“I’ll stay,” she said. “You might need a neutral third party.”
He started to protest, but Becca’s eyebrows shot straight up. “Okay, but I’m warning you, I might get stubborn about this.”
“Of course you will.”
“Meggie,” he said. “Do you know what Eric thinks about you?”
The screen lit up. “Not for sure. I want to ask him.”
“I can tell you. He has a serious crush.”
“Don’t call it a crush,” Becca said. “It infantilizes him.”
“Infatuation, then. Let’s be realistic about his cognitive abilities.”
“So he’s disabled. That doesn’t mean he isn’t serious about Meggie. It’s not like your brother jumps from one love interest to another.”
Wes turned back to Meggie. “So you’re going to ask him how he feels? Let’s say he professes his love like the hero in some romantic comedy. What do you tell him? Thanks, kid!”
“I tell him … ” Meggie stopped. The screen flashed twice, as she got off sync and had to start over. “I tell him that I want to be with him.”
Becca leaned forward. Her eyes gleamed. “You do?”
“Hold on,” Wes said. “You know what you’re saying, right?”
“Don’t worry about me,” Meggie said. “I am an adult. I can make my own decisions. Decide what is best for me. I am not afraid of being hurt.”
“Meggie, I’m not talking about you—I’m talking about my brother. I’m worried about his feelings, not yours.”
“You are?”
“Eric is loyal. He’s never had a girlfriend before, but once he does, he won’t let go. I know you’ve been locked in there for seven years. You must have been so lonely.”
“You have no idea.”
“I can only imagine. I’ve never been there. But it sounds like hell, the stuff of nightmares. The idea of a boyfriend, or someone fawning over you, must be exciting. And he saved your life. That’s got to hit hard.”
Becca put a hand on his wrist. “Wes.”
“I need to say it. Now, before it goes too far and someone gets hurt.” He turned back to Meggie. “But you’re out now. True, barring some huge new medical advance, you’ll never walk again, never feed yourself. You won’t be running in the Paralympics. But your mind is free, and that’s what makes us human. If you’re happy and optimistic now, just wait, it gets even better. You’ll be working, you’ll have a purpose. And you’re a smart woman—you’re going to grow tired of my brother. So you’ll break up. That will destroy him. I can’t let you do that.”
“Let me tell you,” Meggie said.
“Tell me what?”
“Please. I am slow. Let me say it all without … interrupting. Please.”
“Sorry. Go on.”
“I had a lot of time to think. About Benjamin. What I saw in him, why I was with him.” The words came out agonizingly slow, but sure. “So many things that he was, I didn’t want. I never would have wanted them, if I hadn’t been caught up by superficial things like how he looked and how much money he had. And so many things that he wasn’t, I needed. I still need them.”
As she spoke, her fluency was increasing, sentence by sentence. If this were pure therapy, Wes would flip the computer to level five, force her brain to work harder.
“Benjamin was a shallow, cowardly person,” Meggie continued. “Eric is neither of those things. He is sincere. He is brave. He is loyal. You have no idea how much that means to me now.”
“He is also developmentally disabled,” Becca said in a quiet voice. “You are not.”
“I know. I’ve thought about that, too. If I could, I’d do for his brain the same thing you’re doing for mine. But I can’t. But in the end, the things he doesn’t have, I can live without. The things he does have, I want more than anything.”
“Eric and I are twins,” Wes said. “When I was being born, he was stuck inside, with an umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. Suffocating.”
“I understand.”
“That’s my reality. That’s the part that you need to accept on faith. My health is built on my brother’s brain damage. And I will never stop protecting him.”
Becca squeezed his hand.
“But you sent him to help me,” Meggie said. “Even though it was dangerous.”
“That’s true, I did.”
“There are some things that are worth the risk.”
Was she right? It was against everything in Wes’s nature to trust his brother to someone else. And could a relationship like this even work?
“I have so many questions,” he said. “What about physically?”
“My nerves aren’t dead. I can still feel.”
