Redemption Road

by Katie Ashley

  Instead, I focused all the strength I had on the obstacle in front of me. At a full gallop, I lunged at the door, busting the lock and sending it swinging open. The scene before me was just as I had imagined. Annabel sat hunkered down on the toilet with a crimson river pooled around her. The razor blade she’d used to slit her wrists lay in the midst of the carnage.

  “No, no, NO!” I shouted as I barreled forward into the room.

  She lifted her battle-worn green eyes to mine before sadly shaking her head. “Don’t you understand? They’ve taken everything from me—my innocence, my will to live . . . even my ability to bear children.” Tears streamed down her face. She brought a blood-streaked hand up to swipe them away. “I have nothing left.”

  Jerking my T-shirt over my head, I ripped it down the center, then began to tear it into wide strips. “This is not fucking happening. Not on my watch.”

  When I knelt down beside her, she attempted to scramble away from me. “Don’t you dare save me! This is my choice, dammit. I finally have a choice, and I’m ending it.”

  I shook my head at her while I continued tearing the fabric. “I won’t let you do that, Annabel.”

  As I reached for her bleeding wrist, she shot up off the floor, trying to escape me. A feral gleam burned in her eyes before an agonized scream escaped her lips.

  “You fucking bastard! Stop being a hero. Just let me die!”

  Ignoring her, I pinned her against the wall. Like a caged animal, she began to fight me, kicking and clawing. Bright red blood began to paint us both. I couldn’t imagine how she even had the strength to fight after all she had been through.

  Bishop appeared behind me. “Jesus Christ!”

  “Get out,” I commanded.

  “Should I get Breakneck or one of the nurses?”

  “Just get the fuck out.”

  “Rev, she needs fucking sedation not only before she shreds you, but before she bleeds out.”

  “Get. Out!” I bellowed.

  Grumbling under his breath, Bishop stomped out of the bathroom. With my thighs bracing Annabel’s, I pinned her in place with my hips. I grabbed one of her wrists. Winding the ripped shirt around and around, I managed to cut off the bleeding. As I surveyed the wound, I silently thanked God she had made a novice’s mistake and hadn’t cut too deep. She would need stitches, but it was nothing life-threatening. After tying the makeshift bandage tightly in place, I moved on to the next hand just as the palm was about to come in contact with my face.

  When I was done, I exhaled the breath I’d been holding. The roar in my ears and the pounding in my chest slowly began to dissipate.

  Defeated, Annabel sank slowly down the wall and onto the floor. Staring at the bandages, she questioned, “Why? Why couldn’t you just let me die?”

  “Because it’s not your fucking time. If it was, you would have gone up in that blast with the rest of the women.” I raked a shaky hand through my hair. “Besides, you’re twenty-four years old. You’ve got your whole fucking life ahead of you.”

  Shaking her head, she replied, “A tormented life of unfulfilled dreams.”

  “You don’t know that. You can’t let this defeat you. You can’t let them defeat you. You take your life and Mendoza wins.”

  “Easy for you to spout out all the self-help bullshit.”

  “Actually, it isn’t.”

  Her brows came together in confusion as inquisitive eyes met mine. “What do you mean?”

  In that moment, as the hellish ghosts of my past closed in around me, the pressure to breathe had my lungs feeling like a squeezed accordion. I had never spoken of my rape—the actual words had never left my lips. My father knew because he had witnessed the end, and Breakneck knew because he had experienced the aftermath. It had been a horrible secret we kept from my mother and brothers.

  Annabel was a complete stranger to me—someone I’d known less than forty-eight hours. The reason why she deserved to know, and my blood family didn’t, escaped me. But in my heart, I also knew there was a purpose to telling her. In the macabre room splattered with blood, it seemed almost effortless to unburden myself of the sordid details I had tried to bury for so long.

  The intense burden of the secret I was about to divulge weighed on me physically, and I began to sway back and forth. My left leg gave way, and I found myself collapsing onto the floor. I shifted my leg with a grimace.

  “What happened to you?”

  “I got shot leaving Mendoza’s.”

