by Jessie Cooke
He went over to where the big generator sat and picked up the thick, orange electric cord attached to it. He followed that cord to the end where it was plugged into another, thinner cord. He followed that one to a floor lamp, which wasn’t on. Going back over to the generator, he pushed against it. It was heavy as fuck, but the next time he pushed with both hands and all of his might, moving it about three inches. “I’ll be a son of a bitch!” Underneath the generator were two other thick cords, both of them going down through a tiny hole in the floor. At least part of that room down there was finished, and someone had fed those cords down to use for electricity...but how the fuck did they get down there? Leaving the generator as it was, he took his flashlight and started in one corner of the room, slowly moving the light along the floorboards and walls. He was becoming discouraged again when his foot slipped on something. He shone the light down where his boot was and noticed that the wooden planks on the floor had separated, just about 1/16th of an inch. Dropping to his knees, he used his hands to push both of the planks, and suddenly they had opened up and he was looking down at a ladder that led into a dark hole.
As soon as Lucien came through the door, Sally was on him. She had her claws out and she was ready to use them, slashing her fingernails across his face and drawing blood. Of course that just pissed him off and he used the back of his hand to knock her to the floor. Sally didn’t care if he killed her, she’d rather die than let him do whatever it was he planned on doing to her first. She came back up off the floor, reaching up as she did and getting a grip on his balls, squeezing as tightly as she could. He screamed again and kicked at her, striking her in the side of the head and knocking her to the floor again. She could feel blood trickling down into her ear and there was a buzzing sound in her head, but she wasn’t finished yet. This time when she came back up, she went for his eyes. Unfortunately, he was too quick and he caught her wrists with his hands, twisted her arms around behind her back, and she screamed as she felt them pulling at her shoulders. Sally was 5'4" and about 125 pounds. Lucien was 5'10" and at least 180...there was no way she was going to win, but at least maybe his cock and balls would be too broken to do anything to her...for a little while.
“That’s my little wildcat,” he said to her, in almost a soothing tone as he wrenched her arms and wrists so roughly she was sure he was pulling them off. “My little spitfire...I like that, but save it for the bedroom, baby.”
He pulled her back through the door he’d just come through, kicked another door open with his foot, and pushed her roughly through it. He let go of her arms and she screamed again at the new rush of pain when her body hit the bed. Still, in pain or not, she wanted away from him. She scrambled to get out of his reach but he caught her by her ankles and held her as she clawed at the thick down comforter on the bed. Struggling to get loose, and unsure of where she’d go if she did, her eyes landed on the wall next to the bed and a cold chill ran through her. It looked like something out of an old movie, a dungeon where they tortured their enemies. There were leather straps attached to the wall for hands and feet both, and thick leather straps that would go around her chest and pelvis. It was then that she was sure she didn’t want to be conscious for whatever he planned next. Flipping the top half of her body over, wrenching the ankles he was holding as she did, she looked into his wicked blue eyes and said:
“You can rape me. You can torture me. But just know this...the last thought I plan on having before I leave this earth, is the feeling I get when I’m in Evan Babineaux’s arms.”
Those were the sweetest words that Blackheart had ever heard. With a strength that even he didn’t know he had, he reached through that dungeon bedroom door and grabbed Lucien by the back of his neck. Sally screamed in pain as he pulled the son of a bitch’s hands off her, but Blackheart had to deal with Lucien first, and then he’d tend to Sally. With that one hand, he threw the other man into the cement wall and had the pleasure of watching blood spray from his nose all over the wall. Lucien was shaking all over, but he used one hand to try to pull himself up the wall and his other hand went to the back of his jeans. Blackheart reached down and pulled the gun out of the man’s pants, tossing it behind him into the other room. He didn’t want to kill Lucien with a bullet...he wanted to feel this one up close and personal. He pulled Lucien back up to his feet, but before he let the punch go the sick fuck actually smiled at him and said, “You might kill me today, Evan Babineaux, but I already murdered your life, over thirty years ago.” Blackheart landed a punch square in the man’s face and he felt and heard Lucien’s nose crunch. He dropped him back onto the floor, roughly, and a chill ran down his spine when he looked down and saw that even with missing teeth, a broken nose, and blood smeared across his face, he was still smiling. “You should have seen it, the way your Paw’s head exploded when that buckshot hit it. It was a beautiful thing.” Suddenly everything in Blackheart’s line of vision went red. He went into the same kind of trance he was in the night he killed Rodney and sealed his own fate...and by the time he came out of it, he was sitting on the floor with blood all over his hands and Sally was clutching onto him, sobbing and begging him to get her out of there. Lucien Williams wouldn’t hurt anyone else, ever again...but he was right, he had shaped Evan Babineaux’s life just as if he were molding clay, the night he took his father from him, and made him a murderer.
21
One Week Later
Blackheart could have had Lucien’s body dragged out into the swamp and erased him from existence...but even in a time when he was grieving his brother Booger, and his father and the man he’d mistakenly killed all of those years ago, he had to think of his club. He was shrewd enough to know this could clear up several of the problems they were having with the law just then, and keep it from sniffing around, for a while anyway.
