by Lily White
Elliot paused, his eyes studying me with questionable intent. A few moments of tense silence passed before he said, “Fine.”
It was obvious he didn’t want to turn his back on me either. Turning, but placing distance between us so he could keep me in sight, he led me back up the path I’d traveled earlier. Crossing the yard quickly, I spotted the truck off the shoulder of the road.
A black 4x4 with silver trim and back passenger cabin, the truck looked brand new. It didn’t make sense that he’d already be having problems.
“What’s wrong with it?” I asked.
Elliot shrugged. “Don’t know. It was driving normally but then just slowly died. The radio went out first and then it was just dead.”
I prayed it would be an easy fix.
We reached the truck and I shifted around a bit until I had Elliot by my side and not at my back. The battery cables were the first things I reached for. As I’d suspected, one of them was loose.
“Here’s your problem, right here. Your battery cable came loose.”
“I thought I’d checked that.”
A chill ran along my skin from the way Elliot stared at me instead of the engine. Inching away from him, I wiped my hands on my shorts.
“If you have a wrench, it’s an easy fix.”
Another tense moment of silence passed between us. Shaking his head like he was snapping himself out of something, Elliot flashed me a forced smile.
Unable to miss the straight white teeth and the dimples that dented his cheeks, the tightening in my stomach happened again, a shiver coursing through me that was surprising.
“Yeah,” he finally said, “I have one in the truck. I’ll take it from here.”
I nodded and stepped away, but he called out to me.
“Hey, that was really impressive. Most girls your age don’t know about cars. Where did you learn that?”
Dressed in a black, short sleeve shirt that hugged his broad shoulders, jeans gripping at his narrow waist, and a pair of black work boots covering his feet, Elliot was the picture of fit. I traced my eyes over the planes and valleys of his arms, chest and abdomen, my mind appreciative for what I could see beneath the tight cotton of his shirt.
Even though he put off an air of something that made me want to run and hide, I stepped towards him.
My thoughts raced and I struggled to convince myself that there wasn’t something wrong with Elliot. Something was wrong with me.
How long had it been since I’d been alone with a stranger? As a child, I’d been left at the park to play with other children, but once I’d grown too old for those games, my father and brothers had kept me under lock and key. I was only allowed to spend time with their friends - people they knew they could trust - and never a man on his own.
Perhaps the caution I was feeling wasn’t a result of anything Elliot had done, but more because I was alone for the first time with a man, one that I felt attracted to despite the marked age difference. How old could he be? Not old like my father, but just by the way he carried himself I knew he had to be older than my brothers.
“My dad and brothers taught me,” I finally answered. “We travel a lot for their work, which means we’re constantly working on the trucks and equipment while on the road.”
He gave me an easy smile, less stern than the ones he’d flashed before. I liked the way his face looked when it softened. My body relaxed as I allowed myself to trust that he didn’t intend to do me any harm.
“That must be hard. Being so young and moving around all the time.”
Shrugging a delicate shoulder, I reached up to brush my hair away from my face. An odd desire to fix my hair into place overcame me, a desire to make myself attractive to this man. I’d never wanted to attract attention before. But then again, the people my family hung around weren’t the type who’s attention any person would want.
“It’s all I know. Their business requires that they travel around. Storms hit all over the place and they need to be where the money is, you know?”
It wasn’t anywhere near the truth of where my family got their money, but it was the lie I’d been forced to tell my entire life. I hadn’t had many opportunities to tell it, but my father had shoved it down my throat so many times, he never had to worry that the truth would come up in its place.
Idly kicking at a stone on the ground, Elliot pulled his focus away from me for only a split second before those grey eyes locked to mine again. “So, I take it that means you haven’t lived here that long?”
I shook my head. “No, we’ve lived here since I was a kid, we’re just not here all the time.”
It didn’t occur to me until that moment that he was asking a lot of questions. He was a handsome man, probably the most handsome I’d seen in real life, and he’d told me he was impressed with me. That small bit of a compliment had been enough to make me want to preen where I stood. Nobody complimented me anymore. Nobody.
“You said you were eighteen, right?”
My eyes widened and a small, shy smile pulled at my lips. “Yes.”
Elliot nodded. “Well, if you’ve been here since you were a kid, maybe you knew my son when you were younger?”
My body froze in place. I didn’t want to answer any more questions, didn’t want to continue a conversation that might get me in trouble if I said the wrong thing. But I didn’t want to walk away from him either.
Then again, I wasn’t sure I had much to worry about. If this man still had his son in his life, it was a good indication that I’d never known the child.
If I had, he wouldn’t be talking about his son like he was still alive.
Glancing down the long, two lane road that led past my house, I couldn’t see a car out in the distance, which meant I had more time before my daddy and brothers arrived.
“Probably not,” I finally said. “I don’t really know anybody around here.”
Refusing to drop the subject, Elliot took a step towards me. “Well, maybe you knew him. His name was Michael. He had brown hair and blue eyes. He always carried around a stuffed rabbit he’d named Floppy Bunny. Does that ring any bells?”
