HUNTER (The Corbin Brothers Book 1)

by Lexie Ray

  I was, however, nervous about raising the knocker on the door and letting it fall. I picked it up with my gloved hand, wincing as it squeaked, and waited.

  It had taken two long months to find Terry Nocton. I was afraid of what it meant to be standing there on that porch, about to see the man I’d heard so much about. I tried not to think about the what ifs—what if Cream had known her brother was alive at the time of the raid, what if she had called him instead of Jason, what if things had turned out differently.

  Jasmine had discouraged this line of thinking after she called me into the office to give me the number.

  “That doesn’t help you, Sol,” she said. “It doesn’t help you and it doesn’t help Belle. You have to keep moving forward, even if it’s a half a baby step every day. You can’t afford to take any steps back. Keep your eyes looking ahead of you, not behind.”

  I let the knocker fall. Then lifted it and let it fall again. And again.

  “Coming!” a voice called from inside. The door swung outward and I backed up a little.

  The man in front of me had rich brown hair, the exact same shade as Belle’s had been. He was fair skinned, too, but he had a bit of a sallow look about him, like he’d been having trouble sleeping.

  But the very first thing I noticed about him, the thing I couldn’t ignore even if I wanted to, was that he was sitting in a wheelchair, missing both of his legs. Black athletic shorts revealed wrapped stumps that ended just at the knee.

  “Terry Nichols?” I asked, my voice breaking, my mouth suddenly dry.

  “If you’re a reporter, you can turn right back around,” he said.

  “I’m not,” I said quickly, shoving my foot in the door. I couldn’t lose him, not when I’d come this far. I promised Cream that I’d find her brother and tell him what happened. He needed to hear it from someone who had experienced that hell.

  “Who are you, then?” he asked. “And what do you want? It’s cold out there. Please hurry.”

  I blinked rapidly, looking at the circles beneath his eyes, the stubble speckling his chin. How was he going to react to what I was about to tell him? Would he scream? Cry? Yell at me? Demand to know why I hadn’t tried harder to save his sister’s life?

  I didn’t know how he would act, and I didn’t know which outcome I preferred. Part of me wanted to be punished. Why had I made it and she hadn’t? Why couldn’t it have been the other way around? I deserved his hatred. I deserved to be beaten, to be screamed at.

  Survivor’s guilt, Jasmine said. She told me it was natural, that I was going to learn to move past it. There hadn’t been anything I could’ve done, she told me.

  It was so hard to believe. Sometimes, I didn’t even try.

  “Miss?” Terry looked up at me, his eyebrows raised. “Did you come to my porch to daydream, or what?”

  “My name is Sol Ramirez,” I said. “I was with your sister, Belle, in Andrew Steele’s home.”

  I waited for his reaction, holding my breath for it. He only looked at me for a long time, studying my face, before he sighed.

  “I guess you’d better come in, then,” he said, wheeling himself backwards before turning the chair around quickly and leaving me at the front door. I stepped inside, closing the door against the chill, and followed him.

  The house was small but orderly, most things on low hanging shelves to be accessible for Terry. The television was on in the den, but the sound was muted. I glanced at it and quailed. It was one of the 24-hour news shows, and they were showing a video feed of cops leading Andrew into a courthouse for his indictment. He looked briefly into the camera and I felt like he’d seen me, my heart seizing.

  Terry grabbed the remote and flicked the television off. He glanced up at me.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, if you are who you say you are. That was bad fucking timing, excuse my language. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Not a ghost,” I said quietly. “A monster.”

  I didn’t know how I thought I could testify against him, appear in court and look him in the face as I talked about what he’d put us through. I wasn’t strong enough to do that. I had no idea why I thought I could do that. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

  Lost in my despair, I gave a tiny cry as my wrist was captured in a strong grip.

  “I’m sorry for upsetting you,” Terry said. “I shouldn’t even be watching that shit. I can’t stop, though. I just can’t. Not with what they’re saying. What they think he did to her.”

