by Lee Wardlow
I rolled to her side, so I didn’t crush her. Then I kissed her cheek. “I need just a minute.”
I crawled out of bed and headed to the bathroom to dispose of the condom. I grabbed a warm washcloth and returned to the bedroom.
I sat on the edge of the bed beside Disa and uncovered her. “What are you doing?” She asked.
“This,” I replied. I stroked her gently, cleaning her body of the evidence that we had just made love. Then, I tossed the cloth into the hamper in my closet and slipped into bed beside her.
She rolled over and laid her head on my chest. I wrapped my arm around her holding her close. “No regrets?” I asked.
“None,” she whispered tracing patterns over my chest.
“I’m glad. Pleasantly surprised by this turn of events.”
She laughed at me. “I bet you are since you’ve been celibate for a year.”
I kissed her head. It was more than the sex. It was the intimacy that I had never shared with anyone, but I don’t think I needed to tell her that.
We were quiet then. I was content to just hold her naked in my arms, feeling her skin against mine. Her breasts pressed against my side. Soon, she was asleep while I was wide awake contemplating our future. The when and how soon things should happen. Something we needed to talk about now that this had happened. I didn’t want to wait too long.
Chapter 15
“Ben.” I heard my name and it wasn’t Disa calling me. “Ben.” I opened my eyes and Seth was leaning over me shaking my shoulder.
I glanced to my right to be sure that Disa was covered. Then I looked at my brother. “Now what?”
“AJ and Heath are in the living room with some guests,” he informed me.
I scrunched up my face puzzled by his statement. Rubbed my tired eyes. “What?”
We were whispering but still loud enough that Disa should have heard us. The woman could sleep through a tornado hitting the house.
I slipped out from beneath Disa making sure that she stayed covered by the comforter. “What do you mean they are in the living room and have guests?”
“Well,” Seth scratched his head. “That isn’t all. AJ is hurt too.”
“What the hell…” I climbed naked out of bed and my little brother almost got his head knocked off by the next statement that came out of his mouth.
“So, you are screwing her.”
I grabbed the front of his t-shirt and backed him against the wall, “Do not be a dick where Disa is concerned,” I informed him. The words were clipped and angry. He might be taller, but I was bigger. He knew that I could put a world of hurt on him and I was within an inch of doing that right now.
His hands went in the air in a position of surrender. “Could you get dressed? This is weird and I’m sorry,” he apologized.
I dropped my hands to my sides. “Just don’t,” I told him. I grabbed jeans off the floor and slipped them up my body then I followed Seth to the living room.
“I was watching TV like I do every night after work when these two showed up.” We entered the living room. “With them.” He pointed at the two women sitting on my living room sofa.
I knew instantly that one of these women was Merci Riley, Disa’s sister. “What the ever-loving hell, are you two thinking?” I almost shouted then caught myself when I realized that I could wake my daughter and saw that my brother was bleeding out of his right shoulder. “AJ what happened to you?”
“He’s shot,” the other woman I didn’t know informed me. She was applying pressure to his wound.
“Don’t you think we need to take him to the hospital?” I asked.
“Can’t. Gunshot wounds are questioned. Hawk is getting help,” Heath responded.
I ran my hands through my hair in frustration. “Hawk knows you are shot and didn’t do anything to the person who shot you?” I knew my voice was rising. Apparently, that woke Disa or the fact that I was no longer in bed beside her did.
She appeared in a bathrobe and I could see her pajamas beneath it. She walked past me.
“Merci,” she said going straight to her sister. Merci jumped up from the sofa and met Disa half way. They held each other close while Merci sobbed into Disa’s neck. Whatever she was saying to her was not discernable. The poor kid seemed traumatized right now.
“What the hell happened? You two were going to check on her, not kidnap her.”
“It isn’t kidnapping when she leaves willingly,” Heath informed me. “More like begs to leave.”
I turned to him. I was in shock trying to figure this whole scene out when my front door opened. Dad, Hawk, our sheriff and Daisy Clemmons a nurse from the county hospital walked in the door.
