Faithless (Mistress & Master of Restraint) (87 page)

“You’re… I don’t know who you are, but I’ve seen you a lot… everywhere,” Cort suspiciously eyes Wil. “How did you know to find us?”

“That is a conversation for another time. I will explain it to the both of you, or Ezra may. But right now, I need
to know if you’re injured,” Wil rapidly replies. “Where do you hurt?”

“Does my mind count, doc?” Cort snarkily replies. I roll my eyes at the rat-bastard. “Aaron’s hurt, but… um… I didn’t want to hurt him,” Cortez sobs. “Um… but… um… make sure he gets
a girl doctor, okay? No guys. Aaron can’t handle that.”

“What?” I whimper. I’m about to ask who did that to the boy, but Cort breaks down. A
howl-like sound erupts from his chest. If anything would draw Ezra to us, it would be Cort keening.

Ezra sprints out of the woods in our direction, running headlong to Cortez. I stare at him in shock. He looks fine on the outside, but I can always tell who is in control of his mind by his mannerism and his facial expression. As I watch, he switches back and forth, over and over. Every time it causes him to misstep, nearly trip. Ezra, the youngster
, is who seems to dominate and propel Ezra’s body towards Cort. Cortez’s wailing gives Ezra the strength to overpower Master Ez. Not good, because Ezra is a scary bastard who only cares about one thing and one thing only- Cort.

“You gotta shut up, now,” I say to Cort. Wil looks at me like I’m being a monster as he tries to comfort a cowering Aaron. “Your other half needs you to be quiet,”
I warn, as I watch Ezra stumble-run towards us. “Plus, Ray will hear your screaming.” Cort doesn’t stop- if anything he screams louder and louder and louder- the closer Ezra gets to us, Cort shrieks like a siren.

The crack of my hand across that screaming mouth shuts Cortez up. Stunned, he blinks watery gray eyes at me. A fist lashes out. My eyes widen, staring at the knuckles of an elegant hand that has never punched another human
being. The fist suspends in mid-air as I watch two halves of the whole war in their shared mind. Ezra wants to punch me, but Master Ez won’t let him. I move out of the way before the decision is made.

“Ezra,” I direct to the evil shit. “Cort’s howling was drawing Raymond to us. Aren’t you sick of Ray?”

“My apologies,” Ezra says, but I don’t want Ezra to stick around. He will hurt more than help.

“Can you guys please meld together and give us Ez back, please,” I beg. “Cort is fine- aren’t you, Cortez?” I turn and face the kid that I’d rather strangle. I make sure no one but Cort can see my face. I let the mask slip from my expression, showing him how much he pisses me the fuck off.

I lean into Cort, pressing my lips to his ear. “I don’t know what you’ve been through, and I’m so terribly sorry that you had to live through it. But the three of you are alive. Now stop being a selfish prick and tell Ezra you are fine, or else we may never get Ez back. Do it,” I hiss.

“I’m fine, Ezra,” Cort robotically says while my lips are still pressed to his ear. “We need to get out of here, so we need to be able to think, ya know?” he nervously says, giving a reassuring smile- just a curl at the corner of his lips.

“There’s a girl,” Ez, the real Ez says. “Ray… he stopped what he was doing to the girl to chase me. But I… but I… I raped a girl.” Ez breathes out a sound that will haunt me for all of my days. “And then he took his turn.” He falls to the ground next to Cortez and silently weeps.

“I’ll get the girl, you get that bastard,” I snarl, upper
lip curling off my teeth. I snatch my med-kit and start in the direction Ezra came from.

“I’ll
call the FBI again. Last call they had several ambulances on standby,” Wil shouts to me.

I slip through the woods, going from tree to tree, trying to avoid Ray. I could take the bastard down, but the girl needs me more.
I stride diagonal to the trail, remembering the angle Ez was charging at us from. I get closer and closer to the water, instinctively knowing that’s where I’ll find her.

