Redemption (4 page)

Then I reached into my other pocket and remembered
his
phone. I pulled it out and pressed the center button. The background was blue and there were no apps or anything. I felt like a nosey girlfriend, but I wanted to know who this guy was.

Glancing around, I’m not sure why, I scrolled through his texts but there weren’t any, and no calls either.
Damn, had he erased everything?

I clicked on the camera icon and one lonely picture pulled up. A blonde girl stared back at me with big blue eyes. She looked happy and content. Something tinged in my chest.
Why only have one picture? Is this his wife or girlfriend? Is she looking for him?
”

“Ma’am.”

I dropped the phone in my lap and quickly shoved it into my jeans. “Yes?”

“When is Mr. Wes getting back? The boys are killing each other out there.”

I tried not to show my annoyance. “I don’t know. Tell ‘em if they don’t stop I’ll kick all their asses out.”

The boy grinned and ran off toward the double doors. “She said she gonna kick y’all’s asses!”

Three hours ticked by before Dad finally showed up. I could tell he’d taken another shower, probably due to the amount of blood that mystery guy had shared on their long walk back to the house.
Had they carried him?
He looked so broad and big, he’d be difficult to carry.

I darted upward. “What happened? Is he okay?”

Dad’s gaze flickered to the double doors and then back to me. “Everything is okay for right now. It doesn’t look like he has any broken bones, but he’s lost a lot of blood, and he’s weak. But it’s nothing that Cooper can’t fix over time.”

“So you’re not takin’ him to the hospital, right?”

Dad rounded the corner and dropped a white paper sack soaked in grease in front of me. “Let’s go back to my office and eat. I’ll tell you everything. Let me talk to my boys first.”

Dammit.
I’d waited three hours, and I needed answers. Grabbing the sack, Lucy and I darted back to Dad’s office. Nothing had changed in the months that I’d been gone besides the extra layer of dust on his trophy case and the amount of shit scattered along his desk.

I opened our lunch and pulled out everything. The bacon burger smelled so good, but my curiously had skyrocketed. “Okay, so spill,” I almost shouted when Dad walked in.

He sighed and dug into his pocket. He slid a driver’s licenses toward me. If I hadn’t been sitting down I would have been searching for some surface—God, he was beautiful. And I don’t mean
just
beautiful but gorgeously beautiful. Rugged. Those gray eyes that begged me not to call the ambulance were intense, and his square jaw strong. The mop of black hair wasn’t combed, but I wouldn’t have changed a thing about it.

He was the most handsome man I’d ever seen.

I searched his birthday.
Twenty-seven.
Six years older than me but who cares about age, right?

Dad snapped his fingers, and I glanced up. “Hello?”

Had he said something?
I cleared my throat. “What—what happened? Did he say?”

Dad sighed. “Not really. He did speak, but all he said was that a group of guys jumped him and left him for dead.”

“Did he have any money on him?”

“Are you plannin’ on robbing him when he goes to sleep?”

“Ha. No, I was wondering if there was because I can’t imagine a group of people beating him and leaving it. I have his cell phone in my pocket but nothing came up. There are no numbers saved.”

He bit into his burger. “That’s odd.”

I tapped my fingers and eyed my food. “So, where is he staying?”

Dad swallowed. “In the guest house right now. He has no family, he said. And I don’t feel right about leaving him out on the street. But listen,” he said, dropping his burger, “I don’t want you getting too close. I don’t know this guy, and I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt. Don’t get too close for me, okay?”

I grabbed my burger and avoided eye contact. Every part of me wanted to know this person and what happened so close to our home. But I nodded and nibbled on a piece of burger to look indifferent. “Sure.”

“Cooper is going to come over daily and take care of him.”

“Oh. Joy.”

Dad lifted a brow. “That’s all you have to say about that? I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable. I know you two—,”

I held up my free hand. “Don’t worry about it, Dad. That was a long time ago, and I’m not ready for anything right now. I mean—my fiancée
did
just cheat on me.”

Dad reached across the table and patted my hand. “I’m sorry, baby girl.”

I smiled over at him. “I’m not. Hurry and eat. There are a bunch of boys out there beating the crap out of each other.”

Dad groaned and stood up. “The life of a coach.”

