Chapter 31 What She Went Through
WHAT SHE WENT THROUGH
“What did you find out from Grady?” Ford asked when he arrived at Clay’s forty minutes later.
He struggled to find the energy to get out of bed and dress, let alone come talk with his brother.
Reenie was sleeping and he didn’t want to wake her. She was safe and he wanted to have this conversation without her around.
“He’s going to call me in about twenty minutes.”
“Perfect timing.”
“Looks it for you,” Clay said.
He closed one eye at his brother. “No comment.”
“Didn’t expect to get one. Sure you can handle this?”
He hated the doubt his brother had in him just because he didn’t go to war. Couldn’t always sneak up on someone in the woods, cut their throat and escape without a sound.
He detested that life for his brother but knew Clay had lived it.
Not that his brother ever said those words, but Clay had talked in his sleep a few times and Ford let him ramble.
Maybe he thought it’d be a form of therapy his brother would never seek.
But it shed a light on his brother’s head that no one could ever understand.
“Don’t worry about me. I’ve got this.”
“When you care too much you make mistakes.”
“Did you?” he asked.
“Nope. Never cared enough about someone to worry about it.”
“Then you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know enough,” Clay said. “Everyone can see it. Now it’s more. It’s out there. She’s no longer reported missing, but that also means Oliver is going to know she was last seen in this area if he truly has contacts in the police department.”
“Which we aren’t sure of other than one guy.”
“For someone with her background, that’s enough. Remember that. You don’t know what she’s lived. What’s in her mind or what she went through.”
He didn’t need that reminder either.
That he might never know enough. He didn’t expect to know it all, but he’d like to know more than he did.
“I know what I need to.”
“You keep telling yourself that.”
“Do you want to take this downstairs? I don’t mind throwing your ass on the mat again.”
Clay held his stare. “I’m itching if you are, but you’re the one that has to go back to your girlfriend and explain the bruises.”
Since he was going to have a few already, he didn’t need to add to it. Not with the look in his brother’s eyes that he wouldn’t go easy on him.
“Another time.”
“That’s what I thought,” Clay said. “Beer?”
“Sure.” His brother went to the kitchen and grabbed two, then brought them out and tossed one to him.
“How come you’re not drinking your cider over beer?”
“I taste it enough at work. If you say this to anyone, I’ll deny it and then beat the shit out of you.”
“You don’t like your own cider, do you?” he asked, grabbing his side as he laughed. Oh, that was hilarious.
“Don’t be a dick,” Clay said. “Of course I like it. I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t. I wouldn’t be able to get it just right either if I didn’t like the taste of it.”
“Then what?”
“It’s the sweetness. I can only take it in small doses. The acid in my chest and gut is too much after large amounts of it.”
“Awww, the sugar gives you a bellyache?”
Clay put his beer down and stalked toward him.
He held his ground.
It felt good to bust his brother’s ass at a time like this.
Something to remind him that life could go back to normal.
Maybe Clay needed it too with the smirk on the big guy’s face.
But the phone ringing had his brother halting and turning, then grabbing it off the counter. “It’s Grady.”
Clay came over and sat on the couch, hit the answer button and put it on speaker.
“Hey, Clay.”
“I’ve got Ford with me,” Clay said.
“Good.”
He didn’t like the sound of that. It meant there was something to report.
“What did you find out?” he asked.
“Nothing concrete but enough to make the hair stand up on my arm.”
He looked at Clay and got the slight headshake. He was right, not good.
“Fill us in,” Clay said.
“Oliver is still coming and going as if nothing is going on. That his girlfriend of almost a year didn’t disappear from his life. He’s got a brand new seventy thousand-dollar truck in the driveway. Makes little sense for a guy that’s barely making fifty grand a year.”
Sounded like money coming in on the side to him.
“Some people live their life in debt,” Clay said.
“We know that isn’t always the case,” Grady said. “But Oliver appears to have moved on. There’s been a woman at his place a few nights too.”
Ford wanted to hear that part of it. “He’s got a new girlfriend?”
“Looks it,” Grady said. “There’s been no sign of Reenie’s car or possessions. My guess is he’s cleared them out of the house if he’s got another woman there.”
“Could be it’s done in his eyes,” he said.
“For all appearances. Not much to report on Randy either. I’ve had someone tailing Oliver to find out this much.
Randy not as much, but he’s out and about doing his normal sly shit.
Popping into the businesses he’d been dealing out of as if nothing is going on.
Not sure if he’s trying to make up for the missing money or pills, but I can tell you, it hasn’t been found. ”
“What’s making the hair stand up on your arms?” Ford asked. “This sounds as if Reenie didn’t exist to them.”
“That’s what I don’t like,” Grady said. “Maybe it’s me. But it’s not like they know she left. She disappeared. Everything was left behind. Let’s get real, why is that?”
“Because someone inside cleared it,” he said.
“That’s right. Is someone watching every movement every day for information on Reenie?” Clay asked. “Highly doubtful. But it’s going to come up at some point where she is.”
“What I don’t like,” Grady said, “is that there is still talk that Reenie is the one who took off with the drugs. Hushed whispers, but it’s happening.”
