Page 13

CHAPTER 13

Teller wasn’t thrilled about busting into a biker bar looking for one of their own. And he sure as hell didn’t want to take Sachie in there with him.

Yet, he knew if he didn’t take her, she’d find her own way there. What chance did a lone female counselor have against a rabid gang of bikers who might be either drunk or high on illicit drugs...or both?

“You know bikers don’t necessarily hang out all day at their favorite bar. They’re like vampires and come out at night,” Teller said.

Sachie cocked an eyebrow and stared across the console at Teller. “And you know this because you’ve frequented biker bars?”

“Not necessarily,” he said. “However, going in looking like a highly educated cream puff will flag you before you even cross the threshold.”

Sachie’s lips twitched. “What are you saying? I need to look more like a badass than a cream puff?”

“Actually, yes.” He cast a glance her way as they drove away from Candice’s sad house in the middle of an equally sad neighborhood of homes with peeling paint and sagging roofs. Even the houses looked like they’d lost hope. He hadn’t liked the smell of Candice’s home, but even more, he hadn’t liked that anyone was so far down they’d live in a place like that. The woman needed mental help as well as a bulldozer to clean the place.

He handed her his cell phone. “Text George Ingram the following: Need 6, 22:00, Leather & Chains, dress code advised.” His lips twitched, knowing what George’s reaction would be.

Two seconds after Sachie hit send, his phone vibrated.

“You can answer,” Teller said. “Put it on speaker.”

“Yo, Osgood.”

“Ingram,” Teller acknowledged.

“Could you be more cryptic?” His friend and teammate always got straight to the point.

Teller chuckled. “My client and I need backup tonight at a motorcycle club. ”

“A single operative kind of backup or a potential team convergence bailout?”

“Hard to say. I’d lean toward team convergence. The guy we’re going in to question is a recent prison release. My client helped convict him of child abuse. He’s also not averse to beating women, as his first stop post-prison was at his ex-girlfriend's place. He put her in the hospital. We assume his MC associates are equally pleasant.”

“Gotcha,” George said. “And by dress code, I assume you want us to blend in.”

“We’d like to at least make it through the door,” Teller said.

“I assume the client you’re taking is Ms. Moore.”

“News travels fast,” Teller observed.

“Hawk gave us the heads-up in case you needed support,” George explained. “You sure you want to take Ms. Moore into the middle of what sounds like a dangerous motorcycle gang? Is this something we can do without exposing her to the risk?”

“I’m going,” Sachie said, with a stubborn set to her chin. “With or without the Brotherhood Protectors.”

As Teller had predicted. That’s part of the reason I wanted to get some additional insurance. We think the guy we’re going after might be the one who has been at the root of her problems.”

“Why not let the police handle it?” George asked .

Teller cocked an eyebrow in Sachie’s direction.

“I’ve worked with the Honolulu and Hawaii police in the past. Sometimes, word leaks out to the wrong people,” Sachie said. “I don’t want anyone warning Finkel before I get some answers from him. Since we’re not going to the bar until late tonight, I have some other places and people I want to check. It might change our direction.”

“We just want the team ready if we have to go to Leather & Chains tonight,” Teller added.

“On it,” George said. “I’ll rally the troops and wait on standby for the go-ahead.”

“Roger,” Teller said. “Out here.”

“Out here,” George echoed and ended the call.

“Where are we going next?” he asked.

Sachie’s brow furrowed. “I’m thinking.”

Before she could come to a conclusion, her cell phone rang. She frowned down at the display. “It’s Dr. Janek,” she said and answered. “Yes, sir.”

The lines across her forehead eased. “Yes, sir. We’ll stop by in a few minutes.” After she ended the call, she gave Teller a brief smile. “Dr. Janek forgot to give me a stack of mail. I’d like to swing by and collect it. I’m not sure where to go next to find my stalker until we corner Travis at the club tonight, so I’d like to get in touch with Kylie, Luke’s girlfriend.”

