by Cara Carnes
“Don’t gloss over his bad. You let that Mason and the others see for themselves what he’s like. Don’t cover for him. He never did anything to earn that from you,” her mom said.
Ellie tightened. “Is that what you think? That I covered up for him?”
“Didn’t you? You never let anyone see the bruises. You always took the blame for the fights. Keeping the peace isn’t always the best option.”
“There was only so much I could fight when up against him. You know his family, Ma.”
“I know, baby girl. I was up many nights worrying about you tied up with them.”
The confession startled Ellie. She cut the omelet in half and plated it. Turning, she set one plate in front of her mom and studied the woman. A light shone in her gaze that hadn’t been there before, as if something had shifted.
“We’ve had our troubles over the years. I wasn’t ever the best mother, but I tried my best. Things got jumbled in my head after your dad passed. Lots of things became your worry that shouldn’t have been.”
Ellie took her mom’s hand. “I love you, Ma. You’re the best mom I could’ve asked for.”
“No. No, I wasn’t, but the fact you think so fills my heart and soul. I’ve been worrying about you, what’ll happen when I’m gone. Last night, watching television and seeing you smile for the first time…”
God. Ellie squeezed her eyes shut.
“Then you laughed and I knew.”
“Ma…”
“I knew you’d be okay when my time comes ’cause that boy won’t rest until you are. Doctors say it’ll be soon, a few months at most,” her mom said. “One last treatment. My body’s not reacting the way it should, Ellie-belly. You know what the doctor said.”
Ellie avoided any thoughts of what little time remained. Her mom had enough worries on her mind without the morbidity of that particular conversation.
“I’m sorry I was always so opinionated and headstrong. I wasn’t the easiest child to raise.”
“Stubborn, just like your dad.”
Ellie smiled. “You think…you think Dad would’ve liked Jesse?”
“Yeah.” Her mom patted her hand. “He would’ve liked him for you. But I’m worried about that boy. I heard the ruckus last night.”
“He went through a lot.”
“I know you think I don’t hear things, but folks call enough. I’ve heard what people say about him. Is it true?”
“Not all, but most,” Ellie said. “From what I know.” She knew far more than she had before last night. Surgeries had repaired a “significant amount” of the injuries sustained during his imprisonment. The vagueness of the verbiage pissed her off.
“Then the boy’s got problems of his own. He’ll need you fighting those battles with him.” The light deepened in her mom’s gaze. “That brother is right. This is war. Don’t turn and run. We don’t run from a fight, Ellie-belly.”
“I know.” Ellie had already decided she was all in. “He’s worth the fight. I love you, Ma.”
“I love you, too, Ellie-belly.”
7
Ellie glanced about the crowded whiteboard room. It’d been a long morning. Jesse, along with his entire team and Marshall, had escorted her to Nomad National to empty her safety deposit box. Marshall’s original plan to remove the contents himself failed because Old Man Bufort, the bank President, was out of town with his family for an extended Scottish Highlands vacation and unreachable. Translation—no one at the bank was willing to cut corners so she had to remove the contents herself.
It’d taken longer to “secure the area” than it had for Ellie to get the contents. From start to finish, the trip into Nomad had taken less than an hour. Mary, Vi, and Zoey had met them in The Arsenal’s parking lot and whisked the CD and everything else away.
That’d been half an hour ago.
Jesse, Marshall, and the rest of the Mason brothers were gathered with the team leaders and Jud. Ellie overheard conversation about an upcoming mission to Cuba and hoped Jesse and his team weren’t going. Anyone going to Cuba was a bad idea in her mind.
The door opened, and the women entered with matching grim expressions. Kamren entered behind them. Mary and Vi didn’t even smile at their husbands—a fact which everyone in the room must’ve noticed because the tension went from a solid three to eight within seconds.
“We asked Kamren to help us with the video footage so we’d have a better idea of what we were looking at since a lot of the audio was corrupted,” Mary said. “It was obvious, but every piece of data is important.”