  His face twisted and his hand tightened on my wrist. It hurt, but I didn’t say anything. He needed me as much as I needed him right then.

  Terry glanced up at my face and released my wrist, apologizing again.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Please sit down. I didn’t mean to startle you. Give me just a second and I’ll get you a water.”

  I didn’t like the idea of a man in a wheelchair waiting on me.

  “That’s all right,” I called after him. “I’m not thirsty.”

  “I insist,” he said over his shoulder, leaving me in the dim den. I could hear the faucet running in the kitchen, beyond that, the traffic in the street. Some of the neighborhood kids were playing some kind of game outside, from the sound of it. Normal sounds, but I wasn’t normal.

  I thought I was hallucinating when Terry walked—walked, not rolled—back into the room, carrying a glass of water.

  “Here you go,” he said, handing it to me.

  I couldn’t help but stare at him, stunned. How was he walking? He didn’t have any legs. I’d seen it myself.

  “Sorry for answering the door in my wheelchair,” Terry said. “They gave me these prosthetics when I got back stateside, but I hardly use them. Nobody to stand around and impress in this little house but myself, and to tell you the truth, the wheelchair’s easier. I forget that a legless man is a little bit of a shocker to people who aren’t used to it.”

  “I don’t want to cause you to be uncomfortable,” I said.

  Terry smiled grimly. “I got my legs blown off by a bomb in Afghanistan,” he said. “Now the TV’s telling me my kid sister’s been murdered in about the worst way possible. I’m living a kind of uncomfortable existence right now—what did you say your name was?”

  “Sol,” I said. “But your sister called me Pumpkin. And I called her Cream.”

  “Cream?” Terry repeated, snorting as he flopped down on the couch. He snorted again, and it turned into a laugh. He was howling with mirth, but I couldn’t see the humor in it. Then, I realized he was crying.

  I looked down at the glass of water, feeling useless and hopeless and cowardly.

  “I’m sorry,” Terry said. “I’m sorry. I just—this is my fault.”

  “No, no it’s not,” I said quickly, sinking down on the couch next to him. “This was the fault of a monster. Nobody’s fault but that man on the TV.”

  “Did he really do it, Sol?” Terry asked. “Did it happen the way they said?”

  “I’m going to tell you exactly how it happened,” I said, and I did.

  Terry said nothing as I talked, just breathed slowly, in and out, and occasionally balled his hands up into fists. I made it all the way to the end, telling him how his sister had saved my life, how strong she’d been while Andrew was breaking the door down.

  “She asked for you, as I was jumping out the window,” I said. “She asked me to find you. Cream—Belle—told me all about you. How you’d raised her, protected her when she was just a kid.”

  Terry shook his head brokenly. “I didn’t protect her,” he said. “Look at this. Look at what happened.”

  I swallowed and spoke the truth. “If not for you sister, I probably wouldn’t be here. I would probably still be there, being tortured by Andrew Steele. In fact, I would probably be dead. We had started to fear for our lives.”

  “I should never have gone to the Army,” Terry said. “She’d been pushing me, trying my patience by bringing home whoever she wanted, sleeping aro
und. She was better than that, I always told her. She was better than any of those losers.”

  “You were just trying to help,” I said. “She told me. She worried about you, about what had happened to her. She didn’t know where to turn to.”

  Terry shook his head. “She left the apartment I gave her,” he said. “I found out I’d just been sending money to my old boss at the diner, not her. For all of my efforts, for everything I did, it never helped her a bit. I should’ve stayed here. I should never have left her. This wouldn’t have happened.”

  This was the kind of thinking that Jasmine warned me about.

  “When I came back,” Terry continued, his eyes far away, “when it was safe enough to transport me back here, she was gone. I didn’t know where she was. She didn’t leave a note with my boss, or a note in the apartment. She’d vanished. I didn’t know where to look. I had the awful feeling that she’d wanted to get away from me. I thought maybe I shouldn’t look for her, and I didn’t.”

