42 Days (Hell's Fire Riders MC Book 6)

by KJ Dahlen

  Lacey laid her hand on Bear’s arm. “I think I can. You may not like what I have to say but I will tell you what I can.”

  “Okay, let me get my men set up and we can begin.”

  Lacey shook her head. “I’ll talk to you and you alone. No one else needs to know. You can record my answers but just you, me and Bear.”

  Shay shook his head. “That won’t work for me. I have to have a witness present for this. My men won’t talk, they just need to be there for protocol.”

  Lacey shook her head. “No, just you, me and Bear.”

  “Lacey what if I were there? Would you trust me?” Pappy asked.

  Lacey glanced at Bear who nodded toward Pappy. Sighing heavily, she agreed. “Ok but just the four of us.”

  Pappy agreed and led the way to a small bedroom on the main floor. Before Shay came into the room, he grabbed a small recorder and brought it with him. He sat down at the table and hit the record button. “My name is Shay Montross and I’m questioning Lacey Phillips about her brother Leroy Nash and his plot to destroy this nation. From what we’ve been able to determine, Leroy was going to take steps to destroy this nation’s government and murder thousands of innocent people.” He turned to Lacey and began his questioning, “Miss Phillips, how are you related to Leroy Nash?”

  “He’s my older half-brother.”

  “You share which parent?”

  “Our mother, Lila Nash Phillips.”

  “How long have you known about Leroy?”

  “From when I was old enough to ask questions. My mother told me I had an older brother and she told me she hoped he would never find her or me.”

  “Why did she tell you that?”

  “She told me Leroy was crazy. She told me there was something wrong with him and there had been since the day he was born.”

  “Did she ever tell you what she thought was wrong with him?” Shay frowned. As did Pappy and Bear.

  Lacey shook her head. “She said he was conceived in hatred and violence and she was afraid he was going to hurt someone. She told me as soon as she looked at him, she knew there was something wrong with him. She said she tried to care for him but that he was a cold, unloving baby. She said he tried to stab her when he was four and then when he was five, she had to leave him behind. She said he took after his father in that he was cold and heartless and she couldn’t live like that anymore. She was ashamed to admit it, but she was afraid of her own son.”

  “From the records we were able to find on Leroy Nash, child services claim he was abandoned when he was five years old.”

  Lacey hung her head and nodded. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she spoke, “My mother told me she had no choice but to leave him behind. She told me he threatened to kill her in her sleep if she told him no again. He’d been at the park playing and he hurt one of the kids there. She had to drag him back to the house they were living in but Leroy wanted to go back to the park and teach the boy he’d been fighting with a lesson. He said the boy took back the truck he was playing with. Leroy had taken it away from him first and the boy took it back. Leroy didn’t like that and he hit the other kid.” She looked at the three men. “My mom said she looked in Leroy’s eyes and didn’t see anything but a black hole. She told me she locked him in his bedroom, packed her clothes and left the apartment. She said she called the police to tell them where he was and skipped town. She said she heard a few days later that by the time the police got there, Leroy had gotten out of his room and was down on the streets on his way back to the park. The police said he was going back to get the truck he’d been playing with earlier. He got mad when the cops picked him up and wouldn’t let him go back for the truck.”

  “What else did your mother tell you about your brother?” Shay asked.

  “We didn’t talk about Leroy much after she told me that. She said she had her regrets about him but not that she left him behind. She had to start her life over again and when she did, she found my father and had me.”

  “What happened to your mother when Leroy finally found you?”

