by KJ Dahlen
“Not yet, but he won’t get to you,” Gunner assured her. “We won’t let him.”
Becky looked over at her sister. “What else is there?”
“We think this guy is Damen Cole but we can’t find out where he’s from or who he works for.”
Becky paled. “D-Damen Cole? That’s his name?”
Annie nodded. “We could only find his DMV photo and it isn’t a very good one. He has a Texas driver’s license and a Kansas driver’s license that we’ve been able to recover under that name but we’re still looking.” She paused briefly then added, “But I have a feeling there could be more under other names. We just haven’t found them yet.”
“Who is this guy?” Cobra wanted to know.
“I put the photo we have into a special facial recognition program and it's running now,” Harry explained.
“Why would someone like him be looking for me? I mean I’m no one special,” Becky spoke softly. She looked over at Annie and then at Harry. “So what you are saying is this is something connected to a deal that dad did back in the day?”
Annie tightened her grip on Becky’s hands as she took a deep breath and looked at her carefully. “Well sweetie, that’s just it. We think Dad did something really, really bad, years ago. We’re still trying to run it down but if you want, I’ll tell you what we think happened. Like I said, we think we know what happened but we can’t prove it yet, so it may all be speculation for now.”
“Just tell me.” Becky leaned into Patriot’s arms as he held her close while Annie was still gripping her hands.
Annie let out a heavy sigh then she explained it, “When I was five, I think we were living in Wichita Falls. It was usually just me and mom at the house, Dad hadn’t been home for two or three days. When he came home, he had a baby with him. Mom was fussing at him but he handed the baby off to her and I thought he was covered in red paint at the time. But now, I think he was covered in blood. He and mom had a really bad fight after that. I was holding you and you were crying and it was just nuts around the house that night. Dad changed and left the house and mom was there alone with us. After he left, she told me you were my baby sister now.” Annie shook her head. “I looked after you the best I could being five years old.”
Becky felt so lost suddenly. Everything she ever knew was gone. It was all a lie. What she had believed for her whole life was a lie. The only one who knew the truth was gone and she and Annie were left behind, but that had been their whole life. Randy Sheen always left them behind. The cold she felt earlier was spreading through her entire body now.
Patriot pulled her closer, trying to console her.
She looked over at Annie. “We aren’t sisters?” Tears rolled down her cheeks.
Annie smiled at her as she tried to comfort her. “We will always be sisters. No matter what, you and me will always be family. I’ve loved you since the day you came to us. Nothing and no one can ever change that.”
“But who am I if I’m not Becky Sheen?” she asked with a soul wrenching whisper.
Annie let go of her hands and carefully tucked a strand of Becky’s hair behind her ear. “You will always be Becky Sheen. You will always be my little sister. I will always love you no matter what.”
“Oh god...” Becky cried out as she threw herself into Annie’s arms. “I can’t lose you sis, you’ve always been there for me and I can’t lose that.”
“And you never will,” Annie vowed.
Harry came over and folded them both into his embrace. “You aren’t going to lose anyone kiddo,” he told her.
“You got all of us Becky,” Patriot whispered in her ear.
After a moment, they separated but Becky wouldn’t let Annie go far. She stared at her sister. “What do we do now?”
“We find out the truth,” Annie replied simply. “We track his movement backwards and we find the truth. It won’t be easy because Randy had a lot of secrets but we’re going to find them all and expose them for what they are. Acts of a desperate man to fucking cheat the devil.”
“But he’s your dad,” Becky stated.
Annie shook her head. “He was never my dad. A dad protects his family, he cares about them and he never puts them in danger or abandons them when he has to run for his life. Randy did that too many times. He broke mom and he may have been the sperm donor but he was never my dad. I hope he burns forever in the fires of hell.” She gathered Becky in her arms again and whispered in her ear, “You are my family, always have been, always will be. You won’t ever be alone again. I’ll find you every time, I promise you that.” Annie then made sure she looked into Becky’s eyes again before she stepped back.
Patriot gently wrapped his big arms around Becky again. “I claimed you last night and I will claim you today in front of your family and my brothers,” he said the words loud enough for everyone to hear. “You belong to me just as much as I belong to you.”
“And that makes you a part of this club too,” Gunner added. “We protect our own. Always have, always will.”
Harry nodded. “You have Lost Sons protection as well.”
“Soldiers of Hades as well.” Cobra nodded.
Becky swiped her tears away as she looked around at all of them. “Thank you for that. Thank you.” Then she turned to Annie again. “How do you even start looking for his secrets?”
Annie smiled slightly. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a flash drive. “We start with this. When I found Randy a couple of months ago, I took this. Harry and I been looking at it and trying to track down the information on it. The whole time I was looking for you, this has been running in the background.” She shrugged. “Well, I found you so now, we can concentrate on this. Randy Sheen was a bastard this world won’t miss one iota.”
“How can some men be so bad?” Becky wanted to know.
