by K. J. Dahlen
“Yeah, I see your scars but inside your heart, you aren’t bitter about what life has done to you. You cared enough about other people to make your dreams of a safe home like Redemption House a reality. You kept Peaches alive when you could have left her on her own. Damaged people are people like Janelle Walden, people who don’t care what they do, or what harm they cause others. That’s not you. You are stronger than anyone I know, strong enough to overcome whatever happened in your past.”
Cassie felt a tightening in her throat. “I’m not so sure I’ve overcome all my past. I deal by pushing it out of my mind. Sometimes, I worry about my past coming back to haunt me. There’s so much more in my past that nobody knows yet, things I’ve done I don’t talk about, not with anyone. Things even Peaches doesn’t know about.”
“That’s okay.” Deke hugged her closer. “You aren’t alone anymore and your past can’t hurt you if you don’t let it. Turn those bad memories into something good.”
“How do I do that?” Cassie scrunched her nose.
Deke settled in and reached up to snap the light off. There in the darkness, he shared a bad memory of his own with her. “When Sam took me away from my mother I was pissed. While she wasn’t the best mother, she was all I ever knew up until then. I didn’t know Sam at all. Then Gator took me under his wing and taught me what I needed to know. He became more than just a mentor to me and I’m closer to him than I am to my father. One night, Sam got drunk and came home yelling and screaming at me. He told me I showed him no respect and that was gonna change then and there. I was fourteen years old and at the time I hated being with him. He beat the hell out me that night. I thought he was gonna kill me. Every time he knocked me down, I thought about staying down but I was too stubborn to let him win the game and I kept getting up. He knocked me down again and again and every time, I got back up.”
Cassie tightened her embrace around him and let out a sad sigh.
“Then the last time he hit me, I stayed down. He knocked me out and I was in bad shape. Sam finally went to bed. I woke up a few hours later in so much pain I could barely move. I could her Sam snoring and I knew I was safe at least for a while. Each time my heart beat, the pain inside me grew stronger and stronger and I felt the hate for my father growing until the pain went away. I knew in my mind what I had to do but my heart wouldn’t accept it.”
“What were you planning?” Cassie whispered.
“I was going to kill Sam. I blamed him for everything bad that ever happened to me. I couldn’t take the pain anymore. I was lonely and I was tired of being scared all the time. Scared that every time I saw him…he would end up killing me. I got to my feet and grabbed a knife and I went after Sam. I didn’t think about what would happen to me if I did it, I couldn’t see any other way to survive. I got all the way to his room with the knife in my hand and bloodlust in my heart. I stood over his bed and looked down at him.” Deke’s voice lowered to a whisper. “I wanted so badly to plunge that knife into his chest and end my pain.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Deke barked out a short laugh. “Someone grabbed me from behind and dragged me out of there. When he threw me into the dirt, I looked up at him and saw Gator standing there. He was glaring at me like he didn’t know who I was. I yelled at him wanting to know what the hell he was doing.”
Cassie was quiet and waited there in the dark for him to finish the story.
“Gator asked me if I wanted to die. He told me that if I killed Sam, the rest of the club would kill me and they wouldn’t make it pleasant. He told me they would hunt me down like a rat or I could let it go. That I was almost grown and I could get out of there and have the life I wanted someday soon.” Deke shifted. “I wanted out of there and away from Sam then and there but Gator told me to bide my time. To learn what I could from Sam and to start acting like a man I wanted to become. That if I killed Sam in his sleep, I would never be the man he knew I could be, the man I was meant to be.”
“Is that what you did?”
“Yeah I did, but I wanted Sam to suffer too. When he woke up the next day, I still had the knife in my hands and I told him if he ever hit me again, I’d end his life. He wouldn’t know when or where but I would find a way to kill him….” Deke hesitated then went on, “He must have seen I was serious because he never hit me again. I stayed there another three years and the day I turned seventeen…I left him. I left Maine behind me in my rear view mirror and as soon as I could no longer see the border, I felt a release so strong it damn near crushed me. Gator and Reva came with me and when we finally got to Troy, I could breathe again. I found a motorcycle club that I liked and we’ve been here ever since.”
