Tanner

by Kathi S. Barton

  Chapter 3

  Rogan sat where he was told and his hands were chained to the table, then his ankles to the large circle on the floor. He hated the way they were treating him. Like he was some kind of deviant or something. He had his rights and they weren’t meeting them. Rogan looked at the man who came in with his sister. “Well, well, well. Lookee at what the cat dragged in. Why the hell haven’t you bailed me out, Giyanna? I know that you’ve more than likely got enough money to do it. When you were a kid, you were forever hiding a stash of cash from me. But I found it all, didn’t I? Get your skinny ass out of here and get me the fuck out of this place.” The fist that slammed down on the table startled him, and he looked at the man. “What’s up your ass?” “You’re to talk to her with respect or we’ll both leave here, and you’ll be represented by a court appointed lawyer. And that might be difficult after what you did to the last man that was here.” He looked at his sister and noticed that she was afraid of him, but she was trying really hard not to show it. Good, that was the way he wanted it. “Did you hear me? Behave or we walk.” “I heard you, but she didn’t answer my question. Why hasn’t she bailed me out yet?” The man answered him instead of Giyanna. “What do you mean, there ain’t no bail set for me? There is always bail for someone like me. Didn’t Ty take care of that? He told me that I had no bail, but I thought for sure that he’d do right by me and get that fixed. I want the fuck out of here, damn it.” “Well, lucky for us, this time, it’s in the world’s favor that you’re not getting any bail set. Now, we’re here to talk to you about a plea.” He said that he’d done nothing wrong. All the man did was take out a bunch of pictures of his house that he and Bridgett had lived in and lay them out before him. “So? The government has money for that kind of damage. Just have them fix it up again and get over themselves. I don’t have time to be in here. Besides, they won’t give me more to eat. And my bed broke, and now they’re making me sleep on a fucking air mattress that ain’t all that comfortable. I want to be out of here now. There ain’t no reason for me to be caught up in this when it was Bridgett that ran off with my kids. All I did was get pissy about it.” The man sat down and Giyanna stood near the wall. He wanted her close, close enough that he could pop her a good one. He’d not been able to do that in too many years. When the man started talking while pulling out a notebook and a pen that he didn’t lay down, Rogan looked at him again. “My name is Tanner Calhoun. I’m working with your brother and sister to get the charges against you reduced.” Rogan told him he wanted them all to go away. “That isn’t going to work, no matter what we try to bargain. You’re going to serve some serious jail time, if not prison, and how much depends on what you have to say for yourself. Or how much you piss everyone off while you’re in here. These people talk to judges, and they’ll tell them how much you moan and groan about petty stuff. So I want that to stop right now.”

  “My wife, she took my kids. I want her to come back here and bring them back. That ain’t fair that she gets to run off like she could just up and leave me. She better know that she’s going to get a beating, too. I don’t stand for the way she’s been getting uppity lately about the food card and the house.” Calhoun told him that she wasn’t going to come back unless she had to testify against him. “She can’t testify against me. I’m her husband. I know the laws too.”

  “Then you know that since she put a restraining order out against you, as soon as you broke it, and then hurt her, she has all the rights that she wanted. And she’s filing for divorce as well. With your track record, then—”

  “No. No siree bob, that isn’t going to happen. She married me for better or worse, and I want her to come on back and start cleaning up the mess I made. Them people told me that I can’t live in those government houses because I don’t have a family. So she has to come back so then I have a place to rest up. I need my house back. Then she’s gonna drop these charges against me or suffer my fist.” Calhoun said nothing but stared at him. “You don’t seem to be getting the whole picture here, Calhoun. I want things, and you’re not doing a damned thing to get them. You see, I’m used to people getting up and doing what I tell them. Ain’t that right, Giyanna?”

  Rogan laughed at her when she paled. This was a lot more fun than his brother coming in to see him. Tyrrell was real brave so long as he had these chains on. But he hadn’t gotten it through his head yet that Rogan was going to be free soon enough. When she turned her back on him, he thought she was gonna cry and he was all ready to make fun of her. Then she turned and looked at him, and the change in her sort of scared him a little. Not that she’d be able to hurt him, but he was afraid of what she might know about him and tell people. That wasn’t going to set well with him.

