Limitless (Journey Series) (17 page)

 I guess I could understand Caleb’s
jealousy though. He had gone so long without knowing who his dad was, now he
just wanted to be with him solely.

“Well, you just have to be nice to
Shelia. Your dad seems to like her pretty well, so you should try too. Now,
finish up your breakfast, I think you are in need of a bath. I can smell your
stinky feet from here.” He giggled as he ate his last bite and I scooped him
off the barstool and headed into the bathroom.

“ ‘Kay bud, strip down. I’m going
to go grab a few towels from our bathroom since we’re all out in here. I have
some serious laundry to do today after we pick up Tootsie. Doesn’t that sound
like some fun times?” I started up the water, adding his favorite blue bubbles
to the water and walked out to the hallway to grab towels.

“Here we go buddy, I found this in
the closet.” I tossed a bath toy into the tub with a splash, gasping when he
turned around to reach for it.

“Caleb, what happened?” I inched
closer to the tub, squeezing my eyes shut before once again reopening them.
Nope, I hadn’t being seeing things. Almost his entire back was covered in black
and blue bruises.

I splayed my trembling hands across
his soft skin gently examining each one. Some of them faintly resembled handprints
and I immediately knew this was no accident. I blinked back the tears that I
felt coming on, sucking in a deep breath to hold them inside.

Now was not the time for a
breakdown. Now was the time to find out exactly what happened, so I could beat
the shit out of
that
person. Caleb’s face had fallen grim but his lips
remained pressed together tightly, they were almost white.

“Caleb,” I repeated in a soothing
voice, “what happened? Was this an accident or did someone do this to you? Can
you please tell Mommy so I can make sure it never happens again? Please, baby?”
His only reply was a sharp shake of his head and he dropped down to sit in the
water, quickly finding his bath toys and ignoring me. “ ‘Kay buddy, I forgot
something I’ll be right back.”

I walked into our bedroom, trying
to calm the shakiness of my hands as I picked up my phone. How I had not found
out about this sooner was beyond me. He had to have been in pain, but no one
would have ever known. He was one tough cookie and I had no idea how he was
powering through that pain with a brave face. Just thinking about it made me
sick to my stomach.

The phone was answered after only
two rings. “Roy, you need to get over here right away.”

Chase

The first day of conferences was
finally over. I had been expecting it to be boring, but it had actually been
pretty interesting. It actually made me feel professional and like a real grown
up, not just some kid playing teacher. I had an opinion here and people
respected it.

I would have much rather been home
with Leah and Caleb, though. Right about now, I would be pulling into the driveway
after work, most likely coming home to a nice dinner and the craziness of Caleb
that I loved. Leah had really come around in the past month and we were now
more of a family than we ever had been since we got married. I think the
counseling sessions were really helping us out.

My phone rang as soon as I walked
into my empty hotel room, which truthfully depressed the hell out of me. I
couldn’t wait until I was home tomorrow night. My mood quickly changed when a
picture of Leah lit up the screen.

“Hey baby, how’s it going? Missing
me already of course?” I heard a loud whoosh of air come through the phone and
her take a deep breath until she finally responded. Apparently, she was in a
mood today.  The doctor said she would still have those kind of days every once
in a while.

“Chase, I need to tell you
something but I don’t want you to freak out. Your hundreds of miles away and
there isn’t anything you can do about it, okay?”

My heart froze when she said it.
What the fuck was going on? “Leah, what in the hell is going on?”

“Chase, just calm down. Are you
going to freak or not? If you are, I just won’t tell you and you’ll have to
wait till you get home.”

I gripped the phone tightly in my
hands and blew out a breath between my teeth. “Fine, Leah. Just get out with
it.”

“Okay, well,” she dragged out,
setting my nerves right on edge with what was to come next. “I was giving Caleb
a bath, this was the first time I had seen him without any clothes on, he put
on his own pajamas last night,” she rambled on.

