by Rea Winters
“Roadie? What the hell—Awgh!” He grimaced in disgust as a pungent stench smacked him in the face, his squinted eyes roaming the disaster in his living room. “Is that…? Awgh! Did nobody let you out—no, what’re you even doing here? Awgh, it’s all over the place! The wall, too! And look what you did to my couch!”
Desmond pulled out his phone and speed dialed without even looking at the screen. Caspar’s phone went straight to voicemail. “Kid, you have got some serious explaining to do. Where the hell are you?”
He searched the guest room, stumbling into Amie and Caspar’s luggage at the door. Cursing under his breath, he ripped off his jacket and grabbed the mop and bucket from the closet.
Half an hour of scrubbing commenced. Roadie laid on the couch among the tufts and chunks of cotton and foam, watching Desmond scoop, scrub, wring, and repeat. The Sergeant dialed Caspar’s home number over and over to no answer. The answering machine wasn’t even kicking in. So, he dialed the cell again and left another message.
“Dammit, kid. Look, nobody’s happier for you than me, but did you really have to leave this damn hell beast at my place? Date night is over, cancelled. Come get him or I’m dropping him off at a junkyard in the middle of nowhere.” He hung up and shoved the phone back in his pocket, then hoisted a bucket of dirty water to the kitchen, preparing to change it. Roadie barked and grumbled, alerting him to the shadow of a man stood half way in his living room. Desmond pulled his service weapon from the kitchen counter.
“Hey!”
Jack Kent startled and raised his hands. Desmond smacked his lips, holstering his weapon.
“What the hell are you doing in my house?”
“The door was open.”
“That’s not an invitation—”
“Look, I didn’t come to argue. I’m here about Caspar.”
“What about her?”
“I can’t be sure, but I think she could be in some of kind trouble.”
“What?”
“I tried to reach her, but—”
“She wouldn’t answer your calls? Shocker. Get out of here.”
“Wait, listen. There are these men staying in the room next to mine. They didn’t look like they were from around here.”
“Shady strangers are a dime a dozen at Melvin’s.”
“But earlier somebody was in their room, somebody who mentioned Caspar by name, first and sur. They sort of shouted it like they were angry.”
“Saying what?”
“I couldn’t really make out what they were saying after that. I tried to put it out of my mind, but then tonight, those men didn’t come back to the motel.”
“So?”
“So, I asked the manager if they checked out and he said he hadn’t seen them all day. Look, I’m supposed to be flying back home to my boy in a few hours, so trust me, I’m not trying to make up reasons to overstay my unwelcome. I don’t know what it could be, it just…something about it didn’t sit right with me.”
That gave Desmond pause. Not so much because he believed Jack Kent, but because the person he would believe said the exact same thing sometimes.
“I wrote down the license plate just in case. If you don’t check it out, fine, but it can’t hurt to check on her, at least.”
Desmond accepted the paper.
“She’s a match, by the way. My wife gave her the news.”
“Good for Aaron.”
Kent nodded with a downcast gaze and took his leave.
Desmond tried to call Caspar again and neither number picked up again.
“C’mon, kid. Where are you?”
Chapter Forty-Five
“Grrhh—let me go!”
Becker dragged Amie down the hall by her hair and threw her to the living room floor, knocking the girl half-conscious. Her face contorted with malice and pain, she yanked the crochet needle from her shoulder and tossed it.
Mikey laughed, taking his eyes but not his aim off Caspar. “Hey, she got you pretty good, ey?”
“Yes, she did,” Becker huffed. “I wish I could dock it from your pay.”
“Ey, not my fault she’s crafty.”
“Yeah sure, just don’t let me forget to grab that needle before we go.”
“You got it.”
Becker hunkered down to the floor and straddled Amie, her knees locking her in place. With a strong grip on her hair, she pulled the girl’s head back and back handed her across the face, cutting her lip and jolting her awake.
