Chapter 6
She’s fourteen and driving without a license, the rain pounding on the windshield. She doesn’t really know what she’s doing. It’s dark. It’s late.
Kara has no business being on the road, not with all the tears in her eyes, not with her violently shaking hands.
Some teenagers drive off in their parent’s cars just to be rebels. Others do it while trying to show off to their friends, ‘look how cool I am, driving my dad’s Mustang’ and all that jazz. Kara isn’t the sort to be interested in any of the above. She has other concerns.
Her mother is bleeding profusely in the passenger seat. Her teeth are gritted in pain, a hand clenched to her side. Kara had given her a wadded-up towel to hold against the wound in an effort to staunch the flow of blood.
Panic is making Kara feel faint, her stomach on fire with sickness. Her hands hurt from clenching the steering wheel.
“Turn…turn here…” her mother utters weakly.
The hospital looms bright, even in the gloomy dark, like a beacon of salvation through the downpour. Kara pulls up to the ER entrance and runs inside to get the staff, crying out for help.
She’s not sure how long her mother has been bleeding. During the attack she’d hid under her bed, only coming out after she heard the front door of their home slam, angry footsteps thundering away.
Nurses and doctors race out with a stretcher, getting her mother aboard it.
One of the women examines the wound quickly, triaging fast. She says a few fast words to her counterparts and then asks Kara, “What happened?”
They are hurrying back inside, out of the deluge. It’s easier for Kara to hear her own thoughts inside the hospital; the rain is so loud. Deafening. She needs a clear mind; she needs to think fast.
The truth isn’t acceptable, so Kara lets the lies slip from her lips. She’s learned to be a good liar when it comes to protecting others. “She- she tripped while in the kitchen. She was using the cutting board and…and she’s had a bit to drink…” Employing some more very real tears, fueled by her frantic mind, Kara finishes, “It just happened so fast. Please. Please help her!”
The blood is so red. It’s sticky on her hands, heavy with an awful scent. Crimson. It’s much thicker than Kara imagined it would be, imprinting itself in her mind. Her mother can’t die. She can’t leave Kara with him .
The idea of having Charlie Hayes to herself for all eternity is a nightmare of the highest order.
The ER nurses are taking her mother away quickly, away on a stretcher. Ready to operate on the bleeding knife wound arching across her side like a filthy red grin.
“Where’s your father, honey?”
Her mother makes a pained sort of groan and Kara feels frozen, if only for a moment. Then, a cool sort of blankness falls over her. Her mother would want her to lie. Her father would want her to lie. Lies are what protect them all.
They aren’t good parents, but they are all Kara has. They’re the ones she’s got . Even though her mother continually disappoints her, even though she fears her father, even though she loves him despite it all. They are the bad hand she’s been dealt.
“I…I think he’s out drinking. He’s not home.” Not anymore, anyway. “That’s…that’s why I brought her.” Tries to deflect. “Am I in trouble for driving her? I don’t have a license-”
The nurse is giving her an odd look. Pitying. The look people give Kara so often. She hates being looked at this way.
“No. You’re not in trouble. You may have saved her life. She’s lost a lot of blood. Any longer and she may have bled out. The wound has been bleeding for…some time. She should have been brought sooner.” It almost sounds like an accusation.
They leave her to sit in the waiting room while they patch her mother up. They leave Kara with her wretched thoughts.
If she were any sort of decent daughter, she would spend some time trying to convince herself that it was an accident, that her father hadn’t meant to do this at all. She would be lying to herself, of course. Her parents had been drinking profusely, cursing each other out. Yelling so terribly that she was almost certain they wanted to murder each other.
Well. About that.
She’d heard the scream, bloodcurdling, unlike anything she’d heard before. It had come after her mother had started accusing him of fooling around, of being a worthless bastard, of being the singular most regretted fuck of her life.
It had sounded like a horror movie, the way her mother’s vocal cords rang up the walls, careening into a terrifying pitch. She’d known then, that something terrible, worse than usual, had happened. Kara had been too afraid to leave her room, an absolute coward. She’d been shaking, ready to piss herself out of terror that her father would come for her next.
Instead, he’d left out the front door. He’d gotten in his car and drove off onto the rural roads.
A better daughter would have left her room immediately to help their mother. Wouldn’t they? They would have run to her side and taken care of her. Kara had been too shaken, too afraid, so she sat, hiding under her bed for nearly five minutes before her mother’s cries of pain finally brought her from her frozen state of terror.
Nothing had prepared her for the sight of her mother lying on her back, blood beginning to pool beside her like a murderous spilled ink.
Regardless of how cowardly she had been, Kara came through in the end. She pushed past her fear. Her terror. Her despair. She fought to overcome it, like fingernails breaking against a stone wall in a precarious climb.
Kara has always taken care of others, even though so many have never been there for her.
Most of her nights are spent in a book. Or rather, many books. Pouring over old cases, trying to understand the fine differences between all types of defenses and litigations. Ever since being brow-beaten into taking the mantle ‘ she’s a Bittinger Lawyer ’, Kara has been cramming like never before.
Not drinking like a drowned fish certainly helps keep her from spiraling, even though her client likes to torment her by drinking when he sees her. Dieter likes to push .
