Deeper Than Need (38 page)

His fingers traced low, between the cheeks of her rump, and she caught her breath as heat flooded her. “I’m fully aware of how
female
you are. I’m pretty fond of it.”

Then he rolled them around, pinning her beneath him in bed. His blue eyes held hers as he dipped his head and pressed his lips to hers. He didn’t kiss her, though. Instead, he whispered, “Marry me, then.”

Marry me, then.…

She gaped up at him. “Ah…”

“Not the most romantic proposal, I know. I’ll buy you a ring. I’ll go to my knee in front of the whole damn town if you want. I’ll even fly to New York and ask your father’s permission. But neither of us was expecting tonight; neither of us was expecting this to happen so fast. It’s just—”

She reached up and laid a hand on his cheek. “It’s not like you to do this sort of thing without marriage.” She smiled a little.

“It’s not just that.” He shrugged and dipped his head, catching her lip between his teeth. “That’s part of it, yeah, but we kind of threw that to the wind, didn’t we? It’s more complicated, though. I waited years for this. For you. For Micah. I don’t want to wait anymore.”

“Then we won’t.” She wiggled around until she could wrap both arms free. “I kind of like the idea of not waiting, seeing as how I knew the second I saw you that you were what I’d been looking for. I just didn’t realize I
had
been looking.”

He went to say something else and his phone rang from somewhere on the floor. He scowled in that general direction but didn’t get up. His brow pressed to hers, he murmured, “So … you’re saying yes? Really saying yes?”

“Absolutely. Besides, this town might try to run me out if they knew I’d compromised you but wouldn’t make an honest man out of their beloved Preach,” she teased.

“Very funny.” He pushed his knee between her thighs and settled more firmly against her. “I think we should kiss on it. Make it official.”

“Don’t people usually shake hands?”

“I think I like this idea better … for us.”

*   *   *

Adam stared at the phone.

It had been twenty minutes since he’d called Noah and no answer.

No response to the text, either.

That wasn’t like the man.

Adam wouldn’t think much of it, but they had problems,
big
problems, and it wasn’t the kind of thing Adam felt comfortable handling.

Shakers was crowded, the voices a dull roar, and his staff was out there running their asses off, but he couldn’t pull himself away from his computer.

The forums were simple, no bells or whistles. Some of the kids talked about making the site look better, but Adam and Noah refused. Not that anybody knew Adam was the second moderator.

They knew him as Loki-22. A few had probably guessed who he was, but nobody ever asked outright and he wasn’t going to answer one way or the other. It didn’t matter. Noah was the one they really trusted and Noah was the one they went to when there were problems.

Noah was the golden boy, even after all this time, and that was fine.

But Noah wasn’t here now and shit was about to hit the fan.

If we’re gonna do it, we gotta do it now.

That came from CTaz.

Noah had mentioned there were problems with the kid a week or so ago, but Adam hadn’t thought much of it. He’d kept his eye out, though, and when the kid logged in Adam logged in a few minutes later under his other screen name. It was one nobody had connected to Loki, either.

Creed_LoG was a pain in the ass, the biggest troublemaker on the forums, and Adam—under his admin name—had come out and threatened to ban the user, more than once. Which was funnier than hell, since he
was
Creed.

Most of the guys liked Creed. Adam was a little uncomfortable with the few girls on the forums because they liked to flirt with him and he’d ended up shutting down Creed’s message box so nobody could send him any personal messages. That helped, for the most part.

Over the past few months, he had managed to forge something of a friendship with CTaz. It was a weird one, because Adam didn’t know who CTaz was. CTaz didn’t tell; Adam didn’t ask.

And that handicapped the hell out of him, too. He was the only one in the dark from this group.

They
knew who each other were.

Maybe he should have pushed a little harder with the kid, Adam mused.

Pushing his hair back, he told himself he needed to wait for Noah, but Noah wasn’t answering and Adam had a bad feeling about this.

