Buck, page 12
He coughs and sputters.
“Start talking.”
Darnell pulls out the Glock that he’s holding at his side. “That’s right. Start talking.”
“Already told him everything.” Pollack glances at Luke.
“We want to hear it again,” I say.
“And we want to hear it now.” From Darnell.
“I—”
Darnell hits him over the head with his pistol. “Let me make one thing clear. That little girl out there? Aspen Davis? She’s my daughter. I don’t know if you did anything to her on that island, and I don’t really care. I’m going to see you to your grave anyway. But not until you talk.”
“Why should I talk to you if you’re going to kill me anyway?”
“Because I might make you suffer a little less if you cooperate.”
I get what Darnell’s doing. Apparently Pollack already told Luke everything, but Darnell is full of rage, full of the need for revenge. Just like his daughter is.
“I never touched her on that island,” Pollack says.
“But others did.”
“Yes,” Pollack gulps out.
“Katelyn was his favorite,” Luke says dryly. “And believe me, I want you to make him suffer.”
Darnell gets a glaring and vengeful look in his brown eyes.
Damn, the guy means business.
He’s a SEAL. A decorated SEAL.
But this is his daughter.
His daughter who is my everything.
I understand.
But I also don’t think he’s going to do anything. He’s just making Pollack think he will.
“Guys came to me. Your men,” he says to Luke.
“Not my men. Not any longer.”
“Well, they were still your men.”
“Did I force you to get in bed with the drug lords of LA? No, but you did it anyway. You did it because of me. Because of Katelyn. You got in with some bad folks, Ice Man.”
“Keep talking,” Darnell says.
“Your men,” he says to Luke again. “Your men turned me over. Turned me over to a cabal, a prison underground. To Greg Wallace.”
“So this Greg Wallace is some bigwig in prison?”
“Not really. He just used all the leverage he had for this favor.”
“And what favor would that be?” I ask.
“He needed two people taken care of. Gloria Delgado and her husband. Seems they had been asking questions, or people had been asking them questions, about another one of the women from the island. Your daughter,” he says to Darnell.
“And?” Darnell says between clenched teeth.
“Wallace said I owed him. He was behind bars because of me, and the drug lords turned me over to him.”
“What could he do to you behind bars?” Darnell asks.
“Surely you’re not that ignorant,” Pollack says.
Darnell hits him in the head with the pistol again. “I’m not ignorant at all, asshole. But I want you to spell it out for me anyway. I want to hear it from your fucking mouth.”
“Tell them,” Luke says. “You’re such an idiot, Pollack. You got immunity. You could’ve gotten away from all this, but once you saw Katelyn, you couldn’t. Obsession runs deep.”
Luke’s eyes reflect knowledge. He understands obsession. He was once obsessed with my sister. Anger makes my neck grow hot, but I suppress it. I can’t go there right now.
“How many times am I going to have to repeat myself?” Pollack demands.
“As many as I say.” Darnell clocks him on his head once more. “Or I’ll put you out like a light, and then we’ll have to wait here until you wake up and can start talking again. That will make us angry, dumbass. And then we’ll make it a lot worse for you.”
“Fine, fine!” Pollack gasps, sweat trickling from his forehead. “I’ll talk.”
Darnell moves back a few steps. “I’m listening.”
“I didn’t know Greg’s connection to Aspen. Not until recently. Greg and I saw each other on the island a couple of times. But you know, it was a gentlemen’s deal.”
I scoff. “A gentlemen’s deal? You guys think you are actually gentlemen?”
“You know what I mean. Don’t ask, don’t tell, and all that. Anything we saw on the island was always in confidence. We signed a document to that effect.”
“Until you could buy your freedom for that information,” I say. “Then your so-called gentlemen’s deal meant nothing.”
He doesn’t respond.
“Keep talking.” From Darnell.
“We knew each other from the island. I was told, when I made my immunity deal, that none of the information would ever be made public. That no one would know I had given the names.”
“Yeah,” Luke says, “that was before you immersed yourself into my previous world.”
Pollack chokes a little. “Could you loosen these bindings around my chest? I’m feeling really tight. Like I can’t breathe.”
“No,” Luke says flatly.
“Please. I think I might be having a heart attack.”
I look at him. There’s no sweat on his face other than what’s already emerged at his receding hairline. He’s not breathing heavily.
“You’re bluffing. Keep talking.”
He winces a few times, but then he gives up the ruse. “The LA drug people found out all the names that I had given to the feds. Greg Wallace was one of them. Somehow that information got to Greg in prison.”
I roll my eyes. “Yeah, I’m sure it did somehow.”
“Anyway, your people”—he glances at Luke—“threatened me.”
“They’re no longer my people. Say it again and I’ll let this angry father here cut you up into tiny little pieces.”
“Please, no!” Pollack gasps. Then, “Greg found out that one of the people who knew of his involvement was talking to Aspen and you. He needed those people taken care of.”
“So you’re saying you killed Gloria and Brian?” I ask.
“I did,” he gulps out.