“Yet the police don’t think that,” Ford said. “Because of course they know nothing about the drugs. She was reported missing, which she’s not now. There is no mention of her being wanted for questioning about anything.”
“There wouldn’t be,” Grady said. “This isn’t fact.
I have no idea of it other than what I saw yesterday, but there is at least one officer that is at Oliver’s lately when Randy is there.
Going in with a backpack and coming out with one.
Guys don’t carry backpacks like purses into houses, not without delivering things. ”
“So it’s possible at least someone is running drugs with them? Possibly someone in the police department?”
“Everything I’ve seen shows Randy is the one with the drugs, Oliver just hiding them at times. Not sure what or if this officer is involved,” Grady said. “But he’s there with them and carrying bags.”
“You feel it,” Clay said. “And that is enough for me.”
“Send me a bill for your time,” Ford said. There was no way this guy was doing this for nothing.
“I’ll square up with Clay,” Grady said. “You two can work it out. But this has been more fun than I thought it’d be. Might see a future in the PI arena. Thanks for that.”
He heard laughing on the other end, Clay said a few more things to his buddy and then disconnected the call.
“Now what?” Ford asked. “Tell me more about your buddy.”
“His instincts are there. I’d let him cover my ass in the field any day and have.”
“Sounds as if things are just too clean,” he said. “There’s a chance we are making more out of it. Or that they have moved on and aren’t worried about the stash. It’s not much compared to other deals.”
“No,” Clay said. “Unless there is something special about them.”
“Special? It’s a thousand pills, and Reenie doesn’t have them. I’ve been in the cabin. There isn’t anything there that doesn’t belong.”
“There isn’t,” Clay said. “I checked her car for hidden compartments.”
“What the fuck, Clay.”
“Don’t give me that shit,” his brother said. “It was a while ago. Sorry, but I know what I know and I’m not taking chances with the family. You never go into anything blind.”
“You found nothing and you know it.”
“I just said that,” Clay said. “There were no traces either that I could see.”
“When did you do it? Someone would have seen you during the day when it was parked at the cafe.”
“One night,” Clay said, shrugging. “She was never the wiser. I can get around without making noise.”
The fact his brother was outside of the cabin when Reenie was sleeping, going through her car that she locked nightly, frustrated him. Not that Clay could do it, but that he’d done it and never said a word until now.
“You would have told me if you found anything, right?”
Not that he had any doubt there was nothing to find.
Yet didn’t he accuse her of that when he found out weeks ago that pills were missing?
All he knew was what was in his heart twenty years ago and what was there now was much more intense.
That should be enough, but he wasn’t na?ve to think that was the case.
“You would have been the first to know,” Clay said.
“It bothers you that Reenie is the victim, doesn’t it?”
“It doesn’t bother me.”
“Then what does?”
There was a flicker of hurt and anger in Clay’s gaze. “What bothers me is her history of leaving. Not just when she was a kid and had no control over those things, but as an adult. The way she went about this.”
“She wanted to make sure he didn’t come after her.”
“Great,” Clay said. “I can almost understand her drugging him so that she had hours to go. She could have made up a lot of ground before he woke, but the blood staged and then cleaned up. As if he was hiding a crime that he didn’t commit.”
“Don’t you dare say it.”
If his brother felt any sympathy over an abuser, he’d take Clay down himself and pound the shit out of him.
“Say what?” Clay asked. “And get that look out of your eye. You can’t take me and you know it. You’d give it an excellent shot and we’d both end up bloody and get a lecture from Mom, but your girl would nurse you for weeks and I’d be at work in the morning.”
He hated that his brother was probably right.
They both were big and strong, but Clay’s training put him heads above anyone.
“That you think she was framing him to go to jail for something. That she shouldn’t have done it, even though she had no intention of having him charged with anything. He beat her. He broke her arm months ago.”
Ford knew he’d never be told everything done to Reenie. Or that he was positive if his girlfriend had stayed it’d only escalate.
“Fuck no,” Clay said. The appalled look on his brother’s face was laughable, but neither of them found any humor in the situation.
“It’s the fact that she was devious enough to do that.
Who thinks that way? To not just leave blood, but clean it so it was naked to the visible eye.
To make it look as if Oliver was hiding something. ”
“People do it,” he argued. “She said she’d been thinking of things for years.”
“People like me do it,” Clay said. “Think about that. That’s my problem.
It takes a special person for their mind to work that way.
Not just find a way to leave, but to set someone up.
To jam them up in a way the average person couldn’t dream of.
Blood on the floor, broken dishes, added to the house being trashed.
Sure. I get that. It’s the leaving the hidden bloody clothes and cleaning up staged blood I can’t get past.”
There would be no winning with his brother.
He’d never be able to convince him of anything when it came to Reenie.
But he couldn’t let it go either.
“Clay, she’s been abused in multiple forms her whole life.
She’s believed all the shit dropped on her lap that she wasn’t worthy or whatever she did, good or bad, could result in some form of punishment.
Desperate people do desperate things. More so when you add confusion to the mix.
But that doesn’t make them a bad person. ”
Ford stalked to the door, whipped it open and slammed out, returning to the woman he loved.
He was going to protect her the best he could, even if that was against his brother’s opinions.