CHAPTER ONE
He was a man who understood pain.
That's all there was to it.
The boy he'd been, David Sutter, had been groomed to understand it, and although it hadn't gone as planned, he'd been groomed to need pain. To want it, then to inflict it.
Now, more than twenty years gone from the broken child he'd been, he thought he knew everything there was to know about pain. But he'd never felt anything quite like this. There was a hollow, empty ache in his chest where his heart should be, a knot in his throat that felt like it would strangle him, and he could barely breathe.
For too long, he'd thought he'd forgotten how to really feel. Anger, yeah. He could feel that. He liked feeling that. But he existed on the two As. Anger and apathy.
Not pain.
The people around him didn't grieve quite the way he did. After all, death was part of life and Abraham was gone because God had willed it. They would miss him, David knew that, and he could see their grief in the damp eyes of the women across from him, the solemn set of the men's faces.
But while he sat there, furious in a way that he couldn't explain and hurting like a son of a bitch, they all had a peace about them. Yet another reminder of why he didn't belong here.
Abraham had lived a full life and he was gone because God had willed it-David had heard that more times than he could count today. If he heard it again, he thought he might do something violent. God-he'd stopped believing in any such being so long ago.
David couldn't even remember the last time he'd prayed. It might have been the second time, or the third, maybe the fifth time he'd been dragged down into a dark, bloody hell, gagged and tied, left to the vices of whatever monster wanted to break him next.
What sort of God let that evil happen?
David didn't know.
The voices around him rose in song again, but he just stared at the wooden box, the still, peaceful face of the man lying inside it.
Abraham Yoder, the man who'd been David's rock for years, was gone.
The air inside the church was hot and tight. He felt like he was choking, smothering inside his own skin. How long had it been since the service had started?
David-known to these people as Caine Yoder-was all but desperate to escape.
The service dragged on. It felt like hours. Experience told him it was probably roughly just one before they filed past Abraham's coffin one final time and then he helped load it into the buggy that would take the old man on his final journey.
David barely remembered doing it. Barely remembered helping Sarah over at the house over the past few days, barely remembered anything since he'd received the call.
He hadn't even been here.
The entirety of this day was just a blur, save for this moment, clear and brutally harsh, as he stood alone at Abraham's grave.
Everybody else was gone. Thomas had quietly come to guide Sarah away. People must have seen something in David's face, because not one approached him; not one of them said a single word.
Minutes ticked away into hours as he stood there and he couldn't drag himself away.
Once he did, once he turned his back, this final connection to Abraham would be gone.
He'd died in his bed, quietly in his sleep. A heart attack, most likely. David couldn't have picked a better way for him to pass from the world. But David was a selfish son of a bitch and he hadn't wanted the man to leave at all.
There would be no more gentle advice, no more calm talks when David thought he was really going to step over that edge into rage-fueled oblivion.
Abraham had pulled David back from the brink so many times. And the few times Abraham hadn't been there to stop David from slipping over, he'd been there after and helped pull him back up.
Abraham had never known, not really, just how much hell David carried inside him. Maybe it was good that he'd gone now, before it all came out.
That was what David told himself.
And he lied.
He was pretty damn good at that. He should be, though.
He'd lived a lie for twenty years.
A soft sound caught his attention and slowly he lifted his head.
As she came toward him, in a simple black dress, deceptively simple, deceptively sexy, David turned his head away. "You didn't have to come," he said, his voice a monotone. It was easier, better, to cut things between them now.
But Sybil Chalmers didn't do easy and she didn't do simple.
Perhaps if he had truly let himself join this world, become part of the community here and left the outside world to itself, he could have cut her out of his mind, out of his soul.
It would have been easier to will himself to stop breathing.
She picked her way through the simple grave markers until she could stand at his side. "He was your family." She reached down, caught David's hand.
Her skin was shockingly hot.
Or maybe he was just cold.
Clamping his fingers tight around hers, wished he could send her away.
"He wasn't my family," he said, biting the words off. "He was an old man who took me in when I was a kid. I stayed because I felt like it. He kept me here because I was useful."
"Hmmm." She didn't look away from the grave. "If that's all it was, then why are you still here when everybody else is gone?"
Instead of answering, he just closed his eyes.
* * *
She didn't know where they were.
He'd pulled her up into the buggy, leaving her car behind on the narrow little strip of a road that led to the cemetery.