  “You haven’t changed one bit, have you, Rogan? Still the bully. Do you still steal from houses? Shoplift when the mood strikes you and you’re low on cash? Have you beaten anyone lately? Oh, I nearly forgot, you’re in jail chained to the floor like the animal that you are. I have to say, I’m glad to see you here, groveling for your meals to be bigger, complaining about your mattress. Poor Rogan, nobody likes him and he’s all mad about it.” He told her to shut up. “I won’t. I’ve been quiet about you for long enough. I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure that you never see those kids or Bridgett again. So, they can live a normal life without you there knocking them around all the time like you did me and Tyrrell. You’ve made your bed, now you can fucking lie in it, you fat fuck.”

  “You begged for me to hit you. Same with Ty. If you had just done what I’d told you—” She cut him off, asking him how that had worked. “Hiding all your money away from me like you was gonna use it on something special. I’m the special one, Giyanna. You should have learned that a long time ago. Then you and him, you go and leave me there all by myself. That weren’t fair at all, you know that. How was I supposed to have you clean up after me if you and him were off doing things without me saying you could? I could have teached you how to be like me, living off the land and shit.”

  “The only thing I learned from you was to be better at keeping myself safe and to hide my money better. And there wasn’t any reason to clean up after you, as you tried to make us do. You would just come right in behind us and break everything and throw it to the floor. You didn’t want it clean, Rogan, you wanted it neat, so you could break things easier.” He told her to bail him out. “No, I would never do that even if there was a way to do it. Even if it was only a buck, I’d not do it. I like you right where you are. In jail behind bars, where you can’t hurt anyone else.” “Then what good are you to me? Am I supposed to believe that you’re going to work really hard at getting me out of here? You won’t, and we both know it. I might as well put in a change of address card now, because this is where you’ll leave me. After all the shit I did for you, you’re going to be ungrateful and leave me to rot in here.” Rogan tried to stand up, but the chains held him down. “Get out of here. And don’t you be coming back. You’re nothing but a fucking cunt, and I hate the ground you walk on.” When she left them there, he looked over at Calhoun. He was putting his things away as well. He asked him where he thought he was going. He’d not told him he could go yet. “I told you to not talk to her that way. And you’re very lucky that you’re in here, McGowan, because if we were in an outside setting, I’d rip your throat out and feast on your blood.” He took his briefcase in his hand and went to the door. “You have a change of heart, then you have them call me. But until you apologize to Giyanna, you’re on your own.” “You can’t make me do shit.” Calhoun knocked on the window and Rogan felt his temper shoot up another notch or two. “Get your ass back here. I got me a court date in a couple of days, and I want to know how you’re getting me out of here. This is all trumped up charges that they got me in here for. And as soon as Bridgett comes back here and brings my kids, then things will be just like they was before. Go and get her and see if they aren’t.” “I’m not going to get you out of here. Like Giyanna, I like you ri
ght here. Chained up is like a bonus for me. Good day to you. Like I said, you tell your sister and brother that you’re sorry, then I’ll consider working for you. Otherwise, you’re fucked. Because the way it stands right now, you’ll be lucky if you don’t get life plus.” Calhoun left him there, and all he could do was to try and break the chains so that he could go after him. And when Rogan flipped the table over, feeling satisfaction for about a minute, he found himself on his head, with the table holding him up while his legs were still chained to the floor. The fucking police laughed at him for ten minutes or more before they got around to helping him. They were going to regret laughing at him, he’d make sure of it. Just as soon as somebody got up off their asses and got him the fuck out of there. ~~~ Tanner wasn’t sure where she had gone and asked the officer at the desk near the cells. He told him that Giyanna had gone to the bathroom and she didn’t look well. Going in the direction that he was shown, he found himself wanting to go back down to the cell that Rogan would be in by now and kill him. No more conversation, just murder him where he stood. His wolf agreed with him, even going so far as to run along his skin like he was just waiting for the opportunity to do so. He knocked on the door when she didn’t come out by calling her name. At her “Go away,” he knew she had her temper