  Lacey shuddered with the memory of that day. “He found us on the Fourth of July that year. It was his birthday. He had turned eighteen that day and he was happy he found her on the day he celebrated as his day. He saw the Happy Birthday sign up over our kitchen table and he thought it was for him. At first, he seemed ok but my mother was very nervous about him being there with us. She couldn’t believe he found us. She had been so careful all that time. My dad didn’t seem to want him there at all. It was about midmorning when my dad left to go to the grocery store for food for the grill we were going to have for lunch. The store was only a block away so it shouldn’t have taken him long to get there and back. Leroy disappeared for a few minutes about the same time but he came back right away. When my dad didn’t come back, we were surprised and then mom got scared. She took me with her to find him. I remember she wouldn’t let go of my hand all the way there and back. We walked all the way to the store and beyond a block or so. We didn’t find my dad but we did find a blood trail. We followed it to the river but we didn’t find my dad.” Lacey paused as her body shook.

  Shay waited patiently for her to speak again.

  Lacey held onto Bear’s hand as she went on, “By the time we got back, Leroy had made hamburgers and expected us to eat with him. Mom told him we would wait for my dad and he said not to bother. My Dad wasn’t coming back. When he told her that my mom started to cry. She knew Leroy had done something bad. I remember Leroy finished his hamburger and chips and told her it was time. When she asked what was it time for, he said it was time for her to die. Mom got scared and asked him why. Leroy calmly explained when she left him, he knew she wasn’t coming back for him. He knew she never loved him and that when she left him he called that a betrayal. He screamed at her that betrayal in his mind equaled death and that he was there to make her pay for her betrayal. He said he’d already seen and spoken to his father and that he’d taken him out for his betrayal of not wanting his own son, now it was her turn but he told her not to worry about me. I hadn’t betrayed him yet and he would teach me to never cross that line because if I did, he would teach me the same lesson.” Lacey stopped speaking for a moment. Her throat was swollen with unshed tears as memories long buried in her mind came to the surface. She really didn’t want to remember everything Leroy had done that day. Her mind had blocked off the horror of it all…all that time ago and now, she couldn’t bring it all back.

  “You said he saw the birthday sign in the kitchen and he thought it was for him.” Bear stated. “If it wasn’t for him who was it for?”

  Lacey turned her face to his and whispered her answer, “It was for me. I was born on the Fourth of July too. We were born eleven years apart, but we shared the same birthday.”

  “Did Leroy ever figure that out?” Pappy wanted to know.

  Lacey shook her head. “I never told him because he never asked. All these years and he never asked me once when I was born.” Tears rolled down her face as she hung her head.

  When she couldn’t seem talk about it anymore, Shay asked another question, “When did Leroy come up with this plan he had going? Did he ever talk about it with you?”

  “When we left Montana, we traveled by boat all the way back to West Virginia. At first, I was too scared of Leroy to even talk to him. He didn’t really talk to me either at least not for the first few days. About a week into the trip, he made up his mind that he was going to make people remember him. He was going to go down in history and people were going to know his name.” She paused and looked at the three men. Her eyes were filled with fear and she looked sick to her stomach. “He said he was tired of being a nobody.”

  The men sat and waited for her to continue, their expressions full of sympathy.

  “I could see everything my mother had been talking about. His eyes scared me but what scared me even more were the plans he was making. My child mind couldn’t even comprehend what he was talking about. I kept wondering ho
w he could be so mean. By the time we got to his father’s house, he forgot I was even there. He was busy studying maps and googling things on his computer. We were there for three days before he remembered I was around.”

  “Didn’t he feed you at all?” Pappy asked.

  Lacey shook her head. “When we first arrived there, he told me to find a corner somewhere and stay there. He would get up and fix a sandwich for himself but he never once looked at me. When he would go back to his office and shut the door I’d sneak into the kitchen and get something to eat but it was never anything he would miss.” She couldn’t meet their gazes and studied the pattern on the floor. “When he was finally done, he came out of the office and glared at me. He told me that I should be ashamed of how bad I smelled. He dragged me to the bathroom, threw me into the bathtub and turned the water on. He handed me the soap and told me to clean myself. He watched me scrub my body but he wouldn’t let me take off my clothes. When I was done, he dragged me back outside to the boat and told me he was taking me to my new home. Then he laid out his rules. He told me if I didn’t like them I could always join my parents.” Taking a deep breath she went on, “I didn’t have a choice. I never had a choice. He was bigger than I was and so much meaner. I just did what I was told to do.”