I had no clue where this was going,
but I wished she would just get on with it. “And this afternoon I got him in
the bath and noticed the bruises all over his back, I mean they’re bad, Chase.
I can actually see imprints of hands.” I sucked in a breath, immediately
wanting to leave and go home, just like Leah warned me against.

But sometimes there were certain
situations where family was the only thing that mattered. I held my breath, not
sure if I wanted to hear anymore, but I knew I had to so I would know who to
the beat the living shit out of. “So I immediately called Roy and told him to
get over here.”

“Leah, why would you do that without me there? Weren’t you obviously
considering him as a possibility of doing this? He could try to do something to
you and I’m not there to protect you guys.”

“Well, at the time I didn’t really
think about that, Chase. I just wanted to get to the bottom of it. Caleb wasn’t
talking and I needed answers. So, he came over and I confronted him. He acted
like he had no clue and I think I believed him.

“I mean, you know I don’t trust
people very easily, but Roy is one of those people that I do trust, if I didn’t
I would never let Caleb go over there without me. So when I accused Roy of
doing this, he denied it. When I told him that I wouldn’t be allowing Caleb
over to his place anymore until I got some answers, Caleb finally broke his
silence. I mean, he hadn’t made a peep since the bath tub.” She took a deep
breath and I could hear her quietly crying through the phone.

“Leah, this isn’t your fault. I
know that’s what you’re doing right now. You had no idea that this would
happen. Now, please tell me what Caleb said. I need to know.”

“He said it was Shelia,” she
huffed, spitting her name out. I instantly cringed. I knew Caleb didn’t like
his dad’s girlfriend at all and it made me wonder if this was the first time. I
just figured he liked having all of his dad’s attention and that was why he
disliked her so much. I had no clue why he wouldn’t have spoken up and told us
what was going on.  

“Apparently, Roy had to go into the
office for something real quick on Sunday and Shelia agreed to watch Caleb back
at his house. It sounded like she got angry at Caleb for not wanting to clean
up and that’s when it happened.”

“Well, is Roy still there? What are
we going to do this about? She can’t just get away with putting her hands on
him like that, I don’t care how fucking mad she was about him picking up his
damn toys. I’m coming home, Leah. They’ll understand it’s an emergency.” I
instantly started throwing clothes into my bag and raced into the bathroom,
swiping my hand across the vanity to gather everything quickly.

“Chase, there’s nothing you can do
here. Just finish up tomorrow and then come home. Roy immediately called Shelia
but of course, she denied it all. We both took pictures of the evidence and Roy
is on his way to the police station right now to file a report. Obviously, he’s
done with her. He’s going to believe Caleb over her any day.”

“Fine, Leah.” I dropped down to sit
on the edge of the bed and my shoulders relaxed just a little bit. It at least
sounded like Roy was handling things. “It sounds like you have everything
handled pretty well then. I just can’t stand the thought of someone putting
their hands on his little body like that. How is he acting?”

“He’s fine, really. After Roy came
and he explained everything to us, he completely went back to normal. He’s
playing with his cars right now in the living room and watching some cartoons.
He misses you though, we both do.”

“I miss you guys too. I love you,
tell Caleb I love him too and I’ll see you tomorrow.” I collapsed on the bed
after I hung up the phone, trying to push the images out of my mind of what had
happened to Caleb.

He didn’t deserve any of that, no
kid did. I could tell that it would be a long time before I got any kind of
sleep and I probably wouldn’t feel relaxed again until I was home and saw that
Caleb was fine with my own two eyes.

Leah

After having to deal with so much
drama yesterday, Caleb and I deserved to have a fun day. So I called Mary and
asked her if she would keep Tootsie for a little bit longer. She was shaken up
as much as me by the incident that had happened.  

We hit up the place where Chase had
taken me on one of our first non-date as ‘just friends’. We got there as soon
as the doors opened, so we pretty much had the place to ourselves and raced the
go- carts around the track so much, by the time we finally got off them I could
barely walk straight.

Caleb pulled me to the arcade next
and we made our last stop at mini golf, doing one round. We grabbed a quick
lunch when we were all finished and then headed home. I had a feeling we were both
in need of a good nap and then I promised Caleb we would pick Tootsie up
afterwards.