“Now, where was I? Oh, right. I had just come up here to check on my sweet Amie when I witnessed what Adami was doing to her.” Becker punched her in the ribs. “I thought she could still be alive, so I fought with Adami, hit her with whatever I could.” Two punches to Amie’s face filled her mouth with blood and her vision with white spots. She moaned in disorienting pain, her struggle waning. “I thought I knocked Adami unconscious and held the poor, broken girl in my arms, waiting for the police to arrive. That’s when I saw that her throat had been slashed. I was so distraught…If only I’d paid attention to the fireplace…Adami left me no choice. She came at me. It was a miracle I got the poker out of her hands when I did. I just swung as hard as I could until she stopped moving. Until I was sure we were safe. What else could I do? …Yeah, that works.”
Becker moved down Amie’s legs and started ripped her sweater dress open, pressing her hand over her mouth to quiet bewildered protests that became frantic cries. Amie kicked, kneeing Becker in the ass until she sat down on her legs.
“Calm down, honey. I’m not a monster. Just gotta get the bruises in the right spots.”
Amie’s sharp muffled screams jolted Caspar from half-consciousness. She lost most of the feeling in the arm pinned under her own weight and so forced all of her strength into her topside arm, pulling with all her might. The frayed ties popped one by one until her wrists fell free.
In the struggle, Becker’s hand slipped, exposing her wrist to Amie’s mouth. The girl opened her jaw as wide as she could and bit down with all her fury, breaking through sweaty skin and drawing blood. Becker yelled and wrenched her arm free with a hard yank.
“Ha, ey, there goes your story, Suit,” Mikey teased.
“Fuck!” Becker punched Amie unconscious and stumbled to her feet, clutching her bleeding wrist.
“Hey, relax. Most of the story still works. Just wash her mouth out or something.”
Becker shut her eyes and hissed, wrapping her wrist in a dry dish cloth in the kitchen. “Let’s just get this over with. We’re switching to plan B. I’ll still beat Adami’s head in and then…just, fuck it, we’ll drag her out, making it look like she crawled outside herself and then burn it all down. Make it—make it look like an accident from all the fighting in here, maybe—maybe from the stove or something. Yeah…yeah, that’s what I’ll do. All right.” Becker took deep steadying breaths, her eyes still closed. “Now, put the girl on the fucking couch and cut her throat already.”
So thoroughly amused by Becker’s meltdown, Mikey hadn’t noticed Caspar lie on her stomach and slide a loose fire poker from the outer hearth.
“AAHHGG!” The big thug screamed, toppling to one knee as a rod of iron tore through his flesh before he could move an inch toward Amie. Caspar ripped the fire poker out of his calf, brought him down to the floor and piled on top of him, striking him in the head with the round end of the poker until tails of blood spattered on her face.
Once the goon stopped moving, Caspar climbed to her feet, catching sight of half-conscious Amie slowly crawling away. But Becker, having spotted her gun after a frantic search, rushed forward before she could get to her, aiming the weapon at Caspar’s chest.
“Don’t move! Don’t fucking move. Put that stick down and get down on your knees. I said down!”
Caspar threw the poker down and lumbered down to her knees. Her eyes found Amie again, who was still trying to crawl away.
“Eyes on me!” Becker screeched through clenched teeth. She stepped closer and pressed the gun at
the center of Caspar’s forehead. “You…you’ve been making a fool of me since we were ten years old. People always gave you more credit than me, more credit than you deserved all because your mom had a bad time once and it turned her into a Looney Toon. Pathetic. But you want to know what’s crazy, though? Huh?” Becker’s trigger hand shook. “I could’ve let it all go after high school. I all but did, to be honest. But you just couldn’t stay out of my world, you just wouldn’t stay in your fucking place. And then you have the steel to give me a warning?” She scoffed and sneered. “Consider this your slap on the wrist.”