“But that wasn’t so bad,” Cassie replied.
“For me it was,” Deke admitted. “For me that was the turning point I faced. I hated my father enough to end his life that night and if Gator hadn’t shown up, I would have. I would have shoved that knife deep into a sleeping man’s chest and I would have lost my own soul if I had done it that way.”
“And is it still hard for you to see him?”
Deke nodded. “I no longer hate him like I did when I was a kid, but that doesn’t mean I want him in my life either. When I left Maine, I left him behind and started over. But I did follow Gator’s advice. I did learn from Sam how to belong to a MC. I watched and learned how he treated people and how I would have done things differently. I lost any respect I had for him but I did learn how life was with him.”
“So, you and Gator have been together for a long time then?”
“Yeah, we have been.” Deke smiled in the dark. “He’s more of a father to me than Sam ever was and as long as I live, he and Reva have a home with me.”
“That’s the same way I feel about Peaches.” Cassie sighed. “We’ve been through so much together and the night we took her back to her dad was the happiest I’ve ever seen her. That’s what I always wanted for her because she had family that cared. My family died when Flynn murdered my Mom. When I saw Flynn in that warehouse, I didn’t feel anything for him. Not love or hate, or even pity. I just felt nothing. He’d killed any feelings I had when he took me to Janelle’s and walked away with that damn four hundred dollars in his hand.”
“What about when you knew Calderone wanted him dead?” Deke asked. “Did that mean anything to you?”
“No, it really didn’t, Cassie admitted. “Flynn was already dead to me and when he threatened me that night, I found I wasn’t afraid of him anymore. I hadn’t been for some time. I told Calderone the truth and the fear I saw in Flynn’s eyes almost made me happy. I felt that same fear every day when I lived with Janelle. Maybe that makes me a bad person but I knew Flynn was going to feel the pain I’d lived with and I prayed that Calderone would let him live long enough to suffer at least for a little while. I wanted Flynn to know the pain I had lived with from day to day, just for a little while.” Cassie closed her eyes and whispered, “Does that make me a bad person?”
“No, that makes you human.” Deke kissed her forehead. “Now, it’s time to go to sleep.”
Cassie snuggled closer and closed her eyes. She could hear the beat of his heart and feel the heat from his body and it made her feel safe. Before she dropped off the sleep, she had to ask one more question, “Do you know what Gator’s real name is?”
Deke chuckled. “Yeah but if I tell you, you have to promise never to say it.”
“I promise.”
“His real name is Aaron Willis,” Deke whispered. “Don’t ever tell him I told you or he’ll skin me alive.”
“I won’t.” Cassie smiled in the dark. “I won’t.”
~* * * *~
The next few days passed quickly and once again, Cassie found herself bored to tears with her confinement. The fourth day after her run in with Donny, Peaches came in to tell her she had visitors. Boston Detectives Lance Sullivan and Victor Shroder were waiting to talk to her.
Cassie insisted on getting up and going to the kitchen to talk to them. Peach
es helped her get dressed and as she sat down at the kitchen table, she found herself wondering what they wanted. Paige, Peaches and Peggy were there as well. “What can I do for you?” she asked as she stared at Lance Sullivan.
Lance glanced at his partner then looked at Cassie. “We shared the evidence you gave us and wrapped up most of Janelle’s kiddy ring. We were able to find and return over three hundred kids to their families. They will all need counselling for a long time but I’m confident they will get better. But we were unable to find only a handful of the kids listed in her books.
“New York has a Special Victims Unit and one of their officers, Seth Kyle, has a suspect he thinks is involved in this ring,” Victor added. “Unfortunately, he doesn’t have the evidence he needs to stop this creep. We were hoping you would be able to tell us if you ever saw him around Janelle’s house.”
Cassie shrugged. “I can try but when people came to see her, we were always locked in our rooms.”