Gunner spoke up now, “Every single one of us follows a path. We follow what we’ve been taught to follow. If there is no one around to teach us, then we take the easy way. It may get us what we want in a hurry but there’s something to the old saying, ‘some things are worth the struggle.’ Men like Blacky and Randy Sheen never got that. They just took what wasn’t theirs to take, and in the end, they paid the ultimate price for that.”
Annie shook her head in disgust. “Neither man paid the full price for his betrayal. Death came too easy for them and now it’s up to us to clean up their mess.” Turning toward Becky, she added, “But you, my baby sister, will not ever pay for their acts.”
“No, Annie you are right on that, she won’t.” Patriot growled. “I, for one will make sure of that.”
“We all will.” Gunner nodded as a rare smile curved across his lips. “She’s one of us now. We all will protect her.”
Becky just looked at them all with tears in her eyes. She knew in her heart at that moment she had at long last found her forever family. No matter what Annie and Harry found out about where she’d really come from... she was home now.
Damen dialed a number on his cell phone and waited until he answered it.
“Hello,” a gravelly voice barked across the airways.
“I found her,” Damen told the other man.
“Her? Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. She looks just like her mother. She is Tessi’s daughter for sure.”
“So I have a daughter then?” the other man asked. “Where did you find her?”
“Jared Racer sold her to a peddler. I followed her to Jasper, Texas. I found her under Blacky’s care.”
The man on the other end of the call growled under his breath. “Blacky? Blacky Wilder had her? For how long?”
“Three months.”
After a moment of silence. the other man asked. “Did he know who she was?”
“I would say yes to that,” Damen replied. “He must have recognized her somehow. He didn’t sell her but he made her life hell.”
“You took care of him didn’t you?”
“Oh yeah, I took care of him. I let the Sat
an’s Warriors take his head.” Damen smiled slightly.
“Then you have her safely?”
“Not quite,” Damen admitted reluctantly. “The local MC has her. Sheen fucked up badly.”
“So it was Randy then? All this time it was him who stabbed me in the back?”
“Yeah, it was Randy. He knew how to avoid me but I tracked him down finally. Every time I thought I found him over the years, he moved on just as I got close enough. This time he was being hunted by his own daughter. The MC found him and dragged him back to face judgement day.”
“And did they kill him?”
“No but they did make sure he would die. They turned him over to the Russians and if I know them, he’s already in hell’s fire.”
“Do what you do so well and bring my daughter back to me,” the other man ordered.
“That may not be as easy as you think,” Damen warned. “This MC isn’t going to just hand her over. They aren’t your typical MC. They run a bounty hunting service.”
“Then you have your work cut out for you, don’t you? Whatever you do, don’t lead them back to me. Just do it. I don’t need the details. You have a week.”
When the call went dead, Damen stared down at his phone and swore.
He wanted to hurl his phone against the wall and bust it to smithereens but he knew he couldn’t. He would have to purchase another one and transfer the data first. Too much trouble. Placing his cell phone on the table, he ran his finger through his hair and growled. There were days when he hated this job. Some days, he just didn’t want to do it and some days, he regretted ever getting hooked up with a man like his boss.
The money was good but so not worth it in cases like this. He’d been risking his life every day for almost twenty-five years now. He’d been cocky the first few years, taken more chances than absolutely necessary but he mellowed out after the first rush of the jobs settled down. Since then, he’d become a lethal weapon for the organization but there were still days he hated what he did. The men he worked for often took him for granted and he felt they didn’t respect him at all.
To them, he was nothing more than a tool and that had been pissing him off a great deal for the last ten years at least.
“One day they will all pay,” Damen vowed. “One day.”
Chapter Four
Patriot moved himself and Becky to a place in the corner of the room and sat there with her on his lap. He knew she was in shock with all the info that had been revealed, hell it shocked him as well. The thought that Randy Sheen had done what he did shocked everyone there. He hoped Annie and Harry could figure out what happened but even if they didn’t, he knew in his heart that he wasn’t giving her up. “How you doing baby?” he whispered.
“Honestly? Not so good.” She was resting with her head in the crook of his neck her back against his chest, trying to comprehend and understand what was just shared from her sister.
“Baby, this doesn’t change how I feel about you, you know that right?” He wrapped his arms tighter around her.
Becky looked up at him. “How can it not?”
“It just doesn’t matter because you are who you are. You see, your dad or your mom, they didn’t raise you. They had nothing to do with how you grew up. You grew up with Annie and I know she taught you everything you needed to know. She was your sister and your mother all in one. She loved you enough to fulfill both roles. She didn’t sit on her ass when you went missing, she looked for you. And she didn’t stop until she found you.”
“I know.” Becky nodded. “She’s the best sister in the world. Only problem is, she isn’t my real sister.”
“Listen, blood doesn’t always mean family. Annie is your sister because she wants to be, not because she has to be. She will always watch over and protect you.” He kissed her on the forehead. “And don’t forget, you belong to me now too.”
She smiled a little at his sweet words. “Do you really think they can find out what happened twenty four years ago?”
Patriot leaned his chin on her shoulder. “Knowing those two, they won’t stop until they do.”
