by Liam Lawson
There were plenty of woods around Woodhurst. Lots of wilderness. Hiding his body, especially after I’d burned away all of his flesh, wouldn’t be hard. I’d have to destroy his teeth. I’d seen enough detective shows to know that his dental records could identify him. How hard would it be to break up a charred skeleton and shatter the bones into smaller pieces? The more I could reduce his remains into broken bits the less likely anyone coming by would be to recognize them for what they were. Especially after the animals and exposure got to them.
Maybe I’d even break him apart before I burned away the flesh. What would hurt more, being burned alive or death by dismemberment?
The sound of snoring sounded from the backseat and I started. I’d been so caught up in my thoughts and planning that I had lost track of my surroundings. That was dangerous. I needed to keep my eyes on the road. And what the fuck was wrong with me thinking about all of this stuff in such detail? Anger surged through me again. Nothing. Not a damn thing was wrong with me. Albert was the sick fuck who’d done horrible things. He needed horrible things done to him and dammit I would be the one to do them.
I glanced back to see who was snoring and found that Caroline had finally nodded off, her head in Nicole’s lap, fetus tucked under her arm like the world’s most morbid teddy bear. I caught Nicole’s eyes and saw a mixture of emotions that I couldn’t identify, in part because they were hidden deep beneath something flat. If her eyes had been dark instead of pale, I’d have said that she reminded me of a shark. Only…were those the eyes of a predator, or of someone in the process of becoming one?
“Thank you,” she said.
I blinked. “For what?”
“For everything,” she said. “But mostly for not asking why I went back into the shed.”
That question really hadn’t been on my list of priorities, but I had thought about it. Eventually I came to the conclusion that she must have wanted to make sure that, one, the hole really was there and that, two, the office had been put back the way it had been before all of this. The longer that Albert went without realizing that his wife—ex-wife?—was gone, the better off we were.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said.
“No,” she said. “I should worry about it. I should—it’s my fault you’re caught up in this.”
“Hey, you knock that the hell off right now! You’re my sister. Of course, I was going to come when you needed help.”
Nicole shook her head and hid her face behind a curtain of pale hair. “Not that. That’s part of it, but this…it’s…God this is hard.”
“Nicole, none of this is your fault.”
She reached up and wiped at her eyes. There was something clutched in her hand, but I couldn’t tell what it was.
“It is my fault.” She swallowed. “Caleb. It’s his baby.”
My eyes glanced at the fetus. Oh wait, she was still pregnant. I’d forgotten in the chaos of discovering Caroline and getting away from Albert. “Whose baby?”
She pulled in on herself and stroked her mother’s dirty hair. “My baby. Dad…it’s….”
My stomach became ice.
Lights ahead caught my eye. Break lights. Oh shit!
I swerved into the next lane over, narrowly avoiding a collision with the car that had pulled in front of me and then braked. A car horn screamed behind us and I jumped, jerking the wheel so that we swerved.
A moment later I got the car under control. It took a little bit longer for my heartrate to slow.
Caroline gave a huge snore and burrowed her face deeper into Nicole’s lap. Nicole had a death grip on the oh-shit-handle above the door and was glaring at me. “What the hell, Caleb?”
“Sorry!” I said. “I was…I wasn’t paying attention to the road.”
“No shit.”
I took a deep breath. “Albert is your baby’s father?”
Her mouth went flat and she swallowed. Then nodded.
“Fuck.”
She looked away.
My mouth opened and closed several times as I struggled to find words. Albert had always been a domineering bastard and seriously overprotective of Nicole…not overprotective, over-controlling. Someone who was overprotective didn’t rape you. Assuming that it had been…of course it had. I couldn’t ask that. Dammit, what the hell could I say that would help? ‘Are you okay’ was so not enough.
“That…did he hurt you?” Fuck that dinner I’d intruded on suddenly held a whole lot of new meaning. He’d intended it to be romantic and celebrate his baby, not his grandchild. Oh God that man was…I was going to hurt him so bad.