  Terry finally broke down. I realized I’d been waiting for it. It was almost a relief to put my arms around him and let him cry himself out.

  “She needed me,” he sobbed. “She needed me and I wasn’t there for her.”

  He cried, and I filled the void of silence with stories about Terry’s sister. How beautiful she’d been. How she loved clothes and shopping and fashion. Maybe he didn’t want to hear it, but I also told him how well loved she was. How the customers at the nightclub we used to work at always asked after her. How loving she was, always ready to give of herself to people.

  I just wanted Terry to know that his sister had been a gentle soul—not the woman the media was portraying. They’d called her a sex worker, a live-in prostitute, and a sex slave. Maybe she was those things, in some senses. But above all, she was Cream—Belle Nocton, my friend, the strong woman who’d given up her own life in order to save mine.

  I told him all of this, still talking long after he’d stopped crying.

  “Why did you come here, Sol?” he asked, drawing back to look at me. “What are you here for?”

  “She asked me to,” I said. “She asked me to find you, and I did.”

  “The papers say you’re going to testify,” Terry said. “Are you? Are you going to help bring that motherfucker to justice?”

  I thought about how I’d felt, just seeing Andrew on the TV screen. I’d been terrified. How could I hope to even be in the same room as him in court?

  “I was going to,” I said softly. “But I didn’t realize how afraid I was until he was on the television. I don’t know that I can go through with it.”

  “You can because you have to,” Terry said, taking my face in his hands. “You have to make this bastard burn, Sol. For Belle.”

  I inhaled deeply and closed my eyes. “For Belle,” I repeated.

  “If you think it would help, I’ll go to the trial,” Terry said. “I’d been thinking about it. I wanted to look the fucker in the face. But if you think it would help to know that I’m there, to see me if you think you’ll be scared, I’ll go for you, instead, Sol.”

  His words lifted me up inside. “I think it would,” I said. “I think it would help me be strong.”

  We’d both lost Cream. We’d both lost a sister, in a way. She may not have been my blood, like she was Terry’s, but we’d been bonded through circumstance. She was as close to my blood as could be.

  Ahead of the trial, Jasmine worked around the clock to see that I got the things that I needed, doing things she’d normally delegate to the rest of the staff at the aid organization. She was going to procure an apartment for me, but didn’t think I should stay alone.

  “I hope you don’t mind one noisy little roommate.”

  I’d been sitting in Jasmine’s office, reviewing a list of psychiatrists that she’d recommended to me, when I heard the familiar voice behind me. I whirled around to see Blue, holding a precious little girl bundled up in a tie-dye snowsuit. Winter had come to the city, and I was seeing Blue’s little angel, the girl I’d helped save.

  “You’re her honorary godmother, you know,” Blue said, handing me her little girl. The tot had her mother’s eyes, cerulean, round and curious. She grabbed at my nose and chortled in the way only a child can. Holding that little girl was balm on my soul, she healed me more than anything had so far.

  It was good to be among family—with Blue and little Sandra. Blue’s fiancé, Dan, was a gem, understanding that I couldn’t be alone at a time like this. It helped me greatly to be around little Sandra. It was impossible to be sad or scared around her, I found, laughing at her antics and the paces she put her parents through.

  As the trial date approached, I started seeing a kindly psychiatrist. Talking to her was good. I even felt comfortable enough to discuss the ideas of all the different Pumpkins with her.

  “Is that how you felt while you were Pumpkin?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “I felt like there was a Pumpkin for every situation.”

  “And now that you’re Sol?” she asked. “What now?”

  What now? That was the real question, wasn’t it? Now I was hanging in limbo, waiting to testify against Andrew, trying to stop crying, and trying to find some way to reclaim some semblance of normalcy in my life.