Another line popped up in the chat room.

How come you managed to get back online? Thought you were grounded, C.

That came from Assassin-J9.

Adam was almost positive that was Caleb Sims—Jeb’s nephew. The kid was always in trouble at school and had been caught driving drunk three times over the past year. He finally had to go to an in-house treatment center, something that Adam had heard Jeb’s family had fought tooth and nail. The judge handling Caleb’s case hadn’t backed down after the third DUI. He’d come back home with his head halfway straight, or so it seemed.

Right now, none of these boys were thinking straight.

I am grounded. I took off. Over at my girlfriend’s house.

Adam mentally filed that away. CTaz had a girlfriend. It wasn’t much help. How many teenage boys in this town had a girlfriend? A lot.

Your folks are going to kill you when you go home.
BBlue99.

One of the more naïve kids in the bunch and Adam worried about that one. Adam had a feeling the kid wasn’t even out of middle school. Was he already drinking?

I ain’t going home. Now, any of you going to help me? J9? Creed?

“Shit,” Adam muttered, dragging his hands down his face. Then, forcing his hands to the keyboard, he typed out a response.

I’m in the dark here, man. What exactly you want me to help with?

BBlue99’s response came up:

He wants to burn down the Frampton house.

J9 was the one who answered:

Damn it, you fucking idiot. Everybody, shut the window down. New chat, ten minutes.

“Stupid kids,” Adam whispered. Did they actually think
that
was going to protect them?

He closed his window and slumped in the chair, staring into nothing.

One of the phones on his desk buzzed.

It was the spare he kept on hand for the chat—he’d listed a phone number under his admin contact, but he didn’t want to put his number there, in case anybody connected it to his name. Quite a few people in this town would shit a brick if they knew for a fact Adam was the man who helped Noah with this forum. Something about fucking his way through half the women just left a bad image, he supposed.

This
was how he’d realized there was a problem.

He wasn’t surprised to see the message from BBlue there.

Loki, did you find Noah?

Sighing, he tapped out a response.

Not yet, kid. But I will. If I don’t in the next ten minutes, I guess I’ll have to call the cops. Do me a favor, and just don’t leave your house.

He hoped that would be enough. BBlue desperately wanted friends, needed to be liked and accepted.

I wont Loki. But I dont wnt thm 2 b hrt. Wht if Creed & J9 go w/CTaz & they get hrt?

Adam pinched the bridge of his nose. “Where the hell are you, Noah?”

Then he answered in the only way he could.

I’ll do everything I can to keep it from happening, okay? I gotta go.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Hiding in the basement, listening as Cassidy lied to her folks about cleaning up the place, Caleb Sims squeezed his eyes tightly closed. Down there in the cool, dim quiet, he told himself that finally,
finally,
after all this time, he’d find a way to get that out of his head.

That hellish nightmare … the grey room, lit only by flashlights and the urine-colored light streaming down from overhead, that room where he’d cried and pleaded and begged.

The room where they’d just smiled at him and said,
You’ll go in a boy. But sooner or later …

No more.

It was going to stop.

He had a letter that he was going to send. A letter, with pictures, a DVD, all of it. He was sending it to the
Indy
Star,
the second he left town, but before he went he was going to burn down that place.

It had taken him
months
to get those pictures.

They
took plenty of pictures. But the pictures
they
took weren’t the kind he needed. He didn’t want pictures of kids like him. He wanted the sons of bitches who did this. He wanted to nail their balls to the wall and watch them suffer.

After what they’d done to him.

To BBlue.

They told me I had to.

He didn’t need to know what they’d told Blue.

They’d told him the same thing.

How long had they been doing it?

He didn’t know. Of course, he’d lived in hell so long, it was amazing he knew anything outside that hell.

The voices still echoed in his ears, even though he hadn’t had to go back there. You only went for a few years. His personal hell had started at fourteen, and for most, it started before you turned fourteen and ended roughly two years later. Those trips to that dark, dingy hell that still had him waking up with screams trapped in his throat.

