12. Chapter 12
It’s her.
My siren.
My Mary.
Here in Forest Creek.
Only now, she’s got three children, and I don’t miss the obnoxious ring on her left hand.
Though when I look in her eyes, all I notice is pain, sadness, defeat, and shock.
Confusion runs through me when her face turns into an angry snarl and she turns away, using her hair as a curtain so she can’t see me anymore.
Why is she angry with me? I’ve been searching for her these last nine years. Every time I got close, I suddenly lost her and then I had to start all over again.
It doesn’t help that none of the houses she and her husband have lived in these past nine years were under their real names. They’ve been using aliases for their mortgages and bills. Aliases that were most likely provided for them by the mafia.
“Is that…?” Alli asks as she walks up beside me.
“Yeah, I think it is,” I reply just as quietly. I don’t want to spook Mary as she hurries out of the ER like the fires of hell are on her heels.
Still, I notice that she’s got a cast on her arm and is limping. Is she hurt anywhere else? What all did that fucker do to her this time? The need to know what he did flares through me, but I force the feeling down.
Uncle Sam was able to procure dozens of ER logs from each town they’d lived in for her case. Her asshole husband is beating her, but because he’s a cop and tied to the mafia, he gets off with the lightest of punishments every single time. If he gets any punishment at all.
“I’m going to take my ten-minute break. I know it’s early, but…,” my voice trails off and I pull my phone out of my pocket, my fingers already bringing up Uncle Sam’s phone number.
Alli squeezes my bicep. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll cover for you.” She gives me a worried look that says she saw the same things I did about her injuries and is worried about her, too.
Turning on my heel, I place my call and he picks up on the second ring.
“Everything okay, Luke?”
“I’m not sure, but you need to keep that cold case on the top of your paperwork pile for the foreseeable future.”
He’s silent for a few beats, and then I hear a door close. “What have you found?”
He knows I’ve been trying to find her on my own as well as having Smoke, our chapter’s resident hacker and programmer, looking into it as well. “She was here. Tonight. In the ER.”
He inhales sharply. “Are you sure it was her?”
“Positive. I can see if Smoke can get a picture from the security system if you want?”
“No, I think I’ll pay Curtis a visit at work and see if he can get it. That way it’s all on the up and up.”
Nodding, I bite my tongue. The need to get Mary away from that asshole is intensifying, but he’s right. If we want to nail him, and have the charges stick, he needs to get the information. Not me.
“Do you know what she was in for?”
I sigh heavily, running my hand through my hair. “Well, she walked out of here with a cast on her left arm and wrist. I don’t know if she had any other injuries, but she was limping. I’m sure Curtis would be able to get you her file. You know I can’t pull it up since I wasn’t her nurse.” Pausing, I stare down at the floor tiles, and try to calm my racing heart and anger. “She had the kids with her. All three.”
“Well, then, that proves part of what we believed. That they’re all still alive. That their deaths were all a scam.”
“I’ve got to get her away from him.” My voice is barely a shaky whisper, but he still hears it.
“You know as well as I do that a victim of abuse won’t escape his or her abuser until they are ready to. Until they can be sure, or at least mostly sure, that they can be free. And that’s if they are ever ready to leave. From the reports I was able to gather, he’s a master manipulator and could have been feeding her lies all these years. We have no idea the extent of everything he’s told her, so she may not believe any of us in the beginning. I wouldn’t put it past him to make her think we all forgot about her.”
Exhaling heavily, I scrub my hand over my face. “Well, that would explain why she looked so pissed when she saw me.”
A heavy sigh comes over the line. “It’ll take time for her to come to terms with everything. Are you sure you don’t want to leave this to me? For me to be the one to talk to her first.”
“I need to do this, Uncle Sam. She’s my everything. My siren.”
He’s silent, but I can almost see him nodding and stroking his short beard. “Then just keep trying to get through to her. You and I both know that she’ll end up in the ER at some point again in the near future. There’s no way that asshole’s going to change his MO just because he’s back where it all started.”
I grit my teeth at the thought. Thinking back to the reports of everything she’s endured at the hands of that asshole has me wanting to go hunting, but he’s right. “I’ll do my best, but it’ll all depend on if she’ll even talk to me. I’ll rope Alli in on this in case she comes in on her shift and I’m not here.”
“Wouldn’t hurt since they were so close. Especially if that asshole did feed her a bunch of lies about you. However, if the two of you do this, you both need to be on the lookout constantly. If he catches wind that you two are trying to take her and the kids away from him, you’ll both become targets. Just like the ones in the past. Don’t make me be the one that has to break that news to your parents and sister.”
My chest clenches at that, but there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for my siren.
And my parents and sister know that.
“We will. Promise.”
Later that night, I lay in my bed at the clubhouse, staring at our homecoming picture on my phone. A few moments later, I flip to the images from tonight that Smoke got for me. Among them is one where he was able to get all four of their faces visible. It was when they were in the waiting room. Yeah, I know I said Uncle Sam should be the one to get it for his paper trail, but that sure as hell wasn’t going to stop me from getting one for myself.
Sure, Mary’s a little heavier now than she used to be, but having three kids will do that to a woman. Honestly, she looks even more beautiful than before.
The only thing that would make her even more gorgeous would be if her blue eyes were sparkling again. Right now, even in the pictures, you can feel the weight of her pain, sadness, and defeat. But especially her pain.
I hate those looks on her. She should never have had to endure the things she’s had to over the years.
Broken bones and ribs.
Bruised ribs.
Sprains.
Concussions.
Eyes swollen shut.
Not to mention countless black and blue bruises.
And who knows the amount of emotional and verbal abuse he’s put her through as well.
Hell, whenever she was pregnant, I’m almost positive that the asshole brought her into the hospital when her contractions were too close together on purpose. By the time she got admitted, she was too dilated to get an epidural. She gave birth to all three of her kids without pain meds.
However, only one of her kids’ birth certificates didn’t have a father listed.
Her eldest son, Asher.
The other two, Isaiah and Cassandra, both have Stephan listed.
I zoom in on him in the picture and feel my chest tighten even more.
Asher looks just like I did back when I was a kid, if you were to replace his black hair with my blond hair. Hell, it’s even styled similar to how I used to wear it at that age. Did she do that on purpose? Or did he choose the style himself?
Is Asher my son and not Stephan’s?
Was I right all those years ago that she was pregnant before being kidnapped?