The baying of search and rescue dogs tells me they either brought down Ray or found the boys. I have to get to the girl before anyone else does- as sick as it makes me feel, I have some damage control
to do. Ez said he raped a girl. EZ. He did the act when he was whole. In his mind, he was still a virgin. Ez doesn’t know we’ve been together- he doesn’t know about the baby- none of it. Ez is the most fragile, that’s why he fractured into two. I can’t let that happen again. He needs to heal, not crack further. 

~Chapter Seventy-Six~

A flattened spot fifty feet from the water’s edge draws my eye- it marks the spot of violence. The grass is flattened. Scuff marks from where the heels of her sneakers dug. Long grooves are imbedded into the dirt, as if fingers dug in while being dragged. The knee impressions turn my stomach- Ez or Ray’s, it doesn’t matter. Their weight was distributed in that spot while they rutted on the poor, defenseless girl.

I don’t walk over t
o the spot. There is a girl out here somewhere- a girl who has been hurt in multiple ways- frightened and alone. I have no idea if she will lash out at me or run away when I find her.

“Miss,” I call. “The boys who were with you, sent me.” I listen for whimpers, labored breath, anything. “The FBI is here. I’m a paramedic. My name
is Cynthia Brooks. I won’t harm you. I’m here to help.”

I snag my lanyard from the strap of my med-kit and draw it over my neck, making sure my ID is in plain view. When I’m on the job, we have uniforms- slacks with either a polo shirt or a button-down
short-sleeved shirt that has the Maltese Cross with our station number and name over the left breast. I need something to put the girl at ease after her ordeal.

“Do you hear those hounds,” I calmly say. “Do you hear the baying? When they find their quarry they make that sound. They make a happy, rapid bark when they rescue someone. I don’t know how they know the difference between the bad guys and the good guys. Some say we omit a pheromone that the dogs can scent- fear versus harm. I think they just know evil when they see it.”

Movement catches my eye- the graying white of the sole of a sneaker peeks out at me from the brush. The girl had dragged herself towards the water’s edge and hid in the shelter of scrub brush.

I slowly approach her, talking mundane nothingness that I suck at. I have a shitty bedside manner, but most people can feel my inner-calm. I sigh as I lower myse
lf to my heels. My baby smushes my bladder as I settle.

“I’m Cynthia,” I say again. “What’s your name, hun?”

The girl is older than me- eighteen, maybe twenty. It’s hard to judge. I look younger than I am, maybe this girl looks older. Her pale skin carries a network of scratches, cuts, and gashes from limbs and branches. Most are dried over and no longer bleeding, that is a good indicator of the time it’s been since she was running through the woods being chased down by a madman. Her red hair is in a ponytail. Chunks have been torn out of the band.

“I’m twenty,” I give her Cynthia’s age. “How old are you?” I talk to her as I set my bag down on the ground and open it. I slowly pull my notebook out, and then my stethoscope and BP cuff.

Eyelids crack open, showing me fierce green eyes. “Good girl,” I murmur. “You don’t let them win. You fight it. This wasn’t your fault. It was only twenty minutes of your life, don’t let it ruin the rest of the years you have left, you hear me? If you wallow in it, they win. They will take those minutes and steal years of your life. Fight,” I firmly say.

“You have a choice to make,” I begin. “I can help you, get you
put to rights and checked out, or you can be exposed when Fire and Rescue comes. This is a rural area, and there are no guarantees that you’ll get a female EMT. You’ll probably get some man who kinda studied the medical stuff, because his chief forced him to, because if he didn’t, he wasn’t allowed to play with matches. You understanding me, here?” My accent spills from my lips, the accent I’ve pushed down for two years since Daddy’s death. The girl seems to respond to it, so I don’t rein it in.

“Yes,” she says through cracked lips.

“Right. See, even in my department, those men train ‘cuz they were made to. ‘Round here, I suspect it’s worse. No faulting our volunteers, but the training isn’t the same. Now, I’m a certified paramedic. In rural areas you have what… two or three per county that meet your ambulances en route,” I say with a shrug. “So, here I am, a paramedic who happens to be a girl. Your choice: farmers who like pissing on a fire or a trained professional woman?”

“Kat… Katya Waters,” she readily supplies. “I’m twenty.”