Green fire flickered over my knuckles. I paid it no mind.
Nicole let out a little bark of laughter. “Sort of. No. Yes. It’s complicated. He’s never liked hurting me.”
Was she defending him?
“I was so stupid, Caleb. I went to see him for Christmas Break. I swore I was never going back and then he called and….” She held something up. I slowed down and looked in the rearview mirror. In her fingers was the flash drive I’d seen in the office drawer when I’d been looking for a phone charger. Considering that same drawer had held the key to Caroline’s prison I could only imagine that it contained something just as horrible.
“He’s got photos of me. Videos.”
She didn’t need to say what kind they were.
“He threatened to put them on the Internet. I could deal with those getting out. It would suck but I’d deal. I told him that before I left. I told him I wasn’t going to be his…I wasn’t doing it anymore.”
No wonder she’d been so keen to make it work. And military service…she didn’t just want to fund her education, she wanted to defend herself.
“Then over Christmas…he told me that it wasn’t just me on the drive.”
I didn’t bother masking my confusion. What the hell could he have used to control her? Blackmail was only good if you cared about the secret getting out and Nicole had thrown away whatever hold he’d had on her with his recordings. My God, I found a sudden new respect for my adoptive sister.
To know that that stuff could have been released at any day and still gone forward toward her goals. My God she was strong. She’d overcome so much. It made me realize just how pathetic I was. In a way, it was as if I hadn’t really started living until a few months ago when I’d broken my curse.
Nicole glanced down at her sleeping mother. Whatever she was about to say, she clearly didn’t want Caroline to hear it. “You remember that thing we promised we’d never talk about?”
There was only one thing we had promised to never talk about. That promise had been a part of a larger promise that we could talk to each other about anything else. And we had. Nicole had been my sounding board, mentor, and in an embarrassing way, my diary ever since.
“Yeah.”
She swallowed. “He put me up to it. He said…he promised to hurt you if I didn’t do what he said back then.” Tears slid down her cheeks. “Caleb, he recorded us.”
I had been fourteen when the Marshals adopted me. I had only been there a few months when Nicole visited me late at night in my room. I’d had a huge crush on her and had been trying to hide it. I’d thought I was the luckiest guy in the world. She came to me three nights in a row and then stopped.
For a week we didn’t speak. We didn’t even look at each other. It was the most awkward thing in the world. And then we’d talked about it and things had gotten better.
“I didn’t know, I swear I didn’t know,” she said. “And...it’s…I was eighteen, Caleb. It was statutory rape. The video doesn’t have sound and it…you can’t tell he’s behind it all. If these recordings get out, I could go to jail. I’d lose my college funding and military career at the very least.”
I’d always wondered how on earth those nights had happened. I’d put them from my mind after the first year. Weird things happened in foster care and I really hadn’t expected to stay with the Marshals. Not until right before Caroline had supposedly passed away had I
really felt a sense of permanency. After that, not so much.
“Okay,” I said. “That explains a lot.”
She nodded. “I still fought with him. I promise I did. I went back to school anyway after the Winter Break. Only….”
“Only now you had a little passenger.”
She nodded. “He switched out my birth control pills with something else. I didn’t realize that I was pregnant until…and then I had to go back to him. He-he has all the power. Had it, I guess.” A feeble grin fought for purchase on her face, but her eyes turned absolutely feral. “Not anymore. Caleb, you beat him.”
“We beat him,” I corrected. And we, especially Nicole and Caroline, had the scars to show for it. If I had my way the fucker would never see the inside of a jail cell.
We pulled into Woodhurst and navigated through the neighborhoods to Valencia’s house. We’d talked about bringing Caroline to Eleanor’s place but that really wasn’t something that we could do. I mean, we housesat for her and I could tap into the power in her land, but it wasn’t really ours. Even if Scarlett, Absinthe and I all lived there. We couldn’t keep Caroline in our little loft above the garage. But Scarlett had moved in pretty much full time with Absinthe and me, so Valencia had a spare bedroom now. After what she and I had just been through, maybe she and Caroline could help each other.
