My mother had then taken me and stayed at a hotel while my father was taken away by my uncle, and had been gone ever since.
My father knew right from wrong.
He just had a problem with impulse control.
When he was in the midst of one of his episodes, he would drift to a place where he couldn’t control his actions and couldn’t decipher right from wrong. He’d always snap out of it, and when he came back to himself, he always knew that he’d done something bad.
So he didn’t fight my mom.
He knew he was having trouble adjusting to civilian life.
He knew he needed help that we couldn’t give him.
I still went to see him, but only after I made sure that he was okay first.
Starting up the bike, I rode the rest of the way up the driveway and shut it off beside my mom’s small SUV.
“Where’s your head at?” Lenore asked softly.
I blinked, turning to face her.
“Sorry. I was thinking about my dad,” I said softly.
“Your dad? I didn’t realize your mother was married.”
I nodded. “They’re married. But they’re just not…together.”
“What my son is too polite to say,” my mother’s laughter filled voice said from above us, “is that my husband is not well. He suffers from mood swings. He’s unpredictable, and he is dangerous to be around when he’s having an episode, which made it unsafe for us to live with him. I had no choice but to separate from him. He isn’t allowed to come here without our prior knowledge.”
I turned to find my mother smiling at me and Lenore, and I let Lenore go to walk up the steep steps towards her.
Once I reached the second step up, I opened my arms just in time for my mother to launch herself into them.
I smiled as I smelled my mother’s unique scent--roses and mint—as well as the scent of bread wafting out the open door to her house.
Being in her arms always felt right, and the familiar smells made my breathing come more evenly in my chest.
My mom always made it better, and it was good to be home.
“You’re being so rude,” I teased my mother as I set her down on her feet.
My mother gasped, as any good Southern lady would do, and moved around my body to skip down the steps.
“I’m so sorry. When he told me y’all were coming, I got so excited to see him again that I forgot you were here!” My mother cried. “My name is…”
“Oh, I know who you are,” Lenore smiled. “If I’d have known I was coming here ahead of time, I would’ve brought my mother’s cook books for you to sign, Mrs. Deen.”
“My name’s Rayleigh, please use it. Or you can call me mom,” my mother smiled fondly.
Lenore’s face blushed as she surreptitiously looked over at me. “Sounds good, Mrs...Rayleigh.”
“Oh, I’m so excited. I have some cook books you can have. My office is filled with them,” my mother laughed, pulling Lenore by the hand into the house.
Lenore didn’t even spare me a glance as she hurried behind my mother.
I followed closely behind, closing the door that they’d left open behind me.
My mother’s house hadn’t changed since I’d last been there six months before. After Tanner’s funeral.
She had someone come in once a week to clean, I was sure, but besides that, she hadn’t changed it.
Which was weird for my mother who was notorious for moving her couches around once a week.
“Ma!” I called as I walked into the kitchen. “What’s up with your…”
I trailed off as I saw both Casten and Ridley in the middle of my mother’s kitchen.
Two men that I’d left three days ago to keep an eye on a man whose days were numbered.
Both had their hands full.
Casten was rolling out what looked to be dough.
He had a red apron on that dubbed him as the ‘butter baby.’
Ridley had on a black apron that was blank, but it was so covered in what looked to be flour. So much so that it might as well have been white.
The funniest thing, though, was the apron Lenore was pulling on over her head.
On it said, ‘I’m the butter queen.’
I laughed.
Lenore narrowed her eyes as she looked down at what had caught my attention, then sighed.
“Really, Rayleigh? You couldn’t have found me anything other than one that says ‘queen’ on it?” Lenore asked laughingly.
My mother looked at her with confusion. “What’s the problem?”
Lenore smiled fondly. “Nothing. Griffin calls me ‘queenie’ and ‘queen’ because all of my things have tiaras on them. Like my purse…and my…shoes.”
She placed her hands down on the flour covered counter as she spoke.
I snorted. “No, it’s because all of her underwear have ‘queen’ and tiaras on them. She does have the bag, but that doesn’t have anything to do with why I call her…”
I was shut up by Lenore’s flour covered hand coming down flat on my chest. “That’s quite enough.”
I winked at her.
“Ma, why’d you let these two jokers in?” I asked.
I should’ve known they’d come.
They were all worried about me.
I wondered if Peek had put them up to it or if they’d come on their own.
Either way, I was thankful.
I highly doubted they’d come for my mother, but in case they did decide to do something monumentally stupid, Casten and Ridley were two of the best in the business.
“They said they wanted to come down for a little ‘R&R’ when they called just after you did to tell me you were coming. Knowing it really means they’ve got women trouble and want home cooked meals that they don’t have to cook themselves, I said they could come, too.” My mother explained teasingly, turning to the two men.
I wouldn’t put it past them to do that, but not this time.
Not that my mother needed to know that.
“What’s for dinner?” I asked as I took a seat at the bar.
