Turns out Gerald, the bald guy from Lennox, has a rap sheet as long as my kill list. Armed robbery, assault, stalking, embezzlement, and on and on. Charged on all counts but only convicted for assault in the second degree, he ended up doing a stint in NYSDOC—New York State Department of Corrections—up in Marcy, about an hour and a half northwest of Albany.I guess all the rehabilitation programs in the world couldn’t change this motherfucker.
Good thing my practices have a one hundred percent success rate in stopping criminals from escalating.
When I tapped into his parole officer’s records, there was a short note about him finding a job as a security guard for an investment bank but, of course, those notes were barely afterthoughts so the actual name of the company wasn’t there.
I did get a number, though, and that’s the biggest lead yet so I’m running with it.
But before any of this is done, there’s something more important that needs my full attention.
Berkleigh’s home.
Under the cover of night, I run to her place and let myself in. After I’d found her on Sunday night, I made sure to come over and lock up since she’d crawled—fucking crawled like an animal left to die—to my place, leaving everything here as it was. I didn’t need her key since I made one for myself about two weeks after I returned from active duty. As if that’s any surprise.
As I get my first good look at the place since the incident, that familiar low-grade fever starts rising to dangerous levels with every scenario that I piece together from the damage in the house.
Broken glass in the living room, with blood on what’s left of her dining room display cabinet, litters the carpet next to the four-chair table set.
A flash of Berkleigh being slammed against the glass door and thrown on the floor assaults my mind.
When I turn to look at the stairs, the first thing I see is the small pool of blood at the foot of the last step. Farther up, I notice one of the spindles is missing, then find it lying just below in two broken pieces. Splintered and splattered with droplets of blood.
My mind tries to piece it together, coming up with Berkleigh falling, or more likely being pushed or kicked, down the stairs. She tries to break her fall but her momentum is too high. The wooden bar breaks and Berkleigh continues her fall.
Blood is all over her front door, her distorted handprints covering the floor and wall as if she fought to bring herself standing but failed miserably.
My jaw is about to crack open a few teeth from the amount of grinding I’m doing but, still, I keep going.
Upstairs is where I almost lose my fucking dinner.
Blood stains the hallway in thin streaks rather than massive pools, like she was being dragged by her hair, or her ankle. When I reach her bedroom, all I can do is stare at the bed where the sheets and bedspread are crumpled, one pillow at the foot of the mattress, the other on the floor.
My hope was to find wet stains or any type of DNA I could have tested, but all I found were areoles with a faint amount of blood.
I block the images of what probably happened, forcing myself not to see them so I don’t burn this fucking house to the ground and build her a brand new one.
It’s then I decide, she’s not coming back. It doesn’t matter what she wants and it doesn’t matter how hard she fights me on this. She’s not going to live in a house that’ll haunt her dreams for the rest of her fucking days. Not on my watch.
But first, I need this place scrubbed clean.
On my way back downstairs, I bring the burner phone up to my ear and make the call.
“Rottweiler. I need a clean up crew.”
“Roger that.” I don’t know his name, we don’t share that kind of information for safety reasons. We punch in a number, give our DOGs code name, then the address. That’s it. By tomorrow, the house will look like it did forty-eight hours ago, minus the glass door on the dining room cabinet that I’ll replace myself.
Then she can sell it. The house, I mean. Or she can keep it and rent it out. Her choice.
In any case, she’ll need to be with me so she can learn how to defend herself, shoot a gun, and kill motherfuckers who thought it was okay to lay a hand on her.
The next morning, I’m downstairs in the kitchen at oh-six-hundred hours putting together a breakfast for karma avengers. I almost made her the protein-filled dish, SOS—Shit On a Shingle—but thought better of it. Not everyone can appreciate crumbled and browned ground beef covered in flour and thickened with milk over a hot skillet then served on toast. It’s an acquired taste and a necessity when you’re starting out in the Corps. Instead, I opted for eggs, bacon, and pancakes with a variety of fruit.
As I scoop up the bacon and place it on a paper towel to absorb the grease, I tell myself that Berkleigh is a psychologist, she knows that training is going to empower her, to rewire her mind so that she’s focusing on herself and not on what those vermin did to her. And it’s true, it will do all that. However, before we can get her to heal, she’ll need to know that she will never find herself in a vulnerable situation like that ever again.
Karma training is exactly that. Getting all of our ducks in a row so that she can take back her power. And that shit starts today with a breakfast high in protein. It goes without saying that returning to work isn’t in the cards. Scratch that. I don’t just need to say it, I’ll, no doubt, have to repeat it. Over and fucking over, again.
“I’m going back to work.” Those are her first words as she shuffles into the kitchen looking like the devil himself kidnapped her and put her through Hell.
“Not happening.” The plan is planning and I won’t let her derail me.
