No Going Back (Sawyer Brooks)

by T. R. Ragan

  She’d spent a hot second thinking about reaching out to her therapist. But ultimately decided against it. She already knew the drill. Her therapist would tell her she had PTSD and was going through a major depressive episode, and reaching out meant she wanted to live.

  That was the part that had Cleo stumped. Sort of.

  Why wasn’t she reaching out? Did she really want to die?

  She could call her mother or father. No. They had been through way too much to be bothered. Let them live in peace. They had been outraged after Cleo’s ordeal at the fraternity. They’d mortgaged their home to pay for an attorney and stood by her throughout the long process to get to trial. But after listening day after day to all those clean-cut boys in their perfectly fitted suits and ties, telling the jury outrageous lies about Cleo, she’d seen her parents age right before her eyes. Her parents had looked distressed and scared. They’d been emotionally exhausted by the time it was over.

  The truth was, Cleo did like boys back then. But contrary to popular belief, when multiple boys at that fraternity house had raped her, she’d been a virgin. Her decision not to have sex prior to that time hadn’t had anything to do with religion or her parents’ teachings. It was a choice she’d made due to the fact that she’d always been a romantic, a happy, carefree romantic, who’d wanted to find that one special man and spend the rest of her life with him.

  Eddie Carter and his friends had changed all that.

  A part of her had died when Eddie Carter raped her. Every time another boy had climbed on top of her, she’d fought harder, screaming until her throat had been raw and her voice abandoned her.

  There had been a crowd of people in the room. At least a dozen faces staring down at her and doing nothing to help.

  Before she lost her voice, shock had turned to anger. She’d bitten and screamed and done everything she could to fight back. But it wasn’t until she’d stopped fighting that the crowd began to disperse. They’d wanted to be entertained. Once her body had gone limp, they’d left. But not the boys who wanted a piece of her. Those boys had stayed and waited their turn. They didn’t seem to mind that she’d stared into their eyes, their souls, while each had taken his turn.

  The driver’s door opened, sending a jolt through her and bringing her back to reality.

  Stay calm. Stay silent. Don’t move.

  The back of the seat moved from the weight of him. The engine roared to life. Tires rolled over smooth pavement, and the vehicle dipped forward when he pulled out of the parking lot and merged onto the main street.

  She didn’t have much time. The second the car came to a stop, she pushed herself upward. Sitting on the edge of the back seat, she put the gun to the side of his head.

  She could see his face in the rearview mirror. His eyes were round and overly bright.

  “What’s going on?” he asked. His body tensed. “What are you doing in my car?”

  Afraid he might try to run, she pressed the gun hard against his skull and said, “When the light turns green make a left. If you stop the car again, I’ll shoot you.” Her hand trembled. She didn’t like that. Steady as she goes.

  “Take my wallet.” His voice was suddenly high and squeaky. “I’ll pull over and you can have my car. And all my money too.”

  “The light is green, asshole! Go!”

  The Ford Escape jerked forward before smoothing out. He made a left as instructed, then started to pull to the side of the road.

  She pressed the gun into the side of his head. Hard. “Stay on the road! Don’t pull over. Don’t stop. I have nothing to lose, so don’t test me.”

  The car jerked to the left, back on course.

  “What do you want with me?”

  “I want you to keep your eyes on the road and follow my directions. Do as I say and you won’t get hurt.” She looked over her shoulder, glad to see Psycho’s MINI Cooper a few cars back. When she turned around, her gaze met Eddie’s. She could tell by the look on his face that he was up to something. Before she could do anything about it, he jerked the wheel to the right, throwing Cleo off balance. She used her hands to stop herself from crashing into the door.

  He slammed on the brakes. This time Cleo’s head smacked into the back of his seat.

  He put the car in park and jumped out.

  Her adrenaline was running a marathon now. Eddie ran into the street, waving his arms. A car honked and swerved around him.