“It’s worth a try,” Lance told her as he opened a file and pushed it across the table.
Cassie looked at the photo in the file.
The photo was of a well-dressed man. His hair was dark blonde and he had the oddest eyes she’d ever seen. They were a pale blue with a rim of dark blue. They made his eyes unique. In the photo, his eyes looked cold. His eyebrows were drawn together as if he scowled a lot. His lips were thin almost as if he were hard pressed to smile. His chin was squared off and had a deep dimple and his nose was long and slightly hooked. Overall, his face seemed to suggest he wasn’t a happy man.
The longer she stared at the photo the more she knew she’d seen this man at some point in her life. Her brows were furrowed as she tried to remember him so at first, she didn’t notice the sound in the room. Then her subconscious picked up on the slight tapping sound. First, one single tap, then a single tap and a double tap, then it was a single tap, a double tap and a triple tap. She raised her eyes to the sound. Her frown deepened as she tried to remember where she had heard that rhythm before.
Her eyes went down to the photo again, but the tapping wouldn’t stop. Raising her hands to her temple she gasped as pain flashed inside her head. She got to her feet and stumbled away from the table.
Peaches and Page rushed to her side and they led her back to her bedroom.
“What is it?” Peaches asked softly.
“I’m not sure,” Cassie admitted. “I know that man, at least I think I’ve seen him before. I just can’t remember where.”
Peaches sat down on the bed beside her. Putting her arm around Cassie’s shoulders, she hugged her friend. “Is this nightmare never going to end?” she whispered.
Cassie hugged her friend back. “It has to, it has to end soon. I don’t know if I can take much more.”
“Maybe I should call Deke,” Paige suggested. “He’d want to know about this.”
Cassie nodded. “I know he would. Okay, I’m ready to go back out there. I need to know who this guy is.” Getting to her feet, she went back out to the kitchen slowly. She made her way to the table and sat down. Picking up the file, she stared at the photo for a long time. Then she laid it back down on the table and stared at Lance for a moment. “What is his name?”
“His name is Elliot Handlin.” Then he shrugged. “I don’t want to tell you any more about him unless you know him somehow.”
Cassie frowned again. She kept looking back at the photo. Then she heard the tapping again. This time, she glanced around the table and noticed it was Victor’s fingers that were tapping out the strange rhythm. She stared at his face for a moment then closed her eyes and let her mind wander. When the tapping stopped, Cassie opened her eyes and stared at Victor. She could see the sweat on his forehead.
His eyes were blank but his expression was anything but.
She was curious about his reactions, but her eyes dropped to the photo in front of her.
His face was familiar to her but she didn’t know the name Elliot Handlin. Suddenly, she got to her feet. So quickly were her movements that the chair flew back and her hands came up to cover her mouth. Her eyes went to Lance then went to Victor. Backing away, tears began rolling down her face.
At that moment, the front door flew open and Deke came inside. “What the fuck is going on here?’ he demanded.
Lance stood up and held out his hands. “We came up here to see if Cassie could identify someone. I don’t know what’s going on now.”
Deke went over to Cassie and put his arms around her. “Are you all right? You shouldn’t even be out of bed right now.”
Cassie glanced at him and nodded. “I’m okay, but I’m glad you’re here.” She went back to the table and picked up the photo. Handing it over to Lance, who was sitting again by this time, she told him, “I knew him by the name of Seymour. I saw him only once when I was eight years old. He came to Janelle’s very late one night but he wasn’t alone. He had his nephew with him. A nephew named Victor.” She turned her head and studied Victor Shroder very carefully. “You were there that night,” she claimed calmly.
“What are you talking about?” Victor tried to bluff. “I have no idea who that man even is.”
“You called him uncle,” Cassie insisted. “You and Janelle built the crypt and you poured the cement.”
“Crypt? Cement? What are you talking about?” Lance demanded.