“I don’t buy it. It had to have been someone they knew. There was no sign of a struggle.”
“I wasn’t alone,” Pollack says. “Someone else was with me. Someone they knew.”
26
ASPEN
Shattered tibia and fibula.
Nerve damage.
Nerve damage.
Nerve damage.
Voices around me, and then Diamond.
“Garnet, can you hear me? Garnet?”
The sounds are coming through a funnel or something.
They make it to my ears, but there’s something unreal about them. Maybe I’m underwater.
Maybe…
Did he drown me?
No.
They’re not allowed to kill us.
There aren’t any pools deep enough for them to hold us down and drown us, not on the hunting ground.
Still…
If I were drowning, would I be able to breathe?
Am I breathing?
I’m numb. So numb.
Can’t move my leg.
My left leg.
There’s a searing pain.
Searing pain all around my right breast.
“She’s coming to.” Not Diamond’s voice.
An image emerges in my peripheral vision.
A woman. A woman in scrubs. Green scrubs.
“Garnet. Garnet, can you hear me?”
Yes.
But the words don’t come out. Only a soft squeak.
“She’s trying to talk,” Green Scrubs says.
Then Diamond’s face. Her kind and wrinkled face in my field of vision. She’s blurry, but I recognize her.
She’s the only person I recognize.
“Garnet, you’re going to be here for a couple of months. It’s a respite.”
I try to open my mouth.
“It’s okay. Don’t try to talk. Your tibia and fibula on your left leg are broken. Shattered. You’ve got some damage to your right breast. But you will be fine. Your bones need to knit together. You’ve had surgery. It will take some time, but you will be good as new again.”
Where am I? Is this person a doctor? Am I still on the island?
I lose consciousness then.
Maybe Diamond’s right.
Enjoy the respite.
I’m so tired. My arm hurts from holding the gun on Nancy.
But I never waver.
I learned one thing on that damned island, something even more important than what my athletic training taught me.
Sometimes you have to run.
I don’t know if I would’ve been worse off if I had done what the man asked. If I had run when he told me to run.
I was just so tired of being told what to do.
I knew he would eventually catch me because the odds were always in the man’s favor.
And this man? He was as ripped a man as I’d ever seen. Made me wonder why he never wanted to get in the sun. Even a little bit of sun would’ve made him less pasty white. There was not an ounce of fat on him. He was all muscle.
So I fought. I fought by not giving him what he wanted.
And damn, I paid the price.
That’s why I’ll never play volleyball again.
I healed. It took several months and a lot of physical therapy, but I healed. Turned out the island had top notch medical care for all the women. Those physicians and therapists must have been well paid to keep quiet about what they saw. They had one job—to get us healed and back to work. After all, if I hadn’t been able to heal and get back out on the hunt, I was nothing more than garbage to be thrown out.
So I was determined, and I healed. I got my strength back, I learned to run again, I kept my muscles in shape.
But I knew I would never again be a professional athlete.
I could run, but I could no longer jump.
I look down at my left leg, at the scars on my left calf from the halo device that kept my bones in place while they healed. Not all the scars are from the men on the island.
But they were the result of what I endured on the island.
“Can you just put the gun down, for a minute?” Nancy says.
“Absolutely not.”
“Aren’t you tired?”
Yes. “Absolutely not,” I grit out.
“I didn’t know. Please. You have to believe me. I didn’t know.”
I do believe her. She’s a nasty-ass bitch, but I don’t think she’s truly evil. Or at least she wasn’t then. Now? She’s a certified sociopath.
“I don’t believe you,” I say.
“I just… It was a lot of things.”
“Right.”
“You just walked in, took the position from Gloria. Bumped me into third place.”
“You were a setter, Nancy. You had a place. I’ve heard all this bullshit before.” Then something dawns on me. “It was you and Taylor, wasn’t it? You and Taylor were the two people that Gloria heard talking.”
“Yeah.”
“I knew she was lying. She told me she didn’t recognize the voices, but she would’ve known Taylor’s voice. They were dating.”
“Gloria was a little screwed up,” Nancy says. “And it was all because of you.”
“Yeah, whatever. She couldn’t stand the negative feelings she was having about me. Such a good little devout girl, who was having horrible feelings about the person who took her position away. Cry me a fucking river.”
“It was more than that.”
“Really? I don’t care.”
“She didn’t stay on the team long after your disappearance. She felt a lot of guilt about it.”
I roll my eyes. “Really? She told me she got injured. That’s why she left the team.”
“She did,” Nancy says. “But she could have stayed on the team. She left. The guilt was killing her. The injury was just a convenient excuse to leave.”
“The guilt, huh? From what I can tell she didn’t have much to do with it.”
“No, she didn’t.”
“That worked out well for you then. Once she left, that bumped you into the first position. You were the middle blocker.”
Nancy doesn’t reply.
She doesn’t have to.
It’s written all over her face.
“How do you live with yourself?” I ask. “I disappear. Then Gloria leaves the team, which I have a feeling you knew was going to happen. And now your wife is dead because of all of this.”
