Backcountry Escape (Badlands Cops Book 3)

by Nicole Helm

  Psychological warfare. It wasn’t enough to just hurt his sons—he wanted to break them. The problem was, if you were broken, the pain would stop.

  For a time, but the war never stopped. There would always be this war between Ace and his sons, because they’d dared to be good instead of capitulate to his evil.

  He’d promised himself never to be weak in the face of his father again. But giving Ace what he wanted without truly believing it wasn’t weakness. It was survival.

  What wouldn’t Gage do to survive? To make sure Felicity had survived?

  “I get the whip because I’m the smartest,” Gage said, his voice already battle weary.

  “Good,” Ace replied in the same tone a teacher might use when a student finally succeeded with a difficult concept.

  It made Gage feel slimy, slick with self-disgust and the ever-present heart-pounding fear. But if he threw up, he knew exactly what Ace would have to do.

  He had to be tough. Tough enough to survive. Tough enough so that Ace would leave him alone and torture someone else. Anyone else.

  It was his own fault. If he could make more mistakes, be more of a disappointment, Ace wouldn’t try to mold him, make him. If he could be less, this wouldn’t happen.

  Sometimes he even believed that, no matter that it was a sad, self-serving lie.

  You are not a child.

  But he felt it. Felt those old feelings and thoughts taking over as if they were a spirit set on possessing him. He couldn’t get the words out of his head, the pleas he’d offered as a child desperate for the pain to stop.

  “So much potential in you, Gage. And you failed all of it. What you could have been. What you could have done. You’ve failed. Just like Jamison and Cody. Did you know they could have killed me? Both of them. It’d all be over. Instead, here I am.”

  “Do you want to see if I’ll kill you?” Gage asked, giving the bonds that held him a little jerk. “I’d be happy to oblige that little experiment.”

  Ace laughed. “We’ll get to it. We will. I’ll give you all a chance to end me, because only the one who ends me could ever take my spot.”

  “We don’t want your spot.”

  “One of you will. I was chosen for a reason, Gage, and one of you will be, too. Perhaps you six are my great challenge. My cross to bear. Every leader faces them.”

  “I can’t decide if you’re crazy or just evil, but you barely run your own gang anymore. You’re hardly a leader. Seems to me, the Sons don’t need you, Ace. Hasn’t jail taught you that?”

  The next hit was so quick and vicious Gage howled in pain and shock. Ace’s grin widened.

  “The pain can end. You know how it can end.”

  “I’m not worried about your pa—” Another crack and painful slap, though this one wasn’t as hard or unexpected. Gage breathed through it, even as he felt blood begin to trickle down his thigh inside his pants.

  Based on his father’s reaction, Gage knew one thing. The Sons were struggling without Ace at the helm. Ever since Jamison and Cody had managed to get Ace behind bars, the Sons had been sloppy.

  Or maybe...

  Could it be that the Sons weren’t struggling at all. It was Ace, losing power over the group that had followed him blindly. Wouldn’t that be worse to Ace—continuing on just fine without him and so many of his top men dead after a planned explosion by Cody’s former North Star Group?

  The thought—the utter possibility—almost made Gage laugh. It reminded him that everything had an end. And maybe he wouldn’t live out his father’s end, but his brothers would.

  Felicity would.

  She wasn’t here, and neither was Michael. There were too many scenarios, too many possibilities of where Felicity could be and what she could be facing.

  He had to survive this next little while just to make sure she survived. To make sure.

  Then he did the thing he’d sworn to never do again.

  Because sometimes you had to break a promise to yourself to keep a more important one to someone else.

  “I get the whip because I’m the biggest. The smartest. The one best suited to take over, but the weakness of my mother needs to be beaten out of me.”

  Another blow, but he’d been expecting that, too. Giving in to what Ace wanted never truly offered relief. If it were that easy, life would be a heck of a lot different. For all of them.

  “Isn’t that how it goes?” Gage asked, failing to make his voice sound properly deferential.

  “Try again. Try to mean it this time. Feel the truth. The weakness will be whipped out of you, Gage. Here. Or you’ll die. Jamison won’t save you this time. Brady won’t save you. Even that little redheaded dimwit can’t save you. It’s you and me.”

  “And one of us will end up dead.”

  “Oh, son, now you’re speaking my language.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Felicity may have lived with her father only until she was four years old, but as she waited to take him out, she realized she’d learned quite a few things from him.

  Silence was the first thing. Stillness the second. If you were silent and still, it was hard to become a target. And in a house with her father, she was always a target.

  He had to find her first, though.

  She’d learned to fold in on herself, to meld into her surroundings with everything she had. She’d learned and honed those skills before she’d learned how to speak or walk—or so she thought. So she felt.

  Life with the Knights, and the slow—very slow—bloom of maturity and adulthood had helped her unlearn those impulses. She’d figured out how to speak and move and dream and believe without folding in on herself. Without hiding.

  But a person never unlearned their early impulses completely. As her father huffed and puffed toward her, she struggled to stay in the present. Hard when she was hiding just as if she’d been that toddler struggling to hide from another one of her father’s rages.