Now they were moving down a quiet little bit of road while the moon shone down on them and the night creatures sounded in the distance.
They were completely alone.
Very few ever drove a car out here. Thanks to David, she knew a little more about the community here than most.
There was a larger Amish community-the Old Order, with all the strict rules, rejecting modern technology and the way the English dressed-but then there was the smaller group that David had been with the past twenty years. Abraham had never gone into much detail about it, but apparently the two communities had been one at some point in the past, but something drove them apart.
Abraham, the man David refused to admit he'd loved, had been part of that smaller group. She'd once asked David why they hadn't left and David had just shrugged. "Abraham is kind, gentle ... patient. They'd have to outwait him to get him out of here, and that's not going to happen."
She guessed not. Abraham had been eighty-nine when he died.
Next to her, David sat rigid, so stiff she thought he might break if she touched him. She thought he might break if she didn't. After an internal war that seemed to last forever, she reached over, touched his hand. "I wish I could make this better for you."
A second later, he pulled up on the reins and the horse obediently stopped.
Her breath caught in her lungs, but he didn't look at her, didn't say anything.
Instead, he climbed down from the buggy and was lost to her sight.
Closing her eyes, she blew out a soft breath and caught the long skirt of her dress in one fist as she started to figure out the process of climbing out of a buggy. In the dark. In heeled boots.
Before she'd managed to figure out where to so much as put the first boot, a pair of hard hands closed around her waist. She jerked her head up, but he wasn't looking at her as he set her down.
As soon as her feet touched the ground, he turned away and started to pace.
"Why are you here?" he finally asked.
"Where else would I be?" She stood with her hands loose at her sides, resisting the urge to fold them over her middle, tuck herself away, hide away. Protect herself from the hurt she suspected was coming. Maybe not tonight. Maybe not next week, or even this month, but David was pulling away from her. She could feel it.
A bitter curse escaped him and he reached up to shove a hand through his hair only to encounter the simple hat. He tore it off and threw it to the ground.
She tensed as he drove his booted foot down on it, all but grinding his heel through the stiffened fabric.
When he was done, she licked her lips and then looked back up. All she could see was his stiff shoulders as he faced away from her. "Feel better?"
He spun around, his mouth open.
She inclined her head. You don't scare me, tough guy.
His eyes narrowed.
She closed the distance between them, each step slow and precise-she was terrified she'd trip over something on the dark, uneven ground and fall on her ass.
She didn't stop until she was close enough that his heat seemed to reach out, taunt her skin. Then she leaned in, pressed her mouth to his. She didn't give him a sweet, soft kiss, though. David was well past the I'll kiss it and make it better point. That never would have worked for him anyway. Instead, she sank her teeth into his lower lip. Hard.
He stiffened against her.
Slowly, she drew back, dragging her tongue along her lip, staring at his mouth for a long second before looking up to meet his gaze. "You're hurting. You're feeling mean. I want to help, if I can. If you'll let me."
She went to turn away, but a hard arm banded around her waist, hauled her back against him. "And how are you going to help? How can you make any of this better?" he demanded, his words a harsh rasp against her ear. His chest was an iron wall against her back, and tucked against her bottom she felt the hot, heavy length of his cock.
She suppressed the urge to shudder, barely.
But then a wide, warm palm came up to rest on her thigh, fingers catching the material of her skirt, dragging upward. "Maybe that's a stupid question." His fingers dipped inside her panties and she gasped as he started to stroke. "This always makes me feel better."
For a little while, at least, she thought, breaking inside. But it wasn't like she could pull away. Already she could feel her muscles clamping around him and she knew in just a matter of time she'd be riding his hand, practically desperate for him.
"You want to make me feel better, Sybil?"
* * *
David tangled his fingers in her hair. She'd tamed it into a somewhat reserved twist, but he dislodged the clip and pins, impatient, sending the curls spilling down over her shoulder with his free hand while he continued to stroke her with the other hand.
She hadn't answered him, though.
He had to hear the words.
With another taunting, slow twist of his fingers, he stopped touching her and forced her to turn. A soft, sexy little cry escaped her and then a ragged breath as he stroked his fingers, from her sex, across her lips.
"Make me feel better."
