Page 99 of Surly Sheriff
He blinked. “What?”
“I’m a hacker, Beau. Averygood one. It was a backstory I made up, creating a realisticonlinetrail.”
“But …why?”
“To hide the truth.”
“And what, exactly, is your truth, Rae?” he bit out, losing patience with her obfuscation.
“My sister and I ran away on the night of my thirteenth birthday, and for the next year and a bit, we were under federal protection. After that, my sister opted to go out on her own, and they placed me with foster parents in Asheville, North Carolina. I stayed with them till graduating school, and when I left, I erased all records of my life in Asheville. I’ve lived in sixteen states since.”
He stared at her in confusion, his mind stuck on thefederalprotectionphrase in the words she spewed out without taking a breath. “You were inwitnessprotection?”
“Kinda.”
He frowned. “Kinda?”
Although a smile pulled at her lips, the look she gave him spoke of deep hurt. “The Feds weren’t sure what to do with us. And until they could figure that out, they kept us under guard.” She dropped her head and sighed. “But we were together and safe, so it wasn’t too bad.”
Federal custody.
It was the very last thing he expected to hear.
“Why were you and your sister in federal custody?”
Rae stood, walked across to the window, and pulled back the curtain. Leaning her upper arm against the glass, she stared into the dark night for several moments, her chest heaving. “That night … with my grandfather … it was my thirteenth birthday.” Her laugh was hollow and bitter. “And it was time for myeducationto begin,” she snarled, turning her back to the windows. She folded her arms, lifted her chin, and looked at him. “The old man took it upon himself to groom his granddaughters.”
“Groom?” He hadn’t meant to interrupt, but the word was an odd and creepy choice.
“Sexual grooming for three years before marrying a man of his choosing. At agesixteen,” she spat out.
Sexual grooming? Marrying?Sixteen? “What the hell, Rae?” He stepped forward.
She held her hand up.
He stopped moving but continued talking. “What about your parents? Why didn’t they—” He swallowed the rest of his question at the emphatic shake of her head.
“Mama was dead, and my father” — she gave a hollow laugh — “signed the marriage consent form. My eldest sister—”
Rae stopped and cocked her head. “There were three of us. I was eight when Tatiana married. I thought she looked like a fairy princess with her puffy white dress and diamond tiara. Shewassolucky, marrying her handsome prince, getting whisked away to his castle high in the sky. She killed herself a year later. Jumped right off her Upper West Side penthouse balcony. And that’s when I learned the truth about her fairytale life.”
She drew in ragged breaths before continuing. “The servants talked about her death, but I didn’t understand what they were saying. Spousal prostitution. Assault. Rape. At nine, those terms meant nothing to me. And when I asked, they sadly shook their heads, looked at me with pity, and walked away. It was about a year later that I started noticing changes in my other sister. Kat grew quiet, often snapped at me, and cried a lot. Especially after her‘special times’with Grandfather. So, one Sunday evening after dinner—”
She shot him a raw look. “Sundays weregroomingdays. And that evening, I snuck into the library and hid in a corner behind a chair. It was horrid, Beau. What he did to her … Simply horrid,” she whispered, lifting tortured eyes to him.
He closed the distance, pulled her into his arms, and held her close. She didn’t cry, but her heavy, desperate breathing was somehow worse. “Why didn’t you tell a teacher? A school counselor?”
Rae twisted from his grip. “We were homeschooled, our teachers paid to ignore the happenings in that house,” she added bitterly, resuming her position by the window. “That night … watching him rape Kat, I understood why Tati jumped. Some things were worse than dying. And I vowed there was no way he was going to do that horrid stuff to me.” Her lips twitched. “I started planning the great escape.”
“How old were you?”
“Eleven-and-a-half.”
Just a child. But already planning to run away.
He joined her, their shoulders touching.
She met his stare in the reflection in the window. “Don’t feel sorry for me, Beau. What I ended up doing was worse. Much worse.”
