by Lisa Ladew
Frustration ripped at Beckett. He could use his one true mate right about now, and he knew exactly what she would be like, too. She would be a party girl, someone he could take dancing all night, someone who did not want babies. Not right now, maybe not ever. Something in his chest tightened at the thought but he ignored it. What the hell good were pups, anyway?
Beckett addressed Crew. “You said I saw her six weeks ago, right?”
Crew nodded.
“And you said I asked her if she was going to kill me?”
Crew nodded again, his expression tight.
Beckett shook his head slightly. “Why would I do that?”
Crew looked up, but the answer wasn’t written on the ceiling. “I don’t know. It didn’t make any sense to me either.”
“What does she look like?”
Crew stared away from him for a long time before answering.
“It’s not quite like that. I saw her through your eyes, but only your emotional perception of her at the time. All I can really say is…” His voice trailed off for a moment, then he spoke one word.
“Innocent.”
Chapter 4
Cerise stepped over the burnt patch in the carpet in their tiny trailer, remembering how Sandra had flung the kerosene lantern at Myles as he smashed her TV to get back at her for dumping his last fifth of whiskey down the sink. Cerise couldn’t remember why Sandra had waged war on his liquor in the first place, the original slight forgotten over time. The whole place would have burnt down if the lantern hadn’t been almost empty, and maybe it still would have if Cerise hadn’t put the flames out with her bare feet. She winced as she always did when she remembered how bad the burns had hurt, but somehow her feet had healed without scars.
She thought that had been three years ago, but she had no way of knowing for certain. TV had taught her time was counted in months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and seconds, but she’d never seen a clock in real life, or a calendar. There were none in the small trailer home she lived in. Sandra and Myles had never worked, Cerise had never been to school, or even a doctor.
She and Kaci marked the passage of days with marks on the peeling, rotting flooring that lay underneath the carpet in the room they shared. They had 912 marks there, which meant almost three years, but 240 marks were from before she got sick, and the rest from after. How long she’d been sick for was anybody’s guess. Cerise thought maybe as long as six months. Kaci had been too stricken to remember to record the days while Cerise had lain on the floor of the bathroom, for entire weeks sometimes.
Cerise pushed the door of their room open whispering, “It’s just me.”
Kaci peeked at her from the closet and motioned her over, a DVD box held tightly in her hands. “Can I put it in?” she whispered, her eyes shining, her expression eager.
Cerise nodded. “I counted ten empties around him and he just broke into the ‘shine. Keep it on low for about an hour but I think we’ll be good tonight.”
Kaci grinned and pulled the blanket off their tiny TV, pushed way in the back of the closet, then plugged it in to their only electrical cord that snaked in through the slightly-open window with rags stuffed all around. They’d found the TV on the side of the road with a FREE sign on it one night, years ago, long before Zeus had wandered into their yard. It was tiny and old-fashioned, compared to what they’d seen in the houses they’d been raiding, but it had a DVD attached, which made it worth its weight in gold and their only way to know what went on in the world outside their trailer.
Myles had been somehow stealing electricity from the power company for years, and they lived in fear of the day that he wandered outside while they thought he was good and passed out, and discovered they were piggy-backing off his wires.
Their DVD collection was small and they had watched every video in it at least a few hundred times, having nothing else to do, especially in the winter, but it still gave them a way to escape and a glimpse at something they had no other way of experiencing. Until tomorrow.
Cerise turned away from her delighted sister and the movie after she saw which one it was. Heathers. Kaci’s all-time favorite.
Cerise knelt on the floor in the corner put her hand on the carpet there, running her fingers over it. She felt/listened for Myles and found him still sitting in his chair at the other end of the house. Good. She turned up one corner of the carpet and lifted the board out from below to reveal their hidey-hole and inventory the contents, something she did nightly.
