Jim-Billy nodded again.
He didn’t feel much pain but then again, he wasn’t moving and he had a soft, warm female body pressed to his side. She was Tate’s but she was still a soft, warm female and she was Laurie, alive and breathing. It was a gift and life was too short, you get a gift, especially one as precious as the one squeezed next to him in a damned hospital bed, you accept it.
Tate walked from the window to the bed, the entirety of this short trip his eyes never leaving Jim-Billy’s.
Once he made it to the bed, though, they flicked down to Laurie then back to Jim-Billy.
Then he said in a fierce whisper, “Owe you, Billy, owe you huge.”
Jim-Billy nodded again.
“I know.”
And he did know, not because Jim-Billy suffered whatever was behind the complete numbness of his gut, made that way from whatever was feeding into his bloodstream from the drip in his arm but because Jim-Billy suffered it to do his bit to keep what was squeezed in bed beside him alive and breathing.
Jim-Billy grinned his semi-toothless grin at Tate.
Then he said, “Merry Christmas.”
Tate stared at him for a second and he did this hard.
Then Tate’s face relaxed and Jim-Billy heard his low, amused chuckle.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Where Are They Now?
“In one of the most remarkable where are they nows, Tatum Jackson, All-American linebacker for Penn State and first round draft pick for the Philadelphia Eagles, is back in the news after a twenty-two year absence.”
The minute they said Tate’s name, I pushed a bit up Tate’s chest where we were lying on the couch.
Me and my whole family were watching the football commentators doing their bit during halftime of the Sunday (the day after Christmas) game.
Pop had called my folks the minute he had a chance after they found me. They decided not to wait for the next flight out, which was late the next morning because by that time, my Dad said, they could be halfway across Nebraska (and were). So they packed up their stuff and all the presents and took turns driving all night to get to Colorado.
“Turn that shit off,” Tate growled, as he would, since he was in a very bad mood even though it was the day after Christmas.
I’d been let out of the hospital on Christmas Eve.
I’d talked to the cops in the hospital. Dalton was in bad shape from a gunshot wound and the beating Tate had given him. He’d also confessed after Special Agent Tambo explained the extent of the evidence against him which was a lot, considering he’d abducted me, cut my hair, kept trophies, didn’t dispose of his mattress that was covered in DNA and used the same knife on us all, leaving that knife in Jim-Billy’s gut.
Not to mention, Sunny had given a partial ID.
He’d also confessed to murdering his Mom and pinning it on her boyfriend. He was, as Tate would call him, seriously whacked. Not appreciative of the fact that his Mom had found the love of her life and especially not appreciative of the fact that she didn’t mind hiding it.
She was, Tambo told Tate that Dalton told him, meant to be only his.
They’d released Dalton’s Mom’s boyfriend after he spent nearly twenty years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit against a woman he adored. The State gave him restitution but, I figured, losing the woman he loved and nearly half of his life to prison, no restitution would heal those wounds.
Tambo had also told Tate that I’d gotten loose, in a way, partially thanks to Tonia, Neeta and the other girls. They’d struggled, weakening the pipe of the radiator.
I hated this fact, hated knowing their torture helped to save my life, but I was thankful all the same.
And lastly Tambo told Tate that Dalton did all the girls there, at that old house, then took them home even if that meant Nevada or Utah. Dalton said they needed to go home, needed to be with their families, needed to be at rest someplace familiar. Dalton was contrite, driven to his behavior but he struggled against it. He killed in May, his mother’s birth month, and December, her boyfriend’s. That he would allow. Knowing he could give in those months kept the urge at bay the rest of the time. But, when I got to the bar and Dalton watched Tate and me falling in love, that triggered something, flipped the switch, and he lost control.
I hated this fact too but I didn’t dwell. Tate had taught me, with what I allowed Brad to do to me, with what he felt after his Dad died, with how he acted after Neeta’s murder, that life was too short to dwell, to twist special in your head and make it go bad. Tate and I falling in love was just that, a biker and his biker babe falling in love. It was something else for Dalton and that was on Dalton. After searching my whole life, I wasn’t going to finally find special and let some psychopath twist it and make it go bad.
No, I was going to hold it precious.