  “When you were carrying me?” Annabel questioned.

  “Not that it makes any difference, but yeah.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

  Annabel snorted contemptuously. “I got you shot. It’s just one more thing to make me feel horrible about myself.”

  “Hear me when I say you can’t keep thinking like that.”

  “And what makes you an expert?”

  “Look, I can’t say I understand exactly how you feel because I didn’t experience the same torment as you.” Holding her gaze, I continued. “But when I was eleven years old, I was raped.”

  Annabel’s eyes widened in shock. Any old animosity on her face was replaced by shock and sympathy. As the deafening silence hung heavy around us, I drew in a ragged breath and began my story. The walls of the hospital bathroom melted away as I traveled across the years, back to a bedroom with a pink bedspread. As I unburdened myself, the shackles, which had once bound me in a long silence, fell away, and I experienced a freedom I’d had no idea existed anymore.

  When I finished speaking, I stared down at the floor, unable to look at Annabel. It wasn’t that I was ashamed of what she might have thought about me. It was more the fact that I was physically and emotionally overwhelmed. I was almost twenty-eight years old, and it had taken me sixteen years to say the words out loud.

  A rustling sound finally drew my stare from the bloodstained tile. I looked up to see Annabel slowly inching toward me. Just as our bodies touched, she stopped. “I don’t know what to say,” she whispered.

  With a shrug, I replied, “You don’t need to say anything.”

  She shook her head. “How could I hear a story like yours and not have something to say?” She wet her dry, cracked lips. “I would say I was sorry, but that simple word seems so insignificant.”

  More than anyone I knew, Annabel truly understood the meaning of her words firsthand. “I guess so.”

  Tears welled in her sad eyes. “You were so young. Just a baby. Me . . . I was old enough to know better. In some ways, I got what I deserved. I walked right into the lion’s den.”

  “Don’t you fucking say that!” I shouted, my fists clenching at my side. My words and tone caused Annabel to shrink back. She didn’t deserve to be yelled at, but at the same time, I had to get through to her. And I didn’t know how many chances I would have to get this right. It wasn’t like I had a whole lot of experience consoling broken women.

  Tentatively I reached my hand out to touch her cheek. When she didn’t pull away, I brushed my thumb along her jawline. “I’m sorry for yelling at you.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Annabel, I want you to understand that you should never, ever think like that.”

  A mirthless laugh tumbled from her lips. “Honestly, Rev, you’re too forgiving. I’m twenty-four years old, not fourteen. I knew better. But still I asked a man I’d never met to take me on a motorcycle ride. I allowed myself to become a victim.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe I spent years blaming myself for drinking that coffee when I knew I wasn’t supposed to have any. I wasted so many nights lying in bed thinking I deserved what happened to me because even though I was drugged, I hadn’t fought back hard enough. That there was something I had done wrong to make Kurt want me over my brothers.” I shook my head. “It’s all bullshit, Annabel. Letting those kinds of thoughts eat away at you won’t get you anywhere.”

  She remained silent for a few minutes and
I could tell she was deep in thought. “After you were . . .” She swallowed hard as she met my eyes.

  “Raped,” I enunciated the word for her. “I’ve been a fucking coward about the word long enough.”

  She gave a quick nod of her head. “After you were raped, did you ever want to hurt yourself?”

  Her innocent question sent the walls of the room spinning and closing in on me. My breath quickened to harsh pants, and I knew I was dangerously close to hyperventilating. No, I can’t lose it. Not here. Not now.

  Closing my eyes, I pictured myself far, far away from the blood-soaked room. I waded into the crystal-clear waters of a stream. As the cool liquid encased my body, peace began to hum through my veins. The farther I went into the water, the greater the relief became.

  I opened my eyes to find Annabel staring at me openmouthed. “What did you just do?”

  “A visualization technique Breakneck taught me many years ago.”

  “You calmed yourself down right in front of me. One minute it was like you were going over the edge, and then the next . . .”

  “I had peace,” I finished for her.

  “Yes,” she murmured.

