Chapter 11
He’d had too many shots of bourbon—fancy or not—and it had its effects and Dane needed better control of himself—even if it was imaginary control.
Joe was a half a step ahead of him with the mug of hot black coffee.
Dane took the big white mug with the governor’s seal and wrestled his arm free from Shana’s grip to take a sip.
Her touch was comforting and even as he loosened his arm he felt her close in and lean against his side, keeping contact with him as if they were a pair of magnets.
Letting the hot liquid trail down his throat and singe his gut with vigor and renewed hope, he put his cup down on the counter and looked up at his friends, looked at Shana. He leaned his head in and breathed in her scent for peace of mind and then he spoke.
“About ten years ago, I was in love with a girl—a baby girl named Delilah. She was my lover’s daughter.” He paused when he felt Shana’s flinch against him and caressed her back, without looking at her.
“We lived together and I played dad to Delilah, feeding her, rocking her, making her laugh, comforting her tears and...” He stopped.
His heartbeat was too fast so he took a deep breath.
Closing his eyes, he forced himself to picture Delilah sleeping in his arms. He felt Shana touch his arm, a touch of concern, tentative and light.
He opened his eyes and smiled at her. He felt it turn into a real smile when she smiled back—that way she had like sunshine and beauty.
“A couple months into it I was sent away undercover domestically at Camp Lejeune on a sting operation involving missing weapons. The gang buying was from California—the Mongols—I was backup for a short time for a guy who’d been embedded by the ATF for a year.
During the buy, just as the bullets flew, one of the guys from California made me.
He was someone I had known as a teenager from my surfing days.
He was one of those lost boys—that’s what we called him.
He had no father, but he went bad—really bad. I’d lost track of him.
“After the buy—I knew he’d made me when he—”
“This guy have a name?” Peter asked in a hard voice.
“Not in this story. Not since his mother passed.” Dane closed his mouth in a grim line and meant to keep it that way. He hated thinking about Charlie. Hated talking about him even more. But Peter stared, then crossed his arms and widened his stance as if he were settling in for the duration.
“Goddamnit. His name was Charlie. We had been friends when we were younger—mostly grade school, junior high. Sometimes in the summer we’d surf.
We were both without fathers in a community where that was an oddity.
But the teenage years separated us. His mother drank and mine didn’t.
He needed to prove himself in ways that were destructive.
I didn’t. He didn’t get that. I had to prove to him that we weren’t going to be friends anymore. ” Dane took a breath.
What happened next was still painful for him to remember.
Still hurt. He didn’t tell them that Charlie had been more like a brother than a friend up until that day; that he’d wanted to teach him a lesson and convince him not to go through with his plan; that the betrayal had cost him almost as much as it had Charlie.
On that day. He’d gotten over it since. Knew there was nothing on this earth that could have saved him.
Charlie was no longer Charlie. He’d sunk into the realm of crazy and had been closing in on sociopath.
Between his lack of parental guidance or love, his experimentation with drugs and desperation to be someone, Charlie had sold his soul and had none left.
“There was a girl in school. Charlie wanted to ‘date’ her. Or rape her—made no difference to him. I knew it. I’d told him I wasn’t going with him on his planned raid.
Threatened to do something about it if he tried it.
He figured he could rob the house where she baby sat and ‘get some action’ while he was at it.
His words. Funny I still remember.” He stopped talking. Wished he could stop remembering.
“What happened?” Peter’s voice was quieter, but still commanded a response.
“I caught him with his pants down. Literally. Or I should say a whole crowd of us caught him. I took my friends with me for back up. His friends had deserted him—ran. I didn’t call the cops—didn’t think of betraying him—just wanted to—“
“Change him?” Madeline said.
Dane nodded. He felt foolish now. But he’d been seventeen years old at the time and Charlie had been like a brother for too many years. They’d surfed together the previous summer, though they hadn’t hung out in school. He took a deep breath and continued.