Cassie sat down and told her tale, “One night when I was eight, Janelle had beaten me earlier that day and thrown me in the basement. She tied me to the wall and she thought I was out of it. I stayed quiet, so she would leave me alone and not hurt me anymore. The night in question, it was very late when Janelle came downstairs with two men. One was someone she called Seymour and the other man she didn’t name but he was there. He was younger than Seymour by a number of years. Seymour came down the stairs carrying a small child over his shoulder. A little girl. She’d been beaten and was bloody. He tossed her down on the floor and I could barely see her chest move as she took a breath.”
Lance stared at her as everyone listened.
“Janelle was screaming at him, wondering what the hell he’d done to her. Seymour told her things got out of hand. I watched as the other man lowered two more young kids down on the floor. They weren’t beaten like the girl was but they were barely breathing. From where I was, I could see they were younger than the first girl. Janelle checked them out and she told them they used too much chloroform on them. She told them they had almost killed the brats.” Cassie pointed at Victor. “He noticed me first. He called out to his uncle that I was a potential witness. Janelle laughed and told them not to worry about me. She told them I was unconscious for the night. That she’d beaten me and thrown me down here as punishment and that I wouldn’t remember anything the next morning.”
“What happened then?” Deke asked, keeping one eye on Victor but his hand curled around one of hers.
“Janelle checked the beaten girl again, and she was gone. She’d stopped breathing and her pain was ended. Janelle ranted about losing money because Seymour couldn’t keep it in his pants. Seymour began arguing with her but it didn’t make much difference. She said now, they would have to get rid of all three bodies.” Cassie shook her head. “Victor wanted to add my body to the others but Janelle wouldn’t let him. She assured them both I wouldn’t be a problem. The she noticed a stack of bricks in the corner and she laughed. She told them getting rid of the bodies wouldn’t be a problem. She got Victor to help her build a small narrow bench against the outside wall and once it was done, they put the three small bodies inside and filled it with cement. They topped it off with another row of blocks and by the time they left, the crypt they’d built looked like a small bench running along the wall. I kept as quiet as I could while they worked but couldn’t help but cry when I was alone again.”
Lance turned his eyes to his partner and asked, “What makes you think Victor was there?”
“The tapping. The man that night kept tapping out a pattern. He seemed nervous the who
le time he was down there. First, one tap then one and two taps then one, two and three taps. He kept it up while Janelle and Seymour were arguing.”
Everyone’s eyes turned to Victor.
“She’s crazy. I’m not related to that monster. I didn’t kill three little kids and I didn’t help bury them in some crazy woman’s basement.”
“You do realize we can check that out,” Lance pointed out. “If the bench is there and if the three bodies are in it, her story will make sense.” He turned to Cassie. “Did you hear any names that night? Did they name any of the kids?”
“Seymour carefully touched the girl’s face when he placed her inside the bench. He whispered the name Michelle. Then when the other two kids were dumped in beside her, he looked at Janelle and said they would have to replace Elle and Orlando with two others.” She shook her head. “Janelle wasn’t impressed. She didn’t have two small children to replace them. She said the buyers wouldn’t be happy about the delay.”
Lance nodded. “Those are three of the names of kids we haven’t found yet.” He looked at his partner. “I hope to Christ you can prove you aren’t related to Seymour and you weren’t there that night, but if we find even a smidgen of evidence you were there, you won’t see daylight again in your lifetime. And neither will your uncle.” Slipping his hand inside his pocket, he pulled out a pair of handcuffs.
Before he could do anything else, Victor slipped his hand into his jacket and grabbed his gun. He slammed it upside of Lance’s face toppling him over in his chair then swung the gun to where Deke sat. Firing off a round, the bullet hit Deke’s chest and he fell back to the floor. Victor then pushed the table over and stood there pointing the gun at the women.
Cassie got to her feet and screamed as she went to kneel beside Deke.
Victor grabbed her by the hair and pulled her to stand in front of him. He placed the gun barrel at her temple and snarled to the other three women. “Me and her are leaving. If you make any moves toward either of us I won’t hesitate to shoot you, then I’ll shoot her.”