Kamren moved to Dallas and wrapped her arms around him as she buried her head in his neck. The two whispered, but Ellie couldn’t hear anything from across the room. Dallas held the woman close and moved them side to side. Did the gentle movement calm her?
Ellie wished she’d had that sort of connection with her husband. She’d always planned to marry only once and spend the rest of her life being her husband’s other half. The possibility of that had fled when Jesse left, but she’d tried hard to find it with Phil.
The relationship she’d had with the arrogant bastard had been created by necessity—a fact that had poisoned the foundation before it was even constructed. Ellie had made a lot of foolish decisions back then.
“First off, the majority of the CD is an encrypted dataset of some sort. HERA’s working on it. Buried within the files were some old video clips,” Mary said.
“We’re gonna need passwords and user IDs for your ex,” Zoey said. “People tend to reuse IDs and passwords. Anything you can remember will help speed up HERA’s decryption of the rest of the files.”
“Sure.” Phil hadn’t ever trusted her with passwords and user IDs, but she’d seen more than a few scrawled on slips of paper inside his office while cleaning.
She grabbed one of the small tablets off the middle of the table, along with a pen, and wrote down the ones she could remember. Although it’d been a while, the arrogance and strangeness of the words made them memorable. She also included the email addresses she’d run across.
“Ellie, did you ever watch this? Or look at it?” Vi asked.
“No.” She shook her head. “I wasn’t sure what it was. It just looked important.”
“That’s an understatement,” Zoey muttered. “Are we really gonna have to sit through this whole thing again? Can’t we just give the highlights?”
“Dylan and his brothers need to see the people in the video. It’s too grainy for HERA to identify most of them, so we need to rely on anything they may pick up on if they know anyone,” Mary said.
Ellie smiled at the way Mary placed Dylan first. Kamren likely did the same with Dallas. Their Mason was the counterpoint of the Mason world as far as they were concerned. Ellie did the same thing with Jesse.
The biggest mistake I ever made was leaving you.
Jesse’s declaration last night had started a shockwave of conversation Ellie regretted. She’d admitted too much to him. Emotion clogged her throat when she looked across the room where he stood—literally as far away as he could get and still be in the same room. The distance may as well have been a continent away, though.
Whatever tentative bond they’d formed over chicken parmesan and television was gone. Running scared. She could almost taste the terror wafting off him, and it pained her to sit back and give him that retreat. She’d bought her all-in pass to the war for Jesse’s heart, though, so she’d follow him down whatever hellholes he tumbled into.
“Let’s get started.” Mary punched a button on her laptop. A grainy video began on the large monitor behind them. “We cleaned it up the best we could.”
Headlights and growling engines drowned out most of the anxious screams and revelry. Ellie recognized the scene well enough because she’d partaken in it more than a few times. Dallas had once been one of the best street racers in Marville. Only two had been better—Dominic Santiago and his little sister Dani.
The images cut away to black. Wind battered until th
e audio was nothing more than white noise as the camera zoomed in to…
A field.
A group had gathered in the distance. The video zoomed in closer.
“Oh god.” Ellie looked away a moment. Her heart thudded in her chest.
Don’t be a ninny. They’re all here because of you.
Ellie focused on the video once more. A young girl lay motionless on the ground. A man was raping her. His bare white ass was evident as he…
Mary paused the video.
“We had to watch this more than a few times to realize the people gathered around him were saying something. Kamren was able to help.”
Kamren was beyond amazing. She read lips. Ellie imagined the skill was more of a curse than a gift in times like this.
“They’re cheering him on. Go, Ronnie,” Kamren said. “The only Ronnie I know is Ronnie Haskell.”
Ellie gasped. The former Marville sheriff was on video raping someone. Phil had the recording. How?
“This is the part HERA couldn’t do much with because of the poor quality,” Vi said.
