24. Chapter Twenty-Four Lakey #2
My frustration mounted with each empty cupboard and barren shelf. Where were the answers I needed? The clock was ticking, and I could feel the urgency increasing.
"Lakey," Cam's low voice startled me. He appeared in the doorway, “Nothing upstairs, let’s check the study.”
I followed him, my skin prickling. The study was a mess of papers and overturned furniture. Cam pointed to an open drawer, barely visible behind a fallen bookshelf.
"Check there, I’m gonna check the computer.”
I peered inside. My breath caught in my throat. Adoption records. My hands trembled as I lifted the papers, scanning the dates. They aligned perfectly with the blank spaces in my mind, the lost time I'd never been able to recover.
Mother: Lakey Aldrich. Age at birth: approximately 16. Circumstances: medically induced labor under supervision of Dr. C. Olson. Outcome: live female infant, 5 lbs 2 oz.
The room tilted. My vision narrowed to a pinhole. The words swam and reformed and swam again, but they didn't change. They said what they said. Mother: Lakey Aldrich.
I'd had a baby.
I'd had a baby and I didn't remember it.
They'd put me under, or drugged me, or done whatever they'd done with all those drugs, and they'd taken a baby out of my body and I didn't remember it.
The chemical castration hadn't been first. The baby had been first. They'd taken her, and then they'd made sure I could never make another one.
"Holy shit," I whispered, my voice cracking.
“What?”
I made up my mind. I couldn’t tell Cam about this. Not right now. I needed to figure out what it all meant first. Was she his? If not… what happens to us? He’s not going to fight for a kid fathered by a rapist.
Fuck. “Uhhh, nothing.” I shoved the papers in my jacket.
Cam shrugged and finished on the computer until a loud repetitive beep startled us.
"We need to get out of here," he said. "Now." He pointed to the top right corner of the ceiling, a red light blinking obnoxiously at us.
So, it was a set-up.
I nodded, numb, clutching the papers to my chest under my jacket. Whatever these records meant, whatever twisted truth they held, one thing was for certain: nothing would ever be the same again.
Cam led me out of the study and back down the hall. The sound of multiple cars racing down the street should have alerted me something was about to happen, but I couldn't think, could barely move through the haze that had descended on my mind.
The little girl. Lillianna. The one I'd been watching for seven years from a tree across the street. The one whose pink curtains I'd memorized. The one whose name I'd just learned a few days ago and rolled around in my mouth like candy.
Mine. She was mine.
Not Janine's foster kid. Not some random child I'd developed an inexplicable attachment to.
Mine. My body had made her. My body had carried her.
And they'd taken her out of me while I was unconscious and handed her to the woman who'd abused me as a child, and I'd spent seven years watching her through a window without knowing why.
The pull. The need. The way I couldn't let her go, couldn't stop watching, couldn't explain it to Cam or to myself.
It wasn't obsession. It wasn't trauma response.
It was instinct. The most basic, primal instinct a human can have, buried under drugs and blackouts and years of gaslighting, but still there.
Still pulling me to that tree every night.
My body had known. Even when my brain couldn't remember, my body had known she was mine.
"I don't... I can't..." I stammered, my eyes darting wildly around the house. "Cam, what if she's... what if I..."
My throat closed up, choking on words I couldn't bring myself to say. If I said it out loud, it became real, and if it became real, I'd have to face the fact that I'd spent seven years watching my daughter through a window instead of kicking down the door and taking her home.
Cam's hand gripped my shoulder. "Lakey, focus. She’s not here, I checked upstairs," he said, his eyes boring into mine. "We can't stay here. We need to move. Now."
I blinked, forcing myself to meet his gaze. Right. Escape. Priority number fucking one. I nodded.
"Okay," I said, taking a shaky breath. "Okay, let's bounce."
Cam was already moving, striding into the kitchen with purpose. "Time to light this fucker up," he said, his long fingers twisting the knobs on the gas stove.
The hiss of escaping gas filled the air. My mind wouldn't shut the fuck up, screaming at me, drowning out all sense of thought.