“Yes, but you can’t move. What are you going to do to reciprocate?”
“I don’t know. We’ll work that out. Maybe nothing will ever happen—but that’s not your choice to make.”
“Do you even like the same things he does?”
“Yes. Cheesy musicals, Disney movies, classic characters like Robin Hood and Sherlock Holmes. Yes, I do. That’s not all I like, but what couple shares everything?”
“And you find him physically attractive?”
“Is that so hard to believe? Tell him, Becca.”
Becca smiled. “He looks like you, Wes. So yeah, he’s kind of cute.”
“I don’t know,” Wes said. “I still can’t wrap my mind around it.”
Meggie slowed down again. “All I’m asking is that you give me a chance.”
Wes looked at Becca. “And you think … what?”
His wife’s eyes were watery. “I hope this isn’t pregnancy hormones, but … I say they go for it.”
“May I see him?” Meggie asked.
Wes got up without answering. He walked into the hallway, then to the front room. Walter and Davis were talking about a new patient advocacy law in the Netherlands and how it might be a precedent for changes in the United States. He ignored them and walked to the home theater.
Eric was in there, with a controller in hand. Watson and Holmes stood over the dead body of a werewolf mid-transition. But his Victorian-garbed heroes stood still, waiting for instructions. Eric stared to the side, distracted by something. His brow furrowed and Wes could imagine the engine sputtering in there. Figuring things out in his own, deliberate way.
What a team they made. Twenty employees, but the core was here in this house. One pregnant woman, two paralyzed people, and adding a third. Eric, with all his cognitive disabilities. God knew Wes had plenty of his own flaws and weaknesses. Yet here they were, saving lives, one at a time.
“Werewolves? This is even goofier than the zombie game. Your brain is going to rot out.”
Eric turned, face brightening. “Wussy! Come play with me. You can be Watson. He has a Gatling gun that shoots silver bullets. It’s awesome.”
“Actually, I came in to tell you that someone wants to see you.”
“Who is it, is it Dad? Someone from the group home? One of my friends?”
“No, Ruk. It’s your pretty lady. She’s in the language lab and asked if you would come in. She has something important to ask you.”
“Meggie!”
Eric sprang to his feet, almost knocked Wes over as he brushed past, then ran down the hallway to the language lab. He burst in the door.
“Hi!”
“Hi, Eric,” came the voice from the computer. “Please sit down.”
Then Becca stepped into the hallway and shut the door behind her. The voices cut out. She wrapped her arms around Wes’s neck and kissed him.
“You did good,” she said.
“I hope you’re right.”
“I am. Now, I’m going upstairs to lie down in the guest bedroom. You can come up with me, if you’d like.”
“Are you feeling sick?”
“Actually, I may or may not have just felt a contraction.”
He stared. “But you’re only thirty-seven weeks.”
“Wes,” she said, “
haven’t you figured it out yet? Life doesn’t operate on a schedule.”
And with that, she rounded the corner and her footsteps trudged up the stairs. Wes ran after her.
______________
From the Author
Thank you for reading The Devil’s Cauldron.
The Devil’s Deep Series
Book #1 – The Devil’s Deep
Book #2 – The Devil’s Peak
Book #3 – The Devil’s Cauldron
ULTIMATE JUSTICE
(A JUSTICE SERIES NOVEL)
M A COMLEY
Copyright © 2014 M A Comley
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the author or publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in the context of reviews.
Prologue
The swell of the sea had doubled in size in the last thirty minutes.
“Skipper, it’s no good. We won’t make it,” Taylor shouted above the thunder and the howling wind that surrounded them.
The captain threw back his right arm, which connected hard with Taylor’s face. Taylor staggered unsteadily on his feet and landed heavily against the door to the tiny bridge. “Get away from me, you imbecile. I give the orders around here, not you. You hear me?”