There were two police cruisers waiting in front of her house when we pulled up and when I parked a pair of uniforms approached the car. Scarlett or Valencia must have called them. It wouldn’t have been Absinthe. She really didn’t care for the police and I wasn’t sure I blamed her. I sighed. So long as they didn’t look too closely at Colin, we should be alright. Oh, please oh please oh please don’t look at the dead baby in the back seat.
I got out of the car and was addressed before I could speak.
“Caleb Marshal?” said the larger of the two.
I nodded. “That’s me. The antlers kind of give it away.”
“Please turn around and place your hands behind your back. You are under arrest for the kidnapping of Nicole Marshal.”
Chapter Six
The police station was cramped and smelled like sweat. Woodhurst really didn’t have much in the way of a police force so it made since that the station was small. I really didn’t get a chance to see much of it before I was brought to an interrogation room. Which was also cramped and smelled like sweat.
It really didn’t bear more than a passing resemblance to anything from the movies. For one thing, there wasn’t a mirrored wall for the Woodhurst PD to stare at me through. Just off-white walls on all sides, one with peeling paint, and a dull brown door with a narrow, rectangular window over the knob. I’d been sitting at a small, empty table that looked like it had been purchased at a yard sale after being left out for way, way, way too long.
They’d taken all my belongings when they’d arrested me, emptying out my pockets and confiscating my phone. I really couldn’t have said how long I’d been waiting but it was really beginning to get to me. I mean, come on! The sheer boredom had me getting up to try and pace the diminutive room. When that didn’t work, I’d tried doing pushups. Someone had come at that point and told me to stop. They’d vanished back out the door, which locked behind them, before I could get a word in edgewise. This was fucking ridiculous.
You’d think that having Nicole explain that she’d run away with me, not been kidnapped, would have counted for something. And that was before you even factored in Caroline. The cops had not been happy about Colin when they’d realized what she’d been carrying but I hadn’t been able to see much. I’d been hustled into a police cruiser and hauled off. No phone call.
Wasn’t I supposed to have a lawyer? Or be provided with one since I sure as hell didn’t know any. I certainly couldn’t afford to pay for one.
The door opened.
Thank God.
I stood up as a thickset cop in a tan uniform walked in. He gestured at the chair I’d just risen from, set a paper cup of water on the table, and slid it over to me.
“What the hell?” I said, ignoring his offer. “How long have I been in here?”
“A few hours,” the cop said. “My name is Officer Jenkins. You mind answering a few questions for me?”
A few hours? Good grief, what couldn’t they have already figured out by now? I resisted the urge to cuss. “What do you want to know?”
“Please, sit,” the man said. “Have a drink. You’ve got to be thirsty.”
I sat and downed the water. I was parched and I wanted this over with. “Don’t I get a lawyer or something?”
“Or something,” he said with a small grin. “Can you bring me up to speed? Why on earth did Mr. Marshal file a kidnapping report?”
Because he’s a sadistic, rapist fuckwad. “Maybe you should ask him. Or Nicole. Or Caroline Marshal, who’s back from the dead. Isn’t that exciting?”
Wow, isolation had made me a little punchy. I was ready to run laps around the building. Maybe singing the national anthem while I was at it. My eyes actually felt fuzzy with a weird mixture of fatigue and adrenaline.
“You mean the woman with the,” he visibly resisted the urge to make a face, “stuffed baby who was in the back of your car?”
“Yup. Her. She’s his wife, my adopted mother, and she supposedly died two years ago.”
“The rumors of her death were greatly exaggerated?” Officer Jenkins said with a grimace.
“Or fabricated entirely. That sick bastard had her locked up in a hole under his office-shed.”