She scrolled through the contacts on her cell phone, found what she was looking for and placed a call, putting the phone on speaker. “I hope Luke’s foster family has Kylie’s information.”

The call rang three times before a woman’s voice answered. “Ms. Moore?”

“Yes, Mrs. Randall, how are you and your husband?”

The woman sighed. “Okay, now that the reporters have stopped coming around. How are you?”

“Finally coming out of the fog and looking for answers.”

“How can I help?” Mrs. Randall asked.

“I’d like to talk with Kylie, Luke’s girlfriend. I know they had an argument, and that Kylie fell and got hurt. He blamed himself. I’m trying to piece together what made Luke feel like he had no other choice.”

“He was head over heels for that girl,” Mrs. Randall said. “I can’t imagine him purposely hurting her.”

“I agree. I’d like to hear Kylie’s side of that argument,” Sachie said. “Do you have her phone number?”

“Actually, I do. Thankfully, I got it from Luke when he started dating her, in case I couldn’t get in touch with him on his own phone. Hold on, let me scroll through my contacts.” The woman stopped talking for a few seconds and then came back with, “There she is. I’ll share the contact. ”

A moment later, Sachie’s cell phone beeped with an incoming text.

“I’m glad I had her number,” Mrs. Randall said. “The police confiscated Luke’s cell phone and have yet to return it. I hope you find out what was bothering Luke. My husband and I tried talking to him the last couple of weeks before he did what he did. We could tell all was not well in his world, but he wouldn’t open up. He kept saying he was fine. At one point, I asked if I could help him with whatever problem he was having. I remember him saying, I can handle it .” She paused. “I only wish I’d tried harder to get him to open up. I keep thinking he’d still be here if I’d been more persistent.” She gave a brief laugh. “At the time, I thought there was a fine line between being persistent and pushy with teens. I didn’t want to drive him away. I should’ve been pushy.”

“We can’t second-guess what happened,” Sachie said. “It doesn’t change the outcome. But we can learn. That’s why I want to understand everything that led up to Luke’s final decision.”

“I’d like to know that as well,” Mrs. Randall said. “If my husband and I decide to foster a teen again, which I doubt we will, I’d like to know how to get in front of the issue before it goes too far.”

“Thank you for taking Luke in. I’m almost certain that whatever happened to send him over the edge had nothing to do with you and your husband. He only ever had good things to say about you.”

“Thank you for that,” Mrs. Randall said. “And if there’s anything else I can do, don’t hesitate to call.”

Sachie ended the call and placed the next. It only rang once before voicemail picked up. “Hi, this is Kylie. I can’t come to the phone right now. Leave a message, and I might return your call, that is, if you’re not a telemarketer or a creepy stalker.”

Sachie shot a smile toward Teller.

He liked it when she smiled. She’d had so little to smile about lately. He wanted to find her stalker and put an end to the terror he’d inspired. Then Sachie would have the time to heal and learn to smile more often.

“Kylie, this is Sachie Moore. I was Luke’s counselor and was with him when he... passed.” Sachie paused as if gathering her thoughts or courage. “I’d like to talk with you, if you’re up to it. I’m trying to better understand what happened. No pressure. If you’re not ready, I’ll understand.” She ended the call and sighed. “I hate opening the wounds. If she was half as crazy about him as he was about her, she’s got to be a dark place right now. The shock of losing a friend so suddenly and violently can sometimes have a domino effect. I hope she’s not dominoing. ”

Teller reached for her hand and held it for the rest of the drive to Dr. Janek’s office.

The doctor was seated behind the receptionist’s desk, looking at the computer monitor, his forehead creased in a deep frown. He glanced up at Sachie. “I can’t make heads or tails of this appointment calendar.”

Sachie slipped behind the desk and leaned over the doctor. “Let me.”

He removed his hand from the mouse, and Sachie took control. “What were you trying to do?”

“I just spoke with a patient and needed to schedule his next appointment.” He sat back far enough to let Sachie in to navigate the system. He gave her the date and time. “I checked against my schedule, and it will work. I just couldn’t add it myself. Lindsey can’t call in sick ever again.”

