Burn in Hail

by Lani Lynn Vale

  I didn’t think she was abused physically—at least nothing more than any other child, but emotionally was a completely different story.

  And the hate in his eyes right now? Yeah, that was directed wholly at me.

  “I’ve done nothing wrong, Father.” Hennessy stood up and bent down to reach for her empty cup.

  My eyes automatically went to her ass, and when they returned to the man in front of me, I nearly winced.

  Yeah, he’d caught me checking out his daughter’s ass.

  My bad.

  “Little late for you to be eating lunch, isn’t it?” he asked. “I thought you had appointments all day? That is what you told me about an hour ago when I checked in to see if we were still on schedule.”

  Hennessy sighed and threw her cup into a high arc, making it barely into the trash.

  “I did have appointments,” she confirmed. “One canceled last minute, though, leaving me with a half hour of free time. I do have to be getting back, unfortunately.”

  With that, she left, and didn’t look back.

  Her father waited until she was all the way onto the highway before he turned to me.

  “You don’t go there.” He pointed his finger.

  I wanted to laugh.

  The man should know that he couldn’t tell me I couldn’t do something.

  He had, after all, told me that I’d never amount to anything. That I would be a loser for the rest of my life living off of my momma’s pussy.

  Yes, those were his words, in case you were wondering.

  But I had made something of myself. I had gone into the Marines. I had built myself a life I’d been proud of.

  And even if I’d been to prison, I wasn’t upset about that.

  Going to prison was worth it if I got to see a fifteen-year-old girl smile after what she’d been put through.

  “We’ll see,” I said and walked to my truck without looking back. “We’ll see.”

  Chapter 12

  My ‘give a fuck’ is still broken. However, my ‘go fuck yourself’ is still highly functional.

  -Text from Tate to Hennessy

  Hennessy

  “I know you committed the ultimate sin.”

  The snarled voice had me opening my eyes a split second before I was dragged out of my bed by my hair, wrenched upward, and shaken.

  “Stop!” I cried out, knowing who it was without opening my eyes.

  “Tell me you didn’t.”

  I couldn’t tell him. Because I did it.

  I knew what he was asking.

  Did I have sex.

  Yes, I had.

  I wasn’t a good liar. All my times being beaten when I was younger attested to that.

  I couldn’t lie for shit, and my father had excellent lie detection.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I cried.

  My head was on fire where he was holding me up, and I knew better than to struggle, though everything inside of me was demanding that I should.

  “You know what I’m talking about, little girl,” he growled.

  Then a sharp pain burst over my face, making me cry out involuntarily.

  “I have to go to work tomorrow,” I cried out, feeling the pain of his slap on my cheek. “People will see.”

  “You’ll cover it like you did all the rest,” he growled. “Now, stand up.”

  I found my feet, and knew what was coming next.

  The slice of the blade through my hair, the way I could feel his cold fury over my back.

  “You’re lucky I don’t take it all like I did when you were younger.”

  I was, I supposed.

  Still, it hurt to know that all the work that I’d put into growing it out, and nurturing it over the last four years, was all gone.

  By the time he was done, my hair was hacked off at my shoulders, leaving me to stare at the floor in defeat.

  I should’ve fought back.

  I should’ve done something!

  But then I remembered the last time I tried to ‘do something.’

  It hadn’t worked out then, and wouldn’t have worked out now.

  As I heard the door slam, I dropped to my knees and started to cry.

  Only later did I stand up, get dressed for work, and go into the office over two hours early.

  If I was in that house one more single second, then I’d literally scream.

  ***

  Hours later, as I looked up at the sound of the outer office door opening, I saw Tate opening the door.

  He was looking down at his phone, his fingers typing out a message with one hand, while the other pulled on the knob.

  I took a deep breath, ran my hands down my hair, and immediately winced.

  Yeah, today I didn’t look like the Hennessy I’d been hoping to turn into. Today I looked like that old, scared girl that used to hide in the corners with the shadows every time my father pulled one of his many stunts.

  My neck was freakin’ cold.

  And my eyes were starting to sting.

  Stop it, Hennessy! This isn’t helping matters!

  My inner torment went unnoticed to the man as he stepped into the room, still on his phone.

  “Morning, darlin’,” he said. “Give me just one more minute. Gotta figure out this map where I’m supposed to pick up a car in an hour, bothering the shit out of me.”

  “Okay,” I replied as I leaned forward, grabbing my cup and taking another sip of coffee.

  Thank God, I had a coffee maker at the office. Otherwise, I’d be lost right about now.

  Coffee was my only addiction. My one vice that I overindulged in, and probably shouldn’t.

  I had a heart condition. One that caused my heart to skip beats, and beat irregularly the rest of the time. It was suggested to me to stop drinking anything with caffeine in it entirely. Oh, and give up chocolate.

  Neither one of those had happened as of yet, and I am still ticking!

  “Done.”

  I looked up to find him staring at me oddly.

  I knew that he was going to ask the moment he walked in the door.