“Dad?”

He glanced down at me. “What’s up?”

“When I came home the other night, a man at the gas station said that a gang had beat a guy to death in Dallas. Do you think the same people did that to—,” I glanced down at the driver’s license—“Declan?”
Declan? He didn’t look like a Declan at all.

Dad frowned. “What did I tell you about stopping at that Texaco late at night? Only weirdoes are out that late.”

I rolled my eyes. “Topic,
please
.”

He grinned and grabbed a pair of sparring gloves from underneath his desk. “Possibly. But whoever did it probably thought they’d killed ‘em. We found a tire iron close by, and he said that’s what they used but wouldn’t tell us who.”

Chills fluttered through my body.
Tire iron?
Had that been what Lucy was growling at? Did she know they were out there?
“Don’t worry about it, Nev. We’re going to get him cleaned up and on his way.”

I gave him a careful grin. “How do you know he won’t turn on us?”

“I had Michael do a background check. He’s just a recent college graduate with no record. Which reminds me to tell you to call your Aunt Shelly. She’s so excited your home.”

I took a bite of my burger. “Why does that remind you of Aunt Shelly?”

Dad rolled his eyes. “She went on a date with Michael, and she’s all he talks about.”

I lifted a brow. “The cop? You know she’ll never go out with him again. She’s not a ‘long-term’ relationship kind of girl.”

Dad swayed on his feet. “This isn’t news to me. I’ll let him find out for himself. I just needed a background check.”

Typical man.
  “I’ll give her a call today.”

Dad bent down and kissed my forehead. “Eat, and then you can go ahead and head home if you want. You look exhausted. Coopers staying at the house tonight just to make sure Declan’s okay.”

Just great.
“Okay.”

Dad stopped at the door and threw me a smartass grin over his shoulder. “Plus, I hate to see the man that tries to hurt you, you’d kick their ass.”

I straightened my shoulders. “Damn straight.”

Chapter Four

Rage

The hot summer air was doing nothing for my mood.

The butter I’d been asked to get from the store had already melted in the bag. I’d hoped Mom cooked something good with that butter. I’d lost my Call of Duty match online because of it.

I’d walked six blocks to the store since I was out of gas, and I didn’t get paid at my after school grocery bagging job until Friday. I’d made it to the house with the German Shepard when I smelled the smoke.

At first I thought someone was burning leaves. Then I heard all the screams, and my heart dropped into my stomach. I clutched the bag in my hand and ran. There wasn’t any way of me knowing who it was, but I had a gut feeling that told me I was about to live my worst nightmare.

The voices around me deafened, and I focused on the house across from our own. Hannah stood outside with Stephanie. Her dad held Hannah close to his side, and I knew. I felt it in my bones.

I drug my eyes from her to our house. Red flames flickered up from our roof. Panic clogged my throat. Even though I knew, I searched the crowd for my parents. But they weren’t there. I knew where they were and it wasn’t alive.

They’d burned in the fire, and it was all my fault.

I didn’t know how long I’d been asleep when I woke in a sweat.  I couldn’t tell if it’d been hours or minutes since they drug me to safety. A dull ache had taken over my body, and the only relief I’d felt was that I was no longer wet or dirty but clean in some stranger’s bed.

I really need to start thinking my plans through.

Cooper and Wes had thankfully went along with my wishes not to go to the hospital.
What would happen if they found out I wasn’t who I said I was?
Or if the police were called. I couldn’t risk getting into any trouble because I
had
to find my sister. Every time I tried to move a part of me screamed for me to stop moving.

              I wiped a bead of sweat from my upper lip. The damn place was hot as balls, but I wasn’t really in any kind of predicament to complain. This random person gave me their guest house to sleep in and didn’t ask for anything. 

Thanks to the woman that found me near death, I could rest knowing I would get better. For a moment I’d hope I would die so that I could escape the pain, but Neveah had given me a second chance to find my sister.

I’d thought I was going into the light when I heard her voice and saw those moss green eyes staring down at me. She dripped with sweat from her run, and if her dog hadn’t found me, I would have been pushing daisies. Despite the agonizing pain there was something warm and light that hit my chest when I saw her. She was undeniably
beautiful, and I did not like the way it made me feel. Or that it made me feel at all. I made a note to ignore the fact that her name was Heaven spelled backwards.