First came out her book, the encyclopedia. She had read it from cover to cover in the last six weeks, even though she didn’t know what many of the words meant or how to pronounce them. The puzzle that was reading fell into place for her more every day. If only they had more books in the trailer, but Myles didn’t believe in them. He didn’t believe in anything that didn’t come out of a bottle, apparently. She wondered briefly if Myles even knew how to read, then put it out of her mind. Who cared? After tomorrow, they would be done with him forever.
Would she miss him? Her eyes fell on the fading bruises on her upper arms and she shook her head. No, she wouldn’t miss him, just like she didn’t miss Sandra since she’d disappeared.
Something’s wrong with you, she tried to tell herself, but that quiet voice spoke up again, negating what she’d just thought. It didn’t matter that they were her parents, neither had said a kind word to her or treated her nicely in all the time she could remember. Her entire life. They’d been nicer to Kaci, but only when she was a baby. When Kaci had turned two and three and wanted to run and explore, the abuse had begun. Not to mention what they’d done to Kaci as a baby. That first insult that Cerise could never forget. Stealing her out of her home, away from her parents to live this life of hell.
She put aside the encyclopedia and pulled out all their cash, counting through it as best she could. She did not know if she was completely correct in her assumptions about the money, but she’d seen enough in their movies to know she had the right idea.
She laid out her stacks of twenties, tens, fives, and ones, and counted through them quickly. $633, just like it had been last night. They also had a bag of coins but she was less confident in knowing what they were worth, because of the difference in nomenclature. Nomenclature was a word the encyclopedia had taught her and she repeated it often inside her head, loving the weight and length of it. Nomenclature. From what she could tell, it meant how the money was named. But the problem with the coins was she didn’t know exactly what portion of a dollar they represented. She’d found a book in a trash pile behind their closest neighbor’s house called, My Big Book of Dollars and Cents, but the back half had been torn off and most of the pages removed. She’d studied what had remained intently, but still knew her knowledge was inadequate.
If only she knew how much a train ticket to California would cost! Or a bus ticket. She needed two of them and if the $633 wasn’t enough money, she didn’t know what they were going to do. Not hitchhike, that had already ended in disaster.
Cerise carefully wrapped the money back in its bag and pulled out her second most prized possession. A faded and smeared folding map of the United States, that had also been dug out of the trash pile. She put it on top of the money. Next came a piece of lined paper with Cerise’s painstaking handwriting on it. She let her eyes travel over the first two entries
Grey house. pink mailbox. First to east on Granger Street. $42.
Two story white house to the south in middle of Pike’s field. $14
Cerise hated stealing anything at all, but she had spent months and years worrying over their situation and could see no other way out of it. She kept the list because she planned on returning to the area someday and paying everybody back every bit of money they had taken.
At the very bottom of the hole were two more books, both stories that she had stared at over and over again, teaching herself to read them after she’d memorized the relationship of the captions on the TV to the words coming out of the actors’ mouths.
Placing everything but her encyclopedia back in the hole, and the map at the very top, she glanced at Kaci. The TV was still muted, but Kaci was whispering every line.
“Great, it’s Heather.” Kaci’s face changed as she took on the persona of the next person who was speaking. Cerise loved to watch her do it. She had a talent for becoming another person.
Kaci’s eyebrows pulled low over her eyes and her chin jutted out. “Oh, shit.” Then Kaci pulled her shoulders back and looked down her nose, her air haughty. “Hi, Courtney. Love your cardigan.” Again her demeanor changed, relaxing, becoming easier. “Thanks, I just got it last night at The Limited. I totally blew my allowance.” Back to Heather. Cerise could hear the twang in her whisper. “Check this out. You win $5 million…”
Cerise watched for a few more minutes, her fingers rifling through the pages of the book she held. She looked at it slowly, and her mind went to the man in the bed. The man with the scar on his head, who she would never see again. The thought pained her but she wrestled with it. Getting Kaci home was more important than anything else, especially more important than some random guy she didn’t know.
