Page 108 of Wicked Deceit
“She never gives up,” Zepp whispers, closing his eyes and giving a firm nod.
“The others?” I ask, trying to move the subject along.
“Chase is awake and being himself,” Ainsley says from the other side of the room. “He’s been asking about her, you guys, and Carter for the past hour. Yelling at anyone who walks by.” She snorts, rubbing her tired eyes.
“Annoying asshole,” I murmur, gaining a sly smile from Mr. Cole.
“So no change there,” Zepp says, chuckling.
“Carter?” I ask with hope, eyeing the adults.
“He’s in recovery,” Mercy says, tapping my hand. “He has a long road ahead of him. I convinced a nurse—“
“More like bribed,” Mr. Cole says with a grin.
“Fine,” she huffs, “I bribed a nurse into giving me the details since no one came to see him. He was shot four times. His only saving grace was that it went straight through and didn’t stay inside him. They repaired a lot of the damage, but he lost a lot of blood. They aren’t sure if or when he’ll wake up.” A solemn look takes her over, and her shoulders sag. “I’m so sorry, boys. This is….. this is so much.” Tears slip from her eyes, and Mr. Cole takes her into his strong arms, and she weeps into his chest.
“Shit,” I curse, running a hand through my hair. “Shit,” I murmur again as the world spins. Carter’s grumpy ass could fucking die, and we never had time to tell him how fucking much he means to us.
For the rest of the day, we stayed tucked into the little waiting room. Mercy finds us a shower to use and gives me new clothes to wear, including new underwear. Not weird, right? She’s basically my mother-in-law. So, I graciously take them, thanking her profusely for the fresh clothes since all of mine are nothing more than ash. We eat, sleep, and breathe in the small waiting room, taking up the space until we hear any news about any of our loved ones.
We wait. And wait. And wait some more on pins and needles until the call finally comes.
“Twoweeksago,ournewsroom buzzed to life with an unbelievable developing story out of East Point Bluff, California. It grew like wildfire as more and more town members were implicated in heinous and, quite frankly, unbelievable crimes that came to light. The town’s top officials now sit behind bars as the FBI sifts through hours of falsified records, trying to determine fact from fiction.” The blonde reporter’s voice drifts through the TV, grabbing all of our attention. She stands rigid in front of the East Point Prep’s main building, surrounded by multiple news outlets reporting the same story.
Yellow, ‘do not cross,’ tape drapes across every corner of the one-hundred-acre property, crawling with FBI agents. They’re looking everywhere on campus, scouring through everyone’s apartments, the classrooms, the computers, anything they can get their hands on. Their first stop was the house we rescued Kaycee from. They plastered pictures of the dingy torture rooms all over the news outlets and online. Part of me thinks they want the public to know the extent of what took place and how bad it was. No one will defend the scumbags who took children away from their families, tortured them for money, and forged suicide on their death certificates.
Reporters descended on East Point Bluff like rabid zombies, looking for someone to bite. Only they didn’t want to bite into a human. No—they wanted to bite into a juicy story. And we’re the juicy story they’ve been waiting for.
From an outsider’s perspective, it is a juicy story. It’s not every day you hear a grown man got arrested for recruiting high schoolers to commit torture and murder with him to make millions of dollars with his brothers. Since his arrest, Shaw’s sang like a bird, telling investigators everything they wanted to hear. Well, from what we’ve been told, anyway. Veritas hasn’t been forthcoming with their information on what they’ve found. If Kaycee were awake, we’d have broken into their database already and watched his confession tapes. Of course, after seeing the love of my life’s face and stab wound, I want to stay ignorant of the whole situation.
Much to our surprise, Shaw even implicated more officials from around town. The mayor, coroner, sheriff, and several state police officers have met the cold cells of justice in the past two weeks. Getting them thrown in jail is all fine and dandy because the streets of East Point Bluff needed a cleansing. The FBI has ripped every inch of this town up collecting evidence.
Thankfully, Shaw couldn’t talk himself out of this situation or pay anyone to help him. Every asset he owns and every cent in his bank account is now in the hands of the FBI. Shaw was once a multi-millionaire from the murders he orchestrated, and now he’s a penniless felon rotting away in jail. He’ll never see the light of day, and that’s all we could ask for.
Reporters have also moved in front of the hospital, camping out on the lawn and in the parking lot. The hospital staff has called the police on multiple occasions to get them under control. The sneaky reporters have tried it all, whether it’s sneaking into the hospital trying to get a glimpse of us or getting information from our doctors. We’re called ‘The Surviving Five.’ Hailed as heroes after saving our girl from the clutches of psychopaths while putting ourselves into harm’s way.
“The vultures are still outside.” Chase winces, moving the long red curtain back into place. He carefully sits back in his seat, setting his unbandaged elbow on the tiny round table between him and Seger.
Chase’s recovery has been a lot faster than expected. He spent two days in intensive care and three in a standard room, and then they released him. Probably for the best, Chase was climbing the walls and yelling at anyone who would listen to him whine. Every time his doctor came out of his room, I swear he had aged ten years and grayed his hair.
Chase’s burns weren’t all second-degree like they initially suspected. He turned out okay despite walking through gasoline-soaked flames that covered every inch of our old home. He’s a damn miracle. Several first-degree burns redden most of his left side, leaving painful swelling in its wake. Large blisters due to his second-degree burns line his arm and the left side of his abdomen and chest. So, having him walking around and talking normally is a damn miracle. His recovery baffles the doctors, claiming he should have been in the burn unit for weeks to work out his injuries. But he hasn’t. Chase keeps his head held high and refuses to fall apart in anticipation of when Kaycee needs us. He may have gauze on his arms, stomach, and legs, but he’s keeping a positive outlook on everything, unlike the old Chase.
“I don’t think they’ll ever leave,” Seger grumbles, looking over his playing cards. “Got a four?” He asks Chase, raising a brow.
“Go fish, cocksucker,” he sniggers.
Seger begrudgingly reaches into the pile for more cards with a scowl permanently fixed on his face. His hand overflows with cards, yet he still hasn’t found a match. Half of me thinks Chase messed with the game to screw with him. Well, more than half. The way Chase’s face lights up as Seger scowls more at the cards clues me in.
I smirk, pivoting back to the small TV mounted on the wall, and rub my chin. Images of East Point Bluff scroll across the screen again, highlighting the deceit of our lovely town for the millionth time.
The newscasters speculate about how all of this happened and for how long, going off on long tangents about the corrupt elite who run this town and what their crimes were. Murder. Violent acts. Abuse of a corpse. Corruption. Embezzlement. Illegal websites. And the list of their crimes goes on and on.
I shake my head. They’ve plastered this scandal on every news station, even globally. The day after Veritas saved our asses ten minutes too late, word spread like wildfire and only grew from there. First, reporters showed up for the FBI investigation outside East Point Prep. And then they camped out for the first glimpse of the press release. And now, they won’t leave, especially since we’re here.
Once they found out five students were involved somehow and brought the entire operation to its knees, they started stalking us. Day in and day out, Seger and I have had to watch our backs. But not only our backs, we also had to take care of our family lying helpless in the hospital. Two of them couldn’t defend themselves. We’ve checked in on Carter, Chase, and Kaycee, making sure no one had snuck in to take pictures. Because, yeah—it almost happened. Thankfully, Mr. Cole was there to grab the reporter by the scruff of their collar and drag them out, cursing them every which way to Sunday and threatening them.
“Mr. Cunningham!” shouts a nurse from down the hall, earning a growl from the man himself.