Disgust consumed Ellie as the video played, then stopped as Jesse and his brothers discussed who people in the footage may have been. It’d been many years since it’d been shot. She and Jesse used to hang out at the races many nights. Most had taken place on small back roads rarely travelled after dark.
Dallas had stopped racing after Dom’s arrest and subsequent imprisonment. He’d enlisted in the military—one of the last Masons to march into combat. Jesse had been the final brother to join a couple weeks later. She’d been a freshman in college. He’d been a junior.
“Are you okay?” Bree asked.
Ellie blinked. When had Bree arrived? The blonde took her hand and smiled.
“Sorry we’re late. Something came up,” Rhea whispered from Ellie’s other side.
The video had stopped yet again. Vi and Mary were typing into the laptop. Images of people were on the screen. Ronnie Haskell and Eric Brine.
“Eric was Phil’s best friend in high school, I think. They both went to the private school in Nomad after Marville Elementary. I remember folks were surprised because the Brines didn’t have the kind of money needed for a private school,” Ellie commented into the silence.
“Okay, we have another section of video that’ll be harder to get through.” Vi paused and looked over at Kamren. “Sweetie, why don’t you go outside?”
“I’m not leaving.” The woman shook her head and swiped at the tears escaping her eyes. Dallas drew her back into his arms. “This is my fight, too. I stay.”
Mary looked around the table. “Let’s contain our reactions so we get through this without missing details.”
Ellie looked at Jesse. His jaw clenched as he and his brothers all nodded. Mary had looked right at them, which meant it’d affect them more than others. Why?
Worry quickened Ellie’s pulse as the video started. The same grainy quality spotlighted what seemed to be the same field as before, except there weren’t any headlights this time. A lone beam of light appeared. The camera zoomed in.
“Nolan?” The voice was soft, but audible. “I came alone. Dom and Raul didn’t see me leave the race.”
No. No. No.
The video paused. “We thought we had the timetable of these recordings, but this part confused us,” Vi commented.
Nolan’s jaw twitched as he glared across the table. “That’s what you’re having problems with? The timetable?”
“Don’t growl at my wife,” Jud warned.
“Nolan was on leave for half my senior year,” Dallas said as he wrapped Kamren in his arms. “An injury he couldn’t talk about.”
The video continued. Daniella Santiago, Kamren’s best friend, continued calling out for Nolan. Tears rolled down Ellie’s face because, even though she had no idea what she was about to see, the pain and anger in Kamren’s reaction blanketed the room.
The woman never broke down. She was one of the strongest women Ellie had ever met. Yet she was sobbing in Dallas’s arms. Why didn’t he take her outside?
Because he respected her need to be part of the fight even if it hurt like hell. Ellie swallowed. Dallas was so much like Jesse.
Ellie fisted her hands in her lap and remained silent as headlights flicked on from behind Dani—who looked to be around thirteen or fourteen. Ellie remembered how the girl used to shadow the Masons. Nolan had once raced the streets, way before Dallas took the wheel. Then Dom had taken the reign as street king when Nolan went off to war.
“Nolan?”
An engine growled as the headlights approached. Fast. Ellie gasped as Dani started running across the field to escape the car. Then a second vehicle appeared—a truck with running lights along the top. It cut Dani’s escape off.
She fell.
The camera jumped up and down. Breathing sounded in the microphone. The person was running forward. Closer.
Disgust rolled in Ellie’s stomach, but she refused to look away.
Dani was involved in something Phil had kept on a CD for years. Ellie had known about the CD a while and had done nothing. Guilt clogged her throat.
“Let’s get to the summary,” Jesse growled. “We don’t need to see more. We’ll review later.”
“Pertinent facts: Aaron Patterson, Juan Hidalgo, and Raymond Jordan are identifiable as the attackers in this video. There are others present in the background. Images are too grainy, and HERA can’t do voice recognition on this. Many of the assailants were still going through puberty. Voice patterns would’ve changed too much,” Mary said. “We’ve fed it into HERA anyway in case we can clean up the footage anymore,” Mary said. “We all know what the next step is.”
