Dirty Little Secret

by Laramie Briscoe

  “That was my dad’s favorite thing to do,” Christine whispered. “He loved to toy with us, and that was an easy way to do it. He would never do it long enough to leave bruises or to make us black out, but he would cut off the circulation long enough so that we would panic. You, of all people, know what it’s like to try and breathe and not to be able to. Our dad was an evil man, and our mom was very subservient. She went along with anything he wanted her to.”

  Hearing her suspicions confirmed made B sad and mad at the same time, but she pushed those feelings back. This wasn’t about her; this was about the man that she loved and the woman who would be a part of her life, God willing. “After that ordeal, the both of us began seeing a therapist. Jagger has mentioned some things that happened as a child, but I can tell he’s holding back, probably because he doesn’t want me to think any less of him—which is dumb, but it’s how he is sometimes. One of our sessions a month or so ago, he mentioned you and the guilt that he felt. He told the doctor about having gone back a few years ago and being thrown off the property, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that you needed him.”

  Going back in her mind, she figured that was around the time that she had escaped and Travis had found her. It was crazy how feelings in siblings could be like that. “I did, but luckily around that time is when I met Travis.”

  Bianca forged on. “The more recent time that he went back to your parents’ house, it was abandoned.”

  That was a huge shock to Christine. Their parents had loved their home. It hadn’t been happy, but it had been theirs, and they treated it with the utmost care and respect. “What?”

  “Yeah, Jagger wouldn’t take me, but according to him, the yard was grown up and the doors were locked. I’m not sure if he tried to go in or not, but he came back pretty disheartened.”

  A cold feeling settled over Christine. What if her escaping had meant the end for her parents? She always got the feeling that she was the payment for something. She had never been sure what, but what if her leaving had more consequences than even she knew? “We’ve gotta get Jagger out of that jail cell. I have a really bad feeling about it,” she suddenly had to get him out. “I don’t want him there.”

  “What do you think happened?” B asked, her eyes wide.

  “I always got the feeling I was payment for something. It was mentioned in passing a few times. What if my running away meant that payment in full wasn’t made? What if Clinton is the reason my parents abandoned their house and he needs payment again? It’s obvious from everything I’ve seen that he has a lot of law enforcement in his pocket. I’m scared that Jagger’s there, we’ve gotta get him out. We need to go about this another way. I won’t have him hurt because of me.”

  “Okay, calm down,” Bianca told her, worried that the other woman was going to have a panic attack. “Let’s go get Liam, tell him our concerns, and get Rooster to pull him out. It’ll be fine.”

  Christine hoped that it would.

  Jagger paced the cell they had placed him in and breathed a sigh. It had been a very long time since he had been in one of these, especially of his own free will. He was pretty sure that had never happened. His thoughts were racing as he paced. He wanted so badly to end this man that had caused such grief for his sister. He also wanted to know exactly what had been done to her and why their dad had given her up so easily. None of it made sense to him, and if he was honest, he was probably in shock. This whole situation was more than he could stand, more than he could process at this point. God, he hoped when he and B had children—and he knew it was going there with her, he loved to see her with Tatum—they wouldn’t fuck the kids up.

  “Hey, I’m taking you out of here.” His head shot up as he heard Rooster come into the area they had him in.

  “What? Why?”

  “Liam’s orders. Apparently Christine and B had a conversation, and neither one of them think you’re safe here.”

  “I can handle myself,” Jagger argued.

  “I know you can, but apparently what Christine and B talked about was a bit of a game-changer.”

  That pissed Jagger off beyond words. If the two of them were talking, they should be talking to him so that he knew just what in the fuck was going on. He hated that. “So I’m just gonna leave?”

  “I already got the paperwork processed. When this is over I’m gonna have to turn in my fuckin’ badge,” Rooster said softly.

  “Are you kidding or serious?”

  Rooster shook his head. “The things I’ve been doin’ are an abuse of power. If I don’t hand in my badge, I’m gonna be in so much fuckin’ trouble, I’m not gonna be able to get out of it. So yeah, I’m serious. As soon as we find out who Clinton is and what he wants, I’m done here.”

  Jagger hated to hear that because he knew that for the most part Rooster was good at his job, when he wasn’t giving them a hard time. “I’m sorry to hear that. I really am.”

  Rooster nodded his head and escorted him out into the booking area of the jail so that he could get his stuff back. As they walked out, side by side, they had to stop as a few other inmates were being brought in. A man in a suit standing with the sheriff caught Jagger’s eye. He had seen the man before, somewhere. He wasn’t sure where, but he could distinctly remember it. The man had a scar on his cheek, not huge, but big enough that you couldn’t miss it. And his eyes. They were a startling green color. Jagger knew that before the man lifted his face to look at him. The two of them stared at each other for a long time, until Rooster nudged him.

  “I just need you to sign right here.”

  Jagger did as he was told, standing as close to Rooster as he could. “Find out who that man in the suit is. I know him from somewhere, but I can’t place it. I think that might be Clinton.”

