Shattered Valor (23 page)

Ty looked around the basement, looking for someone, anyone who might be watching them.

“Why do you keep doing that?” the boy asked. “It creeps me out. Who else is down here?” He pushed Ty’s sandwich as far inside the cage as he could, then got up and walked around the basement.

Ty scrambled over and grabbed the sandwich then scooted back to the middle of the cage. The boy was walking around, eating his sandwich and kicking boxes and piles of things. “There’s nothing. No one.” He came back to the cage. “I’m Kit.”

“I’m Ty.”

“Why are you in this cage?”

“I live here.”

“You can’t live in a cage.”

“I do. Sometimes.”

“Do you want to get out?”

Ty shook his head furiously. Good things never happened when he was out. His father had visitors now. They only let him out for one purpose.

“Do you go to school?”

Ty shook his head. His father had fired the tutor shortly before he’d built the cage here in the basement.

“You’re lucky. I hate school.” Kit looked around for something. “I’m thirsty. You don’t have a sink. Do they bring you water?”

Ty crawled over to his toilet and scooped up a handful of water. He moved closer to the bars with it, crouching in such a way that if Kit tried to grab him, he could get free easily.

“You’re fucking with me, right? You want me to drink from a toilet? Do you drink that shit?”

Ty lifted his hand and slurped the water that remained in his cupped hands.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Ty’s thoughts came back to the present. He looked at the closed basement door. Max had said the cage wasn’t there anymore. No one who’d been in the basement had mentioned it or asked him about it.

He forced his feet in the direction of the living room. Stepping through the patio doors, he crossed the patio on his way to the gym building. He went straight to the poolroom. The air was warm and steamy from the heated water. The lights were off overhead and dimmed in the wall sconces but lit in the pool. The blue water was still enough to reflect his image yet moved ever so slightly. Alive but asleep. Waiting.

He stripped and dove into a lap lane. Bubbles gurgled against his ears as he surged into the clear water. Somewhere, he could hear an engine pumping as it continuously filtered the water, droning like a heartbeat. He began moving upward, his arms slicing through the water as he rose to the surface.

He swam an endless lap, somersaulting at each end so that he never ceased moving. Soon all he could hear was his own breathing and the rush of the water.

An hour and a half later, he pulled himself out of the pool. He listened for the voices, the whispers, the ugly fucking memories, but they were silent. He showered and dressed in his jeans, then went back into the house and up to his room.

His empty room.

Eden was gone. His life. His soul. His woman. Gone.

He pivoted on his heel and went to her room. She was asleep on her bed. The relief he felt singed the edges of his frozen heart. He lifted her and carried her back to his room.

“Ty? What are you doing?” she asked as she wrapped her arms about his neck.

“You were to sleep in my room. It was our agreement, Eden.”

“I thought, after the way you left, you wouldn’t want me here.”

“I want what we agreed to. You. In my bed. All night.” He set her on his mattress, then closed the door. Tank walked with sleepy impatience to the far side of the bed, nearest Eden. He curled up on the floor with grunt. She slipped beneath the covers, then held them up for him to join her. She was still bed-warm. He sighed as the heated length of her slipped against his body.

“We’ll talk about what happened in the morning,” she murmured as she settled against his chest.

“No. We won’t. Sleep, now.”

Ty slowly came awake the next morning. He held still as reality chased away the fog of his dreams. Something was different. Something had changed.

He’d slept in his room. In the house.

Eden had been with him. He reached across the bed. The space where she’d lain was empty and cold. He dragged one of her pillows over to his nose, breathed in, let the faint scent of her calm him. Judging from the bright sunlight filtering in around the edges of the drapes, he’d slept well into the morning.

In a hurry to see Eden, he dressed quickly so he could go find her. She wasn’t in the living room or the dining room. Breakfast had been cleared away—except for a single chaffing dish on the sideboard.

Kathy came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. “Oh! You’re up! I was just checking to make sure the flame was still warming the plate Eden set aside for you.” She lifted his breakfast out of the chaffing dish with a potholder.

She looked at him, then at the long, empty table. “Why don’t you come eat in the kitchen so you’ll have company?” Without waiting for his response, she walked away with his plate. Ty followed her through the butler’s pantry into the kitchen. She set his plate down on a place mat at the much smaller table, then went to fetch him a cup of coffee.

Eden had loaded his plate with so much scrambled eggs, fried potatoes, bacon, and sausages that he wondered if she’d left any food for the others. Kathy brought over a bowl of cut fruit, silverware, and coffee with cream and sugar. He sipped the hot coffee, hoping to cover his ridiculous reaction to Eden’s thoughtfulness.

He ate while Kathy and the woman she’d hired moved about the kitchen and the laundry room, doing their daily chores. The woman stepped outside, then came back in a few minutes later with a basket of folded sheets. She paused by the table where he was eating.

“Mr Bladen?” She waited nervously for his attention to move to her. “I just wanted to thank you for this job. My husband’s arthritis has gotten so bad that he hasn’t been able to work much lately.”

Ty looked beyond the woman to Kathy, who was watching them from deeper in the kitchen. She smiled at him. He looked at the middle-aged woman standing by his table. “Call me ‘Ty’, please. I’m grateful you were able to come out and help. You’re Carla, right?” He’d remembered her name from the short list of employees Dennis had given Max to approve.

“I am. I sometimes came in to help when your father had his shindigs. I’m ever so much happier to work for you than him. Kathy and I, we’ll keep your house in tip-top shape. If there’s anything I can do for you, please let me know.”

“Thank you, Carla.”

Ty finished his breakfast, then took his dishes over to the breakfast bar. He wandered outside to the wide flagstone patio. Various seating arrangements were grouped in nice clusters under a portico. An elegant dining table was set up at one end, near a big fireplace.