  Psycho pulled over to help the man. The second Cleo saw Eddie Carter climb into Psycho’s car, she bolted from his Ford Escape, ran to catch up to the electric-blue MINI Cooper, and jumped into the back seat.

  Eddie looked over his shoulder at Cleo, then at Psycho. “That’s her!”

  Psycho leaned toward Eddie and zapped him with a stun gun. His body twitched as she passed the stun gun to Cleo and hit the gas. “Take care of him, would you?”

  Cleo set the gun on the floor, then removed her backpack and placed it behind Psycho’s seat. She leaned to the far right and squeezed her hand between the car door and the front passenger seat. When she found a lever, she pulled hard. Eddie’s seat came down.

  He was drooling. His eyes appeared dazed.

  “We’re in the clear,” Psycho said as she glanced in the rearview mirror. “His timing couldn’t have been better. Now we won’t need to worry about getting rid of his car.”

  Cleo examined the stun gun, then pressed the prongs to his shoulder and tased him again.

  His muscles contracted and his body jerked.

  “What did you do that for?” Psycho asked.

  “He should have followed my orders.”

  “Put that away. I need to focus on driving.” Psycho took a hand off the wheel and gestured toward the back of her car. “Inside a gray travel bag you’ll find duct tape. There’s also a thin blanket back there. Bind him to the seat and then cover him up, will you?”

  Cleo worked fast. After Eddie was taped up and covered with the blanket, she took a breath. “Thanks for the help.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  For the next ten minutes, they drove in silence until Psycho started talking. “Am I the only one who loses sleep at night, wondering where Bug went off to?”

  Cleo rubbed some of the tension out of her neck. “I didn’t sleep well before Bug left, so I can’t say her disappearance has changed anything. I will say this, though: only a coward would run off like she did. We made a deal. She should have stuck around to finish what we all started.” Cleo stared ahead at the road. “Malice should have told us right from the beginning what she knew about Bug’s plans to take off.”

  “Yeah,” Psycho agreed.

  “I don’t trust Malice,” Cleo went on. “Which is why I’ve been keeping an eye on her sister.”

  “Sawyer Brooks, the one who works at the Sacramento Independent?”

  “Yes. Do you know her?”

  “She came to see me.”

  Cleo leaned forward. “She showed up at your apartment?”

  “Yes. I told Malice about the visit, but I thought it was best to keep it from the rest of you since I didn’t want anyone to panic.” She shrugged. “It made sense that a journalist would want to talk to me after all the media exposure the Black Wigs has gotten, thanks to dickless wonder Brad Vicente.” There was a short pause before Psycho added, “When Malice told us that she’d known all along Bug might leave the country, I began to realize how very little we know about one another. And then last night, another sister showed up.”

  Cleo gasped. “What? How many sisters are there?”

  “Three. Malice, Sawyer, and Aria.”

  “Is she a journalist too?”

  “No. As far as I know, she’s Sawyer’s little helper. I don’t think we need to worry about them. They’re just as fucked up as the rest of us.”

  Eddie moaned and wriggled beneath the blanket.

  Cleo watched him closely, but her thoughts were on Malice’s sisters. She didn’t like the idea of Sawyer Brooks breathing down their necks
, playing detective. And now Aria too. This information presented a new urgency to her plans and what lay ahead.

  Psycho was right: they knew very little about one another. Malice, Psycho, and Bug weren’t the only ones with secrets. Shit was going to get real.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The connection between Nick Calderon and Bruce Ward hit Sawyer in a flash, jolting her awake.

  The Children’s Home of Sacramento. The picture she’d seen on Nick’s Facebook page. The one with two other boys in front of the home: Bruce and Felix. Bruce had to be Bruce Ward.

  She sat up and looked at the time. It was nine o’clock on Saturday. She’d slept in. Sliding her feet over the edge of the bed, she went to the living room, where she’d left her backpack, and grabbed her files, something she’d been too tired to do last night before bed.