The officer shook his head. “Why would he do that?”
“Fuck if I know!” Dammit, I hadn’t meant to cuss. “Sorry. It’s just…damn what a fucking day.”
I buried my face in my hands and took a few deep, steadying breaths. They didn’t really help but I managed to get myself somewhat put back together. God, how were the girls?
“Yeah, yeah how crazy is all of this, right?” Officer Jenkins said. “I can’t even imagine what you’re going through right now. Look, why don’t you start at the beginning and we’ll go from there, yeah?”
What was the beginning? When I first found Caroline? When Nicole called me? When the Marshals first adopted me? I shook my head. How much of this did I even have a right to talk about? Could I bring charges against Albert for what he’d done to Nicole or was that something that she needed to do? Maybe she didn’t want anyone to know what had been done to her or that she was carrying her rapist father’s baby.
Oh God. She said he’d last raped her during the winter break. So that was what, December or January? It was almost summer. If she wanted an abortion was it too late? Was that even something I could bring up to her? Dammit. I used to be able to talk to her about anything and now it was all crumbling. I didn’t know what I could touch without breaking it.
“Look,” I said. “Officer Jenkins. Albert Marshal is a horrible human being and has been doing terrible things. Go talk to him.”
Officer Jenkins nodded his head slowly. “Is that why you took Nicole with you when you left?”
“I had to get the girls out of there,” I said.
“By whatever means possible,” he said.
“Yeah.” Wait? What?
“Did they need any convincing?”
“Nope,” I said. “They were pretty eager to get the hell away from him. Poor Caroline was a little scared of being outside but…No. No convincing. Once Nicole saw her mom, we were pretty much out of there.”
Officer Jenkins scowled. I hadn’t given him the answer he’d expected. Oh, that mother fucker! He wasn’t interested in Albert. He was trying to get me to confess to kidnapping.
“No prodding at all? I find that hard to believe,” he said with a small laugh. “You know how women can be.”
“Not really, Officer Jenkins,” I said, more coolly than I’d intended. “Why don’t you tell me how women can be?”
Officer Jenkins put his hands up. “Whoa, I’m sensing some hostility here, Caleb. You of
ten have trouble controlling your temper?”
I clenched my fist under the table but forced myself to remain calm. It didn’t really work. My entire body was tight and taut. I felt brittle. “Do I seem out of control, sir?”
“You seem right on the edge,” Jenkins said. “Right. On. The edge.”
“Wonder why that could be.” I glared at him, crossing my arms over my chest.
Whatever rapport he’d been building between us vanished.
Jenkins leaned back in his chair and reached into his pocket and dropped a torn envelope on the table. “Honestly I’m surprised you were able to hold back this long. Normally someone like you’s got a rap sheet long as my arm before they’re out of their teens. Guess you’re a late bloomer, huh?”
I looked at the envelope for a moment, judging his words before realizing what it was. They’d taken my DNA test results when they’d taken my phone and other things. This bastard now knew what I was. He’d stolen that information from me, read the results before I had.
My hand shot forward and I snatched the envelope up. “This wasn’t open when I arrived.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “It was open when I got it.”
Liar. “Guess it’s just something else to talk about with my lawyer.”
The door behind him swung open as I spoke revealing a narrow man with a surprisingly thick neck in a black suit and tie. “I’d rather you didn’t discuss what you should or shouldn’t be disclosing to your legal counsel while you’re being interrogated, Mr. Marshal.”
Jenkins scowled at the newcomer. “Who the hell are you?”
“Bob Avery, Mr. Marshal’s attorney. Has my client been charged with anything?”
Client? I sure as hell hadn’t paid anyone. I damn sure couldn’t pay this man what he was worth. I knew jack about clothes, but even I could tell that that suit was some high class tailored job and the watch on his arm probably cost several months of my old rent, at least. Bob Avery looked like he belonged in New York City or Boston, not this grubby little police station here in tiny Woodhurst.
