I said to my little sister, the irony of Susan sharing a name with her just now hitting me. “If you’re up there, let’s do this.”
Chapter Twenty
We delivered a healthy baby girl. Susan smiled and named her Faith. When both mother and baby were safe and comfortable, I found my cell phone in a back bedroom drawer. In that back bedroom was also an elderly woman, who was paralyzed, and hadn’t been bathed or fed in days. If I hadn’t found her, she would’ve died there in that bed. Rina and Noel had been cashing her social security checks and just leaving her to lay in her own filth.
I had nothing left to give. I nodded off several times during the police interview. They finally let me go with the promise that I’d come back in and explain more coherently. It’s been a lot of years. They know me now. If somebody was in really bad shape and I was anywhere around them when it happened, that person richly deserved it, and those cops would’ve done the same. If somebody was dead by my hand, that somebody had been a really nasty person while they were alive, and I’d made the world just a little bit brighter by removing them from it.
Jackson wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. He wouldn’t leave me alone long enough for me to take a shower, standing outside the bathroom door until he heard the water shut off. I didn’t really mind. Though I would never admit it to him, and barely admitted it even to myself, I wanted him close. I needed him near me.
He was staying in the spare room that Jesse used to sleep in until he was certain that I was back to my strong self and safe. I’d seen that look in his eye before. Arguing was pointless because he wouldn’t discuss it. He simply looked at me, and then continued on with whatever he was doing at the time. He would not leave me, no matter what.
Pango was overjoyed to see me, and I felt the same about seeing her. I wrapped my arms around her and buried my face in her thick fur and breathed her in deeply. I could hear her heart beating when I lay my head against her fur, and felt some of the horror of the past several weeks start to let go of me and fall away.
Jack wouldn’t let me answer my cell phone. He sent me to bed, assuring me that he’d take Pango out and feed her. He loved her too, and I knew he wanted to play with her. He needed her calming effect as much as I did.
I fell onto my bed and closed my eyes. I thought that the images of Rina’s house of horrors would hau
nt me, but I was just too tired. Just before sleep overtook me I heard Pango enter the room, sniffing. She jumped on the bed beside me, placing her chin on my hand. I patted her head until my hand fell to the sheet and a thick, dark sleep settled over me like velvet.
What woke me was the feeling of somebody sitting on the bed next to me. When I opened my eyes, Jack was sitting, watching me, concern in his eyes. “Hey Kicks. How you doing?”
“Swell.” I was still groggy, and my tongue felt thick in my mouth. “How are you?”
“Good. I was getting a little worried about you, though. It’s been fourteen hours”
“That would explain why I have to pee like a race horse.” I sat up, brushing my hair out of my eyes and blinking several times.
“It would.”
Pango was looking at me from the edge of the bed, wagging her tail.
“Hey pretty girl.” I patted her head and threw my legs over the side of the bed and winced. “Wow.”
“Feeling the effects of our recent escapades, huh?” Jack asked. He offered me his large hand for support.
I wasn’t in the mood to be a hero so I took it. “Thanks. And yes. I am. Didn’t used to be like this, Jack.”
“You’re in your thirties now, Kicks. Gonna start feeling stuff catch up to you. I know the feeling. It sucks.” He bent his head from side to side, trying to loosen up his neck muscles.
I was the one who put that tension in his shoulders this time. Seemed I’d eventually be the death of anyone who cared about me. “Need to wake up.”
“I’m making pancakes and sausage in a minute.” Jack stood aside and let me by him.
“And coffee?” Jack made the best coffee on the planet. I didn’t know how he did it. I’d tried, using his exact measurements of coffee and water, but it never tasted the same. It had to be made by Jack. He had the magic touch.
“And coffee.”
“Okay. Be down in a minute.”
I took another shower. A long, steamy one.
One of these days, I’ll actually feel clean. I sighed, letting the water run over me. I looked through the rivulets of water running down the glass shower doors.
A blurry Pango sat outside the bathtub, watching me.
I peeked out at her.
She smiled at me. Her tail thumped on the floor.
“Be out in a minute, girl. Go keep Jack company, okay?”
She stood up and ambled out of the room.
When I made my way down the stairs and into the kitchen, I didn’t feel like talking. Jack seemed to know this, and didn’t speak. He glanced at me, and then went about the business of pancake making in silence.
It was nice. I didn’t have to explain things to him. We could spend hours together not saying much and it was cool. He was the only person I’d ever met who was like that with me.
And that’s the way it was when he placed a stack cinnamon apple pancakes before me, sausage on the side, and my mug of coffee.
We sat and ate together, and didn’t have to say a word.
* * *
A week after Rina and Noel’s house of horrors, I got a call from the hospital regarding the results of the rape kit. I was supposed to go in and discuss them with the doctor.
I didn’t want to. But I knew that I had to. There were all kinds of repercussions associated with having been raped by Gabriel. The least of which, in my mind, was the possibility that he’d given me a sexually transmitted disease. Yes, I did say the least of which. The reason being was that I could honestly deal with that better than I could the fact that I’d been raped. That would be a total mind-fuck for me. That is where it would get dangerous.
