Chapter 20
STARLA
The storm outside woke me. I carefully slid out from under Sarge’s heavy arm, pulled on my robe, and quietly left the bedroom with Luna trailing behind me.
It was more than an hour before anyone else would be awake, but I went ahead and started the first pot of coffee for the day.
While it brewed, I mixed the ingredients for six pie crusts and set them in the fridge to chill before chopping the onions, peppers, and mushrooms I planned to use in the quiches for breakfast. By the time I finished my second cup of coffee, I had the bacon and sausage cooked, the vegetables sauteed, and six quiches with different combinations of meat, cheese, and vegetables in the oven.
I filled my mug for the third time and carried it outside to sit on the porch, eager to enjoy the storm while breakfast baked. Sitting out here had become my daily habit since I’d grown comfortable here at the farm–except on the mornings after Sarge kept me up too late.
I knew it was a waste of time and that I could be doing any number of things–like a morning workout–but the idea was laughable at best. I might not work out in a gym, but I got plenty of exercise throughout the day. At least that’s what my stupid watch told me every evening.
I glanced at my wrist and rolled my eyes, knowing that the second I saw Sarge this morning the damn thing would chirp again. It did it almost every time I caught sight of him, but especially when we kissed or touched each other in any way.
I’d started leaving it on the charger after my shower every evening because Sarge laughed every time it chirped.
It went off almost constantly when we made love, or whenever we touched.
Sometimes it went off when I was thinking about him, but I’d never told him that.
It would inflate his ego, and he already claimed it grew every time he caught me watching him with hunger in my eyes.
It wasn’t just hunger he was seeing, but I still hadn’t told him that. Sometime during the night–every single night–Sarge retrieved my watch from the bathroom counter and slipped it onto my wrist to monitor my heart rate while I slept.
When I first noticed, I told him I’d be fine to sleep without it now and then.
He insisted I keep it on, a worried expression clouding his face as he grilled me about my heart condition.
Even after I assured him that my cardiologist and my primary care physician weren’t concerned and used the data from my watch only to make sure nothing changed, he kept putting it on my wrist after I fell asleep.
At dinner that evening, he stayed quiet while the rest of us chatted about our day and our plans for tomorrow.
When I looked over his shoulder, I caught him reading an article on his phone about internal defibrillators and the warning signs of a malfunction.
Right then, I realized that even if he didn’t know it yet, Sarge Brick loved me.
Or, at the very least, he cared for me just as much as I already loved him.
Luna didn’t even lift her head when the screen door opened.
I glanced over to find Sarge walking across the porch in nothing but a pair of basketball shorts.
The sight was almost as breathtaking as how I’d left him, stretched out in bed with the tattoos on his naked body painting a beautiful picture against the light sheets I’d changed just yesterday.
“Mornin’, babe,” Sarge mumbled as he sat beside me on the swing. “How long have you been up?”
“Long enough to make coffee and start breakfast.”
“Isn’t it a little early?”
“It will keep until everyone wakes up.”
“Might be later than usual. If they’re anything like me, the rain will keep them asleep unless the thunder wakes them up.”
“That’s what got me. Is that why you’re awake?”
“No, I’m awake because I reached for you and found an empty bed.”
“You should have gone back to sleep, sweetie. You still can if you . . .” Sarge shook his head, cutting off my words.
“I don’t ever want to sleep without you by my side, pretty Star. When they hauled me off yesterday, leaving you was my biggest worry.”
Even though Captain and Matalie assured us the feds didn’t have a case against any of us, especially since they hadn’t found a single piece of evidence, I still worried something might happen to take Sarge away.
The thought of him going back to prison terrified me, and not just for my sake.
I was sure he'd been afraid, too, whether he’d admit it or not.
“Is there any chance they might find evidence of . . . shit, Sarge. I don’t even know for sure what you did, so I can’t finish that sentence.”
“You don’t want to know, babe.”
“You’re wrong. I do want to know. How did they know to come here? Did Fabiella call them up and say, ‘I’m pretty sure my ex has done something nefarious, so you should come make his life a living hell,’ or did actual evidence lead them to you? Who were those men in the pictures they showed me?”