After he spent some time just holding Sally in that basement that evening, he called Le Singe and told him to call the St. Mary’s Parish police. Two detectives that he knew well showed up and he and Sally told their stories from start to finish, about their encounters with Lucien. When Blackheart told them that Lucien had admitted to killing Jean Luc, he didn’t mention Rodney. His own soul would have to do penance for that one. The police could see for themselves the shrine the sick bastard had made of Sally on the wall, and the more they searched the underground bunker, the more evidence they found that he’d intended keeping her there indefinitely. Blackheart told them that he suspected Lucien had killed Christoff, and he had to try hard to suppress a smile when his beautiful Sally told them that Lucien had admitted as much to her. Just to help out, while Blackheart and Sally were talking to the police, Le Singe was already on his way to Lucien’s house in New Orleans to make sure they found a knife that would match Christoff’s neck wound and might still have traces of Christoff’s blood on it. It had been wiped clean of fingerprints, but if it wasn’t Lucien’s then what would it be doing wrapped in a towel in his closet? They’d become more suspicious when they found the C4 he kept stored in his refrigerator...just like the kind that blew up the Jokers’ warehouse. And then there was the gun Blackheart had taken off him. He had no doubts that gun would match the bullet they dug out of Gabriel and the shell casings found at the docks. He didn’t tell the cops any of that, though. What he told them was that the son of a bitch had kidnapped Sally, and he’d tracked him there and walked in just as he was getting ready to rape her. They’d fought and Blackheart had accidentally killed him, in self-defense.
Blackheart wanted Sally taken to a hospital as soon as the cops and ambulance got there, but she refused to go until she told her story. Her poor body was battered and bruised and her lips and nose were swollen. It hurt him to see her that way and made him want to kill the dead fucker on the floor all over again. But she was a trouper and she started out by telling them that Lucien admitted to “watching” her since he was fourteen and she eighteen. They could see for themselves, based on the shrine in the other room, that the man was obsessed with her, but as Sall
y told them the things he’d said to her, it only seemed to drive the point home. Then Sally had looked at Blackheart and he had felt the love in her eyes as she said, “He admitted to killing Evan’s father, and Christoff.” Blackheart had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling as she said that, but when she went on, and her voice cracked, all he wanted to do was hold her in his arms and keep her safe, forever. “He was going to rape me, and if I kept fighting, he would have probably killed me...if Evan hadn’t stopped him, I’d be dead. Evan told him to stay down several times, but he just kept coming back at him, and he pulled the gun...” Tears rolled down her cheeks and her voice cracked again as she said, “Evan saved my life.”
When the ambulance finally took Sally away it nearly killed him. He didn’t want to be anywhere but right there with her...but he was at least grateful they waited until she was gone before they arrested him. He was read his rights and told he was under arrest for the murder of Lucien Williams. Blackheart wasn’t surprised, and he wasn’t afraid. He was sure once they took a look around Lucien’s home and tested the gun, they’d have to at least drop the charge down to manslaughter. What he was disappointed about was that he wouldn’t be there for Sally while she healed, and he wouldn’t be there when they put his brother Booger into the ground.
His bail was set at two million dollars so six days into his incarceration when the correctional officer told him to “roll up,” he was going home, he was shocked. He gathered his paltry belongings and followed the officer up front where he was surprised again. Detective Petit was waiting for him.
“Y’all gonna charge me with something now that they’re done with me?” he asked Petit with a smile.
“As happy as that would make my partner, I’m afraid she hasn’t been able to find anything that’ll stick to you. We cleared a thirty-year-old murder, an arson, and the murder of one of America’s most wanted...I think she’ll be satisfied with that, for a while anyway.”
Blackheart signed for his cell phone and wallet and looked back at Petit, just as his own attorney was coming through the door. “Evan!” The middle-aged, white-haired, paunchy Southern man was always huffing and puffing like he was about to have a heart attack. He dressed in suits that looked like they were designed for Colonel Sanders and straw hats with a different band each day to match whatever he was wearing. His affable personality might lead someone to believe he was too laid back to be a defense attorney, but Blackheart had seen him in action many times and he was a bull in the courtroom.
“Logan, good to see you.” Blackheart had spoken to him once since he’d been locked up and Logan had told him not to worry. He’d brought him a message from Le Singe that Sally was healing and had been sent home from the hospital, and they had someone on her 24/7 until they heard otherwise. He also told him that they were holding off on Booger’s funeral in the hopes he and Sally would both be able to attend. That had been five days earlier and Blackheart had to admit that in that time, he had begun to worry.
“I apologize it took me so long. First I had to deal with that stubborn DA in Jefferson Parish and get him to admit that they were looking at the wrong man for Christoff and the arson this whole time, and I had to bully them into comparing ballistics on Lucien’s gun with the one that shot young Gabriel. Once they finally did all of that, I had to come over here and deal with a DA who wanted to charge you with murder, simply because of who you were. Once I finished embarrassing him over letting a fourteen-year-old get away with murder for thirty years, he was ready to admit that what happened between you and Williams was self-defense.”
