Chapter Two
Saint let out a heavy sigh. “Well, come on, let’s go see what Erika has to say about this,” he announced.
Dax grabbed Sage’s hand.
She hitched the backpack she had over her shoulder as they followed the others back to the house.
When they entered the kitchen through the back door, Saint found Erika making her son a bottle.
When they all came in Erika saw Sage and paused. “What the hell? Who is she?” Erika asked her husband.
“She claims she came here to find her sister,” Saint told his wife. “Did you know your dad had a second child that he left behind?”
Erika gasped and she turned her head slowly to stare at the young woman. “He what?”
Sage shrugged. “I never knew him and my mother never would tell me his name. In fact, I only found out four years ago when I got my birth certificate and his name was listed as my father. I was surprised to see it there. Then I found out that he never paid a dime for my care, apparently he couldn’t be found to serve him with the papers. ”
Erika scoffed. “Yeah, as a drug pusher, he couldn’t be found or he would have to spend time behind bars for breaking the law.
Pushing drugs is still illegal. Three years ago, his drug contact made sure my mother ended up dead.
I only met the man twice in my entire life.
Then when he came here to snatch my son, I realized he was one of the Irishman’s dealers, that I’d been handing off the drugs he was pushing for some time.
” She shook her head. “I found out because of an eagle tattoo on his wrist.”
Sage paled and took a step back. She stared at Erika for a long minute before she whispered, “An eagle tattoo? Are you sure about that?”
Erika nodded. “Yeah I’m sure, the eagle was red and it looked as if it was going to snatch a fish in its claws.”
Looking pale in the face, Sage stumbled over to a chair and sat down hard.
She stared off at seemingly nothing for a long moment then she looked back at Erika and whispered, “I think I might have met him a couple of times while growing up. He even came to my school a couple of times like when school events happened and he would sit there with other parents, staring at me.”
“He never tried to talk to you at all?” Saint asked her.
Sage shook her head. “He never spoke to me but he would watch me for a while then just get up and walk away. He never looked back, not once.”
Erika sighed and told her, “He only came to me one time before he tried to snatch my son. He asked me to meet him at a small café and then he gave me a check and told me to disappear. I was seventeen at the time. He informed me that he ordered my mom to abort me and when she didn’t he just walked away.
He said he wasn’t ready to be a father back then and he didn’t want the world to know he had a child with a junkie.
” Then she snorted. “That was like the kettle calling the pot black. He was using, even back then. His hands shook and he was sweating like he was coming down from a high. He didn’t stick around too long and he needed another fix soon.
The only other time I saw that man was when he came sneaking into my room three days after I gave birth to my son.
He warned me that I could let him take the baby and leave to stay alive or he could kill me and take the baby anyway.
But with some help from my brother-in-law, he’s the one who ended up dead. And my baby didn’t go anywhere.”
Sage just sat there and finally she sighed. “Now, I’m glad I never met him face to face.”
Erika went over to the table and sat down across from Sage. “How old are you?” she asked quietly.
“I’m twenty-two. I just graduated from college,” Sage told her. “I got in because I grew up in the foster system.”
“Then you did better than I did. I’m twenty-four and I lost my mom to an overdose three years ago.
” Erika shrugged. “She wasn’t much of a mother but she dragged me all the way through her miserable life.
I was born addicted to coke because my mom couldn’t stay away from the junk.
Tommy Sayor got her that way, then when she told him she was pregnant he walked away from both of us.
But I found out he was always there in the background for all my life.
It was like he couldn’t just leave us alone.
He wouldn’t pay a cent in child support but he wouldn’t leave us alone either. ”
“My mom wasn’t a junkie,” Sage defended.
“She never did drugs but someone gave her that overdose. They injected her with God knows what and they watched her die. I was only four at the time and I had been asleep until I heard her yelling. I ran to her then someone hit me from behind. I dropped to the ground and then I didn’t wake up for a while but when I did the police were there.
They turned me over to Social Services and they took me away.
” Now her eyes widened and she bolted up from the chair then stumbled back.
Looking shocked, her eyes glazed over. She backed all the way up until she hit the wall and slid down along it to sit on the floor, on her knees.
Erika gasped and glanced at Saint. She then swung her gaze back to Sage. “What? What did you remember?”
Fresh tears ran down Sage’s face as she whispered, “S-something f-from that night, something I could n-never remember before.”
Erika got up and moved over to Sage. She knelt in front of her and grabbed her hands. “What? What did you see?”
Sage looked up at her and said, “T-that eagle with its claws stretched way out. I only caught a glimpse of it because something hit the back of my head and I was out before I even hit the floor.” She shook her head.
“That’s what I couldn’t remember. I was so afraid...
afraid for my mom and afraid of that damn eagle. ”
Erika sat back on her heels and slowly turned her head to stare at Saint. Tears were filling her eyes. Her eyes were full of pain as those tears slipped down her face. “He- he killed her?”
Saint couldn’t help himself. He moved toward her then scooped her up from the floor and just held her.
Dax moved over to pick Sage up and held her close to him. He patted her back with his hand to soothe her.
Sage paused, then tried to move away but she laid her head flat on his chest and the sound of his heartbeat echoing in her ear seemed to calm her.
Dax moved toward the table and sat down with her on his lap.
Saint and Erika sat across from them and the room went silent.
Finally, after several quiet minutes, Erika turned to face Sage. “Did you ever go to the police for information on what happened to your mother when you got older?”
Sage shook her head. “I tried but they never gave me any information. They said her file had been closed after the Medical Examiner signed off on an overdose as the cause of death. I tried to tell them my mom never used drugs but they just shook their heads and claimed she died of an overdose and that apparently I was too young to see what her life was really like. Even her own family believed she was a junkie and they told the state that I should go into the system. So I spent the next fourteen years in ten different foster homes. My mother wasn’t a junkie.
The only drug she ever took was aspirin. ”
Erika nodded. “Your mom may not have been a real junkie but mine was. She would clean herself up from time to time but it never lasted long. She had terrible taste in boyfriends and she always picked someone she could get high with. Hells bells, half the time she even forgot she had a kid.”
“So how did you hear about Erika?” Saint wanted to know. He still seemed to feel suspicious about how she found the farm.
Sage shrugged. “I checked the vital records and ran Tommy’s name through birth certificates.
Her name came up then I used marriage records to find her address.
It took me two years to find her. I just had to come to see if she was real.
” She paused and laid her head on Dax’s chest again.
“I just wanted to meet her. I didn’t come to cause trouble or to ask for anything. ”
Thrasher looked down at his phone. He studied the screen, then he looked up at Saint. “We got a white vehicle idling just beyond the fence line. I backtracked the recording and whoever is waiting there has been there for a while now.”
Saint looked troubled and turned to ask Sage, “Did you come here with anyone?”
Sage looked bewildered then shook her head. “No, I didn’t. I parked my car in a turn around and walked here along that county road. I wasn’t sure how to make contact with Erika so I thought maybe if I saw her here. Like outside? Maybe I could talk to her.”
“Well, this guy isn’t moving.” Thrasher enlarged the image on his phone and he was able to see the license plate. “I’ll check his plates.” Then he went out through the back door to return to his office.