“Oh, hell no,” AJ snapped.
“Would you prefer to bleed to death, asshole,” she responded. “I got out of bed for your sorry ass.”
There was open hostility between these two. We moved to my dining room where Daisy could spread out the things she had brought with her. She sterilized some instruments while I got AJ a bottle of Jack that I had in the cabinet.
“I don’t think that’s going to help,” I told him. “It’s all I have though.”
He glared at me and took several swigs from the bottle before sitting it beside him on the table. Merci started explaining what no one else had and I was truly amazed that things like this happened in Sherwood, Ohio.
The woman with her was Lilah Hayes. No family and a stunning woman now that I looked closer at her even if her clothes were a little tattered and dirty right now. She had been taken is how Merci explained it.
She was for Elder Ron’s amusement. She had been kept in the basement of his home as other women had been taken before her were. When they no longer amused him, he had them disposed of.
“Killed?” I asked.
Disa’s eyes met mine. She had mentioned women coming into the compound and not leaving.
“I don’t know,” Merci replied. “Some say sold. Some say killed when they can’t be broken by him.”
“Lilah would you like something clean to wear?” Disa asked. “Maybe a shower?”
She nodded without speaking. Her eyes remained lowered. Her thick lashes sweeping across her lower ones to hide her anguish. She had been abused and more. Bruises covered her arms and that was just what I could see.
Lilah followed Disa out of the dining room, down the hall towards the bathroom leaving Merci with us. I could hear their feet until they hit the carpet in my bedroom. “He hurt her too,” Heath informed us, nodding in Merci’s direction. “Not like Lilah but he was an abusive son-of-a-bitch.”
My brother had a clinical way of speaking without thinking that the victim was in the room and his words were affecting her. Merci almost started crying. I felt helpless to do anything for her, so I hugged her until Disa returned then she could take over.
“He was meeting with the other elders about Disa,” Merci explained. “He wanted to bring her forcibly back to the compound. They were arguing at the house and moved it to the meeting hall, so I wouldn’t hear anything.”
“About?” I asked.
“Your relationship with her. Elder Ron called it unholy without the sanctity of marriage. He wanted to try to save her. The other elders told him no. He requested that they move to the meeting hall for privacy.”
I shook my head and rubbed my hand over jaw. We needed to fix this situation quickly.
“All right, big boy, this is going to hurt,” Daisy told AJ distracting me for a moment. I turned my head to watch them.
He looked over his shoulder and glared at her. A lesser man would have shrunk beneath the look that AJ gave Daisy but not her. She laughed at him. “And you’ll enjoy every minute of it,” he declared.
“I will,” she responded with a smirk.
Daisy was well, she was Daisy. Petit. Slender. A track runner in high school but don’t let her stature fool you. She was strong. Her dark hair was straight, and her eyes were light blue like Disa’s with a crazy splash of color around the
ring of the iris. AJ called her a freak but one time, when they were young, he had loved her. I thought maybe that he still did.
Disa returned to the kitchen and stood beside Merci. The sisters held hands, grateful to be reunited. “I have missed you,” Merci informed her. Her eyes were taking in Disa. It had been six years since she left the compound. I remembered her then and now. Not much had changed about her but I wasn’t seeing her from Merci’s perspective.
“I missed you too.”
“We had to bring them with us,” Heath informed us.
Hawk walked over to us glancing over his shoulder a time or two to check on Daisy and AJ. Dad sat by AJ trying to keep him calm. I couldn’t say that I wanted a bullet dug out of my shoulder without the benefit of any sort of medication. AJ was gritting his teeth against the pain. Daisy was focused on the wound in his shoulder.
I looked at Hawk. “You knew what they were doing?”
“I can’t say that I condone their actions but sometimes, I have to turn my back in order for justice to be served when people like Jameson and Ron get away with things that I can’t prove, or it is in the best interest of the town to not pursue.”