Becky nodded. “Annie’s always been tenacious that way.”
Patriot was silent for a moment. He could feel her fidget on his lap but he didn’t say anything. He wanted her to tell him what was wrong rather than force her to tell him.
After a moment or so she whispered, “What if my real family is worse than Randy ever thought of being? I mean something pissed him off enough to make him kidnap me. My parents must have... I mean, you would think they would have looked for me at some point right?”
“Babe, you’re an adult now, if you don’t want to be around them you don’t have to be.” Patriot shrugged. “You don’t even have to meet them if you don’t want to. And yeah, sweet girl, if you had been my baby I would have turned over every rock to find you. I can’t begin to imagine they didn’t at least try.”
Becky curled up into a ball. “But they never came for me. They never claimed me.”
“Annie said you guys moved around a lot when you were growing up. Maybe they couldn’t find you back then. Maybe they did not know who took you either.”
Becky seemed distracted by the whole thing. “Knowing the kind of man Randy was, whoever my parents were they must have been bad also. Maybe I don’t want to know who they really are. I was very happy with you and being here before all this came up. Would you think me a coward if I didn’t want to know who I was and where I came from?”
Patriot thought about her question for a moment then shook his head. “Aren’t you even a tiny bit curious about where you came from?”
“Not really.” She shrugged. “It won’t give me back or change my childhood. It won’t change the memories I have growing up. It won’t even change the last three months I endured with Blacky. I really believe things happen for a reason and we can either let our past define us, or it can make us stronger. I’ve had to fight everyday just to start all over the next day. But Annie always gave me the strength to begin again with every new dawn. She always told me that with the new day came a new adventure. That if we let the shadows get to us, we could never see the sunshine. I chose to look for the sunshine.”
“How did you ever survive the time with Blacky?” he wanted to know.
“I believed Annie was looking for me and I wouldn’t give into the shadows. I knew deep down in my heart that one day, she would find me and that all I had to do was hang on until she did.” Becky sighed hard. “Some days it was hard to hang on but I did it. I also lost myself for a while. I forgot who I was even.”
Patriot hugged her closer. “I, for one am glad you hung on. I love the person you are.”
Becky snorted. “Well, if I hadn’t, I knew Annie would find a way to find me in the afterlife and she’d drag me back come hell or high water. That girl is stubborn as all hell.” She chuckled.
Patriot threw his head back and laughed out loud. “I’m not sure which one of you is more stubborn. I think you’re neck and neck.”
“Yeah, well I had a great teacher.” As Becky looked around the room, she saw Annie and Harry bent over their computers.
Annie looked up from her laptop and glanced around the room for her sister. When she found both her and Patriot sitting in the corner talking, she had to smile. Looking over at Harry, she found him staring back at her.
“She’s going to make it you know,” he said softly. “You raised her right.”
Annie shrugged her shoulders. “I hope so. We were all each other had most of the time. Randy always came and went and my mom, well she was there but not there, do you know what I mean? Half the time she was stuck in her own little world where reality didn’t go.”
“Hell baby, that’s half the kids out there. Most of them have no clue what being a real family even is. It’s sad but true,” Harry commented. “The same thing could have happened in our family after my mom was lost but my old man wouldn’t let it happen. We also had grandpa and the MC around all the time. They k
ept us in line.”
Annie chuckled. “I imagine they did.”
Harry nodded. “We didn’t dare mess around with those guys. You mess up or back talk them and they let you know about it, the hard way.” He leaned back in his chair and stared at her. “What's going on with you? What did you find?”
Annie sat there for a moment then said, “You know that flash drive I took from Randy a few months ago?”
Harry nodded. “Yeah, what about it?”
“Well, a couple weeks ago, I found something on it. I didn’t think about it then because I was really busy looking for Becky, but when this came up, I went back and checked it out.”
“What did you find?” he asked her carefully.
She sighed. “That’s just it. It could be a lead or it could be nothing at all. It was just a name and date but I’m wondering why he would keep just a name.”
“What was the name?” Harry frowned.
“It was in a file marked KC- The name was Tessi Silvers and the date, 1996. He didn’t write anything else just that, almost like he didn’t want any evidence in case someone else should ever see the file. Whatever he would have written were in his memories, he kept any info in his head.” She shook her head. “The only problem is that there is no Tessi Silvers listed anywhere back in 1996. Not here in Texas anyway.”
Harry frowned. “Did you try other places?”
“Like where?” She groaned. “KC is not much to go on you know. That could be anywhere.”
Harry leaned forward in his chair and reached for his laptop. “Well, let’s try the obvious, KC could be Kansas City.” He began to type again.
As she leaned over she could see that he was running down the name in a number of places associated with Kansas City.
A few short minutes later, his expression changed.
Staring at him, Annie knew he’d gotten something but it didn’t look like it was anything good. She leaned forward and whispered, “What? What did you find?”
Harry raised his head slowly and stared at her. For the longest time he couldn’t speak, then he whispered, “Your dad might have murdered a pregnant woman.”