back, but he still wanted to see her. Going into the neutral gender bathroom, he stood by the sink where she was and asked her if she was all right. “No, I don’t think I’ll ever be all right so long as he’s around. The day before we left home, he beat Tyrrell and I up. Not just a little, but bad enough that we both ended up in the emergency room needing x-rays and stitches.” He didn’t say anything but held onto his wolf. “He was gone when I went back to get my money and my clothing. Tyrrell had to stay in the hospital overnight. I talked one of the nurses into letting me sign myself out so that I could get some things together for us to run. She knew who had hurt us and let me go. It took everything that I had in me to go back to that house. I was terrified that he’d be there, waiting for me. Or worse, that he’d have a gun or something to shoot me with.” “Was he there waiting on you?” She told him that he wasn’t waiting on her, but he came in while she was there. Lucky for her, she’d already taken her things out of the house and had come back in to have another look around. But Rogan took the opportunity to knock her around some more. “Why didn’t the police help you?” “No one would help us. We were related to Rogan, and to help us would surely get them into deep shit with him. He was about as scary as they came. But the police, they were just as bad as he was. I noticed that there is a new chief in town. Back then they would just as soon rob you as much as he did. Then they’d put you in a cell right with him so that he could have his little fun while they watched.” He remembered what it had been like and asked her to go on. “As soon as I got what I could, I got out of the house and never looked back. My parents were gone again, nothing unusual about that. And if you’re going to ask me what they thought of Rogan doing this, they were almost as bad as he was. They would throw knives at each other when they were fighting. And for the most part, they ignored the fact that they had kids even when they were home. Which really wasn’t all that often.” “You had a terrible young life. I wish I could have known you then. I could have helped you in some way, I think” She snorted at him, and he watched her as she got up on the counter and continued. “I had no idea it was that bad between the two of you. Nor what sort of person he was. We never walked in the same circles or I might have known more about him. Does Tyrrell know?” “No. And I don’t want him to either. Not to say that he doesn’t have his own secrets. I’m sure that Rogan cornered him as much as he did me. And he’d try to pit us against one another. It didn’t work, and that would piss him off too.” Tanner said he wouldn’t tell him. “And don’t tell me that I should share that sort of information either. The shrink that I was seeing said the same thing. That I needed closure.” “Tell me the rest of the story. I want to hear it.” She nodded but only sat there. He noticed two things about her then. She wasn’t as fragile as she looked, and she wasn’t just mad, but spitting mad. “You’re very beautiful. Your cheeks are all rosy, and your hair is falling down around your shoulders. You look sexy too.” “Cut the horseshit. I know what I look like. And sexy isn’t a word that anyone has ever used about me before, so don’t do that.” Tanner smiled but said nothing as she continued. “This is something that I’ve never told anyone. Not ever. But I was on my way out of the house when I saw him in the living room. He was there with a woman, but I didn’t know her. He was naked, and she was as well, but she looked more like he’d torn her clothing off of her than just taking them off to have sex. He was taking her from behind, brutally, and she was screaming for him to let her go.” “Christ.” He moved toward her and took her into his arms. When she didn’t fight him, he held her and told her to finish please. “You need to tell me this as much as I want to hear it.” “She saw me, though I don’t know how—her face looked like he’d taken a belt to it. Both her eyes were bloodied, her left eye was swollen nearly shut. She screamed for me to help her, which alerted Rogan that he wasn’t alone with her any longer.