  “You shittin’ me?” Rooster breathed, not glancing up at the sheriff and the man but taking note of all the details that he had seen in passing.

  “No, I really think that’s him.”

  Rooster took note of the time and handed the piece of paper to Jagger. “Tell Travis to hack into the security cameras and give him this time. Then tell him to run facial recognition on him. That will be the easiest way we can figure out who he is, and if anybody can do it—it’s Travis. He’s fuckin’ smart.”

  Jagger took the piece of paper and walked out of the jail, keeping his head straight forward. He could feel the eyes of the man in the suit on him and breathed a sigh of relief when he exited the brick building. There in front were Tyler and Layne. He’d never been so glad to see them in his life, especially when he greeted them, looked around, and saw the suited man walking behind him. It was when he spotted the other two members and watched as Jagger put his cut back on that he went back into the jail.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Jagger had the decency to wait until the next morning to approach Travis about running the facial recognition. If he were being completely honest, he was nervous. He hadn’t meant to attack Travis that way, it was the last thing he had wanted to do. Purposely, he had stayed away until late morning. When he entered the clubhouse, he spotted Tyler.

  “You know where Travis is?”

  Tyler grimaced. “He and his much shorter hair are in the cave.”

  “Shorter hair?”

  “Yeah, dude. It was kinda short to begin with, but they had to buzz him to put some staples in his head where you busted it wide open. I’m not sure you’re the person he wants to see today, if you get what I mean.”

  Now Jagger felt really bad. His temper had gotten the better of him—that and the shock. “Has Liam said anything?” Things like that could have more than one potential consequence. It normally was not kosher to fight in the clubhouse.

  “Nah, I think he gets it. Hell, we all get it, but the rest of us are far enough away from the situation to understand that he was doing what he thought was right. At the same time, we all understand just how pissed you are. Nobody here was right, but it’s not clear if anyone was wrong either.”

  T
his was a no-win situation. Both Jagger and Christine were products of people who should never have been parents to begin with. They were caught in the middle of something that wasn’t even of their own making. Now they had to figure out how they were going to live their own lives. It was up to them to determine if they wanted to continue the cycle of abuse or make a different choice. Jagger knew what he wanted to do, but that would include fixing things with both Travis and Christine. He had flown off the handle first and asked questions later, something that he had previously been working on. “I know, I’m gonna go talk to him. I need him to run a facial recognition on someone anyway.”

  “Good luck, dude. He may not be ready to see you,” Tyler smiled over his skull mug. “You wanna rub the mug for luck?”

  “Fuck you,” Jagger chuckled.

  Travis’ head hurt like a bitch, but Ashley, the club’s doctor, had assured him the concussion wasn’t bad, but it was going to be painful. He reached up and ran his hand over the buzz cut he now had and frowned. He’d never been one of the guys that cared to have long hair, but he’d liked to have enough that he could brush. This was just short of being bald, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about it. At twenty-four, was it unusual to wonder if it would come back? Sighing, he went back to checking his bank of cameras. This was where he felt the best, in front of his electronics. It had been too long since he had sat here and done this. He knew that if he wanted to stop feeling off-kilter, he was going to have to do it more often. Just as he was getting involved in the things he needed to do, there was a knock on the doorframe. He looked up, expecting to see Liam or Tyler. When he saw Jagger there, he immediately stuck up a middle finger.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?

  Jagger took offense, and even though he knew it wasn’t the best thing, to be an ass, he answered. “Same as what you’re doing here. I wear the same patch on my back, fucker.”

  “I understand that you’re pissed at me, but right now I’m fuckin’ pissed at you. They cut my hair, I had to get staples, I have a concussion, and my head is killing me. If you could tell me what you want and then leave me the hell alone, I think we would both be better off.” Travis was usually the quietest in the club, but sometimes he had to let his feelings be known, and this was one of those times.

  Jagger inhaled deeply. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

  Travis didn’t know if he could accept the apology. It wasn’t in him to forgive easily because it took him a long time to get to the point that he was that pissed at someone. “You shouldn’t have.”

  “But you shouldn’t have kept my sister from me either.”

  That flat-out pissed Travis off. “You act like I’m the man who held her against her will. I hate to break it to you, Jagger, but I didn’t keep her from you. She kept herself from you. She didn’t want you to know, she didn’t want to see you. I’ve done the best I can with her, trying to convince her that she needed to tell you that she was alive, tell you what happened in her life, but she wouldn’t or couldn’t. I felt like a bastard every time I left here to go see her, and then when I came back—every time, I wanted to tell you where I had been. She didn’t want that. The relationship I had with her was so shaky—fuck, she was so shaky—I was afraid to break her confidence. It was obvious that so many people had already done that and that she would not hesitate to run. I don’t have to fuckin’ explain myself to you, asshole.”

  “She didn’t want to see me?”