Nancy scoffs. “Taylor and I weren’t in love.”
“Oh?”
“Taylor never really got over Gloria. And I’m not even gay.”
I drop my jaw. “Then what the hell is all of this about?”
“It was best for us to stick together. It made sense, at least that’s what we were told,” Nancy says. “Taylor had already lost so much.”
“But why did she lose her inheritance? How did her father even know what his brother was up to?”
“You’d have to ask Taylor that,” Nancy says. “Oh wait. You can’t. She’s dead.”
“If you know anything else, you’d better level with me.” I prod her with the gun in her side. “Because if you don’t? My boyfriend and my father will see that you pay.”
“A couple of Navy SEALs? I don’t think so, Aspen. No Navy SEALs I know would ever harm a woman.”
She’s right of course. Neither my father nor Buck will harm her.
“Just how many Navy SEALs do you know?”
“Does it matter? Navy SEALs are honorable.”
“You’re right. Perhaps I misspoke.” I dig the nose of the pistol into her side a tad harder. “Let me make this clear then. I will make sure you pay. Me. Aspen Davis, the woman you wronged. And I have absolutely no qualms about bringing harm to a woman whose actions contributed to my five years in hell.”
27
BUCK
“Who was with you?” I ask.
“Who do you think? Taylor Wallace and her wife, Margo.”
Margo. AKA Nancy Mosely. The woman Aspen is holding outside this very house.
And Taylor?
There’s no way we can confront her since she chose to end her own life rather than face this music.
“Did they see what you did?” I ask.
“No. I didn’t come in until later. They went by on the supposed social visit, and Gloria invited them in of course. They had to persuade her.”
“What do you mean?” Darnell asks.
“Apparently they hadn’t kept in touch, so Gloria thought it was kind of weird that they just showed up. But they made up some kind of excuse and Gloria eventually let them in. Then of course we had to get rid of that yappy little dog.”
Good thing Aspen isn’t here to hear this. She loves that pup.
“What did you do to the dog?” Darnell cocks his pistol.
“Hold your fire,” Pollack says. “We just put him outside.”
“You put him outside?”
“Well, later. After the sedative had taken effect.”
“So what happened exactly?” I ask. “Taylor and Nancy go over, feign that they want to visit, Gloria invites them in, and…”
“They put a sedative in their drinks. The whole thing took about half an hour.”
“All right, and then…”
“Then I went in. I moved them to their bed, let the dog out, and… I suppose you can guess the rest.”
“And why are you admitting all of this?” From Darnell.
“I…”
Luke intervenes then. “It was Katelyn. She said some things to him…”
“What things?” My voice is low.
“Things she didn’t mean of course. Things that made me puke. But it worked.”
“So you have a soft spot for Katelyn,” I say to Pollack.
“To me, she’ll always be Moonstone.”
“I don’t even want to consider what you might’ve done to her,” Darnell says. “You better have never touched my little girl.”
“I didn’t. Garnet’s not my type.”
Darnell grits his teeth, and his jaw goes even more rigid. For a moment I think he’s going to pursue this. Demand to know why his little tree isn’t this derelict’s type.
Then he appears to think better of that.
Thank God.
“What do we do with him?” I ask.
“We turn him in,” Luke says. “His immunity will be struck down. He’ll go to prison.”
I yank Luke aside for a minute. “What about your immunity?” I whisper. “You kidnapped a guy, tied him up, and held him at gunpoint. Surely that’s enough criminal behavior to lose your deal.”
“I’ll worry about that,” he whispers back.
“Look. It’s not like I care. But Katelyn…”
“I said I’ll take care of it.” Luke goes rigid and walks back to Pollack. “Get ready for prison, asshole.”
Fine, then. I’ll file Luke’s immunity issue under the heading of “not my problem.”
“Looks like you’ll be going to trial for two murders,” Darnell says. “Plus the crimes you committed on that island.”
“Whatever,” Pollack says. “If I can’t have Moonstone, life isn’t worth living anyway.”
“Oh, you’ll live,” Luke says. “And trust me, prison will be hell for you.”
“Prison is hell for everyone,” he says. “Why do you think I struck the deal in the first place?”
“You have no idea what hell is,” Luke says. “You think Greg Wallace has connections in prison? You don’t even want to know what my connections are. You’ll wish you were dead.”
“Maybe I’ll just take my own life.”
“They don’t let you do that in prison, Pollack,” Luke says. “They’ll put you on suicide watch.”
“That means I’ll be well guarded, and in solitary.”
“You’d think, wouldn’t you?” Luke shakes his head, his blue eyes filled with smoke. “Lots of things can happen to a man in solitary. Especially if I happen to know the officers guarding you.”
“You’re going to go down with me. All three of you. False imprisonment is a crime as well.”
“I don’t think so,” Darnell says. “Two former Navy SEALs, the father and the boyfriend of a woman who was tormented on that island? And a man with immunity? Who happens to be the fiancée of a woman from that island? Nobody will buy it.”
