by Lucas, Helen
“What a fucking mess, you two…” she muttered, getting one for herself. “Well, I guess it is what it is.”
“That’s right. It is what it is.”
“I’ve been needing to talk to Sarah,” Christina continued, taking a seat on the couch with me. She paused, looking pensive for a few moments before catching my eye and looking at me hard and deep.
“Has she ever told you about Kayla? About our mom?”
I furrowed my brow.
“No… Not really. I mean, she mentioned once that she had died in a car accident. And I knew that, of course. When my mom married Harry back in the day…”
I paused, thinking back, back to those early days—back before I really knew the Logans, knew what the hell was going on with these people… Before I knew what a toxic prison Laramie was.
“Yeah, no one really talked about it back then, did they?”
“That’s exactly right,” Christina growled. “And I think that’s because Harry had mom killed.”
My eyes widened. Whatever I had been expecting, it sure as hell wasn’t that.
“How can you be so sure?”
“I remember them arguing once, when I was younger. Mom had figured some things out—Harry was doing some consulting on the side for Oliver Richards, the chief of police. But she thought dad… Harry… was actually cooking the books for Richards. Helping him embezzle money from the town through the police department.”
“Shit.”
“Right. And I remember mom and Harry… They weren’t screaming at each other, like they usually did. No, they were… Talking quietly, but with so much more… God, Damien, I don’t know—it seemed like this life or death thing.”
“And you think it was… About that?”
“Yeah, I remember overhearing mom say some things… About how he was bleeding the town dry, about how she couldn’t keep quiet—about how she would go to the paper about it.”
“And what did Harry say?” I asked, almost afraid to find out as I sipped my cold beer, terrified in retrospect, even though the deed, the crime, it was all already committed…
“He said she might have an accident. That he couldn’t protect her. That he didn’t want to protect her.”
“God.”
“I could see the tears brimming in Christina’s eyes.
“I know. I know. It’s fucked up.”
“I mean…” I said carefully. “Is there anything you’re trying to do about it? Can you… Shit, I don’t know. Get the FBI involved?”
“Actually, yeah, that’s the plan. But I don’t have the evidence I need. Not yet, at least.”
She bit her lip.
“Really, what I need is to get into dad… Harry’s study. His locked files. I’d need Sarah to swipe the key.”
“Based on what she was saying, I don’t know if she’d be up for it,” I said darkly.
“I know. She’s always had trouble going against Harry. Even though she hates him just as much as I do.”
She looked at me carefully, cocking her head.
“As we do.”
I smiled.
“You’ve got that part right, at least. I hate the son of a bitch.”
“I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear that you cracked him one upside the head,” Christina said, returning my grim smile.
“What about this, instead—if we can’t get at Harry’s files, what if we got at Richards’ files?”
“I mean, sure, that’d be great—but that seems like it’d be even harder than getting Sarah to rat on her own father.”
“Maybe, maybe not. Richards’ son owes me one. And he’s none too happy with his dad right now.”
“What do you mean? Teddy? That brain dead jock?” Christina asked, frowning.
“You’d be surprised. He just came out to his parents. His dad kicked him out of the house and he’s staying with his aunt now.”
Christina’s eyes widened.
“Shit. That’s… Wow.”
“Right. And if we could get him to go over to the police station—I bet he could get into his dad’s office. I mean, not if his dad were there, but maybe the other cops would let him in—I bet you they don’t know what’s happened. I bet you they think everything’s fine and dandy at the Chief’s home. Wouldn’t be nothing strange about the Chief’s boy coming in to grab something his daddy forgot at work.”
“That’s right…” Christina said. “Goddamn, that might just work. Can you talk to Teddy?”
“Sure thing. Kid owes me a few favors at this point.”
“It seems a lot of people in this town are starting to owe you favors.”
“Well, I’d rather just not be in this goddamned town to begin with,” I said with a scowl. “But I’ll take the favors if I can get them.”
“Dakota might also be up to get into Harry’s study too,” Christina murmured, sitting back in her chair. “The only thing is—Oliver and Harry, they’ve got a reputation for violence when things don’t go their way.”
“Well, so do I.”
Christina smiled.
“I guess it’s good to have a former Marine on your side.”
“Ain’t no such thing,” I said standing up as I felt my phone start to vibrate. I plucked it out of my pocket. “Once a Marine, always a Marine. I’ve met a couple other guys in town I think would help us out in a pinch too—if we need to, we’ll go to war.”
I looked down at the screen. It was Dakota. What the hell was she calling me for?
“Hello?” I asked, answering and mouthing the words “It’s Dakota” to Christina, who nodded knowingly.