  But she had a plan this time. She had fight this time. Her father didn’t get to terrorize her anymore.

  She moved with his movements, keeping her body shielded by the large rock she was hiding behind. She was careful of where and how she stepped—even a pebble tumbling down the side of the crevasse she was tiptoeing around might bring his attention to her.

  Though, based on all his heavy breathing, maybe not.

  She kept her breathing even, that old hiding trick in full force as he passed the rock she was behind—as she moved around it so she could surprise him from the back.

  She didn’t even need to push him. As she jumped out, guttural scream piercing the quiet air, he jerked, tripped and tumbled down the steep cliff.

  He landed with a thud, and then moans of pain that echoed and grew louder and louder. He writhed on the hard ground below and Felicity looked down at him. She felt inexplicably furious.

  She’d won, for the moment. Done exactly what she planned to do, and still the fury swept through her like a tidal wave.

  “Do you feel big and powerful now?” she called as she considering kicking some rock down on top of him. Or maybe throwing the heaviest rocks she could lift. She wanted to torture him. She wanted to cause him all the pain he’d caused her. She wanted to...

  She stopped herself, and the fury. She wasn’t like him—didn’t want to be. She didn’t need to terrorize him just because he’d terrorized her. It wouldn’t solve anything or erase anything.

  Still, it surprised her how badly she wanted to.

  “Felicity.” He said it in the same tone of voice she remembered. Pleading. Apologetic. Therapy had taught her that an abuser’s strongest weapon was his ability to make himself seem truly sorry, truly sympathetic.

  “Maybe you should answer the question. Do you feel big and powerful now?”

  “I was only following orders, Liss. That’s all. Ace is a powerful man. I
had to do what he said. Please. Don’t... I’m sorry. I had to.”

  He was a big lump on the ground, holding on to his leg. She stood quite a few feet above him. He was begging and pleading, and it was only the therapy she’d had that kept her from falling for it.

  “You didn’t have to do anything. Ace doesn’t own you. You weren’t...” Then it dawned on her, what she’d never fully considered. “You’re in the Sons?” He had been. All this time. Somehow? Or was it new?

  Did it matter?

  No. What mattered was he’d killed his daughter—a sister she’d never known—and then tried to frame Felicity for murder. Regardless of Ace’s influence, he had done those things. She was sure of it.

  “You killed her,” Felicity said, her voice vibrating with an emotion she wished she could bury for right now.

  “Killed who?” His eyes bulged in horror down there in the canyon. “I ain’t killed no one.”

  She believed him, for a split, stupid second when she felt a moment of relief and hope. She desperately wanted to believe her father wasn’t capable of murdering his own daughter, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

  But that was so utterly ignorant she hated herself for even thinking it, no matter how briefly.

  “Is Ace telling people I killed somebody?” He scrambled to stand and howled in pain. Presumably he’d seriously injured his leg. “I didn’t kill nobody!” he shouted, panic and desperation tinging his words.

  “And yet your fingerprints were all over my cabin. And the evidence. You’re the one who identified her body.”

  “I didn’t! I didn’t! Whose body? What are you talking about?”

  Felicity faltered. Michael seemed utterly confused and lost, and it wasn’t beyond Ace, even in prison, to be able to make things happen. But how could someone have impersonated her father to identify a body? How could prints be dropped without her father being culpable?

  “What about your daughter?”

  “You’re my daughter, Felicity.” He managed to get to his feet, leaning on one leg over the other. He put his hands together as if praying. To her. “Please. You gotta help me. Ace made me do all this, but I didn’t kill anyone. Please.”

  “You beat me. I was three years old, probably younger when it started. You beat me. A little, defenseless girl.”

  He had the decency to drop his arms to his sides. He made a helpless gesture. “I... Yes, I did that. I know it makes me a monster. I was messed up. I still am. I get it.” He didn’t make the pleading motion again, but he did look up imploringly, shading his eyes against the sun with his hand. “But I didn’t commit murder.”

  Maybe he hadn’t. Maybe he had. She didn’t know.

  She wasn’t sure she cared.

  “You deserve what you get,” she said, but it was a whisper and she knew he didn’t hear her down there. “You deserve what you get,” she repeated, still whispering, feeling tears sting her eyes.

  But it seemed more than possible that her father was just a pawn in Ace’s scheme. Not an innocent one. He was in the Sons, had to be, whether he’d always been or had joined up recently. He deserved anything he got—and more than that, he didn’t deserve even a second of her concern or help.

  “I didn’t kill anyone,” he said, his voice wavering as if he was about to cry.

  “Maybe,” she agreed, feeling detached. As though she was floating above herself or as if there was cotton shoved into her chest instead of a heart and lungs. “It doesn’t matter.”

  She could hear the way she sounded. Flat. Emotionless. There were emotions—she could feel them swimming under all that cotton—but she was afraid of what would happen, what she would allow herself to do if she accessed them.

  She stepped back from the ledge.

  “Felicity. Where are you going? You can’t leave me down here!”

  She took another step.

  “Please! Please. I’m hurt. Don’t... I’ll die down here. I’m hurt. Please. Please!”

  “I remember begging,” she said. The sun was beating down on her, but all she felt was ice. Brittle, stinging ice. She had to get away from it.

