Galen's Gemma - Dale Mayer Page 0,53

feet?”

The valiant little girl awkwardly bent over and twisted around and worked on untying her feet. Gemma at least had shoes on, whereas Becky was still in her nightclothes, and her feet were bare. Blankets were wrapped around them, so they had just been snatched up as they were, but it would have taken two men to do that. No way would somebody make a second trip. Becky managed to get Gemma’s feet untied, and the vehicle just kept going down the road through the night.

Gemma looked at her options. Finding her phone in her pocket, she smiled and sent a text. With her phone on mute, she checked her battery power. It was at 67 percent. She had to keep an eye on that. Then she sent Galen a second text, giving him the update that they were free but in a vehicle being driven by a single person and that both had been snatched out of the bedroom. Probably by two men. That she may have a recording of her sister and her goons. She was so relieved when she got a response a few moments later.

Leave your phone on. Will track you.

She smiled, returned her phone to her pocket, then laid back down again, a little more comfortable. She grabbed Becky and held her close, whispering, “Galen is coming for us.”

Becky whispered back, “Good. I like him.” And then, in her tiny voice, she asked, “Is he coming now?”

“Yes. He’s coming now, but it’ll take him a bit.” She held her close and whispered, “Stay positive, honey.”

“Did my mommy do this?”

“I don’t know how much of this is her doing,” Gemma replied, her heart breaking for the horror her niece had been through, “but she’s involved to a certain extent.”

“I didn’t want to think my mommy was bad.”

“Bad is a hard thing to say,” she said. “You know your mommy loves you.”

“But she loved Daddy, and she shot him.”

“Are you sure you saw that?”

She nodded. “I did, but she said I was dreaming.”

“Of course.” That explained the little girl’s confusion and the uncertainty in her statements. And so typical of her sister. Rebecca had always been great at twisting things around and making you wonder if you’d actually heard what you thought you’d heard. “Unfortunately those tricks won’t save her now,” she said.

“What’ll happen to me then?” Becky questioned sincerely.

“Nothing. You aren’t bad, and you didn’t have anything to do with this,” she said.

“But she’s my mom. If she’s bad, am I bad?”

Gemma winced at that because a lot of people certainly believed that the sins of the parents were handed down to the children, and she didn’t want Becky thinking that she had inherited those bad things because of her mom.

“I don’t think that at all,” she said. “You are a beautiful little girl, and your heart is good.”

“I don’t like hurting people,” she said.

“And you don’t like being hurt either, do you?”

Becky shook her head. “No.”

“Unfortunately you know a lot about what happened.”

“But I don’t want to know,” she said. Her voice hardened. “I don’t want to have to tell people what she did.”

“Well, you’ll have to tell somebody,” she said. She looked up at her and said, “I could record it.”

“Tape it,” she whispered. “Then I don’t have to tell anyone.” Wincing at that because she also knew her battery was an issue, she pulled out her phone, turned it on Record, and said, “Go ahead.”

“I watched my mommy shoot my daddy,” she said. “Then he fell down and landed at the bottom of the stairs. She was fighting with another man in the living room, and they were talking about the man killing Daddy first. This man had been to my mommy’s bed many times. I saw him there and other men too.”

“Do you know who your uncle is?”

“Yes. His name is James. She was sleeping with James too. But I think there was somebody else.”

It broke Gemma’s heart to hear her little niece say this stuff. “Did your mom treat you okay?”

“When she wasn’t yelling at me, yes. She said we had to look after ourselves, or nobody else would.”

“You know that’s wrong, right? Because I will always look after you,” she said.

“Good,” she said, “because I think I’m a bad person now.”

“And that’s not true,” she said. “You’re not. Did you ever hear your mommy make plans for a new life?” And her heart broke a little more when Becky nodded. “You have to say yes or no, sweetheart.”

“Yes,” she said.