Family Sins

by Sharon Sala

  “Jesse! What the hell’s wrong with you?” Aidan shouted.

  “It’s gone!” Jesse cried.

  “What’s gone, Jesse?” Bowie asked.

  “Can’t look. Can’t look,” Jesse muttered.

  “Can’t look at what?” Bowie asked.

  Jesse pointed over toward the cliff side of the road.

  “The fence is gone. It was there, and now it’s not. Someone’s dead like Daddy. Can’t look.”

  Bowie stared, unable to believe they hadn’t noticed, and then he saw the broken cable in a tangle off in the trees.

  Even though he understood the ramifications of the broken cable, he wouldn’t let himself believe it had been Talia who’d broken it.

  His heart was pounding as he ran to the cliff’s edge and looked down. When he saw the back end of a blue car plainly visible among the trees below, he had a brief understanding of how his mother must have felt finding Stanton.

  “Oh my God! Aidan! It’s Talia. Call 911. Get an ambulance. Get a wrecker. She went over the cliff.”

  Without waiting for Aidan to answer and without thinking about the danger, Bowie stepped off the edge of the mountain and took the fast way down in a running, stumbling slide.

  Talia couldn’t be dead. God wouldn’t let that happen.

  Aidan grabbed his phone to make the calls, and while he wasn’t looking, Jesse took one giant step out into space and followed Bowie down the side of the mountain.

  Bowie couldn’t focus on anything but getting to the car.

  He lost his footing countless times and started sliding down on his back. Then he dug in his heels and began grabbing at saplings to slow his descent until he could regain his footing.

  As he neared the car, he kept hearing a strange dinging sound. By the time he got close enough to see, there was no movement inside the vehicle and no one shouting for help. He was almost on top of the car before he realized the dinging sound was because the car door was ajar on the passenger side and the keys were still in the ignition.

  He scooted sideways until he reached the car. Seconds later rocks began rolling down at his feet, and he looked up to see Jesse less than ten feet away with an intent expression on his face, waiting for orders.

  Bowie was stunned that his brother had made it in one piece. He didn’t know whether to be glad Jesse had followed him or worried that he was going to have two people to get back up the mountain instead of one.

  “Grab a tree,” Bowie said, and Jesse did. “Just stay there a minute and let me see if I can get to her.”

  “Staying here,” Jesse said.

  Bowie gave him a thumbs-up and began inching his way from the back end of the car to the driver’s-side door. His first sight of her was heart-stopping. She was slumped over the steering wheel, unconscious, and bleeding from the nose and from a cut he could see above her forehead. There was no way to tell what kind of internal injuries or broken bones she might have, and he was just praying for a pulse when he leaned in and felt her carotid artery. To his everlasting relief, it was strong.

  “She’s alive!” he yelled.

  Jesse raised his arms in jubilation.

  “Alive! Alive!” he yelled, and waved at Aidan, who was staring down at them in disbelief.

  Bowie tried to open the door, but it was jammed. He thought about circling the car to the open door and getting inside, but he was afraid his added weight would cause the car to start sliding again. And he hesitated to move her for fear he would make bad things worse. All he could think to do was pray the rescue units would get there soon and make those decisions for him.

  “Talia, can you hear me?” he asked, and put a hand on the back of her neck. “Talia, baby, it’s me, Bowie. Can you move? Can you feel your arms?”

  She moaned, and the sound was such a relief he almost cried.

  “Baby, I need for you to wake up and talk to me,” he said.

  She moaned again, then moved one hand toward the steering wheel.

  Seeing that much motion was a relief of sorts. At least now he knew her neck wasn’t broken or she wouldn’t have been able to move her arm. She could, however, have a spinal fracture, and a wrong move there could cause permanent damage.

  He was debating with himself about what to do when the car slid a few feet forward, followed by a sudden explosion. Bowie fell backward, and Jesse jumped a good foot in the air and then hit the ground looking for cover.

  Within moments Bowie saw that when the car slid forward it had rammed into a broken-off sapling, which had pierced the tire like a knife. He got to his feet shouting, “Jesse, it’s okay! It’s not a gunshot. The tire blew out. It’s just a flat tire.”

  Jesse rolled over and sat up. There was a frantic expression in his eyes.

  “You’re okay,” Bowie said. “It was just a tire going flat.”

  But Talia’s situation was no longer okay. The blowout had caused the car to shift position. Bowie could see it beginning to move, and waiting to get her out from the other side was no longer an option.

  He made a split-second decision. It was this or risk losing her for good.

  He grabbed his pocket knife, slashed the seat belt holding her in place, then leaned in the window and slid his hands beneath her shoulders.

  The moment he shifted her weight the car moved some more.

  Please, God, no.

  He planted the heel of his boot on the slope to keep from going with the car and began to pull.

  All of a sudden there was a loud thud. The car vibrated, rocked once, and then the slide suddenly stalled.

  Bowie looked up to see Jesse spread-eagled on the trunk of the car, putting all his weight on the back end to steady it.

  “Hurry, Bowie!” Jesse yelled.