  Maybe that blow had been a little harsh. “She didn’t want to see anybody,” he amended. “I still don’t know everything that happened to her, Jagger, but I think she was treated like a human slave. I think she blamed, or blames, you in a way. That’s something the two of you are going to have to work out, and I refuse to be stuck in the middle of it. I did what I thought was best. If you don’t agree with that, then get the fuck over it. What do you want?”

  Jagger had to accept that Travis needed some more time before he was ready to forgive and move on. “There was a man at the jail last night. Both Rooster and I think it was Clinton. I have a time that you need to hack into the security cameras at the jail. Rooster said to run facial recognition on him.”

  “Glad I’m taking orders from Rooster now,” he mumbled under his breath.

  “I know you’re pissed at me, just like I’m pissed at you, but we both want the same thing. To help Christine put this behind her. Can we at least work together?”

  That made Travis feel like shit. They were both working towards the same goal, and they needed to do that by being mature adults. Travis sighed. “We can, because more than anything I want her to be free, and with that freedom, I want her to choose to stay here. Believe me, there’s something in me that wonders if she’s staying here just because I saved her. If she’s given the option of going anywhere she wants, there’s a part of me that thinks she’s going to leave.”

  “Neither one of us want that.”

  “No, we don’t, so we have to figure this all out and then hope she doesn’t get sick of us and leave in the middle of the night.”

  They both sat there in silence as Travis started doing what he did best. Jagger wouldn’t even know where to begin, but with a few clicks on a computer screen and a keyboard, Travis was into the mainframe of the sheriff’s office. Jagger watched as Travis reached over and grabbed a sucker out of his candy stash. It was such a habit for him; he didn’t even look as he unwrapped the sucker, threw away the packaging in the trash, and then stuck the candy in his mouth. Jagger shook his head, a grin on his face.

  “What time did Rooster want me to look at?”

  Jagger looked down at the piece of paper that he held in his hands, giving him the time. He watched as Jagger pulled up another program, imported something into it, and then clicked a button. After he clicked the button, he sat back.

  “Now we just gotta wait. It shouldn’t take long though. I already did a little research on this guy myself, but something about him never sat right with me.”

  “What’s that?” Jagger asked, sitting in the seat, his chin propped on his hand. This was the most boring shit in the world to him.

  “How did he come into contact with young women? Christine told me that there were a few more when she first came to live there. They disappeared towards the end, but they started out there. What did he do, where did he come into contact with them?”

  Jagger flashed back to his own childhood, the church camp where he’d almost been violated. The summer that had changed his life forever. “You’d be surprised. They have camps, and if you have zealot parents, like we did, they will send you anywhere to help save your soul.”

  “I just don’t understand this whole arranged marriage thing. What did your parents hope to get by doing it?”

  And that was it, it was hard to explain to someone who hadn’t grown up the way they had. Until they had become a certain age, neither one of them had really understood just how weird their lives were, but by then they were used to it and there was no turning back.

  “Because, when all your parents care about is being the perfect church members, they will do anything. I’m sure this man came to my parents, told them that he could make them look better in the eyes of the church, probably offered them some money, and they signed on the dotted line. When all you want to do is look good for other people, it doesn’t seem to matter what you do to accomplish that. Our parents alienated two children, and neither one of us know what’s actually happened to them, but I have a bad feeling that they learned just how shitty it can be to care that much what others think of you.” He didn’t want to add that it had possibly all been put in motion because he’d refused to let himself be touched as a teenager, not unless he had to.

  The whole thing was crazy to Travis. He wasn’t close to his mom, his parents had never been married, and he didn’t have a relationship with his father to speak of, but he knew that if he ever needed anything he could call his mom. She wouldn’t come running, but she would be ther
e. She knew what he did, who he was, and why he had chosen this path in his life. She didn’t necessarily agree with it, but she had never turned her back on him and she had never tried to sabotage his life.

  “I can’t imagine living in that house.”

  Jagger blew out a deep breath. “It wasn’t easy. Our dad wasn’t the type of man to yell. He was the type of man to beat first and talk later. That’s why I feel awful about your head,” Jagger apologized. “I was just like him in that moment, even though I promised myself I never would be. I told myself my whole life that I would find out the situation before reacting, and it took two minutes for me to revert to the way he was. Throw fists first and ask questions later. I’m really ashamed of that Travis, and I’m sorry that you were on the receiving end of that.”

  “Dude, my head hurts, and I’m still pissed, but I can tell you right now, you are not one damn ounce like your daddy. It came from a good place, not an evil place. If I had a sister, I would have done the same thing. I understand it, and I don’t hold it against you. I just gotta get over the fact that my head hurts,” Travis grinned.

  Jagger opened his mouth to say something else, but right then the computer dinged that it had a match. When the two of them turned their eyes back to the screen, Jagger’s blood ran cold. He knew this man.

  Chapter Twenty

  “How do you know him?” Travis asked as he started to pull up all the pertinent information that he needed. Some of it was in his original report on the man, but now that he had the facial recognition, it looked like he went by at least two other aliases as well.