“Damien,” Dakota’s voice came. Instead of calm and collected or, as it had been before, drunk and defiant, she was sobbing now, her voice shaking. “Damien, Damien, Damien… It’s Sarah.”
My blood froze in my veins and I felt a deep pit of anxiety build in my gut.
“Sarah? What’s happened? What’s wrong?”
“She tried to kill herself…” Dakota sobbed.
“What?!”
“Damien, she overdosed on pills and… and… I called an ambulance but she wasn’t breathing and she hit her head…” she sobbed.
“Okay, okay, calm down. Calm down. Where are you now?”
“I’m at the hospital. Will you come? Will you bring Christina?”
“Sure thing,” I grunted. I felt my blood boiling, where once it had been cold. Those were my instincts at work—ready to fight, to take action. “We’re on our way.”
I clicked the phone silent and turned to Christina’s deathly pale face.
“What… What happened?” she murmured, barely able to meet my eyes.
“It’s Sarah. She tried to off herself. Dakota found her and called an ambulance. They’re at the hospital now.”
I saw Christina’s face crack.
“God, no…” she whimpered. “First mom and now Sarah…”
“Come on. We’ve got to go. I’ll drive,” I said, grabbing her trembling hands and pulling her to her feet, as we descended the stairs of her building, down to my car, and off to the hospital.
As in combat, I didn’t think about anything. Nothing at all, nothing besides the mission.
On some level, it was good, good to have a mission once more. It made me feel in control. It helped me to know what I was doing, where I was going.
And it helped me to put off feeling anything for another time.
SARAH
I awoke with a shuddering, gasping breath as air was forced into my lungs.
Somewhere, deep with in the back of my brain, I had been aware of this air, the way the machine forced it deep into my lungs, over and over. The stale, plastic-tasting air invaded my lips and flowed down, into my body—it had been a staple in the dark, twisted dreams I had, dreams that remained just out of reach of my waking mind as my brain re-adjusted to the light around me—the optic white of the hospital room, the sunlight shining through the windows…
And the worried, concerned faces looking down a
t me.
“There she is,” someone’s unfamiliar voice said. “Eyes open. Sarah. Sarah Logan. Hey, honey—good morning.”
I turned my head. It ached. My skull throbbed. I remembered vaguely the experience of hitting my head on something. Yeah, that had really sucked.
“Where am I?” I tried to ask, but there were tubes in my mouth and it just came out like a series of guttural gasps.
“You’re in a hospital, sweetheart,” the doctor—a middle-aged woman with crows-feet by her eyes that seemed to smile whenever she did—said, leaning over me. “Everything is okay. You gave everyone a real scare.”
I tried to sit up but she gently, though firmly, pressed me back down.
“No, honey—now is the time to rest. You’re in no condition to be sitting up.”
But I wanted to sit up and so I tried again.
“Sarah, listen to the doctor,” a cold, tired voice said. My eyes darted over and I saw Damien, hunched over, a day’s stubble on his cheeks. Bags hung under his eyes. God, how long had he been sitting there?
“Damien…” my lips mouthed. It was only then that I realized how chapped they were, how dry my mouth was.
“It’s okay. Just relax,” he whispered. I felt tears start to fall from my eyes. I squeezed them shut, trying to stop the crying, trying to stop everything, but there was nothing I could do. I was crying, and crying hard, gagging on the tubes in my mouth, in my nose, in my lungs.
“It’s okay, Sarah, it’s okay…” someone else was saying. It was Christina. Next to her, rubbing her eyes, just awoken, was Dakota. And Maria. Everyone was here.
Not my dad, of course. But everyone else.
“I’m sorry…” I tried to mouth to everyone but Damien gently pressed his finger to my lips.
“It’s okay. We’re just glad you’re alive.”
Those words cut me deep. I hated the sound of it. Hated the knowledge of what I had done, what I had put them through.
The others stepped out of the room to talk to the doctor. I could hear, only vaguely, what they discussed—something about my vitals, something about my heart-rate and my breathing and my liver… It all sounded fine, though maybe it wasn’t—I had trouble concentrating.
“You really had us going there for a second,” he said with a grim smile. I reached out, took his hand, squeezed it. “You can definitely be a crazy bitch when you want to be. I’ll give you that.”
I forced a weak smile, squeezing his hand once more.
“Sarah, listen,” he said softly. “I’ve been talking to Christina. You know what about.”
What? What could they have been talking about?
Oh, of course. What has obsessed Christina for the past few years?