“I tried reasoning, but my timing had been bad so naturally Charlie had to redeem himself and challenge me to a fight. In front of everyone, the girl, and half the football team, I beat the shit out of him. We both knew I could. I’d done it before.
“But this time I humiliated him. We dragged him out of there and dumped him on the beach—where we used to surf—and left him. I knew his mother wouldn’t bother, so I called 911 to have him picked up.
He spent some time in the hospital I’d heard.
He never came back to school or to the neighborhood after that.
I kept tabs on him through his mother until she left town with some guy.
Last I’d heard he lived in LA and took up pimping and dealing in prescription drugs.
He’d been deceptively clean-cut, but his soul was as black as the worst gang leader and blacker than most. Didn’t take the locals long to figure that out and I wasn’t surprised when I found out he had a leadership role. ”
“Is he still alive?” Peter asked.
“No.” Dane paused a beat and met Peter’s eyes and his friend nodded.
He hadn’t even gotten to the horror yet.
Dane took another cleansing breath, felt Shana slide against his arm and touch his back causing a frisson of cold to run through him.
He shouldn’t subject her to this story. But she would argue that he shouldn’t try to protect her from things, that she was tough enough.
He risked a glance at her. She smiled at him again.
Her smile seemed bright and out of place—but she meant it, couldn’t help it.
He almost wished she would scowl, wished she’d arm herself.
He shook her off then and the scowl appeared.
He stepped away and repelled her hand when she would have touched him.
Within a breath the concern on her face was coated by a sheet of ice.
She was very talented at protecting herself from bad.
He’d forgotten. No need to worry. He continued.
“Charlie contacted my mother later—about a month after the bust. He’d been sprung on bail.
He called her. She hadn’t realized he had been arrested, so she talked to him—remembered him from his younger preteen days.
She remembered his mother. She told him all about my law enforcement career—not knowing she’d compromised me.
Of course she told good old Charlie where I lived.
Where I worked. My phone number. And who I lived with.
” The stab at remembering took Dane by surprise and he stopped.
Shana reached out and he withdrew violently, giving her a hard look.
But she was still armed and she scowled back at him, lifting her chin.
“Get on with your story,” she said. “It’s late.” If he hadn’t been nursing the stabbing coil in his gut he would have laughed at that. The physical pain now was a surprise, but it was nothing.
“By then I was back in Chicago and back with my girl and my baby, who was taking her first steps. I heard no threats or backlash—just the mention from my mother that Charlie had called. I reported the contact and they kept me in low profile work—which ordinarily would have been boring, but not with my baby girl.” He saw the question in Shana’s eyes and said, “She was mine in every way except biologically.”
Joe refilled Dane’s coffee mug and he took a sip.
Peter wrapped his arm around Madeline as she leaned into him, both watching him like concerned doctors would eye a patient on the verge of—something.
He was on the verge. He was on a cliff. He was about to jump off and relive the horror.
He had no idea what it would do to him. He hoped to hell his safety net—his heart and his fortitude—would keep him. So he went on.
“Then it happened. Out of the blue. I knew Charlie had been sentenced to some hard time so it took me unawares,” he confessed and brutally shoved aside the what-if that jumped into his head—the one he’d been fighting with every time he lost his battle to keep it all from his mind, to keep the nightmare of it at bay.
What if he’d taken precautions? What if he’d moved or lifted even a finger to evade detection?
He hadn’t. He hadn’t realized how dangerous and powerful Charlie had become.
“I got the call from my girl—she was well on her way to drunk and drugged out because she couldn’t find the baby.” A twist of tension wrenched his gut. He clenched his jaw and continued.
“I knew. Instantly I put everyone in my unit on alert—called in favors—didn’t call you, Peter, because you were District Attorney at the time and busy considering a run for governor—so I left you out of it. But I did call Sam and Acer from the old unit.
“They tracked Charlie down in prison and checked all his visitors and narrowed it down to one guy who was in Chicago—who also knew me from the beach. He was one of the guys on the fringe of the surfer crowd. I knew then it was personal.