  Away from him.

  “You’ll probably die down there.”

  “Then it’ll be you committing murder, Felicity,” he yelled from his spot down in the canyon as she walked away.

  “So be it,” she whispered to herself.

  * * *

  GAGE WEAVED IN and out of the pain, out of consciousness. The blows kept coming, and would, until his father was ready to fight.

  Usually at the point Gage was his weakest. But when a boy was at his weakest, that’s when he fought the hardest. Or should.

  According to Ace.

  He’d be brought to his weakest point, then be given a weapon. A smaller, less useful weapon than his father’s, but a weapon nonetheless.

  Gage had survived this a few too many times to count. His own personal hell. His punishment for having a quick mind. For being born big and strong.

  Gage was under no illusion he was special. Ace had picked on them all for separate reasons. Doled out punishments specific to each of his sons.

  Gage had never told his brothers the whys of his personal hell. Instead, he’d worked to make himself the opposite of everything Ace said he was.

  Once he’d finally got into school, he’d failed. Over and over again. He’d skimmed through graduation from high school to the police academy. He never let himself excel, and since Brady did, and so well, no one ever thought twice of the underperforming twin.

  Thank God. A saving grace.

  Now he was back here, in the exact position he’d escaped, the exact position he’d proved to everyone he didn’t belong to be.

  He couldn’t think about being back in this same place he’d escaped. Couldn’t think about how unfair it was.

  Maybe Ace was right all along. He was anointed somehow. Chosen. Because somehow Ace always got what he wanted, even if it took years to get there.

  No. No, it wasn’t true. Jamison was alive and well, getting ready to marry Liza and make a family with Liza’s half sister. Cody was back with Nina and their daughter Brianna, building a life in Bonesteel.

  Ace didn’t get everything he wanted.

  Gage fought off the nausea, reminded himself not to float away from the pain because that would only prolong the inevitable.

  This standoff was inevitable.

  Always had been. Always would be.

  And if he ended it, maybe he’d be like Ace, but maybe he’d end this for his brothers. Would that be so bad? So wrong? Couldn’t he live with anything if it meant saving his brothers?

  “I think you’re ready, Gage.”

  Gage laughed. It was all so ridiculous. He’d been whipped and beaten bloody—he could feel the blood covering him. Like a film.

  This was Ace’s language, Ace’s currency. Blood and pain.

  It could be Gage’s, too. If he killed Ace, by some grace of God, it would be his language, too.

  He didn’t want it. He’d rather die. If he just knew Felicity was safe, he’d rather die. But he wasn’t sure. He had to fight to be sure.

  He was tired of fighting the insanity of his own father. Tired of fighting, period. He just wanted...life. He’d taken for granted the years since his escape when Ace had left him alone thinking they’d just keep lasting.

  Gage looked at the man who’d fathered him, tortured him then and now, and had no doubt murdered Gage’s mother. Gage didn’t understand any of it. Top to bottom. “Why didn’t you just kill us, Ace? You had the chance. Over and over and over. You’ve always had the chance.”

  Ace stepped closer, looking at Gage as if he’d missed some important life lesson along the way. “What’s life without the chance? You’ve made me into a monster in your own head, Gage. You all did. None of you ever tried to understand. I d
on’t want you dead. I want you reborn as only mine.”

  Reborn. It was such insanity. As if his own mother could be erased from him even if he wanted her to be. After all, she’d been weak enough to love a monster, to keep giving birth to son after son this monster would torture. Just to stay alive. And for what? To die anyway.

  In the moment, he had no warm feelings for the mother who’d allowed this, but she hadn’t been a monster. She hadn’t been this. “She was better than you, you know,” Gage said, expecting the blow to follow.

  It didn’t. Not yet. Ace got very still. “She was weak. And so are you.”

  “It isn’t weak to survive you, Ace.”

  “She didn’t, did she?”

  “She did. She knew who and what you were. She couldn’t break free of the spell of that, but she knew. She used to tell all of us that when she died, that when you killed her, you would try to make us into you. She said we never had to turn into that, if we didn’t want to. She was stronger than you where it counted. We didn’t escape until she was gone. Why not, Ace?”

  “You really want to play the why-not game?” Ace smiled, the chaotic, gleaming smile that made Gage’s stomach roil completely separately from the concussion symptoms.

  If Ace was talking, though, he wasn’t whipping or beating, so Gage nodded. “Yeah, let’s play.”

  “Why didn’t your mother escape? Why didn’t she run you all to your precious grandma? She could have.”

  “Of course. She wasn’t a prisoner to you at all,” Gage said, letting the words drip with sarcasm.

  “You six escaped. Why couldn’t she?”

  Gage opened his mouth to rage about how Ace had warped his mother, twisted her until she didn’t know how to escape. Maybe that made her weak, but she’d given Gage himself the belief that something better existed out there. He just had to get there.

  Maybe it was Jamison who had proved it, over and over again, but it was his mother’s seed of truth that he’d first believed.

  But he was tired. God, he was tired. And his mother was dead. What did this matter? What did any of it matter? Why couldn’t he give up?