Mom. Dad. And what happened that night when her car skidded off the road and into a tree. And the ambulance didn’t make it out there for hours, even though it was just a mile or two outside of town.
“We’re going to go and get evidence and figure this out once and for all. If we do, then there’s a chance that your father—Harry—is going to go to jail.”
He took a deep breath.
“You can be free of him, Sarah. But I won’t do it if you don’t want me to. It’s up to you. Say the word, though, and I swear to god—I’ll destroy him.”
I tried to say something, but the tubes prevented. Damien found himself grinning over me.
“I guess you can’t say much of anything, can you? How about thumbs up for yes and thumbs down for no?”
I gave him a thumbs up. I reached my fingers to my lips, and then pressed them to his. He smiled. I loved that smile. I could drown in that smile—what a sweeter death that would have been than the one I had planned for myself…
“All right. That’s my girl,” he said with a smile.
DAMIEN
On Monday, I cornered Teddy at school. I told him the plan. He was hesitant, though sympathetic.
“I just… I don’t know what’ll happen if they catch me,” he stammered. I punched him gently in the shoulder.
“That’s where I come in. And a couple guys I know. You’ll be fine. Everything will be fine. You just need to get on that computer and see… You know. What all you can find.”
He bit his lip.
“You’re asking me to betray my father, here,” he said, his voice low and deep. Deep with sorrow, with confusion, with—bullshit.
“Bullshit,” I grunted. “I’m not asking you to betray your father. I’m asking you to make things right. I’m asking you to be a man for once in your goddamned life. I’m asking you to take responsibility and see that justice is done.”
He nodded, seriously. That had worked.
“Right. When do we do this?”
“Tonight. I’ll pick you up. We’ll drop you off, wait for you, get you out of there. That’s all you need to do.”
And so it happened, that night.
Lance was ready and rearing to go when I told him I needed some help. He called up a few of his buddies from around Georgia and by the evening, they had assembled at Riley’s. Riley brought us over a pitcher himself, sat down, and lit up a cigarette in stark defiance of the “No Smoking” sign posted above.
“We’ll take two cars,” I told them. “Mine, and Lance’s truck. Riley, do you—“
“On the house,” the big man said with a smile, reaching under the table and pulling out a paper bag. I peaked inside, and pulled out a large, heavy metal object wrapped in a white cloth.
A revolver. A big one, too. The kind of weapon that could put a hole in a man the size of a vinyl record.
“She’s clean, too—wear gloves when you’re using it, will ya’? It cost me a pretty penny to get something with no record, something they can’t trace.”
“I’ll get her back to her in one piece,” I murmured, wrapping the gun back up and returning it to the bag.
“Y’all are practically planning a revolution here,” Riley said with a grim chuckle. “Logan and Richards done run this town since as long as I can remember.”
“Consider this your declaration of independence, then,” I returned with my own grim chuckle.
“Now, Christina’s got an FBI contact. We’ll meet him here with the flash drive. That’s all. We’ve just got to run from the police station to the bar, and then we’re done. Simple as that.”
“You make it sound easy,” Lance laughed. “I sure as hell hope you didn’t call out the troops just for a grocery run…”
“If Richards’ boys get wind of what’s happening, they’ll go to war,” Riley growled. “They’ll be shootin’. I promise you that.”
“And when that happens, we’ll be ready,” Lance shot back. “We’ve got three rifle, five hand guns, and a couple grenades too—we’ll be ready to give this town a show they’ll never forget.”
I glanced at the date on a calendar tacked to the wall, showing a half-naked pin-up girl from the 1970’s, baring her cleavage and wiggling her hot-pants clad ass. Today was the fifth of November. Where had all the time gone?
“Well, guys…” I murmured. “You know what they say… Remember, remember, the fifth of November…”
An hour later, I was outside Teddy’s aunt’s house. I waited, and waited, and waited—I texted him, and then called him, and then was about to drive away when he came out, clad in a hoodie and jeans. Very non-descript. You wouldn’t be able to pick him out in a crowd.
“What took you so long?” I demanded.
“Sorry. I was feeling sick. I thought I was going to puke.”
“Don’t wimp out on me now,” I growled as I pulled away from the house, heading towards the police station. “The last thing I need from you right now is to get cold feet.”
“Don’t worry,” he whispered. “I’m in it to win it tonight.”
We pulled up at the police station, an older brick building with the words “LARAMIE POLICE DEPARTMENT HEADQUARTERS” in bronze over the doors. It was clearly a relic from an older time and it had certainly seen better days.
“You’re sure your dad is gone now?” I asked, parking the car. I glanced into my rear view mirror and saw Lance’s truck pull up.