“Self-defense?” Blackheart said, incredulous. He thought at the very least he’d be charged with manslaughter and have to do five to ten years.
“Hell yeah. You saved Sally’s life and if you hadn’t killed him, the crazy bastard would have killed both of you. I found out he was in all kinda trouble with the Marines and he only left to keep them from dishonorably discharging him. He’s got a history of mistreating women and it seems whenever someone pisses him off, they seem to miraculously disappear, or die. His own sister told me she’d always suspected he had something to do with their parents’ death. The DA’s not stupid enough to try to charge you when I’ve got all that after only a week. Give me another week and I’d make you come out looking like a choirboy.”
Blackheart smiled. Logan was worth every penny he paid him, and that was a lot. He hugged the rotund little man and thanked him, and then looked back at Petit and said, “You still didn’t tell me why you’re here.”
He shrugged. “Night off. I had a drink with Logan earlier and he told me he was getting you sprung this afternoon, so I thought I’d see if you needed a ride home.”
“Damn, won’t that piss off your partner?”
“Only if we tell her. Besides, I have faith she’ll get something on you one of these days that’ll stick, and then I’ll stand by her side while she hooks you up.”
Blackheart laughed. “I’ll accept the ride, thanks.”
On the two-and-a-half-hour ride back to New Orleans, Petit told Blackheart they’d found a storage facility that belonged to Lucien. Inside of that they’d found a lot of “mementos” or souvenirs...women’s underwear, locks of hair, and a ton of old photos of Sally. They found newspaper clippings from the fire that killed his parents and copies of insurance policies he’d taken out on his sister and her entire family. They had narrowly missed their own deaths, and they hadn’t even known it.
When they got to the Quarter, instead of having Petit take him to the clubhouse, he had him drop him at Sally’s house. He honestly wasn’t sure how she would receive him at this point, since he hadn’t heard a word from her since he’d been in jail. But he had to see her, and at least see for himself that she was okay. Petit was driving away as he walked up to the door, and before he made it, it was pulled open and his beautiful Sally stood there with the light framing her from behind. “Hey,” he said, wincing at the way her face was still bruised a week later. She had a cast on her left ankle and both of her wrists were wrapped in an ACE wrap. She also had some kind of brace around her rib area. “How are you?”
She smiled and his heart began to beat again. He was afraid for a while he’d never see her again, and then he was afraid that after she saw what he’d done to Lucien with his bare hands, she’d never want to see him again. “Never better,” she said. “How do I look?” Blackheart took another step toward her and said:
“Never better, baby.” She brought her arms up around his neck and he lowered his mouth to hers. He kissed her softly, afraid he would hurt her, but she was the one that pulled him in tighter and deepened the kiss. They were both panting for breath when she broke it and Blackheart was as hard as a rock, just from that simple touch.
“Come on in.” He followed her inside and she got him a beer. She made him tell her first what the attorney and Petit had told him. She seemed relieved that he wouldn’t have to do time and finally she sat down next to him on the couch and said, “I should have listened to you about Lucien.”
“You would have, if I wasn’t such an asshole most of the time.”
“True,” she said, completely serious. It hurt his ego a bit, but he knew he had that coming, and much more. “Why is that?”
“What? Why am I an asshole?”
“Yeah. I’ve never been able to figure out how sometimes you can be the warmest, sweetest human in the world...and then just like flipping a switch, you’re an asshole.”
Blackheart smiled and said, “I imagine it would take a whole team of psychiatrists and a shit pot full of cash to ever figure out that one...but you want to know something?”
“What’s that?”
“If you need an answer to that, I’ll hire them tonight.”
She smiled again. He loved her smile...he loved her, and he knew that was most of the problem. He didn’t show her often enough how much he loved her, and he didn’t show her the kind of respect she deserved. He was selfish, and he thought too muc
h about his own needs and not enough about hers. But what scared him the most was that he wasn’t sure, even if he gave it his all, that he could change. Her pretty brown eyes grew serious and she said, “You know, I went out with Lucien more out of frustration because I couldn’t get what I wanted from you than anything else.”
“I know,” he said, “but you don’t have to do that anymore, Sal. I love you, and I’ll do whatever you want, whatever it takes to keep you in my life. You want to get married? Adopt a kid?”
Sally giggled. “Whoa, slow down. I’m almost fifty years old, I think the time for having and adopting kids has passed. And as far as getting married, Evan, I never needed that. All I ever needed was for you to treat me with respect, and to give me the kind of loyalty you give to your brothers.”
“I’ll never even look at another woman.”
She laughed out loud at that. “Don’t lie. You’re too old to change all of your spots. Just promise me that we can start fresh, no other women, no other men...just you and me, and we’ll see where it goes from there.”
Blackheart tried not to look too relieved. He would marry her if that’s what she wanted, but he was pretty damned sure he didn’t want to be a father. He knew he’d be a shitty role model for any kid, and he didn’t want to have to pretend otherwise. “I promise,” he said, “No more sweet butts at the club, or strippers or...”