  “I was pretty volatile there for a while after what happened to me. The emotions coupled with preteen hormones made me explosive. I was throwing punches at my brothers, at kids at school. It was when I took a swing at Breakneck that he realized I needed an outlet.”

  “Will you teach me the technique?”

  “Sure. If you think it will help.”

  “Yeah, I do.” She gave me a small smile. “Thank you, Rev.”

  We sat in silence for a few minutes. Then I braced myself to unburden myself even further. “The answer is yes.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Yes, I tried to hurt myself.”

  Her green eyes widened. “What did you do?” she questioned in a whisper.

  “I tried to hang myself in my closet.”

  Although she had tried slitting her wrists not a half hour ago, Annabel’s hand flew to her mouth in shock. “Oh no.”

  “The months after the rape were almost as bad as the day itself. The man who raped me was just a drifter, so no one came looking for him or had any questions about what happened to him. I guess it would’ve been even worse if my father had gone to prison. Within just a few weeks, my old man left his church. He started drinking again, moved out of the house. My mother cried all the time. My brothers had no clue what had caused the seismic shift in our family, but I did. It was all my fault. I had caused my father to kill a man, to leave his wife and family, and to leave his church.”

  “You poor thing,” Annabel whispered.

  “So I took a belt, tied it to the rack in the closet, and then tied it to my neck. I didn’t leave a note. I just climbed up on the chair and stepped off—” Annabel’s gasp of horror caused me to momentarily pause. “But my weight was too much for the rack, and it collapsed to the floor.” For a moment, I was that scared, devastated little boy all over again. I could feel his pain and desperation just as strong as when I was first experiencing it.

  “You never tried it again?” Annabel asked.

  I shook my head. “No, it was around then that Breakneck reached out to me. As a member of the Raiders, I guess he saw a change in me—one that was worse than my brothers. Maybe he had a soft spot for cases like mine because he had experienced something similar in the past. Or maybe he just wanted to help out a brother’s kid. At first, I wondered if he was just some other pervert like Kurt. But then I remembered how kind he had been the day my father had taken me to him. So when I was just twelve I started going with Breakneck when he worked at the free clinic down in Atlanta. I got to help out doing small chores, which kept my mind occupied, and at the same time, I got to see people who were far worse off than me.”

  “And that’s what eventually helped you move on?”

  “That and time. The old adage about it healing all wounds is true. Of course, the pain is never completely forgotten. It’s more like it lies buried below the surface. Certain sights, smells, or sounds can bring it back.”

  Annabel raised a bloodstained hand to tenderly touch my cheek. “Thank you for saving me. Again.”

  My brows shot up in surprise. “You really mean that?”

  Cocking her head to the side, she remained contemplative for a moment. Then her eyes once again met mine. “Yes, I do.”

  It was at that moment that Breakneck appeared in the doorway. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered with wide eyes.

  Annabel snatched her hand away from my cheek and then ducked her head from Breakneck’s stare. Shielding her from the barrage of questions I knew he wanted to ask, I said, “Annabel needs you to take a look at her wrists. She may need stitching. I’ll clean up in here.”

  When he realized exactly what had transpired, his lips pinched together tightly. I could imagine that inside he was silently seething.

  With a wince, I pulled myself off the ground. Unsteady on my wounded leg, I weaved back and forth for a moment. Once I was stable, I reached down to help Annabel up. She couldn’t bring herself to look me in the eye, so I gently put my finger under her chin and tipped her gaze to mine. “You let Breakneck take care of you while I clean up. Then, if you’re feeling up to it, you can take a shower, or we can get one of the nurses to clean you up. Okay?”

  She nodded and then padded barefoot out of the bathroom. With an agitated sigh, Breakneck turned to go, but I grabbed his arm. “Don’t,” I hissed under my breath.

  “Don’t what?” he demanded.

  “Don’t be hard on her.”

  His eyes flashed with rage before he pushed me inside the bathroom and shut the door. “You want me to coddle a girl who almost threw her life away this morning? A girl who should be fucking grateful she’s alive at all when so many aren’t?”