Taylor righted himself and surged forward, determined to make the captain change his mind. It would be foolish for them to try to enter the port in a storm like this. He watched out the starboard porthole at the waves continually bombarding the deck, and knew they wouldn’t have long before the sea welcomed them with open arms and sucked the life out of them. Thoughts of his wife, Sonia, and his three adorable children entered his mind and stayed there, as if mocking him for undertaking this perilous voyage, despite the huge risk involved. Unexpectedly, his family’s beautiful smiles and the shocking thought that he’d never see any of them again spurred him into action.
He scanned the wheelhouse for a possible weapon. He saw a metal bar in the corner and pounced on it. “Skipper, stand away from the helm.”
Captain Smythe, a man built like a heavy weight boxer, snarled at Taylor before his gaze drifted to the bar he was holding. “Think you can take me on, sonny? Fancy a bit of mutiny, do ya?”
“Our lives are in danger, Skipper. Surely you can see that?” Taylor watched as madness seemed to settle in his aggressor’s eyes.
“I see no such thing. It’s a storm, and a tiny one at that. I’ve been at sea longer than you’ve been out of nappies, lad. Now, let me bring this old girl and her cargo in. Have a day off from your foolishness for a change. Leave this job for a real man to handle.”
The captain’s undermining of him incensed Taylor. He gritted his teeth and his knuckles turned white around the bar he was holding. Smythe turned his attention back to fighting the helm. “You fucking idiot.” Taylor ran at him, screaming like a banshee with the bar high above his head. “I’ll be damned if I’ll stand by and let you kill us all.”
Smythe cried out in pain as the bar crashed against his skull, but he didn’t go down as Taylor had expected. “Ya bastard. Think you can take me on, do ya? You’re the fucking idiot around here if you think that.” Smythe’s iron-like hands connected with first the right and then the left side of Taylor’s face, leaving him dazed. The bar crashed to the floor, and stunned, Taylor held his head in his hands. He’d never been hit so hard by a man before, and he’d been in several fights over his thirty-odd years on Earth.
The boat swayed violently as both men stood their ground, eyeing each other with caution and contempt, but at the same time unaware of the screams coming from the hold below.
The captain beckoned to Taylor. “Come on, then, if you think you’re hard enough. Give me what you’ve got, you nancy boy, with your snooty redheaded wife and your two point four children.”
The captain’s intentional goading worked, and Taylor charged him with all his might. The captain’s chest puffed out and his fists clenched into tight balls. Taylor was clobbered around both ears before he got within a foot of Smythe, but he kept up his charge, despite being almost knocked senseless. Taylor bowed his head low and charged into the captain’s portly stomach. Smythe only laughed at his inept attempt to bring him down.
Taylor, his blood boiling with anger, stooped to the floor and retrieved the bar. He swung it like a golf club at the captain’s lower leg. With the boat being tossed in the high waves, the captain lost his balance and hollered as he went down. His head hit the side of the binnacle supporting the helm, and blood erupted from a wound above his right eye. Taylor tried to stop the wheel from spinning out of control, catching his hand several times in the spokes in the process. “Fuck!” he cried out as a bone snapped in his little finger.
The captain, who was lying on the floor, laughed.
Taylor glared at him, then turned his attention back to the helm, and, watching it intently, he waited for the opportune moment to come his way. Finally, he grabbed one of the spokes firmly with both hands while he anchored himself behind the wheel, his feet spread wide apart. Feeling calmer now that he appeared to have the vessel under control, he guided the ship out to sea and away from the port they had been heading towards.
“Turn this ship around. If you don’t, we’ll go under for sure,” the captain insisted.
“Shut your mouth. If I’d left things for you to sort out, we would have been smashed to pieces on the rocks by now.”
“It takes decades of experienced sailing to become a captain. You’ve got neither the balls nor the stamina, sonny, to bring this ship home safely.”
“We’ll see about that, old man.” Taylor focused fully on the task at hand and chose to ignore anything else the captain had to say. In the distance, he could hear the ghostly screams of their cargo riding on the howling wind. He gulped down the frustration building within him and steered the vessel through the tumultuous waves. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the captain struggle to his feet. But there was little Taylor could do about the captain’s impending attack. His back took the force of the captain’s strike. He gasped for breath as the air was driven from his lungs. Excruciating pain shot through his body.