“It’s not as hard as you think,” Sachie said. “Watch.” She slowly led him through the steps to add an appointment to the calendar and backed out all the changes before committing them.

“Whoa, wait,” he said, his eyebrows rising up his forehead. “Why did you remove the appointment?”

“You won’t learn if you don’t do it yourself,” she said. “Now, you do it.”

Teller had to choke back laughter at the doctor’s incredulous expression .

But the man fiddled with the mouse and the keyboard until he sat back and nodded. “I did it.”

“I always knew you could,” Sachie said.

“I still don’t want to be without a receptionist,” he mumbled, then pushed back from the desk and stood. “What can I help you with?”

“You said you had a stack of mail for me,” Sachie reminded him.

“Yes, yes. So I do.” He turned to a credenza behind him, grabbed a stack of envelopes and handed them to Sachie.

“Some of it’s junk mail, but I’ll let you decide. “Have you had any luck chasing down your troublemaker?” he asked.

“Not so far,” Sachie said.

“Let me know if you need anything else. I’ll be here another hour before I call it a day.” He walked into his office, calling out over his shoulder, “In the meantime, I need to make notes and prepare for my next patient.”

“Thank you, Dr. Janek.” Sachie gathered her mail and left the building.

Teller opened the car door and waited for her to slide into her seat. Then he closed the door and got in the other side. “We still have all day before we have to be at the bar. Are there any other patients who might be angry with you? ”

Sachie shook her head. “My patients are usually happy to see me. It’s the family members of the children I recommend to be removed from their homes who have the biggest beef with me. Luke was an anomaly—a tragic one at that. I feel compelled to discover his reason for feeling like he had to die to find peace, and compelled isn’t the right word. I’ve moved on to obsessed.”

“Like you, Mrs. Randall felt a strong sense of responsibility for what happened with Luke,” Teller offered.

“Guilt is a huge emotional factor for me. I should’ve done more.”

“You couldn’t have guessed what he was about to do. Just like Mrs. Randall. How many of her foster kids have committed suicide?”

“None, until Luke,” Sachie said.

“And how many of your patients have committed suicide?” Teller asked.

“Luke was my first.” She closed her eyes and squeezed her hands together. “Please let him be the last.”

As he sat with his hands on the steering wheel and no direction to go, Teller nodded toward the stack of mail in Sachie’s lap. “You want to go through those letters while we stew on where we’ll go next?”

“I almost forgot.” Sachie sat up straight and flipped through the junk mail, tossing some envelopes onto the dash, unopened. The sender of the next letter had handwritten the street, city, state and zip code, and addressed the envelope to “Miss Sachie.”

A faint smile lifted the corners of Sachie’s lips as she carefully opened the envelope. Inside was a card that appeared to have been drawn by a child using colorful crayons.

A big heart graced the front of the card, colored in with red.

Sachie opened the card. THANK YOU was spelled out with large capital letters in blue crayon. The author and artist had added for being my friend and then signed it Emma .

“A fan of yours?” Teller asked.

“Apparently.” Sachie stared at the card, her eyes shining with unshed tears. “Emma was having nightmares when her mother brought her to see me. In fact, her mother and father weren’t doing much better. Emma’s little brother had gotten off the bus before Emma. He ran across the street without looking first. A car hit him. Emma witnessed it.”

“Did the boy survive?”

Sachie shook her head. “They went from being a cute little family of four to a family of three heartbroken people. I saw Emma for several months, helping her work through her feelings. ”

“She felt responsible, didn’t she?” Teller guessed.

Sachie nodded. “She was the older sister and should’ve been holding his hand. However, Dalton was a force to be reckoned with—headstrong and in constant motion. If the driver hadn’t been looking down at his cell phone, he would’ve seen the bus had stopped and the lights were blinking red. Vehicles are supposed to stop when school buses are loading and unloading.”

“Poor Emma,” Teller commented. “That’s a horrible thing for a child to witness.”

