Page 50 of Ace
But about those would-be killers in the monster truck, those uncanny alligators that seemed to show up at the same time the Camaro blew, the explosion at Sanctuary, and the fact that Gran Mere’s houseboat wasmissing? That four-pronged attack was nothing less than a diversion and he knew it.
Whoever was behind it had money. The bastard meant to keep Savannah too busy fighting to survive to interfere with his moving Gran Mere’s home. He’d had a good-sized crew and heavy equipment on standby, too. He’d had this move planned for days, maybe months. Which meant he’d had someone watching Gran Mere and Savannah for a while now. He’d known precisely when Gran Mere died, also known when Savannah left the houseboat with Keller.
All clues led to Doctor Rudy John, and that made Keller uneasy. Not only had he stalked her, the sweetest woman on earth, but John knew Keller was in town. But precisely who else was RJ working with, and where was the houseboat now? Who was the money man behind this coordinated attack? It sure wasn’t Doctor John. Keller meant to find out.
Easing out of his chair, he leaned over Savannah to tell her goodbye, that he had work to do. Breathing in, he drew in the lovely scent unique to this diminutive bundle of extraordinary fire. Closing his eyes, he brushed his lips over the satiny expanse of her forehead. How sweet. How rare.
Unable to resist, Keller toed out of his dress shoes and knelt on the bed. Peeling half the covers away, he slid one arm beneath her shoulders and settled alongside Savannah. Rolling her to her side, he tucked his knees into the back of hers and reached his free arm around her shoulders. Aroused at the contact of her soft breasts against the inside of his bicep, he basked in thecontentment seeping into his soul. It only took one touch of this woman. Didn’t even have to be skin on skin. Just holding Savannah melted away every last one of the psychic barriers he’d erected to keep his heart safe.
Keller’s best gift hadn’t always been empathy. Used to be solitude and distance. Ever since he could remember, he’d been pushing people away, fighting for personal space and a comfort zone that excluded Elaine and her treachery. But lying here with Savannah…
Breathing her in…
Fighting the urge to make love to her...
Unabashed happiness washed over Keller. For the first time in years, he released the death grip on his inner control. He allowed himself to remember.
Shane Boniface. His father. The town drunk. The waste of skin. The do-nothing bastard and ne’er do-well husband. All Elaine’s harsh edicts. He’d died when Keller was six. For whatever reason, the forgotten memories of quiet times with Shane surfaced like a rush of effervescent bubbles to the silvery surface of a glass of 7-UP.
Yeah. 7-UP. Keller remembered now. Shane always had a glass or a can of 7-UP in his hand, laced with whatever rotgut was handy. Vodka or whiskey, the poison didn’t matter. Only the endgame. After tossing back enough of those doctored 7-UPs, Shane developed a cute sense of humor. He took Keller fishing for catfish or carp, crawdads or frogs, not that little boy Keller knew then why his dad was more fun with a can of 7-UP in his fist. All Keller knew was that Shane took him awayfrom home and Elaine. Besides, poor white folks ate what they caught, didn’t matter if it was trash fish. Trash begot trash, least that was what Elaine always said.
I remember now… Dad let me steer the outboard. We were fishing and he trusted me. He called me Killer Keller. He said I had guts…He called me Buddy, and he gave me his baseball cap.
Keller scrubbed his free hand over his bristly head, wondering what happened to that ratty old Army cap. Where was it now? Was his dad really in the Army? Was he a vet or was that just the cheapest cap at the five-and-dime? Keller honestly didn’t know.
Yet the persistent memory of a real, no-kidding father and son connection lingered. Tall, gangly, and quiet, Shane had never once been mean, snarky, or abusive. Keller couldn’t remember him yelling or cursing, never hitting or kicking, either, which Elaine was prone to do. It didn’t take much to push her over the edge on a good day. Keller had often thought his breathing set her off some mornings.
More often than not, Shane was the buffer between him and his mother, the peacemaker and the quiet man who’d suffered Elaine’s worst temper, vilest outbursts, and sharp tongue. Her belt. Her fists. Her lies.
Chapter Twenty-Five
But for the life of him, Keller couldn’t recall Shane’s face. The color of his eyes. His nose. Any defining freckles, moles, or scars. Lying there with Savannah snug, warm and soft in his arms, the frightened little boy he once was came back to Keller like a shivering, puny ghost who’d never had the guts to stand up for himself. He couldn’t, not back then. Kids weren’t born tough or hard. They didn’t instinctively know how to hit back or hit first, especially when the one doing the hitting was a parent. It took a lot to pummel a child’s innocence and trust away. But Elaine finally did it. She broke him. Damn her.