“You ready?” she whispered to Kaci. “We go in the morning, just before the sun comes up.” Myles would sleep until noon if he drank as much as he normally did, and he wouldn’t come looking for them until he wanted food, which wouldn’t be until later in the evening. They could have a twelve-hour head start on him, easily.
Kaci turned to her slowly and Cerise saw both fear and excitement in her eyes. “Fuck me gently with a chainsaw. Do I look like Mother Teresa?”
Cerise smiled. Kaci was twelve, or close to it, and Cerise knew she was too young to be swearing like that, but she would never tell her not to do it. Swearing was Kaci’s favorite thing and one of the only pleasures she had in her life. Kaci deserved much better than what she got and if repeating swear words she heard on the tiny TV gave her some small measure of happiness, then Cerise would never breathe a word against it.
Besides, if Cerise was even remotely harsh with Kaci, the girl refused to talk to her, sometimes for weeks. Her feelings could be hurt so easily, and Cerise was her entire world.
Cerise didn’t have to worry about her swearing around Myles, because Myles had never heard Kaci talk. No one had, except Cerise.
“Oh!” Cerise cried. The phrase Mother Teresa jogged something in her mind. She thumbed through the book she held in her lap and went straight to a paragraph she’d read earlier. Kaci crawled over to her excitedly. “What?”
Cerise found what she was looking for and held the page open. “Look, it’s Mother Teresa! She was a real person!”
Cerise read haltingly, sounding out words she didn’t quite understand. “Mother Teresa, known in the Catholic Church as St. Teresa of Calcutta, was an Albanian Indian Roman Catholic nun and missionary and consecrated virgin.”
Cerise read it all again silently, then continued to the next paragraph. Kaci was already crawling away, back to the TV in the closet. “Cool,” Kaci said under her breath, then stopped crawling and looked back to Cerise. “Wait, people talk about whether or not someone is a virgin?”
Cerise shook her head and read that line over again. Weird. “I guess.”
Kaci looked stricken and scared again.
Damage control. Cerise launched into the argument she always used when she could tell Kaci was terrified to leave even this poor excuse for a life. “Look, Kaci, we’re going to find your real parents. Living with them is going to be way better than living here. No one’s going to hit you or yell at you.”
Cerise licked her lips, praying that was true. She didn’t know for sure, but kids on the TV were hugged and kissed and smiled at, and given presents on their birthday. She had no idea when her or Kaci’s birthday was. They’d taken to celebrating them at random every few months, especially on days when Kaci slumped in the closet and stared at the ceiling, refusing to talk for hours. Cerise would run outside and gather pine cones, or flowers or anything to try to make her smile. One such birthday had resulted in Cerise weaving together sticks to make a basket that Kaci had carried around full of flowers or bugs until it had fallen apart.
“I’ll take you shopping,” Cerise said quickly.
Kaci smiled at that. “I shop, therefore I am.”
Cerise leaned forward, hands on knees. Another Heather’s quote. “Yes, you can get all those nice clothes that the Heathers wear. And Veronica, too. The plaid blouses with the shoulder pads.”
Kaci made a face. “I hate those shoulder pads. They look so ugly. Besides, they aren’t in anymore,” she said with authority.
Cerise turned away to hide her smile. Kaci had to be right, they hadn’t seen anybody wearing shoulder pads in any of the pictures of the houses they’d been in. All the girls wore them in Heathers, and sometimes the women wore them in the few Knight Rider DVDs they had, but none of the other shows.
Kaci spoke, her voice soft and whispery, but still, Cerise could tell how scared she was. “You’re going to stay with me, right?”
Cerise nodded and forced a smile. “Of course,” she said brightly. Maybe. She’d have to come back and pay back the people she’d taken the money from, but she’d have to make the money first. She could get a job in California. “I’m sure your parents would let me stay close by and visit you every day.”
Kaci pouted. “If they won’t, then I won’t live with them.”
Cerise was about to explain why that wouldn’t work, when Kaci spoke again. “What if we get caught, like last time?”