She went to lick her lips and he caught her chin in his hands. "Don't," he growled, angling her face up. There was another ragged breath, a broken moan as he licked the sweet/tart taste of her away and then proceeded to slip his tongue inside her mouth, another slow, teasing slide of his body into hers. "I'm the one who gets to taste. I'm the one who gets to lick ... feel ... touch...."
He gripped her ass in his hand and dragged her against him. "Like this."
Lust burned, roared inside him, and he pulled away.
He had to be inside her. Had to.
His eyes, used to the dark and these fields, searched the area and found what he needed before he caught her hand and laced their fingers together.
Her face was pale, her eyes dark and wild in her face, as she and David reached the fence just fifteen yards from the buggy. He pulled off his jacket and draped it over the top, a barrier between the rough wood and Sybil's back. Then he urged her up against it, his mouth crushing up against hers as he slid his hands down her back, along the curves of her hips to grasp her butt and pull her in tight.
"Make me feel better, Sybil," he rasped in between one breathless, soul-stealing kiss and another.
She slid a hand between them and he groaned as she started to stroke him. He pulsed in her hand and he felt something wet seep out. Forcing distance between them, he braced his hands on the long, sturdy boards that made up the fence's rails. "Take off your panties," he ordered, his voice harder, harsher.
Sybil's lashes swept down in a slow blink, a faint smile curving up the corners of her mouth. He wanted to fist his hands in her hair, haul her back up against him and feast on that mouth. Every day. Always.
Instead, he curled his hands tighter into the old, weathered boards and watched as she dragged up the sleek column of material that made up the skirt of her dress. Starved, he watched, barely able to see anything over the pool of fabric, but imagination served him well. Soft thighs, round and smooth and strong. Her hips, lush and female. The neat patch of curls between her thighs, covering the heat of her, where she was already wet for him.
Once she had the panties off, she held them in her hand and he reached over, pushed them into his pocket. "Take me out. I want to feel your hands on me."
A harsh breath stuttered out of her, and while it soothed some of the raw, jagged edges inside him, it also made the burning need worsen. She needed this, needed him just as much as he needed her.
But this was poison ... or addiction. Both. Something he'd started to crave so long ago, he couldn't imagine notwanting her, not needing her, not needing to feel her under him. She was inside him, in every way that counted ... just another sign that he wasn't as closed off as he wanted to be, needed to be.
Don't think about it now.
Easy enough, because Sybil had his trousers open and her fingers closed around the heavy ache of his erection and his head fell back, bliss spreading through him as she started to stroke. Firm, tight strokes, her thumb occasionally brushing over his cockhead in a maddening little caress that went straight to his balls.
That sensation raced through him, drew him tighter, tighter-
His cock jerked and for a second he thought ... maybe ...
The thought of coming on her, in her hands, losing control just like that, burned inside his brain, something he wanted, he needed.
You need the pain-
He swore and all but tore her hands away.
"Rubber," he said, forcing the words through his teeth.
Like a magician, she produced one. Where she'd had it, he didn't know and he didn't care. "Put it on me."
Her lashes swept down low and he used those brief seconds away from her gaze to try and regain control, but it was impossible. Her fingers smoothed over him as she dealt with the condom, turning the task into a seduction. When she was finished, he boosted her up and drove into her with savage hunger. Sybil cried out, hooking one hand around his shoulders.
Her eyes stared into his with naked hunger, naked shock, as he slammed into her, hard and deep, little care for finesse or control. He just wanted. He just needed.
And she met him stroke for stroke, touch for touch.
He pressed his face to her neck and sank his teeth into the supple curve there, felt her tighten around him like glory, and he grunted, felt the warning spasms in her sex. She pressed a line of kisses to his jawline, his ear.
Blind, he turned his face to hers, fusing their mouths together.
That need drove him on, still hard, still demanding.
Sybil cried out into his mouth and he shuddered in agonized pleasure as she clamped down and came around him. He could feel the release, feel it hovering just on the edge-
Her teeth sank into his lower lip, exactly where she'd bitten him earlier, harder this time. At the same time, her hand gripped the shorter strands of his hair and twisted.
The line between pain and pleasure blurred and he felt it collapse, that unseen wall inside him. With a groan, he climaxed, his cock jerking, pulsing inside her as he emptied himself.
* * *
"What are you going to do now?"
She asked the question softly as he took her back to her car.
His body was sated, his brain dull, from the release and the exhaustion of the day.