  If the name “Bruce” referred to Bruce Ward, what were the odds that two men who spent years at the same school for troubled kids would both be killed by some random person wearing a black wig and lipstick?

  She tapped her finger against the picture. There were two photos of Bruce. One was of him as a kid, standing in front of the Children’s Home of Sacramento. The other was of three men, who were dressed in hunting gear. One of them was definitely the same Bruce she’d seen lying dead in his garage.

  Coffee. She needed coffee.

  Fifteen minutes later, Sawyer was chugging down the strong brew like it was water and thinking about Nick Calderon and Bruce Ward and how they died.

  A person wearing a dark wig, the hair bluntly cut at the shoulders, was seen on a security camera at the time of Nick Calderon’s murder. Trudy Carriger saw a person fitting a very similar description leaving Bruce Ward’s house.

  A dark, shoulder-length wig and red lipstick did not fit the description of the Black Wigs. According to Nick Calderon’s ex-wife, Nick was gay. Relevant or not, why would a group of pissed-off women go after a gay man?

  And what about the shoe and sock? Why would both Nick Calderon and Bruce Ward remove one shoe and not the other?

  Unless someone else had removed their shoe. But why?

  Sawyer searched the internet, plugging in random word combinations about murdered victims who were missing a shoe. All sorts of crazy headlines popped up. She kept clicking and skimming through story after story of murderers with shoe fetishes, which didn’t fit in either of these cases since the shoe had been left behind.

  Her search took her down many paths, including one article that talked about syringes being used beneath toenails and fingernails as a form of torture. Another story mentioned drug users shooting up in the crook of the elbow or between the toes to avoid track marks.

  She made a note to find out whether or not Nick Calderon or Bruce Ward had drugs in their system when the autopsies were done. It seemed clear when she’d looked inside Bruce Ward’s garage that there had been a struggle. Broken glass and tools covered the cement floor, which told her Bruce Ward had tried to fight off his attacker. Maybe the killer hadn’t expected a fight and in his or her haste to leave forgot to put the sock and shoe back on the victim. The likelihood of that happening in both cases, though, was slim. It didn’t make sense. Why go to all the bother to hide an injection site and then not take the time to put the shoe back on?

  Sawyer spent the next few hours looking for information about The Slayers and other vigilante groups. Endless links quickly took her down a rabbit hole of information. She ended up on YouTube, where she noticed The Slayers already had over a million upvotes.

  News headlines for the Black Wigs included Sacramento Vigilante Group the Black Wigs Grows in Popularity, Everyday Citizens Taking Law into Their Own Hands, and so on. It made sense that The Slayers wouldn’t be the only people following the Black Wigs’ lead.

  She got up, stretched, and went to the bathroom. After she’d refilled her coffee cup, her phone buzzed, letting her know she had an incoming call. It was a number she didn’t recognize. She picked up the call anyway. It was Nancy Lay, the eighty-nine-year-old woman who used to work at the Children’s Home of Sacramento. Apparently she’d been a cook, and she was willing to talk. She lived at Oak View Retirement Center off Bell Road in Auburn.

  Sawyer hung up, then rushed to get ready.

  When she opened the door to leave ten minutes later, Aria was standing there. Sawyer gasped and put a hand to her chest. “You scared me!”

  Aria’s eyes widened. “You scared me!”

  “What are you doing here?” Sawyer wanted to know.

  “I need to talk to you.”

  Sawyer groaned. “The answer is no. I haven’t had time to do a search on that guy.”

  “It’s not about that. It’s about Nick Calderon. I went to his work and talked to his boss.”

  “Great. Maybe we can meet up later and talk about what you learned.”

  “There’s more.”

  “Okay,” Sawyer said impatiently.

  “Where are you off to?” Aria asked. “How about I join you and tell you in the car?”

  “Fine,” Sawyer said. “Come on, then. I’ll explain where we’re going after you tell me what this is all about.”

  Once they were on the road, Aria related her visit with Nick Calderon’s boss and how he’d called in a guy named Adam and they’d made it perfectly clear that Nick had been nothing but trouble.