  “Hennessy,” he hesitated. “What’s going on with…”

  He gestured toward my head, and I grimaced.

  I shrugged. “I haven’t been able to get to the beauty salon yet today.”

  That wasn’t a good answer. I knew it.

  What I also knew was that he likely wouldn’t stand for it.

  I had to come up with a plausible lie. One that slid out of my mouth easily.

  I could…

  Tate walked up to me and cradled my head. His breath was on my face, and I couldn’t make my mind form cohesive thoughts between one breath and the next.

  All because I could smell him. And he was touching me.

  “Try again,” he ordered. “This time tell me what happened.”

  I tried to think. Tried to make my brain formulate a response that wouldn’t piss him off.

  But I couldn’t.

  “My…dad.”

  He frowned.

  “Your dad?”

  I nodded.

  “What about your dad?” he asked. “Did he spit some gum in it?”

  He was joking.

  Oh, God.

  That smile was about to be wiped straight off his face, and he was going to be one pissed off alpha male.

  Then a horrid thought occurred to me, and I had to rethink my strategy. Not even his closeness could stop me now.

  “Will you promise me something?”

  He pursed his lips.

  “Is this promise going to mean that you won’t tell me if I don’t promise?”

  I nodded.

  I didn’t want him going to jail again because of me.

  “Okay, hit me with it.”

  I worried my lip for a half a second, then shrugged, deciding to hell with it.

  “Promise me that when you hear what I have to t
ell you, that you’ll not do anything stupid.”

  He studied my face with humor filled eyes.

  “Define stupid,” he ordered.

  I contemplated what ‘stupid’ was for a few moments, then nodded.

  “Stupid is beating someone up. Stupid is shooting someone. Stupid is doing anything about this that doesn’t involve using your words.”

  His face sobered instantly.

  “Okay,” he reluctantly agreed. “I promise.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was lying or not, or if he actually planned on following through with his promise, but I needed to get last night off my chest.

  Normally I would’ve said something to Krisney, but the last time my father did this, she’d told me that her promises—one similar to the one that I’d just had Tate promise to—were no longer valid if he ever did it again.

  And I couldn’t risk that.

  Nobody at the police station would do anything, and honestly, who would believe that the beloved town preacher that everyone loved would do anything to harm his own daughter?

  That’s right. No one.

  Except, maybe this guy.

  He hadn’t been there from the beginning like Krisney had. He hadn’t seen the things Krisney had. But still, he was here. And he wanted to know.

  I was also sure—down to my bones—that this man would believe every single word that came out of my mouth when it came to my father.

  “My father hacked it off with a hunting knife about as long as my arm,” I blurted.

  He blinked, then blinked some more.

  “You’re…serious.”

  I nodded, wincing slightly. The feel of the uneven wisps of hair touching my neck on one side, and my shoulder on the other, had me growing nauseous all over again.

  I was frantically scribbling on my notepad, trying not to look at the man in front of me, when I felt the notepad ripped from my hands.

  I looked up to find Tate kneeling on a knee beside my chair, his hand extended to my hair.

  “I’ll fucking…”

  “You can’t,” I said. “You made me a promise.”

  His lip turned up into a silent snarl.

  “You’re goddamn deranged if you think I’m not doing anything about this,” he growled, his eyes angry and hard.

  Knowing that anger was for me really made my heart feel full, despite my awful night.

  It was nice knowing that I had not just one good friend on my side, but now two.

  “What exactly are you going to say, and who will you say it to that freakin’ believes it?” I pushed. “Nobody knows that my father is a freakin’ jerk. Nobody realizes that he’s anything other than the nice man that they think he is. Trust me on this, I’ve tried to tell them about the beatings…”

  “The beatings?”

  I winced at the low roar that came out of his mouth.

  “Uhhh,” I hedged.

  He cupped my face and forced me to look at him.

  “You’re going to tell me about everything right now.”

  I laughed. “This is your session, silly. Not mine.”

  He bared his teeth. “Don’t give one single fuck about my shit right now. Let’s talk about yours.”

  I was already shaking my head. “I don’t talk about it. Ever.”

  He stood up and planted his ass on the coffee table in front of me, then crossed his arms over his chest.

  “I’ll go nowhere, and do nothing, until you tell me.”

  I shrugged.

  “Fine.”

  And that was how, forty-eight minutes later, I realized that he’d do exactly that. He’d sit there, and wait…forever if he had to.

  He’d sat there, in the same exact place, staring at me as I tried to ignore him. When his appointment came to an end, and another appointment started to head inside, I immediately realized that I wasn’t going to get out of this.

  “I’ll tell you…tonight,” I told him. “Not right now. Talking about it isn’t good. Ask Krisney.”

  Tate’s eyes were hard.

  “I don’t want to ask Krisney. I want to hear it from the source—IE, you.”

  I sighed. “I’ll tell you tonight. Just make sure you know that you’ll have to take care of a drunk Hennessy after we’re through.”

  “Takes alcohol to make you talk?”

  I shrugged. “My father makes that patient,” I said, gesturing to the schizophrenic man that was glaring at me through the glass, “look like a fairy princess.”