Becker fired behind her, aiming at Amie in the spot she had just crawled from and missed. As she turned to get a better shot, Caspar leapt to her feet, grabbed the hand with the gun, and drove Becker into the breakfast bar, slamming her back against the marbled edge. The gun let off another round between them before it tumbled from Becker’s grip and clanged to the floor. Cas twisted the bastard’s arm behind her back then wrapped an arm around her neck and squeezed. Squeezed until Becker’s feet were nearly off the ground and kept squeezing.
She couldn’t see the red and blue lights flickering through the windows. Didn’t hear the door kick or the yelling of commands as Desmond charged in with two deputies flanked behind him.
One deputy checked on Mikey and the other found Amie curled up in the kitchen. Desmond pointed his weapon between Becker and Caspar.
“Hey, that’s enough, Cas. Kid, let her go. Caspar! Let her go!”
The other officers joined their Sergeant, their guns trained on Caspar alone.
“Final warning!” One deputy yelled.
“No! Do not shoot. Caspar, you don’t want to do this. Just flip that switch in your head. Get your head back…”
Blood rushing, the hammering of her own heart deafened her to Desmond’s plea. Becker was turning blue, her kicking losing its adamancy.
“Cas! Put her down now!”
“Now! Put her down!”
A whimper from the kitchen penetrated her deafening rage. Second by second, Caspar’s grip loosened until Becker dropped to the floor like a sack of bricks. Twitching. Still breathing.
“Don’t move,” they ordered while running to Becker’s aid. Cas ignored them and stumbled into the kitchen, falling to her knees by Amie’s side. Her rough bloody hands hovered over Amie’s bruised and bloody face, then pulled her dress back together. Caspar’s palm on her stomach kept the fabric in place as she gently lowered her head onto hers. Amie felt her there, but didn’t have the strength to open her eyes let alone reach out to her.
So, there they lied, breathing each other with the last thread of consciousness they had.
The heaviness Cas had carried all her life seem to shed from her bones. The room grew smaller and darker and breathing became easier than ever before. So easy it was slipping away.
“…been shot…bleeding out…ca…an ambulance…Cas? Caspar!”
Desmond pulled Caspar onto her back, ripped a towel off the counter and pressed it against the bleeding wound in her side.
Chapter Forty-Six
Three Weeks Later
Beeping machines and the odor of sterile solutions pervaded the senses these past few weeks.
“I can hear you crying,” Caspar rasped while pretending to be asleep.
Amie expelled an amused huff, swiped tears off her cheek, and held up a cup from the lunch tray.
“Hush and drink this.”
With a few light groans, Caspar shifted up the bed a little higher and sipped water through a straw.
“You know, you shouldn’t cry over people in hospital beds. Makes them think they’re dying.”
“You’re not dying. But you could’ve died and it’s all my fault.”
“No, it’s not.”
“It is. Those guys were here for me.”
“Becker would’ve just found another way. I shouldn’t have provoked her.”
“But—"
“I’m too tired to argue. Let’s just blame each other and call it a day.”
Amie broke into a chuckle and held her head high. “Fine by me.”
“Okay, then. I forgive you.”
“I forgive you, too.”
Caspar cracked open her sore eyes to the only sight that mattered sitting by her side on the edge of the bed. Amie fiddled with the soup on the tray with a frown of discontent. There was less bandaging on her face now that the swelling from her injuries healed, though red and purple bruising still remained in oblong patterns from her neck down to her thighs. The stamps of violence she endured; violence that had only been meant for Caspar. Sensing the cogs of guilt and regret within her spinning backwards, Amie took her hand in hers and squeezed. Cas’ gaze left those marks and found Amie just as the girl leaned down to kiss her gingerly.
“Ahem,” Desmond unsubtly cleared his throat, standing by the doorframe. “Don’t mean to interrupt.”
Amie met Caspar’s grumpy embarrassment with a wink, then turned her attention to their visitor.
“Any news on Aaron?”
“Vera says the transplant has so far been a success. If this keeps up, he’ll be home in a couple more weeks.”