"Matches?" I croaked, my voice sounding foreign to my own ears.
Cam produced a book of matches from his pocket. "Always prepared, baby. Well, except the gloves, I guess."
As he struck the match, the small flame dancing in the dark, I couldn't help but think of Lillianna.
My... no, I couldn't say it. Not out loud.
We were about to burn down her home. It made me feel some kind of way.
Like I shouldn't. Even if Janine was a horrific person, this was the place where she raised my girl.
Except that mom was Janine. And Janine was Chimera. And the curtains were gone and the girl was gone and the whole thing had been a set piece in a play I'd been watching from the wrong side of the glass, just like I'd feared.
"Cam," I whispered, uncertainty creeping into my voice. "Are we sure about this?"
His eyes locked onto mine. "It's us or them, Lakey. Always has been."
The match fell, and we ran just as all hell broke loose. Men streamed into the front of the house, shouting at each other, but I didn't take time to stop and look.
We ran into someone's back yard, over some bushes, slamming through a gate.
I was on autopilot, following Cam's large frame as he led the way, looping this way and that while I clutched those damn records to my chest. My legs burned.
My lungs burned. The cold air bit at my face and I could hear the shouts behind us, getting fainter but not gone. Not yet.
Cam cut through an alley between two houses, then across a darkened park, then through a parking lot behind a closed hardware store.
He moved with the confidence of someone who'd mapped every escape route in a three-mile radius, which he probably had.
That's what Cam did. While I danced and obsessed and killed impulsively, he mapped exits.
He counted cameras. He memorized license plates.
He was the reason we were still alive and I was the reason we had something to fight for.
Someone to fight for.
Almost back at our bikes, we finally slowed to a brisk walk, the air sucking into my lungs in a rush. I was paralyzed, unable to think.
"Let's go. Lakey, you need to move. I think we lost them. For now, anyway. Baby, come on, please. You need to help me out here," Cam said, finally stopping in front of our bikes. His eyes never left the road as he sat me on mine, slipping on my helmet before getting on his and doing the same.
I started my bike and shot off, watching our shitty neighborhood come into view.
We pulled up to our crappy apartment complex and headed down to parking, the reality of what we'd just done started to sink in. My hands were shaking, and not in the fun way they usually did after a job.
"Fuck," I said, fumbling with my helmet. Cam's hand shot out, steadying mine.
"Hey. We’re okay. You're okay."
I met his gaze, those dark eyes that had seen me through hell and back. "Am I?" I asked, hating how small my voice sounded. "Cam, if that little girl is... if she’s..."
He cut me off with a sharp look. "Don't go there, Lakey. Not yet. We need more intel."
I nodded, swallowing hard.
We made our way up to our place in silence. As soon as the door closed behind us, I headed straight for the bottle of whiskey on the counter. Cam didn't stop me.
"So," I said, after taking a long pull that burned all the way down. "What now?"
Cam ran a hand through his hair, looking more rattled than I'd seen him in years. "Jesus, Lakey, just..." Something must have been in my eyes because he sighed. "We find Janine, I guess. I'm sure Skeeter's laptop has more information. I've barely scratched the surface. Make her talk."
I laughed, but there was no humor in it. "And if she won't?"
His eyes met mine. "Then we make her scream."
Blood. Pain. Torture. This, at least, I understood. This, I could handle. This was the language I spoke, the only one that never let me down.
"Sounds like a party," I said, raising my glass. "To family reunions."
Cam's lips twitched in a humorless smile. "To destruction and madness."
I drank. The whiskey sat in my stomach next to the knowledge that I had a daughter and the knowledge that I'd been watching her for seven years and the knowledge that I couldn't tell the man sitting across from me because if I did, he'd try to fix it, and some things can't be fixed.
They can only be avenged.
Lillianna. Five pounds, two ounces. Born while I was unconscious. Raised by the woman who'd hurt me. Watched by me from a tree for seven years without knowing why.
I'm coming for you, baby girl. Mama's coming.
I just need to burn a few things down first.