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Tanner didn’t know what she was going to say next, but he was barely holding onto his wolf as it was. “He didn’t stop. He kept taunting me as he took her, slapping her on her back and legs with the hard end of the belt he had in his hand. And when he was finished, he never took his eyes off me and pulled her body to him and snapped her neck. Just murdered her where she was right in front of me, like it was nothing for him to do something like that. Before he could come after me, I ran. I ran as if my life depended on it, and I was sure that it did. To this day, I can still see her face and the way that he murdered her. I’ve often wondered if he’d done something like that before. Had he murdered someone else along the line and we didn’t know about it.” “Why did you come home? Why did you even bother with coming here to try to get him off?” She sobbed then, and he held her to his chest. “I’m sorry, love. I really am. I didn’t mean to hurt you with that. I only wanted to know how you could stand to be in the same room with him. I’d have killed him had I known. I still might.” She cried holding onto him. He wanted to tell her to wait while he took care of Rogan, just went down the hall that the cells were in and tore him apart. Tanner was reasonably sure that anyone in the station house might help him, turning off the cameras there as well as unlocking his door for him. “He just dropped her like she was nothing at all. And I suppose to him she wasn’t.” Tanner now wanted to go down the hall and kill Rogan over and over again. Cause him to suffer in ways that would make Tanner’s wolf very happy. “I called my aunt the next day and told her what had happened. I told her all of it except for him killing the woman, and she told me to come to her. She wired me enough money to buy a ticket, and I went to her the next week, leaving my brother all the cash I had on me so that he could make a clean break as well. We had a party in the little room we were in before I left. I could have told him then, but we were so hurt by all of what Rogan did to us that I only told him that Rogan was gone and that I’d gotten my things. He moved in with a cousin, and was with them when my parents came home. I don’t know what happened to the woman, only that there was never a news report about her missing, nor that her body had been found. For all I know my parents helped him clean up the mess and then acted like nothing had happened at all. They were good at that, it seemed, ignoring what they didn’t like and treating Rogan like he really was the boss of all of us.” When she pulled away, he let her. One thing he had learned from her story was, she had been battered in more than just her body. And she was the bravest person he knew. Telling her that would piss her off, he knew that, so he kept it to himself. The fact that she’d gone to a different country to get away from her brother was brave enough, but to have sat in the room with him earlier was more than he could have done if all this had happened to him. “I don’t want you to come here anymore.” She just looked at him. “I’m not trying to tell yo
u what to do, but this can’t be easy on you, and I hate to see you hurting over him. And no matter what you tell yourself, you’re hurting, aren’t you?” “Yes. This is the reason that I can’t be a part of your life, Tanner. He’s going to drag us down, Tyrrell and I, and there isn’t any point in you being brought down as well.” He could have told her that he didn’t care but he did, about her and her brother Tyrrell. Instead of saying anything that might come out wrong, he pulled her back into his arms and kissed her. It was all he could do to not have his wolf go and kill her brother. He didn’t deepen the kiss, for as much as he wanted to, he didn’t want her to be mad at him. Tanner didn’t doubt that she would be, but he was going to take what he could while he could. Pulling back from her, he looked down at her face and could see more freckles than he’d thought she had earlier. They were the cutest things he’d ever seen, the way that they danced across her nose and onto her cheeks. “You kissed me.” He said that he was glad that she’d noticed. “You shouldn’t have done that. You know as well as I that it only leads to trouble. And I don’t know if you’re aware of this or not, but we have enough trouble going on as it is.” “I’m willing to take my chances. How do you feel right now? Well enough for me to kiss you again?” Giyanna glared at him, but didn’t pull out of his arms. “You have the prettiest eyes. I guess I knew that red heads had green eyes, most of them anyway, but yours are the greenest emerald color that I’ve ever seen. And the softest skin. I find myself waxing poetic about it in my mind.” This time, she did pull away. “I need to get back to the place we’re staying and tell my brother what happened. And that you and Rogan didn’t get along any better than we did.” He nodded. “Then we have to figure out what we’re going to do about this. I can’t be around him. Not now.” “No, and I don’t want you to be. If you’d allow us to, Tyrrell and I can do the trial and you can help my sister-in-law, Chloe, find the missing woman. Someone would have reported her by now.” Giyanna said that she’d go to jail. “No, you won’t. She’ll be so glad to help you out that she’d be willing to overlook the fact that you didn’t report it. Not to mention, she knew all about the station house well before we did. And now it’s a good place to be. Just help Chloe, and I’m thinking between the two of you, not only will you find the woman, but also if there are any more of them.”