  Bowie took him at his word and pulled her free. He fell backward with her in his arms just as the car began to slide again.

  “Jump, Jesse!” Bowie yelled.

  Jesse pushed himself backward as the car slid out from under him. He grabbed on to a tree as the car continued to slide before catching in more trees farther down.

  Jesse crawled over to where Bowie was lying with Talia in his arms and threw his arms around his brother’s neck.

  “You’re okay, Bowie. You’re okay,” Jesse said, then looked at Talia and gently patted her on the arm.

  Bowie held on to Talia with one arm and grabbed his brother with the other.

  “Jesse Youngblood, you are one awesome dude,” he said softly, hugging him tight.

  “I have sharp eyes,” Jesse said.

  Bowie started crying and hugged him again.

  “You sure as hell do, little brother. You helped me save Talia’s life.”

  Aidan was shouting at them from above, but Bowie couldn’t hear what he was saying. Moments later he heard a siren in the distance. And then another, and another.

  Bowie looked at Jesse. “Help is coming,” he said. “Do you hear the sirens?”

  Jesse nodded, then looked down at the knees of his jeans, and frowned at the dirt and tears.

  “Mama’s gonna be mad I tore my jeans,” he muttered.

  “No, she won’t. Not this time,” Bowie said. “I promise you, she won’t be mad.”

  * * *

  Leigh was pacing the floor. She had a bad feeling about what might have happened to Talia, and when she began to hear sirens, she ran outside.

  The sirens were close, which wasn’t good, considering the short time her boys had been gone. She grabbed her cell phone from the hip pocket and was about to make a call when it rang in her hand. She jumped, saw it was from Aidan and was officially scared. She didn’t bother with hello.

  “What’s wrong?” she cried.

  “We found Talia. Her car went over the side of the cliff. Bowie went down to the wr
eck site, and before I could stop him, Jesse went, too.”

  “Oh my God!” Leigh groaned. “Is Talia alive? Are the boys okay?”

  “Talia is alive, but I don’t know how badly she’s hurt. Her car was partway down, hung up in some trees. While Bowie was pulling her out the window the car began to slide again. Jesse threw himself on top of the trunk to slow it down so Bowie had time to pull her free. I never saw anything like it, Mama. He may be slow, but in times of danger, his soldier instincts kick in. They’re still down there waiting for rescue to get to them.”

  Leigh could hardly believe what she was hearing.

  “I’m coming down. I won’t get in the way, but those are my children hanging on to the side of the mountain, and I need to be there.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Aidan said, and then saw the first rescue truck appear around the curve. “Oh, thank God. The first rescue unit is here. Gotta go.”

  Leigh ran inside the house for her purse, tossed in the phone and pulled out her car keys. Moments later she was in her Jeep and heading for the main road. Never had she felt Stanton’s absence as strongly as she was feeling it now. They were all under attack, and it was turning into a blood feud.

  “Oh, Stanton, this is just more of the madness related to your murder. I don’t know how this is going to turn out, but I’ll go down fighting for you and our children,” she said, and kept driving until she came up on the rescue vehicles blocking the road.

  She got out, trying not to be overwhelmed by the panic she was feeling, and began moving through the crowd of men and vehicles looking for Aidan. When she saw him talking to Constable Riordan she headed straight toward them.

  Aidan saw her coming.

  “Mama’s here. You can ask her about all this.”

  Riordan saw the look on her face as he turned around. She looked upset, bordering on enraged. Just as he thought she would stop to talk, she walked right past him and all the way to the edge of the road.

  Aidan ran to catch up with her.

  “Mama?”

  She pointed at the men rappelling down the mountainside just below where they were standing.

  “I can’t see Jesse or Bowie.”

  “They’re lying down. See the top of Bowie’s head there, between that stump and that scrub brush?”

  She looked again, then put a hand to her heart, as if to steady the beat.

  “My God, yes, I see. Where’s Jesse?”

  Aidan pulled her a few feet to the right and pointed again.

  “See him there? Bowie has one arm around him and the other holding Talia.”

  “Do you know how badly she’s hurt?”

  “No, only that Bowie yelled that she was alive before he pulled her out.”

  Leigh shoved her hands through her hair.

  “I can’t believe this happened. Are they going to be able to recover Talia’s car?”

  “Yes, ma’am. The wrecker crew is waiting until they have Talia in the ambulance before they get to work.”

  Leigh looked out across the mountains to the valley below. Eden was down there somewhere beyond the trees, harboring a den of vipers. It was time to run the snakes out of Eden.

  “I need to speak to Constable Riordan again.”

  “He’s waiting to talk to you, too,” Aidan said. “Want me to go with you?”

  “No, you stay here and watch out for Talia and your brothers.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  He’d seen that look on her face before. He recognized that take-charge attitude. Shit was about to hit the fan.

  Leigh looked for the constable, then ran over to where he was standing.

  “I need to talk to you,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am. Let’s step over here so we’re out of the way.”

  She followed him a few yards uphill and then stopped.

  “You saw Bowie’s pickup down the hill?”