I was staring directly at my mother, but out of the corner of my eye I could see Casten talking to Lenore.
Lenore nodded and tilted her head in my direction, and I sighed.
“Chicken in bourbon cream sauce. Mashed potatoes and grilled asparagus,” my mother rattled off as she stuck herself into her massive fridge and came back out with a bowl of freshly trimmed chicken. “Oh, and homemade bread.”
“Sounds good,” I said, standing up. “I have to make a few calls, and I need to go stretch my legs. I’ll be back in a few.”
My mother nodded, but other than that didn’t acknowledge me as she turned to Lenore and started telling her what they had to do first.
Catching both Casten and Ridley’s eyes, I moved to the door that led to the back porch, and waited for the two men to appear at my side.
They didn’t disappoint.
“When did y’all get here?” I asked once the door closed behind them.
“About twenty minutes before you.” Ridley answered, coming up on my left while Casten came up on my right.
“Notice anything off?” I asked, keeping my eyes pinned on the ocean that was less than a hundred yards away.
“Not a thing,” Ridley said. “Your dad called when we got here, but he didn’t say anything about us being here.”
“Hmm,” I said. “He knows you, though. He knows you’re not a threat to his woman.”
Dad had my mom’s place wired.
He watched who came and went from her place, which was inevitably why I didn’t have a problem with her place not being watched since the beginning of this shit fest.
My father did it religiously. He may not be allowed to live with his wife but that doesn’t mean he’s not going to keep her safe.
But Casten and Ridley had to think something bigger was going on here for them to come down here wi
thout asking me.
“You think it’s gonna get bad, too. Don’t you?” I asked.
Casten was the one to speak, and he didn’t sound very encouraging.
“It’s not that I don’t trust your instincts,” Casten said. “But something else besides the death of your son is going on here, and we think you’re too focused on that to see the bigger picture.”
I winced.
But I couldn’t say he was wrong.
“So what’s your gut got to say?” I asked.
“My gut says that they’re gonna get this bill passed by any means possible, most likely because they have someone huge backing this. Bill fucking Gates, huge,” Ridley added. “And nothing’s sacred. Not a kid’s life. Not a cop’s life. Not anyone’s life. And they’ve proved it with your son and tried to prove it to you three days ago.”
I couldn’t argue that point.
This went beyond just my son, and I knew that.
But I couldn’t get past it.
My son was more important to me than some bill being passed.
If I wasn’t careful, they’d take me out before I could prove who did it.
“Did you get anything out of the shooter?” I asked, turning to Ridley.
“Not a damn thing. Kid was only twenty and was homeless until about two days before he tried to shoot you,” Ridley answered. “Took him into Paul who booked him for attempted murder. Found out his name is Alex Lively of Tyler, Texas. He was approached about a day before he tried to shoot you. Paid a grand to do it with a piece that the woman provided him.”
“And the woman?” I asked.
“No name. Kid’s young and never thought to even ask her. He showed me the roll of bills she gave him, though. I can see why he didn’t care what she looked like. Kid was in desperate need of some rehab. He had needle marks all over his body, indicating he’d had a problem for some time. It would’ve been easy for someone to see that he was an easy target,” Casten said.
I didn’t doubt it.
I’d been at a coffee shop, of all places, trying to keep awake with some good coffee, when I was approached from behind as I headed out to my bike that I’d parked in an alley.
I’d been working the same gun trafficking case that I’d caught a lead on four days prior, and I’d been working on little to no sleep.
I had been contemplating the merit of a few hours of sleep compared to trying to talk to the man we’d caught with a shipment of guns passing over the Louisiana/Texas border on Caddo when I’d felt a weird tingling at my back.
I turned just in time to knock the gun away from the kid that’d had it pointed at the back of my head.
Had the kid not hesitated, I would’ve never noticed as he stepped out from behind the dumpster, aimed at my head, and fired.
But he had hesitated, and I’d realized something was wrong in time to stop him from blowing a hole in the back of my head.
My eyes wandered along the beach as I finally let myself realize how close I’d come to dying.
Possibly by seconds only…and it was a humbling experience.
“Thought that house was owned by some old folks.” Casten wondered.
I followed his gaze to find a kid, all of two years old, at the most, walking straight towards the water chasing after a football that’d gone about a foot into the surf.
But the longer it was in there, the further and further the rolling water took it out.
“Shit,” I hissed, shucking my boots from my feet.
The next thing to go was my gun as I laid it all on the deck at my feet, took the stairs at a leap and a bound, and started running.
My shirt was gone by the time I hit the bottom of the stairs, and I looked down the beach to see if any of the adults sitting around were paying attention to the kid.
They weren’t.
By the time I’d sprinted half way there, the kid had gone into the water to about ankle deep.
By the time I hit the wet sand, he was in up to his chest.
“Stop!” I yelled at the boy.
You know the tone.
Everyone does.
It’s the sound of a parent’s voice, worried and frantic, telling a kid to stop doing what he’s doing and freeze.