Her question took more thought than he liked, even though he didn't really have to think very hard. He'd been thinking about this for ... well. Maybe ever since the day he'd run away from home.
He'd always known, David realized.
Sooner or later, he'd have to go home and face his demons.
Turning his head, he met her eyes from under his lashes.
"I'm leaving here."
Her eyes went wide, her mouth falling open.
Before she could say anything, he focused his gaze on the dark road. The moon was full, giving them more light, but they had to go slow and he needed to get Sybil away so he could think, start to figure things out. He never could think clearly when she was there.
"Leaving...?" she whispered.
"Abraham is gone. He left the farm to his daughter and I could stay in my house on the hill, but it isn't right." He looked around the quiet darkness surrounding them, felt an odd tug in the region of his heart. He'd miss it, he realized. Some of it, at least. "I don't belong here."
"Where-" She cut herself off, but from the corner of his eye he could see the strain on her face.
"I'll find a place in town." He shrugged. He'd already looked around, checked a few things out. Money wasn't an issue. He had money. The issue was everything else.
"Town. You're moving to Madison," she said, her voice ragged.
From the corner of his eye he watched her for a moment. "Did you really see me going anywhere else?"
Her gaze flicked away. "I don't know. You..." She heaved out a sigh. "But I don't see you being happy in town."
"Happy." He snorted. "Happy...? Yeah, sure. I can be happy there with half the town staring at me like I'm a freak and the other half like I'm a monster."
"You're not a monster." Her gaze cut to him. "And you're no more a freak than I am."
Faint amusement worked through him. "At least you don't lie and tell me I'm normal."
"What is normal?" she asked, reaching up to touch his cheek.
This ... part of him wanted to believe this was normal. That this could be normal. "Normal ... not me." He shrugged. "People in town know. Unless they've been living under a rock, they know who I am and the ones who aren't idiots are already figuring out..."
He stopped, unable to continue. Unable to voice that shame in front of her.
"Figure out what?" she asked, her voice gentle. "That your father was a monster? Good. People should know he was a monster."
Fury pulsed in her voice. "It's made me sick the past twenty years, watching people mourn him and your mother."
Her gaze came to his. "You know..." She hesitated.
He jerked a shoulder. "You knew he was abusive back then. You were one of a few." His heart thudded hard against his chest. "One of a very few."
"I'm sorry."
"Why?" His laugh sounded like jagged bits of glass. "Because people know? Don't be. You're right. Everybody should know he was a monster." Shaking his head, he murmured, "Yeah. They should know."
Her hand smoothed up his back while secrets and shame slithered through him, but for once, it all wanted to come spilling out. Clenching his jaw against the words tearing up his throat like bile, he said, "I can't leave. There's too much left undone, unanswered."
Sybil's hand, soft and strong, smoothed up his back. "Some questions won't ever be answered."
Nobody knew that better than him.
But he had some of those answers himself, tucked away inside his head. And if he'd look deeper, he could probably find a few more.
* * *
Sybil watched from the road as he turned the buggy off the main road. She would have liked to follow him, but it was weird enough coming out here just to offer him comfort he clearly hadn't wanted.
He hadn't wanted it, no. But the pain in him was wild. The need enough to take her breath away.
She'd probably have bruises on her hips in the morning, and although her body felt bruised in that wonderful, blissful way that could only happen when you have good, hard sex, she knew he'd just done the same thing he always did.
Used her body to avoid looking at his own pain too deeply.
Used her so he wouldn't have to think about the fact that he needed her.
He did need her. She'd seen it in his eyes, on his face, in the way he clung to her as their breathing calmed and their hearts slowed. He needed her, and because he did, he would push her away.
He'd been doing it for weeks.
To be honest, she'd been half-expecting this anyway.
Hell. She was actually shocked David Sutter had ever let her get close to him at all. One look in his dark, tortured eyes and she'd realized that he had demons living inside him. All the truths were coming to light now and she understood more about those demons than she really ever wanted to know.
She wanted to hunt down the people who'd hurt him as a child.
She wanted to put herself at his side so he never had to go through anything alone again.
But David-Caine, whatever he called himself-only wanted to be alone, except on the rare occasions he didn't. Then he turned to her. When he left in the quiet hours before dawn, she was exhausted, aching, and the need for him was like a drug in her system. More, more, more ... that was all she wanted.
But he gave her less and less.
