Chapter 13 #4
Pumpkin frowned. He supposed growing up in northern Russia, Yelizaveta would have a different definition of ‘cold weather’. It wasn’t like she was in shorts, flip flops, and a tank. But the way she said ‘finally’, it raised some red flags for him.
He thought back to last year when Yelizaveta had started working for them.
He didn’t exactly pay attention to women’s clothing, but he also couldn’t specifically recall a time when he remembered her wearing short sleeves like she was now.
This past summer, he’d been in the hospital and then rehab, and she’d only visited a few times.
“What do you mean?” he asked her.
“Hm?” she questioned .
“You said ‘finally’. Were you not wearing them during the summer?”
Her smile brightened. “I was! It felt amazing!”
Her response only had his hackles rising higher. “Have you ever worn short sleeves before?”
She shook her head. “Not since I was a little girl. Billy did not permit me to wear them here.” Pennsylvania had some hot summers, especially up here in the mountains.
Hell, during the summer months, Pumpkin rarely wore any shirts.
Before he could reply, Yelizaveta held out her arms and then she said something that changed everything: “No more Billy, no more bruises.”
Pumpkin felt like a caged animal. He wanted to pace so badly, and the stiffness in his legs only made him even more frustrated. He’d hidden his reaction from Yelizaveta as best he could. The last thing he wanted to do was to scare her, especially when no amount of his rage was pointed at her .
The clubhouse doors opened and Ghost strode in.
He looked like shit. His ginger hair was disheveled, he had a two-day-old beard on his face, and there were bags under his eyes.
Pumpkin didn’t know who Lucky had sent to the station to replace him, but he was grateful.
Ghost needed sleep just as much as Bulldog and Lucky did.
Pumpkin nodded to his brother, not saying anything because he didn’t want to stand between Ghost and his bed.
But Ghost must have seen something on his face because he paused. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” Pumpkin insisted. He was finally sitting on the couch, but was in no mood to take a nap. Yelizaveta was in the kitchen humming away as she made more cookies for the club brothers.
Ghost crossed his arms over his chest, unimpressed. “Want to try that again?”
Pumpkin glanced up at his brother and then away. If he couldn’t pace, maybe he could hit something. “Not unless you’re volunteering to be my punching bag.”
A ginger eyebrow went up. Then he crooked a finger. “Follow me.”
“I was kidding!” Well, not really, but Ghost needed to get some sleep.
“I wasn’t,” Ghost threw over his shoulder.
Pumpkin watched as his club brother walked under the stairs towards Steel’s office.
As an officer, Ghost had a key. After a glance at the kitchen door where he could hear Yelizaveta’s soft humming, Pumpkin got himself off the couch and then followed Ghost. His cane clacked on the floor with each step.
Ghost held the office door open for Pumpkin and then closed it behind him. But he did not sit in Steel’s chair. That would have been fucking weird. Instead, he took one of the two chairs in front of Steel’s desk and then kicked the other one out to Pumpkin.
“First, tell me why you need a punching bag and then I’ll give you one,” he held up his pointer finger, “free shot.”
Pumpkin hobbled over to the chair. His skin felt uncomfortable, like he had ants crawling up and down his spine. He really did just want to punch something, but he supposed he owed Ghost an answer before taking a swing at him. “Billy Merrick used to hit Yelizaveta and Carter.”
Ghost did not look surprised by this news. Cracking his neck, he leaned forward on his knees. “I suspected as much.”
“You did?” Pumpkin’s eyebrows drew down. “She worked here for months before Merrick planted that bomb! Why didn’t you say or do anything?”
“Because I didn’t suspect until after he was in our cellar.”
Pumpkin’s anger lessened. Slightly. “Oh.”
“Yelizaveta relaxed the moment Merrick went missing. It was like a weight was lifted off her shoulders. About a week after Merrick’s execution, she spilled some flour in the kitchen.
Seemed simple enough, but she froze and the look in her eyes told me she expected a punishment for what she perceived as a transgression.
I helped her clean it up and reassured her that everything was fine.
When she went to wash her hands in the sink, I saw the faint remnants of a bruise on her wrist.”
“He was in our cellar for over a week,” Pumpkin recalled.