  Tate growled low in his throat and stood.

  “I’ll be at your house at eight.”

  With that, he left, leaving me with a few minutes to breathe.

  At least until the pounding on my office door started. “You’re late! We’re late! Everyone will be late!”

  Grumbling under my breath, I opened the office door and let him in.

  “Sorry about the wait.”

  Chapter 13

  They are called man hours because a woman would’ve done it in twenty minutes.

  -Bumper sticker on a construction vehicle

  Tate

  I sat in the meeting that discussed the week’s calls, staring at two of three new members that’d arrived while I’d been away.

  One was an ex-FBI agent who was as talkative as a fucking honey badger. His name was Parker, and I was sure that one day I’d make the mistake of talking to him when he didn’t want me to, and he’d slit my throat.

  The other one was named Rafe. He was like an elusive wraith. I never saw him do his job, yet it always seemed to get done. I never saw him go home, yet he never looked unrested. And honestly, he was the slipperiest motherfucker when it came to tracking him down. He was never where he was supposed to be.

  Both of them made me suspicious, but today, I just couldn’t find it in me to care.

  I was still fucked up about Hennessy.

  Seeing her hair…it shook me.

  Knowing that her father had done it. Yeah, that really chapped my ass. I wanted to go fucking kill him, yet she’d gotten that promise from me, knowing that I wouldn’t go back on a promise to her like her father did.

  “Are you listening, Casey?”

  I let my eyes lazily come to Travis’, and shrugged. “Long fucking day.”

  He looked at his watch. “It’s nine in the morning. How fucking long could it be when we’re only an hour into the work day?”

  I laughed at that, and even I could hear the anger and pain in the threads of sound that wafted over the room.

  “You have no fucking clue.” I leaned my chair back and looked at the ceiling. “I’m fucking wrecked right now, and I don’t know what to do.”

  When my head came back up, it was to find all eyes on me.

  “Please enlighten us,” Baylor drawled.

  He looked lazy, sitting there with his feet kicked up on the table with his arms crossed over his chest. I knew better, though.

  He’d always given off that feeling of ease, yet when we were twenty-four, and minutes back from a deployment, I’d seen him go from looking relaxed to having a man six inches off the ground for shoving a girl—Krisney—and causing her to hit the ground.

  He may not like her—cough, cough, bullshit—but he didn’t want anyone else to hurt her either.

  Though, I had a feeling that Baylor had done that because of his brother, who’d been in an eerie calm, as he watched her fall.

  See, Reed Hail had once, a long time ago, dated Krisney. They’d been happy and in love, and then they found out that Krisney’s brother had been raping their sister every time he came over to the house to stay the night with their other brother, Tobias.

  The moment that it all went down, Reed had dropped Krisney like a piece of trash, and all the other brothers had, too.

  I could see where they were coming from in all of that, but I knew that Krisney was a good girl. She’d always been at Hennessy’s side, and now that I thought about it, I rea
lized that she had been every single time that Hennessy’s hair had been hacked off.

  And it’d happened a lot.

  I remembered a lot when she was younger, looking at her and wondering who the hell had been doing her hair. She’d just get it to a manageable length, and then she’d hack it off what looked to be with a hacksaw—or a fucking hunting knife, like she’d told me he’d done last night.

  Just like that, I was mad all over again.

  “Jesus Christ, Tate. You’re going to fucking break my goddamn table!”

  I instantly let go of the table, and looked down at the dented plastic.

  “This is a shitty fucking table if I can dent it,” I told him. “And God.”

  Travis rose his brows at me.

  “Any day now would be great.”

  I brought my hands up to my head and sifted my fingers through my hair.

  “Fuck!”

  They waited.

  I sat forward, put my hands on my knees, and stared at the ground.

  “Y’all know Hennessy Hanes?”

  “Your psychologist?” Baylor rolled his eyes. “Yeah, you know we do.”

  I clenched my fists and stood up. I’d made it to the door before I turned and paced back in the opposite direction.

  “She showed up today with her hair hacked off.”

  “Hasn’t she always had weird haircuts?”

  That was Reed.

  Why was he even here? Wasn’t he supposed to be stationed in Germany?

  At least, he was the last I heard.

  I nodded, swallowing.

  Then brought my hand up to the back of my head.

  “If you don’t spit it out already, I’m going to beat it out of you.”

  I looked at Parker, the one who’d spoken, and stared straight into his eyes for a few long seconds.

  It’d be a fair fight. He was smaller than me, but not by much. His eyes though…yeah, they were practically dead.

  I turned away and looked at Baylor.

  “Last night her father came into her home, dragged her up by her hair, and sliced it off with a hunting knife because he knows that she sinned.”

  “How did she sin?”

  I gave my best friend an obvious ‘are you fucking stupid’ look.

  Baylor started to laugh, then sobered when he saw I wasn’t joking.

  He stood up.

  “I’ll fucking kick his ass.”

  “You’re telling me that he did this…Krisney said…oh, fucking God.”