But putting things into perspective, I wasn’t doing all that badly, considering. I’d escaped the bloody basement, where if I were honest, I’d been pretty sure I was going to die. Things had looked mighty grim. But somehow I’d gotten out, and I’d helped bring a baby girl into the world safely.
So my life didn’t completely suck.
I stood, looking out my kitchen window, through the lace, at a bright, shiny winter day. Considered what I might want to do that day. Jack was at the office, I made him go. He was making me twitchy, which meant I was getting back to being my old self again. He said he didn’t want to see my face there for a few weeks. Didn’t think I was ready. I probably wasn’t.
We’d both gracefully bowed out of the missing pregnant women case. There were still several who hadn’t been found. Neither of us had the heart for it. We were putting our faith in Lucas and the police. Sometimes you just had to let go. This was one of those times.
He was sifting through some new cases. Nothing too emotional. Just keeping himself busy.
I looked down at Pango, who sat beside me, looking up at me.
So now what? I sighed. “Let’s go for a walk, girl.”
And then my cell rang.
It buzzed away on my on my kitchen table. I stood watching it. I’d taken the ring tone for Lucas’ cell number off my phone. I really didn’t want to answer, but the curiosity was killing me. I stepped to the table and picked my cell up.
“This is Leah.”
“Leah. It’s Declan.”
I blinked. I’d forgotten about Declan. “Declan. How are you?”
“I’m doing better. Thanks.”
“Good,” I said. My stomach tightened a little. He couldn’t be calling for anything good. “What’s up?”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about getting back into the land of the living.”
“Yeah? Doesn’t seem like a bad idea. You’ve been kind of in a cave for a while, haven’t you?” Just like I’d been for the past couple of weeks.
“Right. I was wondering…”
“Yes?”
“If you’d like to go grab a beer or something. Just casual. You know? Just kind of hang out with me. If, you want to.”
I felt my mouth drop open. This I didn’t expect. “Sure, Declan. That would be great. I could use a beer.”
He gave a nervous laugh. “I could use several. But I’ll just keep it at one or two.”
“Right. I know the feeling.”
“Okay. Great. Are you busy tonight?”
I thought of what my plans were for the evening. Sitting on the sofa, sharing microwave popcorn with Pango. “No, tonight would be good.”
“Great,” he said, his voice filled with enthusiasm that surprised me and made me smile.
“Do you want me to pick you up? Or do you just want to meet somewhere?” He asked me.
This was feeling more and more like an actual date. I paused for a few seconds. Where did I want this to go? Well, I couldn’t disappoint him now. “You can pick me up. Six o’clock? We’ll get some food while we’re at it. I love wings. Somewhere with good beer and wings.”
“I know just the place.”
“Where?”
“Well, you’ll have to wait and see.”
“Really.” I grinned. “Sounds interesting.”
“It could be. Okay. I’ll see you at six. Casual, Leah. No pressure. Okay?”
I nodded, though I knew he couldn’t see me through the phone. “Okay.”
Sounded like just what I needed.
I smiled at Pango, who sat giving me the ‘who was that’ face.
“A friend, girl. I have to get myself prettied up. I think I have a date.”
Pango seemed to smile back at me.
“I’ll let you know how it goes when I get back tonight. You’ll meet him when he comes to pick me up, anyway. You can tell me what you think.” And she would. I’d be able to tell what she thought of Declan within seconds. Dogs are good judges of character, and Rottweiler’s have particularly expressive faces. Their body language says it all, too. You know if a one is digging you or not, in a hurry.
Anyway, I decided to keep the appointment to discuss my results. I’d deal with them when I had to. Until then, was just going to enjoy my date with Declan.
I was just going to live my life. I wasn’t going to think of mi
ssing women or babies, or rape kit results. I was just going to take it one moment at a time, and deal with other things as they came to me.
I knew I wasn’t quite right yet. Didn’t know if I’d ever be. I’d been in some dark places recently, both physically and emotionally, and I needed some time to heal. But real healing doesn’t come from lying around and being too careful with yourself. It happens when you get back up, put one foot in front of the other, and get yourself going again. It happens when you do things you need to be doing. It happens when you live your life.
I was just going to go on with living, because by some miracle, against the odds, I had the luxury of doing that.
I’d start with taking my dog for a long walk on a brilliantly sunny winter day.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks goes out to my mother, Jeannine, my sister, Joan, my niece, Jeanie. To Katy Sozaeva for her kind words, wonderful reviews and kind plugs for my book on her blog.
Thanks also to Maria Konrath for her eagle eye and sage advice on the Leah books. Thanks to Jack Kilborn, (because J.A Konrath asked me not to thank him in my acknowledgments), for his invaluable assistance, his suggestions and advice, his kindness and his wonderful sense of humor.
Thanks also to Carl Graves for his wonderful work on the covers for the Leah books.
Finally, thanks to the two loves of my life, Benji and Jeff.
About the Author
Tracy Sharp grew up in a small mining town in Northern Ontario, Canada, where there wasn't much to do except dress warmly and write stories to entertain herself. She is fond of horror movies, thrilling novels, bellowing out her favorite songs in the car, iced coffee, flamethrowers and Slinkies. She lives in Upstate NY with her family.