  “Would he ever leave you alone in the silo?” Shay asked.

  Lacey nodded. “He would go on business trips all the time. He never told me what his business was and I didn’t ask.”

  “So you never knew what he was doing all this time?” Shay wanted to know.

  Lacey didn’t want to lie, so she didn’t say anything for the longest time. Then she admitted, “I knew.”

  “You did?” Bear was surprised.

  “I said I never asked his business but that didn’t mean I didn’t overhear him talk to his people. I pretended I didn’t know what he was doing but it was all a lie. I may not be able to read or write but my mother taught me how to think. I figured things out.” She hung her head and told them, “I just couldn’t do anything to stop him.”

  “But you did try,” Bear stated. When everyone glanced at him he said, “She told us where his office was and showed us where his flash drives were, so we could get the information we needed to stop him. She did try.”

  Shay stared at her for a moment then finally agreed with Bear’s assessment. “Okay I’ll give her that. She cooperated. Almost too little too late but she did assist.” Turning to her he asked, “Did you ever wonder how he got the money he needed to do all this?”

  Lacey shook her head. “Leroy never talked about money. It wasn’t my business to ask about that kind of stuff.”

  “Did you never try to escape?” Shay wanted to know. “You had to know what he was doing was wrong, why did you stay with him for so long?”

  “I didn’t want to die like my mother did,” she whispered after the longest time. “Leroy always told me he would do the same to me if I ever betrayed his trust. What he did to her was the stuff nightmares are made of.”

  “You aren’t worried about him being here?” Shay asked. “He knows you are here too. He keeps telling my men he’s going to enjoy killing you when he gets free.”

  Pappy sat up in his chair and glared at Shay. “Stop it Shay. You’re scaring her unnecessarily. He isn’t going to get close to her and you know it.”

  Lacey began to shake. She scrambled to her feet, knocking over her chair as she bolted toward the door. Bear jumped to his feet as well and tried to stop her. Her grabbed hold of her and she fought him all the way until he wrapped his arms around her and just held her tight.

  She was sobbing when she finally gave up. She was so much smaller than he was so her face was buried in his chest. He grabbed her under her ass, lifted her into his arms, and just held her. Glaring the whole time at Shay he announced, “This interview is over. You got all the information you’re going to get from her.”

  “These questions are tame to what the committee will ask her,” Shay announced.

  “She has nothing to tell them or you after this.” Bear growled at him.

  “She doesn’t have a choice but to answer their questions.” Shay reminded the others. “This situation affects Homeland security and those pricks will want their pound of flesh. You know all this.”

  “I know that was one of the reasons we all left the service.” Pappy groused. “It’s all bullshit and you know it.”

  “As the only survivor left besides Leroy, she’ll have to talk to them. I can’t control that.” Shay shrugged.

  “Well, you better find a way,” Bear warned him. “She doesn’t need to relive the shit of her childhood.”

  Before Shay could warn him again, Bear glared at him then turned to Pappy. “She’s my woman and she’s under my protection. From now on, if you have something you need from her, you go through me first.”

  Pappy looked shocked but nodded at the other man slowly. “Bear, you haven’t known her very long. Are you sure you want that?”

  “I’m sure.” He peeked down at her and saw she had passed out. “I’d give my life to keep her safe.” He turned to Shay and glared at him. “Even from that bastard.”

  Shay raised his hands in the air as if to surrender. Both he and Pappy watched without saying a word as Bear turned and stomped out of the room.

  Pappy turned to stare at the other man. “You were an asshole.”

  “I know but I had to know.”