  “What’s really weird,” Aria went on, “is that I have a feeling they were afraid to fire him.”

  “What do you mean?” Sawyer asked.

  “I think they were worried he might come back with a gun.”

  “But you’re just speculating, right?”

  Aria nodded. “I am. Anyway, as I was leaving the building, a woman came running out and told me that Nick did have a friend named Felix Iverson. I haven’t had time to do a thorough search yet, but it’s something, right?”

  Sawyer’s pulse quickened. “Felix Iverson! There’s a photo on Nick Calderon’s Facebook page that shows three boys standing in front of the children’s home. The names Nick, Bruce, and Felix are scribbled in the margin. It has to be the same guy.” She could hardly stay still. “We finally have someone who might be able to shed some light on Nick Calderon.”

  “Don’t get too excited,” Aria warned.

  “Why not?” Sawyer glanced at Aria before fixing her gaze on the road again. “What did you do?”

  “I went to Stockton.”

  “Why Stockton?” Sawyer asked. And then it hit her. “You didn’t go to see Christina Farro, did you? You didn’t knock on her door, right?”

  “I didn’t have to. She found me in my car. I had been parked across the street for less than thirty minutes when suddenly I looked up and there she was, heading straight for me.”

  “Oh, God. What happened?”

  “We talked for a little bit. Well, she talked. I was speechless. And then she gave us a warning.”

  “Us?”

  “Yes. You and me. She said that if we didn’t stop snooping around, we would regret it.”

  “And that was it?”

  “Not exactly.”

  Sawyer groaned.

  “I then asked Christina Farro flat out if she was a member of the Black Wigs,” Aria said. “I figured I drove all that way to see her and there she was, so I might as well just ask.”

  Sawyer shook her head.

  “That woman is scary,” Aria continued. “She knows everything about us. Isn’t that odd?”

  “Yes,” Sawyer said. “It’s very odd. Please don’t do that again.”

  “No problem. I think I’ll stick to researching on the computer.”

  “That’s a good idea.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Harper paced back and forth inside the empty warehouse off Power Inn Road. It was beyond strange being back at the place where she’d killed a man. She stopped to stare at the metal piping where The Crew’s victim, Otto Radley, had been fastened before he quietly broke free.

  She had walked inside the warehouse jus
t in time to see Otto sneaking up behind Psycho. She could almost feel the butt of the rifle against her shoulder as she’d taken aim and fired. The jolt had been explosive, sending her flying backward.

  The bloodstain on the cement floor had since been bleached and scrubbed many times, but the outlined shadow was still there. The real evidence was buried in the dirt about twenty feet away from the entry door.

  She had killed a man.

  And she hadn’t been the same since.

  It didn’t matter how many times she reminded herself that Otto Radley, a real-life monster, had deserved what he’d gotten. The guilt and shame would not go away. Talking to someone about what she had done might help, but she couldn’t risk it. Her husband, Nate, would never understand. How could anyone understand something she hadn’t yet come to terms with?

  When she’d helped form The Crew, the thought of killing someone had never entered her mind. Not once. Their plan had sounded so simple. They would kidnap their targets, take them to an isolated spot, and hold them captive for a day or two. The men would be blindfolded and bound. For months she’d felt energized by the notion of showing rapists what it felt like to be overwhelmed, powerless, helpless.

  She rubbed her belly, smiled when she felt a kick.

  It bothered her now to realize that if she’d sought help and found a way to accept the brutal truth that nothing would ever change what happened to her when she was growing up, maybe she would have made better choices. After she’d escaped her hometown and the ongoing abuse, if she’d found a way to accept what had happened, then maybe she would have been able to process her emotions and move past it. Instead, she’d buried her feelings and allowed the trauma to fester, turning her into a control freak, micromanaging everything around her.

  It was as if a light had suddenly been switched on and she could see everything so much clearer now. But was it too late?