Experience is always valued in the world of law. However, having the right knowledge and understanding of precedent certainly helps. In these last few months, she’s almost certain she’s learned more working for Dieter than she ever learned while in college. Even more than what she learned at Derrick’s firm, where she mostly prepared casework for the senior associates. The Debra Mills trial had been her first one ever- and look how that turned out.
Flipping through another tome, Kara cradles her phone between her shoulder and ear. “Gale, I’ve been told to bring him to the station for an interview.”
Her mentor’s voice dips precariously. “Rotten timing. About the Dark Mirage ?”
“Yes. Though, I wouldn’t put it past them to bring up anything else on their laundry list. I have no idea what that laundry list may be, by the way.” I’m at a disadvantage here, Gale, if you didn’t deduce that.
The older woman makes a soft sound of frustration. “If you bring him in-”
“Yeah, about that. It was heavily insinuated that I’ve got no choice in the matter.”
The sound of Gale drumming her finely done nails on the counter creeps through the phone, a sure sign the other woman is thinking. “Bring him in. Go with him. Any time they ask something that doesn’t seem to relate to his relationship with Paxton Brooker and the club, put a lock on it fast. All you really have to say is, ‘my client is not obligated to answer that question’. Be the worst stuck-up bitch possible; you know he likes that. Be the bad guy, Kara.”
Kara rolls her eyes, thinking of Dietrich and the way he smirks when she acts particularly awful. She’s certain he gets off on it.
Leaning back in her chair, Kara rubs her tired eyes. The words from pages swim in her vision. “Tell me this. Are they going to be trying to ask many unrelated questions, do you think? Is there…stuff I need to be worried about?” There’s no guarantee that Dieter is an angelic businessman. Kara is afraid the cops will use this time to dig into other matters she isn’t aware of, putting her client at risk.
Dieter has a large surface of attack, as it were. Too many assets. Has his hands in too many things.
“I’d like to tell you the answer is ‘no’, but I think we both know I’d be lying if I said that.”
Well, shit. Wonderful! “I feel very comforted, thanks Gale. Aren’t you in town this month? Can’t you just…handle this?”
The other woman is making a pitying sound on the other end of the phone. “My schedule is pretty booked already. I hate to tell you I told you so about Dieter, but I did , friend. I wanted you absolutely nowhere near his account. There are things…well, there are things . Is he being good for you, mostly? Behaving?” Now, Gale sounds like a concerned parent, not that Kara has ever had one of those.
Behaving…is an interesting term where Dietrich Bittinger is involved. Can he be a perfect gentleman? Certainly . Can he also get a little too close after snorting a line off a table, his eyes a little more interested than they should be in Kara’s face? Oh, yes indeed . Choosing to keep it relatively demure to spare Gale any nightmares, Kara says, “He’s been demanding I hire him new staff, which I’m sure you already heard about, seeing as I didn’t do it.”
Gale groans loudly, full of exasperation. “ Yes. I got someone hired. We use a service for that, I’ll tell you about it sometime.” So you can do it next time, is left unsaid. Kara is so utterly unexcited about that.
Before hanging up, Gale seems to be chewing over something. “Hey. Your father has been asking about you.” Kara’s stomach drops. “He wants to know when you’ll be coming down to be with him.”
Screams from decades past echo through her skull, the feeling of being hopeless and terribly out of control falling over her. Angry, midnight eyes and a mouth that can easily swap between a charismatic smile and a vicious snarl.
“You’re a worthless parasite of a daughter,” a voice like cruelty made living.
Feeling the need to flee her own skin, Kara gets up and paces the room, clutching the phone to her ear. As she passes by the window, she sees a figure on the sidewalk staring upwards. She pauses and glances downward, realizing the man is leaning against the lamp post smoking, staring straight up at her.
Unease twists in her gut.
It’s hard to see his swarthy features for certain, he’s got a hood up. What she can see leans towards a cruel, hard face. There are tattoos lining his fingers, visible as he lifts his cigarette to his mouth again. He doesn’t move. He just keeps taking drags from his cigarette, staring up at her open window on the second floor. An intimidating stare and pose, oozing a silent violence.
He doesn’t look away. Not once.
“Fucking creeper,” Kara mutters as she pulls the curtains into place, obscuring his view into her apartment. She feels disturbed. What the hell was that about?
Screams, chains, needles, rust-filled bathtubs…
“Kara?” Gale asks carefully.
“Yeah, sorry. Just caught some weirdo trying to peer into my place.” Shaking herself out of the cold sweat that has suddenly overtaken her, Kara grits her teeth together to keep them from chattering. Her voice sounds faint as she replies, “Anyway. Next time you see him, tell him…tell Charlie…”
She doesn’t know what to say, because what the hell can she say?
“He told me that seeing you would make him feel better,” Gale continues, likely oblivious to Kara’s struggle. “He’s very sweet about it, actually. He misses you.”
I’m sure he does. I’m sure he’s so nice and charming because he thinks that’s what’s going to save him from the slammer. He’s so good at playing the innocent martyr. He’s anything but.
Strengthening her voice, Kara replies, “Tell him I’ll come as soon as I can. I have to take care of my client first, but I- I miss him. Too.” The words are like knives in her throat, slicing, ripping her apart.
She misses her father the same way one misses a blade in their gut.