“Christ.” Nolan pinched his nose with his fingers. “This is why.”
Dani had a hatred for the Masons no one had ever understood—even Kamren. She’d heard the two women arguing about it several times since Kamren had hooked up with Dallas.
“Juan and Raymond were the two Dom went away for,” Dallas said.
“Now I want to give Dom a medal,” Dylan said.
“I don’t understand. Why didn’t she tell me?” Kamren asked. “This is what happened. She wasn’t the same afterward.”
“Erm, guys, there’s another clip,” Zoey said. “I thought they were through, but there’s another after the snow.”
Everyone focused on the screen as the field returned. Two dead men were sprawled out and visible on the footage. Voices rose above the wind.
“Damn video jacked, man. I missed the kills.”
That voice. Icy tendrils crawled along Ellie’s spine. “That’s Phil.”
“Are you sure?” Mary asked as they paused the footage.
She nodded. A hand settled on her shoulder. She looked up and saw Jesse standing behind her.
He cupped her face. “This is going to be okay, Peanut. We’ll figure out what all this is.”
“Why? Why would he have recorded this and kept it and done nothing?” She swiped at the tears rolling down her face. “Sorry, I know this isn’t about me. Not anymore. There’s something way bigger than my ex-husband being the biggest asshole of all time.”
“Look at me, Peanut.” Jesse crouched down so their gazes locked. His hand rested behind her head. “You are the main focus here. We’re going to figure out what the hell that CD is about and lock it down, but you being safe from your ex and his threats is the main priority.”
“I didn’t know. I swear if I’d known what was on there, I would’ve done something.” She looked over at Kamren. “I didn’t know.”
“None of us did,” Dallas said.
“There’s a bit more for this footage,” Zoey said.
“Play it,” Marshall ordered. “Then we get to work figuring this out. Until this is sorted and Ellie is secure, we aren’t taking any more cases. Addy and her team will handle Cuba as planned, but nothing more beyond that.”
Everyone in the room nodded. Shock resonated within her. They were shutting down
for new cases because of her. Because of the CD she should have looked at long ago.
“This isn’t your fault,” Jesse whispered in her ear. “Don’t take blame that’s not yours.”
“I was married to a monster and had no idea.”
“We don’t know what his involvement was,” Jesse said.
“He was there. That makes him a monster.”
“We’ll take him down,” Gage said. “We won’t rest until we do. Play the rest, Little Bit.”
Zoey tapped a button on the laptop. The voices returned as the camera zoomed in on the two bodies. Phil’s voice thundered through the speakers. “I wanted the kills on video. That’d be better leverage.”
“We’ve got them on the other camera, man. We’re solid. We own this town and everyone in it.”
“Damn straight,” Phil said. “What now?”
“Now I finish this. It ain’t over ’til someone goes down for those two. I know just who.”
The footage stopped. Vi shut off the feed and looked around the room. “The second voice?”
“Javier,” Dallas and Kamren said at the same time.
“Dom’s cousin? The dead cousin?” Zoey asked.
Dallas nodded. “This must’ve been the night Dom supposedly murdered those two guys. Now we know he may not have even done it.”
“Dom had every reason to kill those fuckers. They raped his sister,” Jud repeated.
Everyone in the room nodded. Street justice. Ellie was more than familiar with the term because it ruled in Marville most of the time. Sheriff Haskell had always been a waste of a uniform, which left the town and the rest of the county on their own to handle troubles.
“I’m thinking we missed taking a few dirtbags with Kamren’s mess,” Addy said.
“We won’t miss anyone this time,” Nolan said. “We need to find the other camera footage he referenced. Every prick there for those attacks is maggot food.”
Mary raised her eyebrows. Everyone chuckled. Ellie knew the man had a strong dislike for worms and maggots because of an op where Mary saved his life. She’d heard Nolan’s brothers teasing him about it many times since her arrival at The Arsenal.