The other day he’d passed one of the men on the street and the motherfucker had clapped him on the back.

You’ll be graduating soon, right? Just another year or so. Then it’s off to college.

All the words had been nothing but a blur while Caleb had thought about tackling the son of a bitch, shoving him into the street and pounding his head into the pavement until it split like a ripe watermelon and the blood and brains spilled all over the place.

That was what Caleb had wanted to do.

He’d almost done it when the cocksucker had said it.

He’d looked Caleb in the eye and smiled.
Once you get out of college, let me know. We’ll help you find a job and there’s a place for you with us. You’re one of us now.

One of them? Hell would freeze over first.

A place? Yeah, Caleb had a
place
. A place he’d like to bury that son of a bitch.

But unlike that body they’d found buried in Frampton house, they wouldn’t ever find that evil old bastard.

Caleb’s phone buzzed and he looked down, saw the message.

It was his mom. He read it and red rolled across his vision.

Caleb, where are you? I went to get you for dinner and you’re gone. If I have to call your father, you’ll be in so much trouble.

He deleted it without responding.

Hunting. That’s what they called it when they got together now since they had to move.

They didn’t know how fucking easy it was to hunt them down, though. He’d been doing it for months. First at the Frampton house. Then, once the new owner had come in, he’d held his breath, hoped for the best and followed. He’d struck pure gold, too.

Now it was over. It would stop, all of it. He’d make sure of it.

Another message popped up.

Pastor Hal says we need to pray for you and be patient, but I’m running out of patience. Caleb, you need to get home. You’re not to leave here without my permission and you know it.

He deleted that message, too. Then he looked over at Brian Busby. On the forums, everybody called Brian J9. Brian was the captain of the football team and he’d been the man to tell Caleb how to get booze without getting caught. Caleb was the one to tell Brian he needed to sober up after they found out Brian’s mom was dying—her liver was shutting down.

Brian had never gone to the grey room, but he didn’t doubt Caleb. Brian had been there when Caleb helped Blue after the kid had come out of the grey hell the first time.

The two of them had worked together to figure out how to get the proof they needed to stop those cocksucking perverts. They’d hidden the cameras all over the damn kitchen, and then at the new place, and they spent months making sure the faces of the boys weren’t visible in the feed they’d put together.

Maybe it wouldn’t be usable in court.

But those men would be ruined.

Initiation … that’s what the men called it.

But the boys saw it as something else entirely. It was their annihilation. Their destruction. Or it would be, if they didn’t shut it all down.

“We doing this?” Brian asked.

Caleb nodded.

The best time to do it. There wouldn’t be a better time.

Brian reached into his pocket and pulled out a fat roll of green. “I was saving it for my car, but you’ll need it more. Once we’re done, you just go. You got the disc and shit, right?”

Caleb didn’t say anything, just nodded once more. He didn’t know what to say or do.

Instead of trying to figure it out, they stood up. Brian glanced at the computer and asked softly, “You going to wait and see if the others want in?”

“No.” Caleb grabbed his bag from the ground. “Creed doesn’t know anything about this and it’s too hard to explain it all right now. Blue’s just a kid. Let’s leave him out of it.”

Caleb swung his bag and then glanced at Brian. “Make sure you get back home before anybody sees you gone. I don’t want them thinking you did this.”

*   *   *

Caine stood in the shadows across the way, eying the house with more disgust than he’d felt in a good long while.

There were a lot of people who had a right to hate that house.

Caine couldn’t even think of how long that list might be.

Did any of them hate it as much as he did? He didn’t know.

At least it had all stopped.

That was all that mattered. The evil son of a bitch was dead. He was gone. Pushing up daisies, in the purest sense. Without him there, none of them would carry on. He’d always been the leader.

It wasn’t enough, but it was better than nothing.