Cerise shook her head. “I’m over 18 this time. The cops will leave us alone, I know it.” I hope.
“We won’t hitchhike?”
Cerise shook her head, forcing herself to look Kaci in the eye. She wasn’t telling a lie, her plan was not to hitchhike unless it was their only option. “We won’t hitchhike. We have enough money to get us to California, I know we do.”
Tears formed in the corner of Kaci’s eyes. “I don’t want to go to foster care again.” Cerise crawled over to her, squeezing inside the closet, and pulled her into a hug. “I know. Jail wasn’t any fun, either.”
“What about the big cop? The crazy one? What if he finds us again?” Kaci asked and Cerise pulled her in tighter. “I promise you he won’t show up this time. He doesn’t even know where we are.” That was the only good thing about the last time they’d tried to escape and been caught. Sandra and Myles had moved them away from that man with the intense eyes, all the way across the country, and they’d never seen him again. He’d scared Cerise as much as he had Kaci.
Cerise rolled her eyes heavenward. Please God, let her be right. If that cop found them again, who knew what he would do.
Chapter 5
Beckett sat at Crew’s new dining room table, on a bench, next to Troy and Trent, thankful that Trent was next to him and not Troy. Trent ate fastidiously, even though he had no hands to bring the food to his mouth, slowly lowering his head and delicately picking his way around his plate.
Troy ate like the dog he looked like, wolfing his food without regard to what mixed with what or how he looked or how much flew off his plate onto the tablecloth.
Beckett didn’t mind it too much, but Heather, who was directly opposite them, looked positively green and hadn’t touched a bite of her salad or roast. Her pregnancy surprise, or Troy’s table manners? Beckett bet on the table manners. Heather still seemed to feel nervous around the two wolves.
Everyone at the table spoke over each other except for Trent and Troy, Heather, Beckett, and Jaggar.
Beckett finished his last bite of beef and dropped his fork, wondering how quickly he could escape. Did he have to wait until after dessert?
His gaze fell on the picture he had brought as a gift, already hanging on the wall directly above the table. A place of honor. It was the overhead view of Chicago he had taken from his drone in a circling panoramic before drones were cool. Crew had always loved that picture, so Beckett had taken it off
the wall of his own house, gifting it to his friend.
Besides his truck, Beckett had nothing to spend his money on but his drones, and he’d been fascinated with drone photography from his very first flight. That picture had been one of the first good shots he’d ever taken. Professional quality.
Beckett would never have given that picture to anyone else, except maybe his own brother. But his brother was dead and Crew was the only substitute for him that Beckett had. Beckett clamped down on the feelings that came with that thought and tried to pay attention to something, anything else. Desperate, he focused on Troy, watching him lick his plate clean, then start on the tablecloth.
Wade cleared his throat, his face serious. “Can I say something?” He addressed his question to Crew and Dahlia.
Crew nodded, his expression questioning, and Dahlia smiled her agreement.
Wade thought for a moment before he began. “I want to get this out of the way, so we can enjoy the rest of our evening. We have much to talk about as a group, and this is the first time we’ve all been together in many weeks. We’re missing Canyon, Timber, and Sebastian, but they already know most of this, and what they don’t know, I’ll make sure to tell them.”
He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and stared at it. “On the subject of the one true mates, there is nothing new to report.” He looked pointedly at Beckett but Beckett shook his head, still not knowing if Crew’s vision was wrong, or if he had somehow lost a day of his life. “Maybe I was drunk,” he mumbled, even as he knew he hadn’t been that drunk in years, not since he’d first been old enough to scrounge up liquor and see if forgetfulness was stored at the bottom of a bottle.
Wade gave him a look, then dismissed him. “Khain crossed into the Ula today.” Wade held up his hands to quell the noise that had erupted at that statement. Trevor, Graeme, Crew, and Troy all had begun speaking at once, or, in Troy’s case, barking.