I was surprised by our sheriff’s view on my brother’s vigilante activity. “How so?” I asked. I really wanted to understand this.
Hawk was tired, and I don’t think it was just because it was late. His stance spoke of a man that was worn down. His face was thick with a heavy beard. His eyes were glassy from lack of sleep and maybe a shot or two of whiskey before bedtime.
“Ben, if I had taken Jameson in after what he did to Danni and Walker, his people would have rained down on Sherwood. You know that. That’s just the way it is with them. There’s a code that we follow. You know that. So, we turned our backs. AJ and Heath gave him justice that he won’t soon forget but he’d have a helluva time proving it was them and he would have implicated himself in the process, so everyone is quiet now.”
“Is there more I don’t know about?”
“You don’t need to concern yourself,” Heath informed me.
“How can you say that? You removed Elder Ron’s wife…”
“I’m not his legal wife. He has no claim on me except in the eyes of our church. I am his property,” Merci interrupted me.
Property. She had used that word referring to herself like she was furniture or cattle that they raised. I scratched my head. This was archaic thinking. We were talking about a human being as being property.
I couldn’t imagine what the young woman had gone through or what he had done to Lilah either and I didn’t want to know.
Then my eyes met Disa’s and I knew. She nodded at me. Her eyes were sad because she knew that for the last few months, her sister’s life had been hell and she was trying to convey that to me without words.
“So, these ladies are staying here?” I asked thinking Disa would like it if her sister close to her.
“Nope,” Heath said.
“God dammit,” AJ shouted causing us all to turn our focus on them. He jumped out of the chair and whirled around on Daisy. I thought he might punch her. His hands were clenched at his sides.
“You can’t do that. I almost had the bullet out.” Daisy shouted at him.
“Could we keep it to a low roar. My child is sleeping,” I admonished them.
“She’s trying to kill me,” AJ snarled at me. I wanted to laugh.
“You, big baby, sit your ass down. You never could take pain.”
“I survived you, didn’t I? That was painful.”
When he sat down, she wacked him in the head and he turned and glared at her.
“Stop it,” Dad snapped. “Both of you.”
Daisy sighed. “Give me five minutes, AJ. I’ll have the bullet out.” Her voice didn’t have its usual sass. She just wanted this to be over. I knew Daisy well even though she was AJ’s age. She had been at our house on more occasions than I could count until AJ and Daisy turned eighteen and were heading off to college.
“I didn’t cheat on you,” AJ said. His voice was soft and filled with hurt and the room got suddenly quiet until Heath snorted.
“Eighteen years later, you still want to discuss this?” She said. I noticed her hand trembled as she tried to get the bullet out of my brother’s shoulder.
“I want you to finally believe in me, Daisy.”
She stopped talking and focused on his shoulder.
Heath turned to me, changing the subject. “Ben, the ladies will be coming home with me. Most people don’t even know my cabin exists. If they find it, I have precautions that will prevent anyone from getting too close before someone can get to the girls.”
I cocked my head to the side. “Precautions?” I repeated his word.
“Don’t worry about it,” Heath informed me. I was beginning to hate his vague statements. I was worried about it and this was Disa’s sister we were talking about.
I shook my head. Inhaled sharply. “You keep saying that and it scares me more than anything. Will they be safe with you?”
He frowned at me. “After what I saw at the compound, they will love living with me. I’ll even give them my bed to share. I will even sleep on the sofa until I can get more furniture for the cabin.” He only had one bed at the cabin. I remembered that now that he was contemplating taking two women home with him.
What had he seen that was so bad that these women were terrified, begging my brothers to take them with them.
I glanced at Merci. “Are you all right with that?” I asked.
“Yes, I don’t want to put Disa in danger. This will be the first place he looks for me because after our parents died I wanted to join my sister, but Elder Ron would not allow it.”
Disa embraced Merci. She gazed over her sister’s head at me. “I don’t want Ron to find me…ever…again.” She shivered like his ghost was watching over her. She had a haunted look in her eyes that I was sure would not go away soon.
