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Thanks to me. That doesn’t sound that bad. I try to think. “It was something about the house in Wausau. Something about… Tyrell. Tyrese.”
Dylan nods. “He was never found.”
Never found. My hands start to shake. “So we went back and found the door to the basement. Rafe and Megan, they went down first. And then we followed them. We found…”
… flashes of unwashed faces, frightened eyes, stench of rotting blood and shit and sweat steeped in terror—
“Z-man, focus.” Dylan grabs my hand, lowers it from my face. I blink at him, confused. “What did we find in the basement?”
“Kids,” I whisper. “Motherfucker had kids locked up in the fucking basement.”
Jesus Fucking Christ.
No wonder I keep slipping into the past. Son of a bitch went and did it again. Hurting children. Making them fucking bleed, locking them up in places nobody will hear their screams. Did he… Did he do to them what he did to me?
I’m not even aware I asked the question out loud until Dakota comes to sit down beside me, the baby in her arms, and leans into me. “We don’t know yet. They’re at the hospital. The doctors are examining them.”
I wrap an arm around her, drawing in her scent, letting it drench me all the way to my bones.
“You saved them,” Dylan says. “Thanks to you, those boys were saved from more pain, more torture, maybe even from death.”
Is it possible that a good thing has come out of this? That because I told my story I helped save those kids?
A crushing weight is shifting on my chest, slowly lifting.
Until I ask, “And Kenneth Shaw? Did they catch him?”
From the dark look on Dylan’s face and Dakota’s sharp intake of breath I realize they’d been hoping I wouldn’t ask, not yet.
He’s still free.
And I need to climb out of this fucking rabbit hole before it sucks me back in for good.
Chapter Twenty Nine
Dakota
“What’s wrong, baby?” I lean over him, touch his cheek. “Nightmare?”
Lee wails again, wiggling in his crib, tiny fists wagging back and forth. I scoop him up in my arms and flip him on his stomach, then rock him gently as I pace the bedroom. That usually calms him down. He has colic pain sometimes and being on his stomach helps.
“Shh…” I walk in the dark, because I know the room well. I know the darkness. My heart has been full with it these past weeks. “It’ll be all right.”
Even if I’m not sure I believe it, I can’t give up.
I’ll never give up on Zane.
From the start I knew that loving him wouldn’t be easy. He never stopped having nightmares since I moved in with him, but they had grown infrequent, milder.
It feels as if he’s been gone from my life for years, when it’s only been weeks since the flashbacks and nightmares took over.
The timing was terrible, too—having him fall into the horror pit of his past right after Lee was born, when I needed him by my side more than ever. When we should have been making happy memories together with our son.
But how can I complain when it wasn’t Zane’s fault? When I felt at times I was losing him and didn’t know what to do? If he comes back to me… that’s all I’m asking for. We can make happy memories from now on.
“Do you miss Daddy?” I whisper down at Lee, shushing him again when he lets out a small wail. “I know…”
Me too. I want my man back. My boyfriend, my husband, my baby’s daddy. The guy I love most in the world.
