REprisal - Kathy Coopmans Page 0,23
stop to this immediately. Cases like this never come easy.” He stops short. “Aw hell, I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. I know this has been anything but easy.”
I know he’s trying to be a friend here and try to get me to calm down. Part of me is relieved, but something is clawing away at my heart and brain just to find out where Clove is so I can see for myself that she’s okay. Where the hell has she been for a year?
Sinking down on the worn leather couch, I rest my elbows on my knees and grab handfuls of my hair with both hands out of frustration, anxiety, and fear.
Tears fall down my face, a whole damn year’s worth of pent up emotions. Missing my carefree sister and not knowing jack shit about how to find her. Watching my father age overnight. Krista never wanting to leave the house in case Clove was to call. Not being there for so much of the first year of my son’s life because I was working day in and day out trying to find her. And all the answers have been just an hour away from me the whole time.
“I cannot believe my mother had a part in this. It blows my fucking mind. I mean, how? Why? How could anyone in their right mind do something as disgustingly hateful and fucked up as this to their own child?”
“I don’t have the answers for that, son.”
The chief sits down next to me, placing his arm around my back. For the next two hours, I sit there with my head in my hands.
“We got her!” Martinez comes into the room with a big smile on his face. “He told us everything, man. Every motherfucking thing.”
I jump to my feet, shaking.
“Where is she? Is she alive, hurt?”
“You’ll want to sit back down for some of this, brother.”
I shake my head profusely.
“Where the hell is she?”
“She’s in upstate Mississippi, in one of Caleb’s houses. And she’s not alone.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? I know she’s not alone. Trent and my fucked up mother have her. This shit is all kinds of messed up.”
Martinez is silent for a moment as the Chief and I look at each other in confusion.
“She had a baby, Zack,” he says finally. “A little girl.”
“What?”
It’s then that I hear the door crash open. Shock freezes me in place as the man I have not seen for too damn long stumbles into the room, a thunderous expression on his face.
“Where the hell is my WIFE?”
Chapter Eight
Turner
“Fuck, baby. Where are you?”
I take a heavy sip of my beer, clinging onto the feeling I have in my heart that Clove is still alive. I stare out into the dark, thunderous night. It’s been over a year since I’ve seen her, heard her scream after my brother shot me, leaving me for dead.
The next thing I remembered after that was waking up in a hospital with my mom sleeping in a chair next to my bed. Two months I stayed in that hospital, secured and sheltered away from society while my body healed from its broken ribs and leg; a busted jaw, and a gunshot wound to my shoulder.
My body may be healed, but the only person who can heal my broken heart is my wife. My brave girl, who went through hell to find me. I know the whole fucked up story. Everything.
Does it kill me? Hell, yes, it does. Do I hate her for it? No. I could never hate her. Not when I know that what she did, breaking our vows, sleeping with another man, she did out of love for me.
I have never doubted her love, ever. Not one damn time, but the notion of another man touching what it mine is something I will never forget. I can’t help the visuals in my mind of her face when she comes as another man takes her, makes her scream and beg for more.
Did she like it when he touched her, more than when I do? Did she come for him? Did she suck his cock? Did she leave with him willingly? Think I was dead? Those excruciating feelings are all there.
I shouldn’t even be thinking these selfish thoughts, but I have plenty of time on my hands to let my imagination run wild while I have to stay out of the public eye, which is a whole other story in itself. One I don’t want