  I started meeting with Terry several times a week, too. He said that it helped him to get out of the house and away from the television. There were some days when he didn’t feel like putting on his legs, so I would push him around town. I liked that, and I didn’t think he minded it. We talked about Cream a lot, and then one day, we talked about Afghanistan.

  “I kept going because of her,” Terry said, looking at the place where his feet were supposed to be. “I wanted to give up, but I didn’t.”

  “You didn’t,” I agreed. “And now you are doing something for her—helping me be strong.”

  After we’d talked about Afghanistan for a while, I started telling him about East Harlem and growing up with the female contingency. I told him the story about my family shaving the guy who’d wronged them and tattooing him with a penis. Terry laughed as much as Cream had, throwing his head back and scaring a flock of pigeons in Central Park.

  The night before I was to testify at the trial, Jasmine thought it’d be nice to do something to distract me. She and her husband, Nate, hosted a dinner at the gorgeous condo they shared. Blue, Dan, Sandra, Terry, and I all rode over together. I was surprised and delighted to see Cocoa and meet her husband, Liam. She was heavy with child, she told me with a laugh, and about ready to pop.

  At one point, everyone held their glasses up and toasted to me, though I didn’t understand why they would.

  “To Sol,” Jasmine said, beaming at me. “And for her courage.”

  “Here, here,” Blue cried.

  Terry took my hand at one point during the night.

  “Sol, I just wanted to thank you for everything you’ve done,” he told me. He looked so nice, his face shaved, his skin looking a little better, the bags under his eyes not so heavy. He’d even put his fancy legs on—the ones with dress shoes attached—for the occasion. He walked remarkably well with them, but it took concentration, he said. More practice and he’d have it down pat, he promised.

  “For everything I’ve done?” I repeated incredulously, shaking my hand. “Thank you for everything you’ve done. I wanted to testify at first, but I became so scared. That day we first met, I decided that I just couldn’t.”

  “You’re going to do fine,” Terry said. “But I wanted to ask you something.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “After this is all over, is it all right if we still keep seeing each other?” he asked. “You give me a reason to stand up and walk, Sol.”

  That simple statement made me choke a little on my drink in shock, but Terry was completely sincere.

  “I would love that,” I said, laying my hand on his arm. “I really would, Terry. You give me a reason to keep going at all.”

  When I took my pl
ace in the witness stand, I looked out into the crowd first. I found Jasmine, Blue, and Cocoa, all sitting next to each other, giving me small smiles. I knew that Dan was just outside, holding Sandra. And there was Terry, standing tall in the very back of the courtroom, which he said he’d do so I’d know exactly where he was.

  Finally, I turned my eyes to Andrew.

  “Tell us what you remember the most about the time you spent with Mr. Steele,” the lawyer said.

  Andrew’s face was expressionless, his black, lifeless eyes staring at me, daring me to tell them. He’d wanted to kill me. He still did. He wanted me dead. And he’d very nearly had his way.

  “Miss Ramirez?” the lawyer prompted gently. “What you remember most?”

  My eyes found Terry’s at the back of the courtroom and stared at him for a long time. He nodded at me.

  “What I remember the most is Belle Nocton,” I said, my voice loud and clear. “She was my friend, and she gave her life to save mine.”

  I told my story to the world that day, all news outlets agreeing, in the end, that it was my testimony that had put Andrew Steele away forever.

  After the verdict was handed down, several weeks later, I felt better than I had since I made my escape. The psychiatrist suggested that it was because I’d brought justice down for Cream, and my heart was telling me that it was okay to move forward now and heal.

  I would never have gotten this far if it hadn’t been for my new family. Jasmine, Cocoa, and Blue were all strong women who had survived. Through sheer will, they’d given me the tools to become one of them, one of the lucky ones.

  I hoped one day, as I walked hand in hand with Terry through Central Park, that I’d be able to give that same gift to someone else who needed help.

  There had been so many of Mama’s girls. I was just one of them.