  “Yes, on the way up. Aidan said Bowie’s brakes went out.”

  “I think they were tampered with, and the fact that Talia’s car went off the side of the mountain leads me to believe it was tampered with, too.”

  “That’s a pretty far stretch, saying someone got access to both their vehicles and then they just happened to be driving up the mountain on the same day,” Riordan said.

  “It’s not a stretch at all. Circumstance put both cars right beside each other today, and I’d bet money that’s where and when it happened. Talia buried her father this morning. Bowie went into Eden to be with her. Both cars must have been parked at her house, because the funeral home would have picked them up there to take them to the service.”

  “Why do you automatically assume it was tampering?”

  “Because a couple of days ago I had a run-in with my family. It wasn’t pretty. The bottom line is, when we went to leave, if it hadn’t been for Bowie’s quick thinking, Justin would have put a knife in my back. My boys took him down and took the knife away from him. He threatened to get even. He told all of us we would be sorry. And now this? There is no such thing as coincidence when it comes to those people.”

  Riordan frowned. “Did you report the assault to Chief Clayton?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “They committed murder and are still living their privileged lives. With the incident being their word against ours? Why bother?”

  Riordan frowned.

  “I understand how you feel, and I hear your theory. But we still don’t know why Miss Champion’s car went over the cliff.”

  “You don’t know yet, but you will find out. But by the time you do, something else will have happened. If anyone else in my family is harmed, or even threatened in any way, and the law still has done nothing, I will go to war with them. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  The hair rose on the back of Riordan’s neck. Leigh Youngblood had just given him fair warning.

  “Okay, I hear you,” Riordan said. “I’ll have both vehicles towed into the county impound and get my crime scene team to check them out ASAP. And I’ll have Chief Clayton start investigating your accusation today.”

  “Thank you,” Leigh said, and then heard a commotion and saw a lot of people beginning to gather at the edge of the road. “What’s happening?”

  Riordan glanced over his shoulder.

  “I’d say they were bringing up the injured woman. Excuse me. I need to be there,” he said, and hurried away.

  Leigh followed, praying Talia’s injuries weren’t life-threatening. It would kill Bowie if anything happened to her now.

  * * *

  While all the confusion was happening up on the road, Bowie and Jesse were waiting for help to get down to them.

  Initially, when the car had rolled away, leaving Talia in Bowie’s arms, he was more or less perpendicular to the slope. Desperate not to move Talia any more than he’d already been forced to, he dug in his heels to keep from sliding and dropped the rest of the way to the ground. His arms were beneath Talia’s breasts, and he had her head immobilized between his chin and his chest to brace her. He hadn’t moved since, except once to grab Jesse, and now they were stranded, waiting for someone to get Talia before they dared to move.

  The sun was directly overhead and brutal. There was a bit of a breeze that high up, but not nearly enough. He needed to shade her face, but didn’t have anything.

  “Hey, Jesse, do you have a handkerchief or a bandana in your pocket?”

  “Got a yellow bandana.”

  “Can you get to it without sliding away from me?”

  Jesse moved enough to pull it out of his back pocket.

  “Here it is!”

  “Would you please unfold it all the way and then lay it over Talia’s face so she won’t get sunburned?”

  “Y
es, yes, I can do that,” Jesse said.

  Still holding on to Bowie, he opened the bandana, then gently covered her face with it.

  “That’s great,” Bowie said. “Thank you, brother. You’re really doing a good job.”

  Jesse smiled. It was a smile of innocence that touched Bowie’s heart.

  Bowie was relieved the sun was off her face, but he was concerned about her breathing, which didn’t sound good. There was a slight rattle to her breath every time she exhaled. He feared everything from internal bleeding to a deflated lung, and he was hanging on to each breath she took as his lifeline. He’d turned himself into a backboard to keep her as immobile as possible and just needed this hell to be over with. Sweat was burning his eyes, but he didn’t dare move.

  Then he began to feel a change in her breathing and tried not to panic.

  “Jesse, I think my girl is waking up, and we don’t want her to move until doctors can check her out, right?”

  “Yes, sir. What do you want me to do?”

  “I need you to scoot down beside me and just hug her legs a little so she can’t move around. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir. I’m gonna hug your legs and hers, but not too tight.”

  Bowie sighed in relief.

  “Yes. Exactly. Go ahead now and scoot, but don’t ever turn loose of me, okay? I don’t want you to accidentally fall farther. Mama would be really angry with me if I brought you home hurt.”

  “Won’t turn loose. Gonna hug your legs now,” Jesse said, and did just that.

  Bowie breathed a sigh of relief when he felt the weight of Jesse’s arms across their legs, and it was none too soon. Within seconds Talia stiffened and let out a moan that tore through him. She began mumbling, but he didn’t understand until he listened closer.

  “No brakes...no brakes...no brakes.”

  Bowie groaned. His mother had been right.

  “Talia, can you hear me, baby? You’re alive. I’m holding you in my arms.”

  She moaned.

  “Don’t move. You’re hurt, but help is on the way.”

  She moaned again, then he heard her whisper, “Hurt...”