Sybil was stupid enough, desperate enough, needy enough, to accept whatever he was willing to give her, to give him as much as he was willing to take.
And all the while, she hid some truths from him that she'd likely never reveal to him.
Sighing, she did a three-point turn and headed back into town. She needed to get out of her boots, get into her bed and crash. Alone. Thankfully, she had that option.
She'd left her nephew, Drew, with her best friend. Taneisha Oakes had a boy about Drew's age and the two had become almost inseparable. It was a good fit, in more ways than one.
Taneisha wasn't going to be intimidated or freaked out if Drew's mother, and Sybil's sister, showed up looking for him. It wasn't likely to happen, because Layla didn't have a maternal bone in her body and the few times she'd actually tried to get involved with her son she'd been doing it to get something from Sybil.
But if she tried to square off with Taneisha, Layla would find herself in for a rude awakening. Taneisha might leave a few shards of bone when she was done, but that was it.
Someday Sybil wanted to think her little sister would get her act together, stop the drinking, the drugs, and kick the revolving-door habit thing she had with men.
Until that day, though? Sybil's goal was simple-keep Drew out of his mother's destructive orbit.
He'd be safer. Happier.
And if Sybil knew what was good for her, she'd pull out of David's orbit before it was too late.
But that point had already come and gone.
* * *
Within minutes of his leaving her, that raw, edgy energy returned.
David knew he should be doing better than this-it shouldn't hit him so hard that he'd lost Abraham, shouldn't hit him so hard that he was alone in the quiet, again. Without Sybil.
He'd been alone in the quiet for most of the past twenty years and this was how he'd wanted it, why he'd deliberately set out to shut himself down, shut himself off, so he couldn't feel, so he didn't feel.
Maybe it had all been a lie, though.
Brooding, he stared out into the night. It was past midnight. It was quiet, the air in the house cool and still. And his brain wouldn't shut down. He'd wanted to collapse and just sleep, but he couldn't.
There was too much inside him. The grief for Abraham, the need to leave here-now-and find Sybil, wrap himself around her so the nightmares wouldn't find him. They never did, not when he was with her.
He'd told himself that was why he let this go on so long.
Except it was a lie.
He knew it now, just like he'd known it then. The escape from the nightmares was a plus, but the reason he couldn't pull back was because it was Sybil. Because he enjoyed the way she felt, the way she smelled, the way she moved against him in her sleep and the way she looked him dead in the eye with that unflinching way she had.
Some part of him might think he loved her, but he knew that wasn't right. David was too flawed, too fucked-up, to love. He didn't buy into the shit that he'd done something to make his father hurt him, or that it had happened because of something David was-that wasn't why he couldn't love.
David couldn't love simply because he'd spent the past twenty years smothering those emotions inside him. He'd killed those urges until he might as well have destroyed the part of his soul that made him able to feel. Even with Abraham, a man David wanted to love, a man who had him grieving and hurting inside, he knew it wasn't love that he felt.
He did care, though. Because he did, and because he cared too much, he knew he needed to end things. Too much of the ugliness in his past was about ready to come spilling out, ready to stain and ruin everything he touched.
Once she really understood all of that-
His hands started to shake and he made a deliberate effort to block everything out. If he just didn't think about it, it was easier. That slow crawl of red didn't creep in on his vision and he didn't think about slipping out of the house, taking the old truck or even just making the hours-long walk into town and trying to find one of them.
Were there any left?
David didn't know, but there were times when he'd been ready to paint the town with swaths of murderous blood-red just to find one of them. Especially over the past few months. Because it hadn't stopped.
That, he knew, was what had him so close to the edge now.
Why he woke up choking and clawing his way out of the nightmares, still hearing their voices. Voices that echoed, lingered, a stain on his soul.
"Stop." He swiped the back of his hand over his mouth and spun away from the window so he could pace.
The shaking would stop. The rage would ease.
Then he'd be able to think again, as long as he didn't give in to that rage.
He'd given in to it before. Just a couple of times. He'd never killed anybody ... yet. But he'd taken back some of the blood, and he'd reveled in it as agonized cries managed to break through gags or muffling hands.
David didn't regret it. If he stood before a judge one day over it, they'd probably lock him away or send him to a home for the mentally unfit. He'd smile and say, I'd do it again.
Two men. Two men who'd never be able to tear into a boy the way they'd torn into him. Maybe he should be sorry for it, but regret was another emotion he couldn't feel.