Ghost nodded once, his expression grave. “Which meant that bruise was deep enough that it took nearly three weeks to heal.”
Pumpkin hated to ask, but felt he had to. “Did you think it was Carter? I don’t know much about autism, but I’ve heard Harper talk about how some can become physically violent when upset.”
“Not really,” Ghost told him. “Harper wouldn’t allow Carter around Scotty, Lila, and the other kids outside of school if he was prone to violence.”
Pumpkin sat back in the chair. “She was working here for months! Months! And we never knew. We never suspected. I ,” he clarified, “never suspected.” He shook his head in disgust. “You should have heard the way she talked about him. It makes me wish we could kill him all over again or that he was still down in the cellar suffering. Execution was too good for the likes of him, because as happy as she is to no longer have bruises and injuries, she still blames herself for them. I know it’s her culture and how she was raised and then practically sold to be a bride, but shit, man, it was so fucking hard to just sit there and listen to her say those things.
How she needed her husband to ‘correct’ her.
She’s a legal citizen and yet it never occurred to her to try to leave him.
In the end, it took her husband’s own stupidity to free her of him. ”
It was microscopic. Just a twitch of an eye, but Pumpkin caught it. Staring at his brother, he asked, “What?”
“I have a theory about that too,” Ghost confessed.
Pumpkin’s eyebrows drew down and he felt the need to verify. “About the bomb?”
“About who built it.” Ghost ran a hand down his face. “I haven’t mentioned it to anyone because it didn’t change anything. Merrick is still dead and I have no proof.”
“Wait,” Pumpkin shook his head in confusion. “You don’t think Merrick planted that bomb?” The bomb the club executed him for?
Ghost shrugged. “Like I said, I have no proof. I’m not actively searching for any either, but I am keeping an eye on the situation. If I thought any one of us were in danger, I would have said something.”
Pumpkin didn’t understand, and Ghost’s vagueness only increased his frustration. “Are you saying we executed an innocent man?”
“‘Innocent’?” Ghost asked back, his tone mocking. “Did you not just tell me you believe he was beating his wife and special needs child?”
Pumpkin did believe that, and he would have killed Merrick himself if given the chance for that crime.
Billy Merrick had not been a good man. Per Cage, he’d been a fucking moron and an asshole.
Yelizaveta’s casual confirmation of her abuse made Pumpkin want to find a necromancer so he could raise Merrick from the grave and kill him again himself.
But if Ghost thought Merrick innocent—at least of building that bomb—then the real question that needed to be asked was who .
The club had gone through this already when they’d been divided over accusing Merrick.
No one else was there on the security camera.
Pumpkin remembered watching the footage.
Merrick had pulled up beside Pumpkin’s cage to pick up Carter and Yelizaveta from the clubhouse.
The bomb hadn’t been there before Merrick’s truck had pulled in and was there after the truck pulled away.
For a brief moment, the club had suspected Yelizaveta, but she hadn’t been on the side of the truck where the bomb had been dropped. Only Merrick had been.
Except, he actually hadn’t been.
Pumpkin’s eyes widened as the proverbial lightbulb clicked. But Ghost couldn’t possibly be saying what Pumpkin thought he was saying.
Ghost, though, stared back at him, unblinking. “What would you do to save your mother from her abusive husband? What lengths would you go to?”
Pumpkin’s father was many things, but abusive had never been one of them. Just neglectful and selfish.
Pumpkin shook his head, still trying to process Ghost’s insinuation. “Are you saying Carter built that bomb? ”
“It makes more sense than Billy did,” his brother said with a bit of scorn.
“Cage argued from the beginning that Merrick wasn’t smart enough to build that bomb.
He’d worked with him for years. Wouldn’t he know?
Add the fact that it took some serious time and effort to build that sophisticated device, but the bomber just happened to use rubber glue to neutralize it?
” Ghost shook his head. “That took either great stupidity or great genius.”
“You’re still saying a kid built a bomb and somehow framed his father for it?” Disbelief rang heavy in Pumpkin’s voice.
“Carter’s not your average kid. He doesn’t think about or see the world the way we do,” Ghost pointed out.
