What tipped her off? What made her leave her comfortable chair by the fire, where her craft shit had been discarded on the side table? Whisper sure as hell hadn’t stopped to make a call for help during the time she was fighting for her life. She had stopped to drop a key off and have a nostalgic look at the dead garden, and then she was going to return to the bar once she had relieved herself of the burden of the inheritance.
The old lady proved to me she had no idea what had happened to Whisper, yet she went charging off into the night, ready to face anything head on in only a nightgown and robe, desperate to find her and make sure she was safe. That says a lot to me about their relationship. They are each other’s family. This old lady respects this female, and she is of great worth to her.
Just as my previous thoughts of Whisper begin to rewrite themselves in my head, the woman comes back carrying a laptop and a tumbler of water, handing both to me. I am more grateful for the tumbler of water than she will ever know. I place it on the arm of the couch after nearly draining the contents in one gulp.
“Dallas.”
“Excuse me?”
“My name is Dallas. Just thought you might be more at ease if you knew my name.”
The old lady is wary but seems to think I’m not a threat to her. She turns her back on me, fussing about with the dying fire, breathing new life into it.
I start the laptop up and the screen reveals a headshot of three smiling faces: the two females I have met, the third, a man I haven’t. It was a good day for them, from the looks on their faces.
I focus and get down to business wiping the data clean on my phone, that way, if fuckers one and two get a hold of it, they won’t have my contacts. Then I set the GPS up for my cell.
It takes no time at all, and I’m linked up and have a beat on Whisper’s location. The fucktards look like they’re headed for the Mississippi border. Not too far away for me to catch up.
Feeling overheated, I unzip my leather jacket, taking out Whisper’s and the old lady’s phones, and tuck them between my thigh and the armrest. I throw the jacket down on the couch next to me and strip off my button-up, leaving me in my T-shirt. I swipe my button-up over my face, wiping away beads of sweat and grime, before tossing it next to me.
I’m ready to chase down Ebony and Ivory, but I need answers. Due to my fucked-up state, I’m not being practical about the condition I’m in. I know I’m not thinking as clearly as I should be. I’m working off adrenaline until the crash comes, and it surely would soon. My body temperature is telling me that much.
I look over at the old lady, who has seated herself in her cozy chair as she observes me. She’s wringing the fabric of her robe and is trying to hide how anxious she really is for her friend’s safety. “Miss Catherine…” I needed answers now because this old lady’s reactions to Whisper being abducted tells me I just made a big motherfucker of a mistake, and it won’t stop scratching away at my soul. And then I lay it down hard. “William Dupré is my father.” This is the only way to get an honest reaction out of her to see if she knew anything about him.
She physically blanches at this information I freely handed to her on a silver platter, letting out a little gasp of shock mingled with a look of pure hatred appearing on her old, lined face until she regains her composure.
What the fuck has my father done since I last saw him?
“You have nothing to fear from me. I haven’t been associated with my father in twenty years. I was fortunate enough to be released from his care. I need to hear it all from you now, Miss Catherine. How Whisper and my father knew each other. And I will tell you what I know.” Well, not everything. “Whisper’s life is on the line, and I needed answers yesterday.”
I hear enough of the sordid tale of Whisper and my father to make me feel sick to my stomach. So many fucking memories of my very own are being dredged to the surface. A rage is boiling inside of me, needing an outlet, and I’ve got nothing I can take it out on.
“How old is she?” I need to know how many years she’s been subjected to his abuse.
“Nearly twenty-two. Came to me on her twenty-first birthday, but she be actin’ much older. Her soul’s been to hell and back.”
Around twenty years of his mind-fuckery. And she’s just taken another fucking road trip to hell.
He must have changed states and stolen Whisper by enlisting the help of that dead bitch, not long after I was reluctantly released from his care. He needed somebody to fill my place.
Effectively, my freedom was the ultimate demise of hers.
My tainted blood has held her a prisoner, no doubt torturing her into submission. Christ! She’d only been free for a little over eight months. Now this has happened to her.
I happened to her.
She has already spent too long in those fuckers’ hands. “I’m going after her.”
The old lady is watching me, wondering if she can trust me.
“Is there anybody else coming to her immediate rescue? The longer we sit here, the farther away she gets.”
She comes over and sits beside me. “If you be givin’ me my phone back, I can be callin’ Boxer and Lincoln. I trust dem with her life.”
I hand it over. She makes a call and then another, and nobody answers either call. “Text them both the same message. Tell them it’s an emergency and to call ASAP.” She does as I request, and then I take the phone back out of her hands before she can utter a protest. I need to be in control. If either man calls back, I will answer. “Where are they now?”
She hesitates. I remind her time is wasting. “Most likely on a job.”
“Legal kind?” Who the hell has Whisper gotten herself tangled up with?
She nods.
This is like playing 20 Questions. “Are they the type of friends who are capable of handling themselves?”
She nods.
“Ex-military?”
She waits and then nods hesitantly. “Somethin’ like that.” She probably only knows the bare skeletons of those closets.
“Your friends are the type to respond straight away to a call from you or Whisper, especially when they are away and it’s past midnight?”
“Yes.”
“They are never lost to you, correct?”
She nods.
“This is unusual for either of them to not answer your call or reply by text?”
“Yes.”
Makes me wonder if something has happened to them. Ebony and Ivory had been busy tracking me, knowing my whereabouts—not that far-fetched to be thinking about after what happened already. “Would they be the ones who helped Whisper after my father died?”
She reluctantly nods again.
She knows she has to give me enough because I’m her fucked-up, knight in less-than-shining armor. I’m all she’s got at the moment and she knows it.
“I need my foot cleaned and bandaged, and then I’m out of here. The bad guys have a head start, but I can catch up on my bike.”
She’s up then back with a generous first-aid kit and a basin and gets to work, while multitasking with her own questions. I grit my teeth while she cleans my wound.
“How did you meet the chile?” Jesus. I have to edit this for Whisper’s sake. The old lady still thinks of her as a child.
That was no child fucking me. She was a liberated woman.
It’s making sense now, her pain on my bike when she cried out and tried to cover it up. Whisper thought she’d had her virginity taken by my father, but for whatever reason, he hadn’t yet taken that. He took everything else from her.
I took her virginity.
“She told me her name was Sara when I met her at the bar in town last night. After she closed up, we had a few drinks and talked.” I’m not about to say we fucked, and it was one of the sexiest fucks I’ve had in a long time, if ever.