Page 105 of Reign of the Queen
With one last shake of my head at the mess that is Melinda, I walk away and head to the shed. I'm hoping it's not locked. I don't have anything to break the lock with, and it's broad daylight. I don't want to draw any attention to myself.
I try the door, and it's locked,fuck. I walk around the building and spy a partly opened window about six feet off the ground.Great, looks like I'm climbing. I jump up and catch the sill of the window, hoisting my large frame up and lifting the opening of the window higher. It's a tight fit, I'm not a small guy, and the window isn't large enough to accommodate my body easily. Pushing one leg and arm in at a time and squeezing my frame through, I drop to the ground inside.
Walking around the shed, I start looking for shovels and spy some in the far corner, I grab two and a couple of pairs of gloves that are hanging on one of the hooks. I'm heading toward the shed door when it suddenly opens wide, and Mateo is standing in the doorway.
"Bro, quit fooling around. Let's go. I already have the other shit in your car." He stands there, hands on his hips with impatience.
"How did you get the door unlocked?" I ask, bewildered and making my way out of the shed with my haul.
Mateo grins back at me. "I have a key fuckhead. I fucked the groundskeeper's daughter all last semester, remember?"
"No, I didn't fucking remember. I had to climb through the window to get in, dick." I move quickly across the field and courtyard and to the parking lot, thankfully not seeing Melinda still on the ground. "How did you get into my car? I locked it."
Mateo lets out a chuckle. "I had a key made to yours and Theo's rides, so if I ever needed to get the hell out of Casbury, I had options."
I roll my eyes at him and open up the trunk of my car and throw in the shovels and the gloves next to the duffle bags and the case of water Mateo had already placed in there. Getting in the driver's seat, I don't even wait for Mateo to have his seat belt on before I’m peeling out of the parking lot and speeding out of Casbury.
"Look out for a tail. Theo seems to think his dad might have eyes on us," I instruct as I take the road out of town.
"Theo's dad is a psychotic piece of shit. I can't wait for the four of us to get the hell out of this town and away from our parents," he grumbles and keeps watch on the side mirrors.
"Five of us, and not all our parents are like that," I grunt.
I see Mateo smirking at me out of the corner of my eye. "Yeah, you're right, five of us now, and your mom's really fucking hot. Jack's ok too, I guess." He laughs.
Shaking my head at him, it never gets old the comments about how hot my mom is. One of these days, I'm gonna put one of their heads through a wall for constantly having my mom’s name on their lips.
We reach the town limit, and I take the right that leads us to the oldest part of Casbury. It's a part I'm pretty familiar with, having grown up on this side of town before my mom married Jack. We pass crumbling houses with broken-down cars on the front lawns. Dried up lawns that look like straw, garbage strewn everywhere and overflowing on the streets, homeless people sleeping in tents and old metal trailer homes that look like they could blow away in the wind.
This is the part of Casbury people don't like to talk about or look at. One far from the wealth and affluence of Casbury society, working poor folk just struggling to keep crumbling roofs over their heads and barely getting by.
I once lived in a crumbling house just like those, with no real hopes for a better future. My mom was a struggling Black single mom trying to provide for us on a waitress's salary. Doing the best she could while still taking classes at the community college to better our lives. How far my life is now from the one I once had. The love was always there, my mom made sure. She’s always been an amazing mom. I just lucked out that now I have an amazing father too.
I turn my thoughts away from my past just as we approach the turn for the old, abandoned church. The roof collapsed years ago, and the four stone walls that make up the building look like they could crumble at any point. I look around to make sure no one is watching us as I make the turn to drive into the long lane that leads to the dilapidated and overgrown cemetery that was abandoned years ago—the Caddie powering through the long grass and weeds. I spy Theo's Range up ahead, parked behind some overgrown bushes.
He turns the car off and steps out at our approach and indicates for me to turn around and back in closer to his vehicle. I move the car around, wondering what the hell is going on here and keeping an eye out for anyone that might be watching us.
Once I step out of the car and approach Theo, I hear the thrashing and banging in the back of his vehicle. "What the fuck is going on here, Theo?"
Theo gives me his stone-cold look and opens the trunk of his car. What I see there has my blood-chilling. There's a young girl with her ankles and wrists bound, and she's gagged. That's not even the worst part of what I'm looking at. This poor girl has been beaten badly. "What the fuck, Theo!" I move toward the girl to release her.
He steps in front of me and pulls her to a sitting position, removing her gag from her mouth. "You are alright now. No one here is going to hurt you. I promise you're safe right now. I’m so sorry about before, there was no other way out of there."
She trembles as he removes the rope around her wrists and the cords from around her legs, rubbing the areas softly and gently to get her circulation moving again. "Thank you." Her soft, accented voice answers him.
He checks her head, and I hear him wince.
"What is going on here, Theo? How the hell did she get like that? Who did that to her?"
She whimpers and cowers at my loud voice, hiding herself behind Theo’s large frame. I instantly feel guilty for causing her any distress. Mateo moves up toward me, shock across his features. "Holy fuck, what happened to her?"
"My father happened to her. She's who's been receiving the bulk of his rage while we've been hiding at Mia's." I watch him part her hair and inspect a large gash on her head.
"Your dad did that to her?Jesus." Mateo moves away from us and back to my car. I watch him grab bottles of water and one of my T-shirts from the vehicle and bring them to the girl. He opens the water bottle and soaks the shirt, giving it to Theo to help clean the blood from her face. Then passes her the other bottle so she can drink.
"Why are we in the cemetery Theo?" I question, trepidation setting into my body.
"I need to bury her," he answers, distracted while cleaning the wound on her head.