It worked, too.
The boy looked back at me, eyes wide, then his feet were swept from under him as an incoming wave took him out at the knees.
The kid flailed and went under.
The last thing I saw before he was swept down was the wide, fear filled eyes of a boy that wasn’t supposed to be doing what he was doing.
The water felt like quicksand as I took tall, wide steps.
My feet ate up the distance to where I’d last seen the boy and I dove under the water.
My eyes burned as I looked through the water with them opened, and I came up and flipped my hair out of my eyes.
My heart was pounding in my chest as I searched frantically for the red shirt that the boy was wearing.
I couldn’t find it.
I heard more splashing behind me as I was sure Casten and Ridley joined in on the search, but I didn’t come up for air long enough to look for them to corroborate my thoughts.
On my fifth dive underneath the water, with my lungs screaming for me to go back up for air, I finally saw a flash of red.
And I swam for it.
Eyes starting to dot white with the lack of oxygen in my blood, I pushed forward with one last burst of energy and clasped onto the red t-shirt of the little boy.
I was in six feet of water now; by the time I had him in my arms and pushed off to the surface, I was nearly seconds from passing out myself.
I hit the top of the water and burst through the surface, taking in deep pulls of air as fast as my lungs could hold them.
I pulled the boy up with me, but he did nothing more than flop back into the water face first.
I wanted to throw up.
I was holding a little boy in my hands that wasn’t breathing.
The last time I’d done that, it’d been with my own son.
Shaking off those thoughts, I turned the boy over to his back and let his head rest on my shoulder as I paddled into the beach at a diagonal angle.
“He got him,” someone yelled from the beach.
I didn’t look.
Instead, I kept swimming, happy as fuck when I got close enough to the beach where I could walk in.
The moment my upper body was out of the water, I held the boy in my hands like one would a baby and started to breathe for him.
I covered his mouth with mine, pinching his nose, as I gave him a small breath.
Was I supposed to give half breaths? Or were they full? Would I burst his lungs if I gave too much?
Those thoughts sifted through my brain as I did what I could as I hurried to the dry sand.
The moment I was completely out of the water, I dropped down to my knees and placed the boy’s body down onto the sand.
Casten was there the moment I had him completely on the ground.
“I’ve got compressions,” he said urgently.
So we both worked together to do CPR on a boy no more than two.
Somewhere behind me I could hear Ridley on the phone with 911.
I could also hear my mother and Lenore crying.
I didn’t look up at them, either.
Instead, I focused on breathing for the little boy that looked eerily similar to Tanner, puffing breath into his lungs.
And when he started to choke, I started to cry.
A lifeguard pushed me back, and I went willingly as I let the professionals take over.
Then I heard the father say, “Well, that was lucky.”
And I snapped, turning around to glare at the stupid, stupid man.
The man who still had his beer in his hand.
“You stupid fuck!” I bellowed. “What the fuck kind of father drinks his fucking beer while three men, who you don’t
even know, rescue his kid?”
I was in the man’s face, and the man was looking at me like I was stupid.
“You had it.”
He was obviously drunk, otherwise he would’ve thought better of his answer.
“You’re going to get fucked,” I hissed, getting close to him. “You can kiss your boy goodbye, is what you can do.”
The mother was behind the father, crying, but I could smell the alcohol pouring off of her, too.
The entire bunch of them were loaded.
Even the minors.
“Cops are here, man,” Casten said.
I turned to find him looking at me with worry in his eyes.
He was wondering if I was about to lose it.
I wasn’t.
But I would’ve given anything—anything—to have my son back, and there these fuckwads were, not even watching a precious gift that they still had, while I no longer had mine.
“Sir, we’re going to have to ask you to take a step back,” an officer said from behind me.
I tossed a look at him over my shoulder and narrowed my eyes.
“Fine,” I snapped, taking a step back and keeping both the officer and the parent of the year in my line of sight. “But you’re going to have to make sure you charge him for something. Child neglect, at the least, or I’ll have your badge.”
The officer stiffened. “I’ll most certainly do what the situation warrants, sir.”
That ‘sir’ was said with such heavy sarcasm that I wanted to punch the young punk’s face in, but I didn’t.
See, I exercised self-control every once in a while.
Narrowing my eyes at the man as I walked, I turned my back on them both and started walking to where Casten, Ridley, my mother, and Lenore were huddled at the bottom of the stairs that lead up to my mother’s place.
Lenore broke off from the group when she saw me coming toward her, and I caught her up in my arms, hugging her to me fiercely.
“Are you okay?” She asked, pulling back from me a bit.
I nodded. “Fine. Just pissed.”
She pressed both of her hands against my face. “Let’s go get you dry.”
I nodded. “Our stuff’s still on my bike.”
“I got it,” Casten said, breaking off from our group and cutting underneath the house.
Whiskey Neat (The Uncertain Saints MC Book 1) Page 17