“He won’t,” I promised her. I hoped that my word was my truth.
“Bullet is out,” Daisy declared.
“I’ll take that as evidence. Ben, I need a plastic baggy.”
I reached into the cabinet behind me and grabbed one then I handed it to Hawk. He had Daisy deposit in the baggy. “Ben got a shirt AJ can borrow? Heath needs to dispose of the one AJ was wearing? Heath needs to dispose of all the evidence of the shooting.”
“I’ll get him a shirt,” Seth replied and headed out of the kitchen.
AJ flinched while Daisy stapled his wound closed but he didn’t make a sound. When she was done she deposited her staple gun back in the medical bag she had carried into the trailer. She passed by AJ and entered the kitchen where she rinsed off her tools until they were clean. Then she handed them to me.
“Make yourself useful, Benjamin. Dry these while I clean my hands. You never know what AJ has.”
He grunted at that statement. Then she washed her hands thoroughly even though she had gloves on. When they were clean she rinsed my sink until it was perfectly clean.
She smiled at me. “Leave no traces of anything behind.”
“Are you part of this conspiracy to rid Sherwood of the badness?” I asked her.
She held her finger to her lips. “Shh,” she whispered. “There is no conspiracy. You saw nothing tonight. Remember that.”
I thought they were all crazy.
AJ rose from his chair and staggered just a bit. Dad caught him. “You’ve lost some blood son. You need to take it easy.”
“I just want to walk to the bathroom to take a piss,” he replied.
“Need some help?” Dad asked him.
“I think I can manage all right.”
“Have any trouble finding it, I’m sure Ben, Heath or Seth can help,” Daisy quipped.
He stopped at her side. AJ and Heath were the smallest of my brothers at six feet two inches. Daisy Clemmons was only five feet one.
“I have apologized to you. Begged for your forgiveness but you are an evil, little el
f who has no heart.” The room got quiet. Daisy squirmed in her pink tennis shoes. She wouldn’t meet AJ’s eyes that were piercing her with a hardness that intimidated me, and he wasn’t focused on me. “I give up.”
Then he walked out of the room without saying anything else. Daisy turned to Hawk. “How about you take me home, before he comes back?” She asked. She sounded like she might cry.
I didn’t know who to feel sorry for because although AJ was a dick, Daisy was comparable at least with him.
“You got it sweetheart. Thanks again.”
“Anytime. Just call if you need me but if it’s AJ again, let him bleed out. I’m done with him.”
I don’t think she meant it. She might hate AJ, but I don’t think she really wanted him to die. The old saying there was a fine line between love and hate, I think might apply here.
“I’ll text you that everything is all clear,” Hawk told my dad then he followed Daisy out the front door.
Dad nodded then he leaned against the counter and looked at me. Seth was eating an apple. “Eat in the other room,” he told my brother.
He frowned, shrugged and left the room. “Merci, honey why don’t you sit with Seth for a moment. He won’t bite. He’s a good boy.”
She looked at Disa for confirmation then she followed Seth to the other room after her sister nodded at her that she was safe with my brother.
“I assume you cleared the room to speak to me and Disa?” I asked. Only Heath remained. Dad must not mind if he heard what he was about to say.
“I did. You two seem pretty, cozy.”
I glanced at Disa whose cheeks turned pink at that declaration. “Are you worried about me hurting her?”
“No, I’m worried about Ron Parson hurting her. How would you feel if she moved in here and gave up her apartment?”
“Now what a minute…”
Dad held up his hand. “Disa, you need to hear me out.”
I saw the stubborn look on her face and knew this wasn’t going to be easy to convince her to move in here, but I agreed with Dad on this one. I wanted my woman close to me right now when I knew she could be in as much danger as Merci.
“Disa, the boys went to the compound to start surveillance. The meeting hall was lit like a party was taking place with guards outside protecting it. They snuck around the back and cut through the fence. Merci was alone, except for one guard. They over took him because the opportunity was there. They just wanted to see how she was doing.”
