Page 35 of Ace (The Deuces Wild #4)

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 never fought 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. ”

He’d blamed Shane for leaving him, that was why Keller forgot his dad. Remembering only made him soft and weak. It made him cry, and Elaine never tolerated weakness. She was one of those her-way-or-the-highway alpha bitches. Only the house Elaine built was as full of shit as she was.

Back then, Keller didn’t know better. He was a defenseless kid with no one at his back but a shrieking, hounding shrew who wore him out.

In the end, he’d shut down. He’d schooled his thoughts and hardened his heart until every good memory of the man who’d once loved him turned to dust and blew away.

A kid will do anything to survive. Even lie to himself.

But now those memories emerged from the locked-up vault of his child’s heart, and Keller grieved for what could’ve been.

He remembered the good times, but he wondered.

What exactly was in the tea Elaine gave Carol Marie?

Better question: could a decent ME, with the current advances in forensic technology, now isolate the poison Keller believed Elaine used to kill Carol Marie?

Elaine had sent Keller on an errand to fetch one of her crows for the doctor down the road.

Elaine kept cages of various animals for her curses.

By the time he returned from those cages, Carol Marie was dead.

Elaine said she’d choked to death. He’d been so shocked and grief-stricken, he’d just gathered Carol Marie’s limp body into his arms and ran to the nearest doctor, Doctor Scratch, another backwoods ‘professional’ like Doctor John. Also one of Elaine’s voodoo buddies .

In the end it didn’t matter. The crow he’d fetched had been for the liar, Dr. Scratch, Elaine’s friend and cohort. Scratch had verified what Elaine said. Carol Marie just choked and died.

And Keller went berserk. If not for his wife’s limp body lying there on Dr. Scratch’s gurney, Keller would’ve ripped the charlatan apart.

But he couldn’t let that man touch his wife again.

After a brief, violent confrontation with Elaine, during which he’d earned the scar near his eye, Keller gathered Carol Marie into his arms and drove to the city and a real hospital emergency room.

By then, a deputy waited at the hospital entrance to arrest him.

The witch had outright lied. Elaine told the sheriff he’d killed his wife, that he’d strangled Carol Marie.

But the ER doctor was smarter. He let Keller stay with her body until the Medical Examiner arrived, then conferred with the ME.

They both agreed. There were no ligature marks on his wife’s neck. No petechial hemorrhaging.

But because of Elaine’s lies, he spent a night in county lock-up, sick at heart and accused of murder.

In the end, COD could not be precisely determined.

The ME declared Carol Marie died of hypoxia, but was unable to say how it had occurred.

He did say there was no validity behind Elaine’s outrageous charge, no signs of strangulation.

But Carol Marie could’ve choked to death.

Keller was in the Army at that time. Next morning, the sheriff released Keller, the MPs came for him, and Elaine walked away scot-free.

He hadn’t seen her since. He’d only returned to Turkey Creek long enough to bury his wife and console her parents, then he’d scraped that sad excuse of a hometown off his boots, and he signed on for one deployment after another.

The Army became home, family, and all he needed.

But now it was important to reach out, to finally know what Shane and Carol Marie had died of and to request two exhumations. It was time to know precisely what had gone on in the murky backwaters of Turkey Creek.

Whispers from Ecclesiastes surfaced from the deep dark shadows of Keller’s soul.

A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones again…

A time to keep silence. And a time to speak…

So, speak. That was the key. Shane and Carol Marie could no longer speak for themselves, but Keller could. And speak he would. He’d get warrants for two exhumations, but first…

The lady in question stirred in his arms, ending the deluge of tender memories when she pushed her soft, warm backside into him.

Still fully clothed, Keller’s body flamed to life at the intimate contact.

It had only been hours, but he couldn’t seem to stop touching her.

He found himself stronger and surer when he was with Savannah.

More masculine, more powerful, and yes, even more calm.

For the first time in years, Keller was at peace.

And all because Savannah told him she loved him.

How ironic. An innocent creature not afraid to reach out to a war-hardened man without guile or hidden agendas.

Her innocence was her gift. Savannah took chances he’d never take.

She led with her heart instead of her chin, and she gave her love away to everyone she met.

Dogs, cats, birds, recalcitrant federal agents, didn’t matter.

She wasn’t afraid to reach out to slathering, unpredictable beasts like Galahad.

She wasn’t afraid to get bit. Yet he, the big brave soldier, hadn’t thought of petting a dog in years, not until Savannah dumped Sanctuary into his life.

Keller wasn’t so sure if Sanctuary was a place—or if Sanctuary was Savannah.

What he wouldn’t give to slide in behind her, naked and ready.

But one more time inside her sweet body would never be enough.

He knew that now. No matter how many times he reminded himself he was an honorable arm of the federal government, that men of authority like him should maintain a strict boundary with women like Savannah, he couldn’t make himself ease away from her.

Even honorable special agents had lives and lovers. Wives...

But she needed rest more than sex, and her needs would forever come first, and…

Aw hell. He pressed his nose into the warm crook of her neck, wishing she’d wake up just enough to be friendly.