My prayer …

Coincidence
.

I shook my head, stretched my neck and groaned when I felt it in my fucking ribs.

“Wow there.”

My eyes flew opened. Wes stood at the cabin door with a bowl of food in his hands.
Thank God
. I was getting hungry. “Fuck, you scared me,” I whispered. I was too jumpy, and I knew he knew something was wrong. He hadn’t asked when Cooper bandaged me up early, and I assumed he’d be back to talk about my situation. There was only so much I could truthfully tell him.

He chuckled and shut the door behind him. “Sorry about that. I brought you some soup, and I wanted to talk to you about some things.”

Uh oh
. I was right. Hopefully, it didn’t mean he was kicking me out. He sat in the chair next to my bed and laughed. “Don’t worry, I’m not kicking you out in the street. I just wanted to talk to you about your—situation.”

My situation was fucked up. “Okay, that’s fair.”

He handed me my bowl and even though it was just soup because that’s all I could tolerate, my mouth began to water. I started eating, and he watched through worried eyes. “You’re in trouble, right?”

I shrugged. “Not really. I guess it depends on how you look at it. Most likely, the guys that did this think I’m dead.”

His eyes narrowed. “Will they come looking to make sure you’re dead?”

“Probably not. Dallas is big—,”

“You’re from Dallas?”

I looked up over my food. “Is this not Dallas?” I thought I was on the outskirts of Dallas somewhere in the country.

He slowly shook his head and leaned forward to press his elbows against his knees. “No, this is Huntsville.”

God, they’d taken me a long way.
“Well then I would say it’s safe that they won’t come looking for me then.”

He nodded and leaned backwards. “My predicament would be different if my daughter wasn’t here for the summer.”

Ah, the angel
is
his daughter.

I swallowed. “I understand.”

“Do you?” he asked, standing up and running his fingers through his hair. “She means the world to me. It’s just me and her. I can’t let your demons come along and hurt my daughter.”

A man that put his family before himself was someone I admired. Even though I had nowhere to go, and this was a chance to start over, I knew his predicament. And I’d have the same things running through my head. “I do understand, Wes.”

He closed his eyes. “I don’t want to regret giving you a chance, but you can stay here, on the down low for right now. If you need a job you’ve got one at my gym.”

Goddamn
. I had to bite my cheek to keep from crying like a fucking girl. “I can’t explain how much I appreciate this, sir. I know you don’t know me from Adam, but I won’t let you down. I would love a job.” A job that would obviously pay shit but would give me some change in my pocket to live. To actually have a job was great. Getting a job after being in prison was almost impossible.
Who wants to hire a criminal?

He nodded and shoved his hands into his pockets. “I have two conditions.”

Finishing my soup, I placed the bowl in my lap and met his gaze. “Anything.”

“If anything happens to my daughter I’ll make sure you don’t pull through next time. She’s my life, and her safety is my number one priority—always.”

I nodded. “Done.”

“And you have to leave my daughter alone. You can be friends but there will be nothing more than that. She’s been through a lot lately, and even though she seems strong, she doesn’t need any more complications in her life.”

Something twisted in my stomach, but I ignored it. I smiled over at him. “I can promise you that
nothing
will happen between the two of us.”

He sighed and looked down in relief. “Thank you. Now, get some rest. You’ll start work as soon as you’re feeling better. I’ll be back later with some supper, and Cooper will be over later to check those bandages. Do you need anything else?”

I shook my head. “No, sir. Wait, yes. Have you seen my cell phone?”

He shook his head. “No, but I’ll ask my daughter, she may have it.”

There wasn’t anything in it, and that’s what scared me.
What kind of person didn’t have something in their phone? A person with a hell of a lot to hide.
I smiled. “Thank you for being kind.”

He nodded. “I’d want someone to do the same for me or my kid. I’m going to the gym,” he dug into his pocket. “I’m leaving my cell phone here for you, and the number is logged in there already.”

I took the phone and sat it beside me. “I appreciate it.”

He disappeared through the doorway. The promise I’d made settled over me.
I can resist the Angel. I have to resist her.