As the edgy, broken rage spun inside him, he started to pace, the four walls of the plain home he'd built for himself closing in around him. Suffocating him. The silence beyond these walls was doing the same. Abruptly he turned and headed toward the closet where he'd been stowing boxes. Not many, just a few. But he didn't need more than that.
He grabbed them and hauled them out, dumped them on the bed.
There was duct tape in the truck and he went outside, the cool air washing over his overheated flesh. It brought little relief. He found the tape and a utility knife and headed back inside.
Within five minutes, all of the boxes were ready to be filled, and he went about do just that.
* * *
It took an hour for that red haze to melt back.
Having a task, a chore, something to accomplish, helped him focus, helped to center him.
Everything at the farm down at the bottom of the hill was quiet. A few days ago, during a family meal-the last he'd ever share with Abraham and Sarah-David had told them the truth he'd been keeping to himself over the past few weeks. It was time to leave here, time to return to the life he'd run from years ago.
Sarah had looked at him as though he'd slapped her. Go back to the English? Why?
Abraham had simply studied him, but in the back of his eyes David had seen understanding. Abraham, unlike Sarah, had known the truth: David had never belonged here.
Now that Abraham was gone, there was nothing to hold David here and it would be better if he left before the mess in town followed him.
He couldn't let it happen.
Sarah would never understand that.
As he looked around the small house, he realized the entirety of his life had been packed away into five boxes. Twenty years of living and he'd tucked everything that mattered into a few boxes.
There was the furniture. He'd have to come back for it. Abraham had helped him build it and each piece mattered. Aside from those pieces they had built together, nothing else had any value.
This place had been for Caine, or the person Caine had pretended to be.
Caine was gone, buried under an explosion of ash the day the Frampton house burned down. Or maybe even the day those bones were revealed, under that rotting floor, when Trinity Ewing fell through the floorboards.
Caine was gone. David was back and David didn't belong here.
There was a quiet sound behind him as the door opened. She didn't knock, but then she never had. He'd gotten over being irritated by it a long time ago. Sarah was who she was and she wasn't going to change. Like her father, she loved David. Unlike her father, she thought loving David would somehow change him, make him fit in here, somehow. As if she prayed enough, it would somehow smooth out all the rough edges, fill in the void inside him.
That wouldn't happen.
She insisted it would, if he gave it time.
He had stopped fighting her a long time ago. Her words rolled over him and sank into the ground around him like rain. They meant nothing. And he suspected there was another watering to come.
"It's late, Sarah. You should be home asleep."
"I buried my father today. I don't need you telling me what to do." She looked around, stared at the boxes, her mouth pinched, her eyes dark and unhappy.
"I'm not trying to tell you what to do. But it's been a hard day. We could all use our rest."
She flung out a hand. "That's what you are doing? Resting?" Nudging a box with the toe of a plain black shoe, she glared at him. "How can you leave me now? We've just buried my father. I need help. I need you here."
He thought about just ignoring that simply spoken, soft statement but instead met Sarah's stark blue-grey eyes. She'd been pretty once. Time and unhappiness had worn that gentle beauty away. It wasn't right and he wondered how much of her unhappiness could be laid at his feet. "I don't belong here, Sarah. I always knew that. Your father knew it. And you don't need me. Your cousins are ready to help you. They've already told you that. Thomas will be here at dawn. He'll always be here for you."
"You should be here. This is your home."
"No. It's not."
"It could be, if you would simply let it." Sarah set her jaw and squared her shoulders under the plain blue dress she wore.
Was it as simple as that? He didn't waste more than a minute on it. If it were as simple as that, he would have found the peace that Abraham tried to offer him a hundred, no, a thousand times over the past twenty years.
"Then I guess I've chosen not to." He shrugged and tucked the flaps of the boxes in, closing them up.
"Everything will change for you if you return to that life," Sarah said, her voice stiff. "Nothing but trouble will be there. How will you explain the past twenty years?"
He jerked a shoulder in a shrug. "That's my concern."
"You have-" She stopped, her mouth puckering with distaste. "It's been twenty years since you used that name. You've worked. You've made money. Under another name. Won't that cause problems?"
He saw what she was getting at, especially considering how he had just been thinking about some of those complications. Shrugging it off, he said, "I've always been aware it could be a problem. There was never any guarantee things from back then wouldn't come back to bite me. They have. Now I deal with it."