It rang the alarm bell, and because of that fact, I wanted to run as fast as I could back to my house.
My eyes rounded with fear as I inched backwards. Yes, I remembered the boy, but only parts of him. Like the way he’d cried when his mommy was so tired she’d slept the entire way to the farm. Or the expression he had on his face when my family and I drove away from that farm and the boy realized he was being left behind.
“Listen, I didn’t know him and your car is fixed, so you need to leave,” I said, not giving Elliot time to respond or react before I sprinted across the field towards my house.
Slamming the door as I ran inside, I locked the place up tight and refused to even look out the windows until my father and brothers returned.
My eyes tracked Maggie as she ran away, my hands clenching into fists when her sudden flight made it obvious she knew something. Fighting against the urge I had to chase her down, I remained in place and watched her until she’d disappeared into the ramshackle house.
Her reaction had been all the confirmation I’d needed to know that her family had something to do with Katelyn and Michael.
I didn’t think my fight was with her. She’d have been too young at that time, innocent just like my son. However, her father and brothers hadn’t been. And men like those three could have easily overtaken and controlled Katelyn. They could have easily made my family disappear.
After rounding my car to grab a wrench from the glove box, I ignored the sweat dripping down my brow as I tightened the battery cable back in place. Every muscle was tense along my bones, my teeth clenched together as I slammed the hood down and turned to stare at the small house where Maggie had run.
It took everything in me to resist marching up to that house, to force the door down, if need be, and pull the girl out by her hair. I needed to know what she was hiding, but I couldn’t be stupid about it
either. Tempering the rage that was festering inside me, I turned my attention to the length of highway I’d passed over in route to the Crow farm, and my eyes focused on the small cloud of dust being kicked up by the tires of a distant truck.
Jonah and Maggie’s brothers were returning home, and I wasn’t prepared at that particular moment to take on a fight that would be three against one.
Cursing under my breath, I walked around the truck to climb up into the driver’s seat. Flinging the wrench into the glove box, I slammed the lid shut and turned the key to start the engine. The truck fired up with no problem, and by the time my hand gripped the gearshift to slam it into drive, Maggie’s family pulled up in their beat down truck. Three sets of angry eyes locked on me as they pulled to a stop beside me.
Waving to them like I had no idea who they were, I grit my teeth when I rolled down the window.
“Is there a problem with your truck?” one of the brothers asked, his blue eyes studying me from where he sat, his elbow hanging out the open window.
I tipped my chin towards the hood and forced a smile. “The battery cable came loose. It was a quick fix and I’ll be on my way now.”
Old man Jonah leaned forward in his seat to get a good look at the stranger parked outside his property. After a quick appraisal, and a glare behind his narrowed eyes that made it clear he didn’t trust me as far as he could throw me, Jonah inclined his head.
“Just be sure you are on your way, son,” was his slurred warning.
Rage coursed through my body in tumultuous waves, but I kept a level head despite the way my fist gripped the steering wheel until the knuckles turned white. I wanted nothing more than to pull the gun I kept beneath my seat and level each and every one of them, but I wouldn’t get answers from them if they were dead. A bullet was too kind a death for the price I wanted those bastards to pay.
Answers. I needed answers. And to get them, I needed those men alive.
Giving them a mock one-fingered salute, a byproduct of the time I’d spent in the military, I nodded my head once before driving away.
Sitting in the old leather chair by my desk, I stared at a picture of my wife and son.
I’d carried that picture with me into the Middle East, and I’d cherished the note written on the back of it from my beautiful Katelyn. There was a scribble in blue crayon that ran through her note, the only remnant I had left of my son.
Leaning back against my chair, I sympathized with the way it groaned to take my weight. In many ways, I was that chair, still strong in structure, but ragged and torn apart on the inside and out. Years of unbearable anguish had drawn wrinkled lines across my skin, just like years of neglect had torn holes in the black leather of the armrests.
And much like that chair, I appeared older than I actually was.
Katelyn and I had been young parents, Michael a surprise addition that neither of us had been prepared to take on. It was the reason I went into the military immediately after I’d graduated high school. At the time I’d joined, the United States wasn’t involved in many wars, but after an attack that occurred in New York, everything changed and I was deployed.
It was during my first tour that Katelyn and Michael went missing. As soon as I received word of their disappearance, I’d lost my mind. The military discharged me a few months later because I was a danger to myself and any soldier who fought beside me.
I’d come home to an empty house where I no longer heard my wife singing out of tune while she cooked or did dishes, a house that was so quiet because the laughter of our son was no longer there.
And through those years that I sat in agonizing silence, I’d aged faster than I should have, but I didn’t really care.
At thirty-four years old, I could easily pass for forty.
Slamming my palm down on the desk, I ignored the flutter of paper from the breeze kicked up by the motion. Staring at the photograph, I considered what I would do with the new information I had.
Running to the police wouldn’t do me an ounce of good. I’d attempted that when I first suspected the Crows. The cops laughed it off as the ruminations of a heartsick husband, as nothing more than the need to place blame by a shattered and broken father.