Sachie nodded. “I’m glad she’s doing much better.” Her lips pressed together. “And yes, I see the parallels to what happened with me and Luke. I know it takes time to get past the horror.”

She flipped through more junk mail, laying the letters with the others on the dash, and then stopped to read a glossy postcard depicting boys playing in a gym. “This is the Boys’ Club where Luke worked after school. They’re having an open house...” she turned the card over, “today, actually.” Her forehead wrinkled as she tapped the card to her chin. “When I was asking Luke what was wrong, he wouldn’t tell me. I asked him if something had happened at school. He said no. Then I asked him if something had happened at the Boys’ Club.”

“Did he say yes? ”

Sachie shook her head. “No. But he didn’t say no. He avoided answering the question.”

“I say we go to the Boys’ Club next.” Teller entered the address in his map application on his cell phone. As he pulled out onto the road, Sachie’s cell phone rang.

She answered with, “This is Sachie. Kylie?” She glanced toward Teller. “Hold on.” She lowered the phone and placed it in speaker mode. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry I couldn’t answer your earlier call. I’ve had so many crank calls that my mother doesn’t want me answering any. She turned off my phone. I just happened to turn it back on to see someone had left a message.”

“Thank you for returning my call,” Sachie said.

“You were the counselor Luke was seeing?”

“Yes,” Sachie said.

“Wow,” the one word sounded choked with emotion. “You were there... You saw...” An audible sniff sounded over the line.

“Yes. Probably like you, I’ve been struggling to process it all.”

“Struggling,” Kylie said, the word breaking on what sounded like a sob. “Yeah.”

“Before he...” Sachie stopped.

Teller glanced toward her.

Her eyes were filled with tears .

Teller found an empty parking lot and pulled in. He reached for Sachie’s hand and held it.

She gave him a weak smile, swallowed and continued. “Luke asked me to tell you he was sorry for dragging you into his shitty life, and that he was sorry he hurt you.”

“Oh, God,” Kylie whispered. “He said that?”

“Yes. I’m so sorry I didn’t deliver the message sooner,” Sachie said softly, tears slipping down her cheeks.

Teller gently squeezed Sachie’s hand, wishing he could take away her pain, knowing he couldn’t.

“Now that I can think more clearly,” Sachie said, “I’m trying to understand what drove Luke to that...day.”

“It’s all my fault,” Kylie said. “We had a terrible argument.”

“What was the argument about, Kylie?” Sachie asked.

“He was so angry,” Kylie’s voice caught in a sob, “it scared me.”

“Angry with you?” Sachie persisted, her voice calm, controlled and so gentle that Teller would have told her anything she wanted to know just to keep her talking.

“Not at me. At something that happened where he worked. He said they were pushing him to do something he didn’t want to do.”

“Did he tell you what that was?”

“No. He wouldn’t say, no matter how many times I asked. I asked him if it was illegal. He wouldn’t say. I asked him if it would hurt the kids. He said not at the club, but that if he didn’t do it, they would hurt his best friend.”

“Did he say who they were?”

“No. He wouldn’t tell me anything. That’s what made me mad.” She paused. “The last time he saw me, I was mad. And I wasn’t even mad at him. I was mad at whoever was pushing him to do whatever it was he didn’t feel right doing. But I took it out on Luke. I didn’t get to tell him I loved him.” Her voice faded off.

Teller bit down on his tongue to keep from firing off all the questions that crowded his mind. Kylie didn’t know another person was listening in. He couldn’t be certain how she’d react if she did. And Sachie was the professional counselor and doing a good job of wading through the heartbroken teenage girl’s emotions to get to the facts.

“Kylie, what friend was he worried about?” Sachie asked in that same, soft, caring tone.

“Mark,” Kylie said. “When Luke started working at the club, Mark showed him around. He learned that Mark had come from a broken home and didn’t like his stepfather. They bonded over their poor excuses for fathers and video games. They even traded some of those games.”

Teller wanted the girl to get back to her argument with Luke. Patience wasn’t always his strong suit.