  I shoved him against the blood-spattered wall with more force than I’d intended. “For one minute, leave Sarah out of all of this. Think back to that eleven-year-old kid you stitched up one day and then weeks later tried to put back together when he fell apart.” Breakneck blinked in acknowledgment. “You cannot and will not discredit her pain. She has every fucking right to want to take her life. That’s not our place to judge. Our part is to help her see there’s a reason to go on no matter how hard it seems right now. You feel me?”

  “Yeah, I feel you,” he replied.

  After releasing him, I took a step back. “Glad to hear it.”

  His gaze dipped down to my leg. “Are you all right?”

  “Just a little tender, that’s all.”

  “Maybe I should have a look at it.”

  “Take care of Annabel first.”

  “Chivalrous to a fucking fault,” he muttered before turning and leaving me.

  I didn’t want to alert the medical staff to what had transpired with Annabel, so I ducked out of the bathroom and then stole a bucket and mop out of the supply closet. I also grabbed a pair of scrubs so I would have something to change into once I finished cleaning. After a quick sweep of the floor and walls, I returned the supplies, then took a long, scalding shower.

  My calf still hurt like a motherfucker, but at least the stitches hadn’t popped and there was no bleeding. I slipped the scrubs on and took one last inspection of the bathroom before going outside.

  Breakneck had finished up with Annabel’s stitches. Annabel’s and Bishop’s attention was drawn to the television while Breakneck stared at his phone. At the sight of me, Annabel jerked her gaze to mine.

  “Shower’s all yours now.”

  She nodded and then turned to Breakneck. “It’s okay if I get the stitches wet?”

  “The gauze should protect them. Just don’t stay in long. And if you start to feel light-headed, call out for one of us.”

  “Okay,” she replied. After taking the spare hospital gown from the side of the bed, she went into the bathroom.

  Bishop glanced between me and Breakneck. “You think it’s safe for her to be alon
e in there?”

  “I did a sweep of the bathroom. There’s nothing in there she could use, even if she was so inclined.”

  “Where the fuck did she get a razor to start with?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe she asked one of the nurses for it. Since she wasn’t on suicide watch, they probably didn’t think a thing about it.”

  “You don’t think she’ll be a repeat offender and ask them again?” Bishop asked.

  Before I could reply, Breakneck said, “No. I think she’s going to be all right.” When I shot a questioning look at him, he gave a brief jerk of his head. “For a first-timer, she did a number on her wrists, but the wounds weren’t deep enough, and after talking with her, I don’t think she needs to be put on suicide watch or anything like that.”

  Bishop snorted. “With us on round-the-clock duty, we’re watching her enough as it is. She doesn’t need anything else.”

  “I’m not taking any fucking chances on Mendoza being alive or the Diablos hunting her down. Those cocksuckers are psychotic,” I argued.

  Breakneck rose from his chair. “She’ll be discharged tomorrow. We need to start planning how to get her back to the States.”

  Crossing my arms over my chest, I said, “For starters, we’re going to be riding out of here. No way can we be flying. Annabel doesn’t have any ID, and whatever paperwork the Raiders concoct to get her over the border, it won’t hold up with TSA. Besides, we don’t need any record that we were even here.”

  Breakneck shook his head. “With the extent of her injuries, there’s no way in hell she can ride on a motorcycle. She needs four to six weeks recuperation from the hysterectomy at least.”

  “Okay. So I’ll rent a car and drive her,” I replied.

  “Then how does your bike get home?” Bishop questioned. As I paused to consider that issue, Bishop said, “Maybe Breakneck should drive her home.”

  “No way,” I answered adamantly.

  Bishop looked at me in surprise. “You got a better suggestion?”

  “Rev’s right,” Breakneck said.

  “He is?” The doubt was clear in Bishop’s tone.

  With a nod, Breakneck added, “For whatever reason, Annabel has bonded with Rev. For her continued mental stability, she needs him right now, especially during a long car ride. I can ride his bike back.” At Bishop’s incredulous expression, Breakneck snapped, “Wipe that fucking look off your face. I can still ride a Harley.”