“Take that, you bastard. I’m taking control of my ship. My ship, you hear me?” The captain ran to the wheel.
Taylor’s hand went in search of what was causing the pain in his back, and his heart sank when he discovered the six-inch blade embedded there. He crumpled to his knees as the blood started to drain from his body. The beautiful faces of his young family flashed before his eyes once again. He asked only one thing: “Why?”
The captain took his eye off the sea for a split second to glance at Taylor, and that was when disaster struck. The wheel spun out of Smythe’s hand, and the force sent him reeling across to the other side of the bridge. The whole boat lurched sideways and water flooded through the open bulkhead door as it flew open. With his life slipping away, Taylor didn’t have the strength to stop himself from being swept out the doorway and onto the deck.
Smythe did nothing to prevent his exit for, despite his hulking frame, the water dragged the captain through the doorway after Taylor. They both choked on the salt water as the mighty energy of the unforgiving, raging sea pulled their heads under the surface. Taylor watched his captain resurface three or four times, his body smashing against the taffrail a few times before being washed overboard and out to sea. Taylor finally succumbed to the sea’s beckoning call.
It wasn’t long before the ship, in her last death throes, finally sank.
The sea sighed with satisfaction at the devastation it had caused, yet no one was there to hear it. Even the ship’s valuable cargo had been silenced.
Chapter One
“Why, you little monkey, bite the hand that feeds you, would you?” Lorne picked up the bundle of black and white fluff and kissed the eight-week-old pup on the tip of his nose.
“He�
�ll soon learn that you don’t take crap from men,” Tony laughed before he took a sip of his coffee.
“Hey, you cheeky sod, who asked you for your opinion? Aren’t they just adorable?” Lorne placed the male pup back in the zoned-off area in the kitchen with his six siblings and then fluttered her eyelashes innocently at her husband.
Tony replied with two simple words: “Yes. No.”
“What do you mean, ‘no?’”
Tony laughed and shook his head. “I was pre-empting your next question,” he told her. Then he put on a whiny voice and continued, “Couldn’t we make room in the house for just one more dog? Henry’s lonely.”
Lorne rose from the floor, picked the tea towel up off the counter, and aimed it at his head. “Dear husband of mine, has anyone ever told you that you can be cuttingly mean at times?”
Tony reached out and pulled her onto his lap, kissing her hard on the lips. The kiss took her breath away for a second or two. He murmured against her lips, “Umm…yes—you. But I tend to ignore what you say half the time.”
A cough from the doorway interrupted their romantic moment. Lorne’s father, Sam Collins, looked embarrassed as he walked over to the kettle and switched it on. “Don’t mind me, you two.”
Lorne shot off Tony’s lap and went to hug her father. “Sorry, Dad. I didn’t know you were up. Did you sleep all right?”
Her father pecked her on the cheek. “Not really, love. I was awake for three or four hours during the night, as usual.”
Lorne had been worried about her father’s insomnia for months now. Since he’d been hospitalised with meningitis, his sleep had been dramatically affected. In turn, this had hampered his ability to lend a hand around the rescue centre. It was like a domino effect in that this also hindered Lorne’s new private investigation business. But there was a light at the end of that particularly dark tunnel, as the school holidays were just around the corner. Which meant that Charlie, Lorne’s teenage daughter, would be eager to help out more around the kennels, tending to the numerous strays Lorne was trying—without much luck—to rehome. Due to the recession hitting the UK, their occupancy numbers had risen to an all-time high of thirty. Ever the softie where dogs were concerned, Lorne found it exceedingly difficult to turn away animals in need, hence the little family of pups invading her family’s private space. The only member of the family who didn’t seem to mind the pups being there was their Border collie, Henry. The devoted collie kept a constant watch over the tiny pups as if they were his own flesh and blood.
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