Shame for the weakling he’d been suffused Keller. He used to stare down at the table between his dirty fingers whenever she came unglued—which was most of the time—afraid to make eye contact in case it made her angrier. Not like that was hard to do. But he’d neverfought back once the vicious name-calling started.Puny pig. Lying thief. Rat bastard. Crybaby!So many others. But never ‘son’. Rarely even Keller.
What he wouldn’t give to confront her now. For what she’d done to his father alone, Keller’d knock her on her ass. He’d set her straight.
The only time Keller stood a chance was when Shane was sober enough to intervene. If he was, he always stepped up and took the blame for whatever his skinny son stood accused of. Which meant Shane couldn’t win any more than Keller. Elaine seemed to hate the entire male gender, and she focused that hatred like a demented surgeon’s scalpel on the two males who were stuck in her life.
It was the Army that saved Keller. The discipline, structure, and rock-solid brotherhood he found there changed that scrawny, wimpy, snot-nosed crybaby into a man. The Army recruiter promised him the world, but it was Keller who’d grabbed onto that promise and made it come true. There wasn’t a rucksack, mortar, or fellow soldier he couldn’t carry, a mission he wouldn’t accept and complete, or a target he couldn’t nail.
After Carol Marie passed, he’d poured every fiber of his broken heart into the Army’s‘Be all you can be’bullshit. He became more focused, more lethal, and more controlled. He became the deadliest marksman. He became Death and Destruction. For a while that was enough. But the day finally came when it wasn’t. His few friends had either died in action or left the service. So Keller moved on.
But what kind of bastard forgot his father? Oh yeah. The angry, beat-up kind who needed someone to blame when Shane up and died and left his only kid behind.
“She was bigger than you,” Keller remembered out loud. But Elaine couldn’t have been. He might not remember his face, but Keller knew his dad was a tall man. Maybe that was just how a raging, belligerent mother in a full-blown tirade appeared to a little kid. For whatever reason, Shane never knocked her on her ass. Not even once. But when he died…
Keller closed his eyes to kill the relentless slideshow playing in his head. He’d been defenseless then, and Elaine took a peculiar, sadistic joy in tormenting her son. She insisted he be there for her gruesome rituals. If he cried, she’d beat him. Whipped him. Kicked the shit out of him. She never left any scars though, only the hash marks on his arm for trumped-up infractions he’d never committed and lies he’d never told. Elaine relished pain—other people’s pain.
But that was a long time ago, and Keller was a man now, a trained professional who had ended more despicable men and women than Elaine. He had no regrets for what he’d done. Those kills weren’t sadistic nor joyful. They were simply taking out the trash.
The more Keller remembered, the more he wanted to know if his dad had been Army. If so, where had he served, abroad or stateside? What rank was he when he retired? What had he seen and done? Was PTSD the reason he drank himself to death? Or was marriage? Was he honorably discharged or kicked out? Hero or coward?
And that Army ball cap. Was it Shane’s or just junk? Keller recalled soldiers at the cemetery the day they buried his dad. A twenty-one-gun salute. A folded flag. Respect. The soldiers were immaculately dressed, clean and sharp, their weapons polished, their gloves pure white. Medals and ribbons decorated their chests. Their caps were clean and neat. One of those men gave Keller a spent brass shell after the salute. Like a treasure, he’d stuck it deep in his pants pocket to make extra sure he didn’t lose it. No one had ever given him anything so cool. It was all he had to remember his dad.
But when he got home, Elaine beat the shit out of him, screaming how poor they were now that Shane was gone, that anything and everything was hers.Give it to me!Even that measly shell. She’d thought that kindly soldier had given Keller a silver dollar. When she found out it was just a spent cartridge and as worthless as her son, Elaine ripped Keller’s last memory of his dad out of his grubby hand and slapped him so hard, she’d knocked him down and out. When he came to moments later, she made him stand in the kitchen corner the rest of the day. So he did. Crying for the father who would never save him again and wishing he could leave too. Just die. It couldn’t have hurt worse than living.
“I hated her that day,” Keller told the Man Upstairs, his Heavenly Father, the one he usually cursed. Funny. He might curse, but he’d always known God listened. Guess that saying about there being no atheists in foxholes was right. “I truly did. I still do. She’s one of the cruelest people in the world. Never should’ve had a kid.”