It was Sachie’s. His respect for the counselor grew stronger by the minute. What made him fall for her even more was how much she cared for her patients and how far she’d go to figure out where she’d gone wrong with the one she’d failed.

“Was Luke very close to Mark?” Sachie prompted.

“Sometimes, too close. Luke said they thought so much alike, it was as if they shared thoughts. He said they finished each other’s sentences.” Kylie snorted softly. “At first, I was a little jealous, but Luke still made time for me, and he’d never really had a good guy friend. He said Mark was like the brother he’d never had.”

“There were other children in his foster home,” Sachie pointed out.

“Not like Mark.”

“Did you meet Mark?” Sachie asked. “What was he like?”

“Luke wanted me to meet him, but the timing wasn’t right. They went their separate ways once they left the club. Luke would come spend time with me, and Mark went to his home. Then Luke started changing. He went from being happy and doing well in school to frowning all the time. Where we used to talk nonstop on the phone well into the night, our calls got shorter and shorter. He wouldn’t tell me what was wrong. I thought he wanted to break up with me. When I told him that, he got angry. He said he loved me, but he had a lot on his mind. I pushed and pushed until he blew up and said all those things about someone threatening to hurt his best friend if he didn’t do whatever it was they wanted.”

“Did Luke say how they would hurt Mark if he didn’t do what they wanted?”

“No. Just that he couldn’t let it happen, even if it meant doing what they wanted.” Kylie huffed. “Whatever it was must’ve been bad for Luke to be so upset about it.”

“Luke said he couldn’t let you do something. That he grabbed your arm to stop you, and that’s when you fell,” Sachie said.

“I told him to go to the police and turn them in. He said he couldn’t. It would make things worse. He didn’t say how. So, I told him I was going to go to the Boys’ Club and find whoever it was trying to get Luke to do something he didn’t want to do and tell them to back off.” She gave a shaky laugh. “I didn’t know how I would do that, considering Luke didn’t tell me anything useful. I just couldn’t stand by and watch the guy I loved drifting further and further away. He grabbed my arm. I yanked it free. The next thing I remember was waking up in the hospital with a headache, only to learn my boyfriend had committed suicide.”

“Oh, Kylie. I’m so sorry.”

“You were there,” Kylie said. “What happened?”

“He told me basically what you just said, and he blamed himself for hurting you. He didn’t want to be like his father and was afraid that he was.”

“He was nothing like his father,” Kylie said. “Nothing. He was kind and caring, and I loved him for who he was.

“He really loved you, too,” Sachie said. “He thought the only way to protect the ones he loved was to do what he did.”

“He was wrong,” Kylie cried. “I died when he died.”

Sachie didn’t respond to the girl’s comment. Nothing would make her feel better at that moment.

Teller knew how hard it was to lose someone you loved, but he also knew that the living kept living. Kylie was young. The heartache would fade over time.

“Kylie, if you ever need to talk to someone, you have my phone number now. Please, call me.”

“Thank you,” Kylie said. “I feel like you might be the only one who really understands.”

“I feel the same about you,” Sachie said.

“I have to go before my mother comes looking for me,” Kylie said. “She hovers over me like I might break at any moment and even has me homeschooling. I haven’t left the house in two weeks. I think she’s got me on suicide watch.”

Teller’s heart squeezed hard in his chest. If Kylie were his daughter, he’d have done the same.

“Ms. Moore, Luke was a good guy. He had a big heart and only wanted to be loved. Promise you’ll let me know if you find out who was tearing him apart,” Kylie said. “I’d really like to see them rot in hell.”

When Sachie ended the call, she stared at their joined hands for a long moment, her face pale, her mouth set in a grim line. When she looked up, Teller saw fierce determination burning in her eyes. “They’re having an open house at the Boys’ Club. I think we need to check it out.”

Teller briefly squeezed her hand again and then drove out of the parking lot.

Paying a visit to the Boys’ Club might not get them any closer to the person stalking her, but Teller wouldn’t hold Sachie back from learning the truth about the young man who’d taken his own life in front of her.