“He’s extremely smart. Demo said most of the supplies needed to build the device could be found at any hardware store.
All he’d need is a chemistry lab, which he had at his high school.
According to Harper, the only reason he wasn’t in a gifted program years ago was because his father wouldn’t let him. ”
Pumpkin still argued, “A bomb is extreme. There are other ways to get your abusive dad out of the picture.”
“We had Billy Merrick on surveillance camera planting a duffel bag outside the clubhouse. It would take a lot more to frame him another way. Was Carter supposed to get Merrick to walk in here with a gun in his hand?”
Pumpkin’s heart wanted to argue with Ghost so badly, but logic was not on his side.
Then a conversation from a year ago came to mind.
“He knows Demo worked with bombs. He specifically asked Demo why he was missing his fingers.” Fuck, no.
He was not even considering this. It just wasn’t possible!
Pumpkin shook his head. “I won’t believe it.
Abuse or no abuse, a bomb is excessive.”
“Maybe that’s the point,” Ghost said thoughtfully. “Who would blame a teenager for building a bomb when all evidence points to the dad anyway?”
“How could Carter know we wouldn’t point the finger at Yelizaveta?” Pumpkin argued.
But Ghost had an answer for that, echoing the very thoughts Pumpkin had just had himself only minutes before.
“Yelizaveta was on the other side of the truck. She never touched the duffel. Carter and Merrick got in on the driver’s side.
We all assumed Merrick dropped the duffel. Carter could have too.”
That itchy feeling down his spine was back. “Let’s say you’re right. And I’m not saying you are, but let’s just hypothetically say you’re right. How could Carter know we’d execute his father? That we’d even get Merrick out of his life?”
“Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he just wanted his father arrested,” Ghost argued.
That, hopefully, made more sense. Pumpkin certainly didn’t want to believe that a sixteen-year-old boy orchestrated his own father’s execution. And worse, it meant that Bulldog had pulled the trigger on an innocent man—or at the very least, innocent of the crime he’d been executed for.
Bulldog was a fiercely protective man. It was what made him such a good SAA.
He looked out for everyone, took their security and safety personally.
Yelizaveta fell under his protection as a club’s employee, but if Ghost was right, Pumpkin wondered if the man would feel guilty about pulling that trigger under a false accusation.
Pumpkin wasn’t sure how he would handle it.
He’d voted for Merrick’s execution because he’d believed that the man had planted a bomb outside the building where Pumpkin’s son slept.
He felt like he should feel guilty that a man had been executed for a crime he didn’t commit, but he didn’t.
And maybe that made him a bad man and father, but he was the sort who would never condone any violence towards women and children.
He didn’t doubt that Merrick went after Carter too, but Yelizaveta was such a fierce mother that she likely took the brunt of that rage.
“What are you going to do?” Pumpkin finally asked.
“Right now? Nothing. As I said, I’m keeping an eye on the situation.”
Pumpkin shook his head. “You have to tell Steel.”
“Steel has enough on his plate right now,” Ghost argued, stating the obvious. The man was in jail after all.
“I know,” Pumpkin agreed with a grimace, “but he’s still our President. Even though he’s on his way out, you can’t keep something like this to yourself.”
Ghost was quiet for a moment. “I don’t want anyone to look at Carter differently.
Without definitive proof, it’s just speculation.
It won’t change the past, and my only concern is if this was a one-time event or if Carter is capable of doing it again.
Possibly worse. And I don’t want anyone thinking about him that way.
I can’t imagine what life is like for Carter and the daily struggles he faces that most of us in the population take for granted. ”
Pumpkin scratched the back of his neck. His brother had a slight point. “I don’t know what to say or even think. All I know is that that asshole is out of their lives. And at the end of the day, I guess that’s all that matters.”
Ghost nodded once. “Let’s see what’s going on with Steel and the charges. You’re right that it’s disrespectful of me to not tell him my suspicions. With everything going on with Jenna, then thinking Scar was dead and your accident, I just didn’t want to add more to his plate.”
Admirable, but that didn’t make it right. “Good,” Pumpkin said, getting to his feet. “Now stand up. You gave me a free shot and I plan on taking it. Then you desperately need a shower and to go to bed.”