That seemed to catch her off-guard. "So people already know."
"By now?" He pretended to think it over. "Probably half the town, if not more."
He had slipped into the hospital twice, but each time he'd gone in quietly, left the same way. There for one reason, to check on old Max. His condition was no longer critical, and the last time he'd opened his eyes they met David's. Max had recognized him. But other than Max and the handful of nurses who'd done their best to chase David out, nobody had seen him for long enough to say a word. Toot Jenkins had almost wrecked his truck when they'd passed each other at a four-way stop. All up and down Main Street, David had felt the eyes on him. He wasn't a fool. People knew.
Right now, Lana was in town facing the heat all on her own.
He'd planned to be there, dealing with it as well, but then Thomas had found him, told him about Abraham. So for four days David had been here.
He couldn't continue to linger, though. The longer he was here, the more likely it was that Sorenson was going to hunt him down. That was one thing he'd promised he'd never allow. David didn't want that evil to come here, taint this quiet, peaceful place.
"Why?"
He whipped his head up at the low, angry thread he heard in Sarah's voice. Narrowing his eyes, he studied her. "That's hardly your concern."
"You're part of the family." She paused, her head cocking as though she was thinking something through. "If you leave, people are going to want to know why. What made you run. You'll have to talk about it. Those are your secrets, secrets that should stay within the family. We always protected you. Stay here, and we'll continue to protect you."
"Abraham was the closest thing to a father I'll ever have." It was nothing but the truth. There was no way in hell he'd claim the monster who'd spawned him. He turned his back on her. "And yes, he spent a long time protecting me, but that time is over. I haven't needed protection for a long time, Sarah. And I'm not part of this family. I don't belong here. If I choose to talk about all those secrets, then that is my concern."
He was quiet for a moment and then said, "But people already know."
Sarah's lids flickered. "What do they know?"
"Who I really am." He tried not to think about what else they might know, what they might be thinking-guessing. All the speculation ... would it even come close to the reality?
"How do they know?"
At the soft, almost scared question, he looked up. "Because I stopped hiding."
He'd only told the sheriff, the night Max was shot, but there were others around when he did it and in a town like Madison, news spread like wildfire.
"Why..." Sarah stopped and licked her lips, looking away. Her gaze roamed around the room and she stared at everything but him. Finally, she shook her head. "I don't understand why you would do that, Caine. We worked so hard to protect you, to give you peace here. Why would you tell?"
"It wasn't going to stay buried forever, Sarah."
A static, almost heavy silence fell through the room and David stood there as Sarah stared at him, her gaze flat, blank as a mirror. He couldn't see a thing behind that gaze, had no idea what she was thinking. Not that he really cared. He knew what she wanted. For him to settle down here, stay here, probably take over the farm.
Abruptly she sighed and looked away. "Of course. I just don't know why you wanted to bring it all back up. You would be so much happier if you'd just let those troubles die."
* * *
Her words haunted him.
He lay in his bedroom for probably the last time, staring up at the ceiling until his lids were too heavy, and when he slid into dreams they were anything but pleasant.
But then, his dreams never were.
Let those troubles die....
In his dreams, those words echoed mockingly around him. Die. How could you let something die when it was a demon that lived inside you? He was facedown, tied to the bench again, while a whip cut into him.
Let those troubles die! She screamed it this time, watching from the side, her hair falling from her prim white kapp-the little bonnet Amish women wore. And as she screamed, somebody came up behind him. He swore, jerking against the ropes. They couldn't do this to him again. Not now. He was bigger. Stronger. Stronger than they were.
There's always somebody stronger, boy.
He jerked his head up, found himself looking at Sorenson.
Next to him stood Peter and one of the faceless monsters who'd joined in on the many, many times David had been dragged down into hell. It's your turn now, boy. In time, you'll be a man and it will be your turn to join the brotherhood. Be ready to receive the honor we give you. In time, you'll pass it on to others. Just as we pass it on to you now.
The words echoed in his ears, repeating, louder and louder, and when a hand touched his spine he jerked against the ropes. This time, they snapped like threads and he came up, spun around, grabbed the neck of the person behind him, slammed him-
No.
Her.
It was Sybil.
Her eyes were wide on his face.
Caine ...
That was all she said before he killed her.
Copyright © 2015 by Shiloh Walker