Beyond the patio, a terraced garden spilled across green lawn. Rocco and Zavi were out there playing a game of soccer. Zavi’s throaty chuckle filled the air. As he listened, Rocco called instructions and encouragement to his son in Pashto, Spanish, and English, encouraging him to exercise his linguistic dexterity as they played.

Off to the other side, several rows of white cotton sheets were hanging on a line, drying in the sun and breeze. It was crazy beautiful and so damned peaceful, this place he hated. Strange that such beauty existed in the same place as his father had.

He stepped back inside the house. Kathy was preparing batter for something. She looked up at him and smiled. He didn’t smile back.

“Why did you stay?” he asked her. “All those years? Why didn’t you leave?”

Kathy stopped what she was doing and studied her hands. It took a minute to find the words. “Dennis and I had searched a long time for an employment situation like this where we could work together. We didn’t go to college. We had no training in a trade. Your father provided us with a house, good pay, a place where we could raise our sons.”

“Did he touch them? Your boys?”

She gave him a sharp glance as she tried to distill from his question the things he wasn’t saying. “No.” She sighed. “If he had, we would have left. We thought our being here was the only way we could positively affect how he treated you.”

“You helped. You definitely helped. But when he sent you away for weekends—” Ty couldn’t finish the thought. The reality of what had happened, the things that led to his father’s building the cage, were too ugly for Kathy.

“Dennis reported your situation to social services several times.”

Ty nodded. “They came and talked to me. Twice.”

“What happened?”

“My father threatened you and your family if I told them the truth. I didn’t know them, but I knew my dad. I didn’t know if they really were from social services or if they were just more friends of my father’s. I thought it was a test. And if they really were social workers, then I knew your family was in danger. So I lied to them.”

Kathy resumed stirring her bowl of batter, her strokes sharp and fast. She pressed her lips in a thin line, sealing away words she didn’t want to speak aloud. “I’m sorry,” she said after a moment. She set the bowl down on the counter and wiped her hands in her apron. “I’m so sorry.”

Ty came around the counter and pulled her into a hug. “You have nothing to apologize for. You did what you could, and it was far more than I expected.”

She pulled away after a moment, sniffling. “I’m so glad that we could see you again. As an adult. Free of your father. I like your friends. And I like your Eden, too.”

Ty smiled. “I do, too.”

He wandered outside to where Rocco and Zavi had been playing. Zavi had switched from chasing the ball to chasing Yeller and Blue. Rocco was standing off to the side, watching them. He smiled at Ty as he joined them.

“He looks happy,” Ty observed.

Rocco nodded. “I think he is. He has nightmares sometimes, but overall he seems to be adjusting pretty well.”

Ty squinted from the bright sun. “How do you handle that? The nightmares?”

“Kathy had Dennis move your mother’s rocking chair into our room.” Rocco glanced at Ty. “I hope you don’t mind.”

Ty shook his head. “Not at all. Does it help?”

“Yeah. We sit and rock him until he calms down, remembers where he is, remembers he’s safe.”

Memories flooded Ty, things he’d thought were long forgotten. His mom had died when he was four—just about Zavi’s age. The town had come to mourn her, but Ty hadn’t understood where she’d gone or why everyone was so sad.

His bedroom had been at the far end of the hall from his parent’s, a long, long walk for a little boy still afraid of the dark. When he’d gone to their room in the middle of that first night after the wake, looking for his mother, his dad had hit him, then shoved him into the hallway. Ty remembered sitting and crying outside his parent’s room the night his hell began.

His dad had come out to shout at him, but that just made Ty cry more. His dad grabbed him and dragged him down the stairs. He shoved him through the front door into the dark, cold night, then shut and locked the door.

Ty never again cried after that night.

“Zavi’s lucky to have you and Mandy.”

Rocco shrugged. “I don’t know what I’m doing, half the time.”

Ty looked at Rocco. “Maybe not, but it all comes from the right place.”

Later that afternoon, Ty sat in his father’s chair at the big mahogany desk. He was alone in the den, except for Sebastian. The cat wandered over from the sofa and jumped onto his lap. Ty lifted him and leaned back in the chair as he contemplated the data he’d assembled on his father.

Nothing in his finances supported the lifestyle he was living. Which meant he had another stream of income Ty hadn’t yet discovered. Most likely, given the WKB’s involvement, it was not a legal source of money.

Kit came out of the secret bookshelf door and hurried into the room. “Who’s in here with you?”

Ty set Sebastian down and looked around the room. “You tell me.”

“Was anyone here a few minutes ago?”

“No. Why?”

“Amir called. He said you were at last going in the right direction. What are you working on?”

“My dad’s investment data, which he did a very poor job of managing. He was close to being broke. He was entertaining heads of banks, fund managers, senators and such out here—with no obvious income to support that kind of lifestyle.”

Ty looked at Kit, wondering if he should tell him everything, layout the hypothesis he was working on. If Kit couldn’t deal with it, then he knew the rest of the team wouldn’t be able to.

Kit sat on the arm of the sofa. “You think that’s what the WKB was after when they trashed the house? Evidence that your father had dirt on his guests? Maybe they didn’t like him running his extortion scheme right under their nose.”

Yeah. And Ty himself was the dirt his father used as leverage. “It’s possible.”

“How did Amir know you were working on that?” Kit asked. “We’ve swept this room a thousand times. It’s clean.”

Ty shut his laptop. “I don’t know.” He got up from the desk and walked around the room. “My dad always knew things, Kit, when I was a kid. I never knew how he did it.”

“Your dad’s dead, Blade.”

“I still feel watched. I have since I first came back here. I can’t shake it. I feel it everywhere in the house. Like it has eyes. It doesn’t. I know that. But maybe there’s technology our tools can’t detect.”