They were quick to clear the Crows, even went so far as to show me what little they could find on the timing of large storms and the dates the Crows left town. They used the date my wife disappeared, specifically, and then pointed to the reports of a hurricane that had just finished pounding the East Coast. To them, that coincidence was good enough.
Never once did they visit the property. Never once did they lift a finger to try.
No. Taking this to the police would only draw their attention to the fact the Crows had returned home, and I didn’t want that. It was better to remain quiet - better to watch and wait - until the moment presented itself to strike.
With a bottle of whiskey tilted to my lips, my mind wandered to that young woman by the side of the stream. What had she been thinking about when her hand skittered up her stomach? What thoughts had been running through her head when her shirt slipped up so high I could see every curve of her young body? Were those bastards doing to her the same things I assumed they’d done to my wife?
The questions were killing me, so I gulped down the burning liquid in hopes it would smother the flame of rage inside me.
More than that, I hoped it incinerated the odd flare of interest I had in Maggie Crow.
There wasn’t a thing about her that should have drawn my attention, not in the way a man should be interested in a woman. If anything, I should have felt protective of the girl. That, or hated her. Even if she wasn’t part of a family that made my skin crawl just at the sight of them, she was too young for the thoughts that had whispered to me when I watched her.
She was off limits in every way, and for every possible reason.
Draining the bottle, I threw it in a small trashcan to the side of my desk. The glass clamored against the metal and shattered.
Hands running through my hair, I clenched my eyes shut and let my head fall back. She was just a girl, young and skittish. I couldn’t fathom what the hell I’d been feeling.
It didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter. She was part of the family I wanted dead.
Cursing under my breath, I practically hissed out the words. I didn’t know if I’d be able to easily pull the trigger and kill her.
Despite the skittish behavior that all but screamed I know what happened to your kid, Maggie had impressed me. She was confident about her knowledge of cars, and her eyes were much older than her years. It made me wonder what horrors those eyes had seen.
Promising myself that I’d give her a chance, I made the decision to help her if she was there against her will. But if she fought me, or if I found out she was somehow involved in the crimes her family had committed, her death would have to be a simple means to an end.
“Did that man outside come to our door?” My brother, Finn, took a step towards me. We shared the same hair color, the same face shape, but where I had green eyes, Finn had blue. And where I was small, Finn was tall and broad.
Shrugging a delicate shoulder in response to his question, I turned to busy myself with pencil and paper. I sketched for an excuse to avert my eyes, because, in truth, I was a horrible liar. Although, with as boring and controlled as my life had been, there was never much for me to lie about. My family was with me practically all the time. But what few secrets I did have I wanted to keep, and now Elliot was one of those secrets.
My heart beat harder at the thought of Elliot. I wasn’t sure if it was due to attraction or fear, but that small jump in pace was noticeable. It was probably for the best that he’d brought up a subject that made him dangerous. I wouldn’t have walked away without it. Now that I knew he was connected to a family that could spell trouble for my father and brothers, it made him off limits in every way. I didn’t need the temptation of a fantasy I couldn’t have dangling right in front of my face.
“Wha
t man?” I asked, feigning ignorance with a voice that was timid and soft.
“The one whose truck broke down. You didn’t see it? A black, shiny 4x4 with its hood up? You didn’t notice that?”
Another shrug, my hand working the pencil over the paper. “Daddy said I couldn’t go outside. So I didn’t see anything.”
Finn smirked. “Yeah, because you’ve always been one to listen to what daddy says.”
“I’m a good girl,” I mumbled. Too afraid to take Finn on directly, I made my argument, but with little strength behind it. “I don’t do anything wrong.”
His lips tilted at the corners, an expression that mocked me with every drop of cruelty Finn had in him. “Really? That’s funny, because I could have sworn that’s not exactly true.”
Taking a seat at the table opposite me, he watched with a passive stillness that shot a chill along my spine. I loved my brothers, but I couldn’t deny there was a rancid sickness that infected them both. Finn just happened to be the worst of the two. It was his laughter that was the loudest. No woman alive could scream as loud as my brother could laugh.
With a voice that was halfway between a whisper and an angry hiss, he taunted, “I seem to remember some books of yours that I found. The ones you had hidden beneath your bed. Do you happen to know what books I’m talking about?”
Giving me a slimy grin, he folded his hands together over the surface of the table.
I cringed because I knew exactly what books he’d found, and I didn’t want my father to know anything about them. Regretting not throwing them away immediately after reading them, I prayed that Finn wouldn’t say anything.
“Please don’t tell Daddy. He’ll kill me.”
Finn’s smile broadened. “I know.”
“Why are you even bringing this up?”
Holding his hands up in feigned placation, Finn said, “Don’t worry, Maggie. This can be our secret.” He laughed a sharp bark of a sound that caused me to jump. “I mean, I get it. You’re a growing girl. You’ve got needs just like the rest of us.”
My nose scrunched. “Ew, Finn. I don’t need to know about your needs.”