“Good girl,” I murmur as I write her name down. “Let’s take care of down here first. I know the FBI will be sniffing around here soon and I want you covered. Every girl deserves the respect and dignity of being clothed when interrogated.”

Kat tried, she really tried to make herself decent. Her shirt is torn down the middle and her shorts are halfway up her thighs. It’s like she struggled them into place and couldn’t get them to rise any higher. I don’t like the looks of the pink tingeing her bruised thighs. It looks all too familiar- blood from a broken Hyman mixed with semen.

I pull out some gauze pads. “Kat, was this your first time?” I don’t shy away from the questions. If a patient hears hesitancy, they will f
reeze up. “I see that it is. I’m sorry. Being a virgin is a state of mind. My sister’s hymen broke because of tennis- sports will do that. Our friend, she broke her own. Girls who use tampons don’t have that barrier anymore, either. For a lot of girls it just deteriorates over time. But you know what?”

“What?”
I smile because I hear a hopeful tone in her voice.

“They were still virgins. My sister lost it to a boy on our sofa. Our friend lost it to the father of her children. State of mind, not a physical state. Someday, you’ll give it to someone that matters. Virginity can’t be taken from you, it must be given- always remember that!”

I press a few gauze pads to the spot of her violation and help her pull her shorts up. I tie her t-shirt together in the front, covering her exposed breasts. “I’m going to ask you something uncomfortable, but you have to be honest with me, okay?”

Kat shakes her head as I wrap her right arm with the BP cuff and tighten it with the Velcro strip. “Can you tell me who violated you? How many? And who left a deposit behind?”

I ignore Kat, knowing how difficult this must be for her. I put the stethoscope buds in my ears, pressing the flat oval to the crook of her elbow. I pump the BP ball until it moves the gauge, and then I slowly release the valve. I listen closely as the gauge slowly drops, the first beat is her Systolic rate, and I wait until the beats fade to ascertain her Diastolic rate. I patiently write her information onto my notepad, waiting for her to feel comfortable enough to answer.

When the stethoscope finds its way to her chest, she finally answers. “I don’t want the boy to get into trouble.”

“Which boy, Katya? And why don’t you want him in trouble? Didn’t he hurt you?” I show no emotion or judgment- both things clam a patient up.

“He… he didn’t want to do it… His dad forced him to. That man was going to kill me. He was going to make them all hurt me,” her panic breaks her words, her heartbeat and respiration rises with the fear.

“Shh… I understand. I found all three boys before I found you. The tall one, with the white-blond hair and gray eyes, is he the one you’re talking about?”

“Yes, don’t tell,” she begs me. I want to tell her I was going to manipulate her into keeping her mouth shut, but I guess Ez already beat me to it.

“Whatever you say to me is strictly confidential,” a lie. I didn’t take the Hippocratic Oath or anything, but it is in bad taste to gossip about your patient- not to mention, highly unethical.

“He was the one that… that finished inside me,” she whimpers. “Then his dad… was… inside me.” I close my eyes as she speaks, praying. “He got very angry and just left me here. He was screaming at his son and his friends. He ran after them.
They are okay, the boys?”

“Yes, the boys are physically fine. I left my partner with them,” I reassure her.

“Don’t tell. I… don’t tell.” Her fingers wrap around my wrist, begging me to keep silent. She holds my wrist as I write out her story- the story I’m going to force feed her.

“
I won’t, but what are you going to say?” I coax.

“I… I don’t know,” she cries.

“It was the boy who ejaculated inside you, not the older man? But you don’t want to get the boy into trouble, do you?” Her hair bobs as she shakes her head- I feel like such a snake. It takes everything in me not to throw up. This is by far the worst thing I’ve ever done- and I’ve murdered people. This is what Mitchell meant- he said I couldn’t handle the day to day shit. It’s stuff like this that Wil has to clean up after Raymond all the time- this is what Wil refuses to talk about.

“My suggestion is to tell the FBI and the other medical professionals that only the older man touched you,
and that he was the one who ejaculated inside you. The boys will be seen as the victims, too- which they are. If the truth got out, who would believe the boy when he said that his father forced him? I doubt a jury would.”