“And what about Becker?” Caspar inquired. Desmond hesitated to answer, but he could tell from the kid’s stony stare that she was determined to receive every update possible on the aftermath of their scandalous fallout. Josephine Becker, along with her paid accomplices, were transferred to another jail downstate. Her legion of lawyers would soon follow and do their damnedest to sanitize the situation in whichever way would grant her some leniency with a judge. With any luck, their tactics wouldn’t work and she’d go away for a long time for the laundry list of crimes committed that night.
“She can play the mute and crazy cokehead all she wants, but we’ve got her dead to rights. The others, too. You won’t have to worry about any of them for a long time,” Desmond assured, calming the underlying panic in Amie’s eyes. He then asked to speak to Caspar alone for a minute and she obliged, but not before getting one more kiss for the road to the vending machines.
“So, how you—"
“When can I get out of here?”
Desmond scoffed and shook his head. “Cas, we’ve been over this. You were shot.”
“Barely. The doctor said it practically went through and through.”
“Practically, not actually, which is why they still had to cut you open. You also had an entire organ removed during the surgery and choppered through the state, in case you forgot.”
“It’s not like I could feel the second part,” she murmured, pouting.
“You know what I mean.”
Caspar shook her head at the ceiling. “I’m tired of this place. This bed, this room, this open apron thing.”
“Well, your house is a crime scene. You can’t be there right now.”
“I don’t need to be there, either.” Caspar’s gaze flit to the window into the hall, where Amie stood on the other side talking on her cellphone. “She’s leaving soon to go see her dad. Mom’s lawyer is meeting her there. They’ll see if there’s anything that can be done for him.”
“Which means Amie might be gone a little while,” Des finished.
Cas deeply inhaled and her voice came out small. “I don’t want her to go. Is that wrong?”
Desmond smiled. “No. It’s completely normal.”
Yet she wasn’t completely convinced.
“She’ll come back, Cas. You didn’t fail her and she’s not leaving you. She’ll be back.” Des shook his head at the kid’s bemusement. “I know how losing your mom makes you think. This isn’t that. Okay?”
After a pause of unfallen tears stinging her eyes and a lump forming in her throat, Cas managed a nod of fragile acceptance.
Amie popped her head in the door. “All clear?”
“All clear,” Des answered. He squeezed his niece’s shoulder, then showed himself to the door.
Amie resumed her position on the bed, tossed a packaged snack on t
he tray table, and wiped away the tears sliding down her woman’s temple.
“He made you cry, huh?”
“No,” Cas grumbled, jutting her eyes to the ceiling in an annoyed pout. “What did Abernathy say about your dad?”
Amie shook her head, smiling as she combed her fingers through Caspar’s hair. “It doesn’t matter.”
“No?”
“Not right now. Where were we again? Oh right.”
Amie leaned over Caspar like a shield and their lips locked once more.
Epilogue
Eight Months Later
Amie’s deep even breaths tickled Caspar’s neck. It was early in the afternoon, the sun beaming in thin stripes through the blinds. The ladda lied on her back on their new couch and Amie lied on top of her, their legs intertwined with no sign of untwining any time soon.
Caspar had been awake for ten minutes, rubbing circles on the small of her girl’s back, breathing in the peace of her presence. From the light vanilla scent of her hair to the slight curl of her fingers around Cas’ shirt, all of it warmed her inside and out. She could’ve stayed like that forever. But Roadie had other plans. He stared at them, his low whimpers becoming sharp whines. His beady brown eyes unblinking.
“If you don’t get up now, he’s gonna bark right in your ear,” Amie warned.
“How long have you been awake?”
“Since the fourth whimper, I think.”
“Why didn’t you move?”
“So, you can successfully avoid walking Roads again? Nope, not falling for it.”
“I don’t see any other way.”
“You’re a creative boi.”
Roadie’s whines transitioned into moderate grumbles. Somebody was getting up and they were getting up now.
“Okay, how about this?” Caspar bargained. “You walk Roadie—”
“I knew it.”