 I knew something was odd as soon
as I stepped up to the front porch of our house and noticed the door was
slightly ajar. Now, I had always been paranoid since I was a little girl. I
checked the doors almost every time I went near them to make sure they were locked
growing up with my mom because of all of the riff raff she brought home. So, I
knew there was no way I had left it unlocked.

I glanced over at the driveway,
double- checking to make sure I had somehow not noticed Chase’s truck there, I
guess he could have parked in the garage wanting to surprise us. I slowly
pushed the door open and stepped inside gripping Caleb’s hand behind me
tightly.

I gasped when I saw the inside of
my house. I wasn’t the greatest housekeeper, so it wasn’t like my house was
ever really tidy, but I definitely didn’t leave it like this.

Throw pillows were thrown all over
the living room floor, along with all of the contents of the coffee table.
Numerous picture frames lay cracked and broken on the floor. I stepped over
glass and picked up Caleb before doing so, not wanting to risk the chance of it
going through his shoes. “Mommy, what happened?”

“I don’t know, buddy,” I answered
quietly. I glanced into the other rooms of the house but didn’t notice anything
else out of the ordinary until I opened Caleb’s room. It had been completely
torn apart. Toys lay broken in a heaping pile. Framed pictures that I had lined
up were broken and pushed face down. The sick bastard had even cut off the heads
to all of his favorite stuffed animals.

I pushed Caleb back into the
hallway before he could see the damage and crouched down, lightly gripping his
shoulders. “Buddy, I need you to go into Mommy’s room. Lock the door behind you
and then go into the bathroom and lock that door. Only open the door if you
hear Mommy’s voice, okay?” He gave me a small nod and backed up to our room, I
could tell he was trying to be brave for me even though his bottom lip was
trembling.

I had to make sure he was safe though.
Whoever had done this might still be in the house and I had a pretty good idea
who it was. I made my way quickly back out to the living room to get my phone
out of my purse when I heard a crunch of glass behind me.

“Caleb, I told you-” A sharp pain
radiated through my head as I felt something slam into the back of it with such
a force it immediately dropped me to my knees. I thought when people said that
they saw stars they were just being dramatic, but now I knew exactly what they
were talking about.

I shook my head slowly back and
forth, trying to clear the haze, but just as that was happening, I heard
another loud crack and that time it managed to turn everything black.

I woke up feeling groggy and had no
clue how long I had been out. I felt like I had the worst hangover in the world
and then my head had been trampled over repeatedly by a herd of elephants. Over
and over again.

I moved to put a hand to my
throbbing head but realized that I couldn’t move my hands. They were trapped
behind my back and when I was finally able to peel my eyes open, I realized
that I was tied to one of the dining room chairs. I tried moving every inch of
my body to loosen the hold of the ropes that were holding me down but they
didn’t give at all.

“Oh, don’t even bother, honey.
Trust me when I say you won’t be going anywhere for a long, long time. You and
I need to have a nice little chat. Woman to woman.” I cringed when I heard that
voice. I had only met Shelia a few times, but her voice was familiar enough.
And when I thought about what she had done to Caleb, it instantly made my chest
burn with a red hot anger.

I slowly lifted my head to look her
straight in the eyes. No one would have ever expected something like this out
of the woman standing in front of me.

She was more petite in size than I
was, barely taller than a twelve year old child. Her blonde hair was always in
perfect order, not a strand out of place and her clothes reeked of money, the
silk business suit she had on probably cost more than my whole wardrobe.

 This time when I looked at her I
saw all of that, but I also saw something in her narrowed eyes that I had never
seen before. They looked almost animalistic, like a rabid pit-bull, out on the
loose, looking for its next victim. And unfortunately, I was the one she had
picked.

“I have nothing to say to you,
Shelia,” I hissed. “You are a monster. Obviously, something’s wrong with you.
Who abuses small, defenseless children? This is no one’s fault but your own.
Roy just finally saw you for the bitch that you really are.”