Sarge watched the rain fall in the yard for a few minutes before he spoke. “We’ve mentioned that we occasionally work for Ajax, right? Well, Lurk was working for him when those four men and their cronies took him captive.”
“What was he doing?”
“Helping a woman they’d taken first. From what I understand, her brother traded her to settle a debt he owed those men and . . .”
“What kind of debt is worth your own sister’s life and freedom?”
“Drugs. It’s fucking crazy what people will do for them.”
“I know,” I whispered sadly. Child services had removed me from my parents’ custody because of their drug use, and as far as I knew, they’d never kicked their habits, either together or apart.
They might even be dead. I wasn’t sure I cared at this point.
Life with them was a distant memory, thank God, because what little I did remember was chaos and neglect. “My parents were addicts.”
“I remember Ma saying something about that.”
“And these men took a woman as payment for her brother’s debt?” When Sarge nodded slowly, I sighed. “Fucking monsters.”
“Well, obviously you’ve figured out they’re dead monsters. We were almost positive they wouldn’t be able to track them here, but we were wrong.”
“How did they?”
“The men were in the trunk of a car deep in the woods near the corner where Fabiella lives.”
“And you got rid of them?” When Sarge nodded, I said, “But the feds didn’t find anything.”
“Because we did things to intentionally mislead anyone who came sniffing around, just in case they were tracked here somehow.”
“How were they?”
“A jealous girlfriend and a car that was smarter than all of us.”
“Huh?”
“One of the men’s girlfriends slipped a tracker into his wallet so she always knew where he was. And the car they stole to get Lurk here happened to be LoJacked, so they traced it to the farm.”
“Where is it now?”
“Somewhere deep in the Missouri River, along with the men who rode here in the trunk.”
“So they’re still in the trunk?” Sarge shook his head. “How did you get rid of them, then?”
“Are you sure you want to hear this?”
“Yes! You know how much I love true crime shows, so I’m honestly curious how you got rid of them in a way that makes you know for sure they’ll never be found.
They can’t be in a well because you’d never poison the water for the farm.
If you’d put them in the river, someone would have found them floating somewhere. . .”
“Not if we put them through a woodchipper first.” My jaw dropped, and Sarge laughed before he said, “We hauled it out into the middle of the river on one of the boats we use for fishing and fed those four men into the current. By now there are bits of them scattered through at least four states, and whatever was left fed the fish in the Gulf.”
“Holy shit!” Sarge laughed at my reaction, and after a second, I asked, "What did you do with the woodchipper? No matter how hard you try, there’s always some DNA somewhere.”
“That’s the same one we use around the farm to make fish-emulsion fertilizer after we drag the pond to thin the population so the fish don’t block our pumps.”
I remembered the day they’d done that a few weeks ago and how much all of the men reeked when they came back to the house.
I was shocked at the forethought it took to know that even if the FBI got their hands on that machine, there would be too many DNA profiles to sort through, especially after it had been cleaned with the power sprayer and whatever chemical cleaners they used.
“That’s fucking genius,” I whispered. “Damn!”
“As odd as it is to say this, considering the subject matter, thank you.”
“But why . . .” Suddenly it hit me, and I exclaimed, “You planted the trees all of a sudden to make it look like they were buried under one of them!”
“Exactly.”
“And the well?”
“That’s a new runoff pond for irrigation. We’ve been planning it for years, but Ma used this opportunity to make them do the hard work for us. In the end, that’s how she’s going to finally get rid of Fabiella.”
“By flooding her out. That’s something I’d like to see.”
“There’s a cover on my Gator. Why don’t we go look?”
“Really? Right now?”
“We can wait until your pies are finished, but . . .” Sarge was interrupted by my watch chiming, but this time it wasn’t because of my heart–it was the timer I’d set to remind me to take the quiches out of the oven.
Sarge smirked, and I gave him a bored look. “That was the timer for the quiches, Captain Ego.”
“While you take them out of the oven, I’ll write a note for Ma telling her we’re cruising around.”
I went inside with Sarge and quickly completed my task while he refilled our mugs and wrote a quick note to Ma.
I was already sprinting across the soggy grass toward his Gator before I remembered I was still wearing my robe.
I slid into the seat, which the storm had already soaked, and said, “This is refreshing and all, but I need to go put some clothes on before we take off.”
“I like that robe.”