  “Know what?” Pappy growled. “If her brother terrorized her for the last fifteen years of her life? If he beat the hell out of her every time she turned around. If he ground her self-esteem under the heel of his boot every chance he got?” He leaned toward the other man and continued, “He used her for manual labor, to keep his hovel clean and all he ever gave her was the back of his hand. He left her alone for days at a time when she was just a baby. He never showed her love every child shown get from family. When my men showed up at that silo Leroy took off without looking back. He never protected her like, a brother should. Question him but Bear won’t ever let her talk to you again. He’s claimed her. You’ll be lucky to get anywhere near her now.”

  “Why is that?” Shay frowned.

  “Because now, all the brothers including Swede will protect her. If Bear doesn’t want you to talk to her, you aren’t going to talk to her. We protect our own and she belongs to a brother. She belongs to us now.”

  “Fuck a duck.” Shay swore under his breath. Then he stopped to stare at Pappy. “I thought you said he had severe PTSD.”

  “He does.”

  “He doesn’t seem to have a problem touching her.”

  “No he doesn’t but she’s the only one who can. I believe I told you that before.”

  “You did.” Shay nodded. “I’m wondering if that is still true though. He didn’t seem to have any problems a few minutes ago.”

  Pappy shook his head. “I don’t think you’re stupid enough to push it are you?”

  “No I’m not but we need to get our hands on Leroy soon.” Shay sat back and stared at Pappy. “You never did say who is questioning him?”

  “Do you really want to know?”

  “After waiting three days, I think so.”

  “Have you ever heard of a man they call the Priest?”

  Shay sat up in his chair and paled. “Are you shitting me?”

  Pappy shook his head.

  Shay ran his fingers through his short hair. “How the fuck did he get involved in this?”

  “He married Calico’s daughter.”

  “What the hell?” Shay exclaimed. “How did that come about?” Then he paused a moment. “I don’t imagine they travel in the same social circles.”

  “They have friends in common. Actually, the Priest has been very useful tracking this down. He wants to leave his past behind and he’s willing to stay here and work with us, so I’m going to let him.”

  “Ok I guess I can live with that.”

  Pappy snorted. “You’ve got nothing to say one way or the ot
her about it. But I would appreciate the fact if you didn’t broadcast the fact that he’s here. He has his share of enemies just like the rest of us and he doesn’t want to put his wife in any danger. I can’t say I disagree with his thinking on that point.”

  “Neither do I,” Shay assured him.

  They were interrupted by a knock at the door. Pappy looked over and found Dewey standing there. “What’s wrong?”

  “Bastian’s done. He wants to talk to you.”

  “In private or can everyone listen in?”

  “I think he wants to tell you first.” Dewey nodded at Shay.

  “Show him in.”

  A few minutes later, Bastian joined the two men. When Dewey would have left, he motioned for the other man to join them. Taking a deep breath he told them, “Leroy Nash is one very sick bastard.”

  “We knew that,” Shay commented sarcastically.

  “You really have no idea how that man thinks.” Bastian spoke in a low voice, his ice blue eyes looking troubled. “He’s beyond the scope of criminally insane. We managed to catch him before he had time to deploy his arsenal though. Well, other than the Algae and the barrels. He hadn’t set up his nuclear explosion yet.”

  “What the hell?” Pappy exclaimed.

  Bastian nodded. “He hoped to set off the Yellowstone super volcano. He was going to start off with a cascade failure to take out communications then blow the volcano. While people were panicking about that, he was going to set off the swamp fires and release the algae. Your men found the last container on his boat, so all twenty are accounted for.”

  “Did he say why he did all this?” Shay asked.

  “He said he’s been invisible all his life. Nobody knew or cared about him from the day he was born. He wanted people to know him and fear him.”

  “Did he say what the last container was for?” Dewey asked.

  Bastian nodded. “He was going to use it to take out the government. Your men found blueprints for the White House on his boat as well.” Then he leaned forward and stared at Pappy. “We have another problem.”