When he opened the door, I heard him say, “What the hell?” before gunshots tore through the quiet house. I stopped breathing, my confusion and horror paralyzing me. What was happening? I couldn’t seem to wrap my mind around what was going on until my mom squeezed my hand tight and jerked me to get my attention. She was wearing an expression that I’d never seen before, and in my haze it took me a minute to interpret it. Fear—all consuming, unrelenting, hope stealing fear.
Fear, but not panic.
Then time sped back up.
“Escóndete en el closet detrás de las decoraciones de Navidad. Te quiero. No salgas,” she whispered, her voice so low that I had to watch her lips.
Get in the storage space. Behind the Christmas decorations. I love you. Don’t come out.
I tightened my grip on her, shaking my head frantically as she wrapped her arms around me in a quick hug. I didn’t want to let go, and I tried so hard to drag her with me as we heard the men moving around on the bottom floor of the house, but the minute they sounded on the stairs she pushed me hard, causing me to stagger across the hallway.
“Go!” she mouthed to me before turning her back and facing the stairs.
I raced into my parents’ bedroom, scrambling to the wall. There were storage areas beneath the eaves that we kept Christmas decorations in, and I quickly slid one of the little doors open, put my phone between my teeth, and scrambled inside. My hands were sweating so much that I had a hard time getting the door closed behind me, and I bit down hard on my phone, sobbing silently as my fingers tried to find purchase on the smooth wood.
It only took me seconds before there was no light shining from my parents’
bedroom, and I crawled silently behind the boxes of Christmas ornaments as quickly as I could. Cody and I had used the storage areas as hideouts when we were little, playing hide and seek and pretending that we were hiding from bad guys. Little did I know how an innocent game would end up being the thing that saved me.
I was shaking hard, my teeth clenched to keep them from chattering, when I heard a man yelling at my mother in the hallway. Whatever he was saying was muffled, there were too many boxes between us for me to hear clearly, but the gunshot wasn’t. It was as clear as if he were standing right next to me.
I bit my arm as hard as I could to muffle the screams in my throat when I heard a loud thump in the hallway. I was hyperventilating, rocking in small movements back and forth, my mind spinning. My chest felt like it was cracking open, like any minute it would just spontaneously split apart, but still, I stayed silent.
I heard the men come through my parents’ bedroom, tearing apart the bed and lifting the mattress up off the frame before dropping it loudly. They were calling me by name, telling me to come out from wherever I was hiding, and somewhere, behind the mind numbing fear, I was mortified because I felt myself peeing my pants.
I don’t know how long I sat there after they left, shaking. It could have been minutes or hours, but I was afraid they were just waiting for me to make a move, so I did nothing. I just sat there in my own mess, with my head on my knees and my fingers twirling slowly in my hair—a habit I thought I’d grown out of when I stopped sucking my thumb in kindergarten.
When I finally felt safe enough to do something, I slowly reached my hands to the floor around me, searching for the phone I’d lost in the darkness. When I found it, I took a short breath of relief until it fell out of my shaking hand with a loud clatter, startling me and causing me to curl into a tighter ball of fear. I didn’t hear anyone, but I waited a few moments before reaching out with both hands and grabbing the phone again.
I knew I should call 911, and that was my intention, but when I accidently pushed send with my trembling fingers, I didn’t hang up when I saw the name ‘Grease’ come across the screen. He didn’t say anything right away, and it took me a couple of seconds to realize that the phone had stopped ringing.
“Grease?” I was whispering, terrified that my phone call had somehow alerted the men in the house and any second they’d slide open the door of my hiding place.
“Yeah?” he answered in his gruff voice, and I was instantly filled with a choking feeling of both relief and terror.
“Asa?” I asked again, desperate to know it was really him. “I’m scared.”
When he spoke again, worry lacing his voice, I felt like I could finally breathe. I quietly informed him that I was hiding, and when he told me he was coming to get me, I believed him. He’d saved me before, hadn’t he? So when he told me to stay where I was and keep quiet, that’s exactly what I did. I never called the police, and I didn’t leave my hiding spot. I did exactly what he told me, because I was afraid of what would happen if I didn’t.
I didn’t answer when I heard people walking around, yelling that they were police, and asking if anyone was still in the house. I didn’t call out when they searched through my parents’ room and called back and forth to each other. And I didn’t make a sound when they talked about my dead parents as if they were science projects. I couldn’t be sure they were safe. Without seeing their faces, I didn’t know if it was all a game they were playing to try and find me. So I stayed hidden, waiting for Asa, until finally, the house was silent once again.
I sat there, curled in a ball, and I thought of my mother and why she hadn’t hidden with me. We would’ve had time, and there was space enough for the two of us. I rocked and rocked, my sleep shorts growing clammy and chafing my skin as they dried.
Asa texted me throughout the day, asking me if I was okay and still hidden. I replied with one word, “Ok,” to every single one of his texts, no matter what he sent. I was busy replaying the night over and over in my head, trying to figure out what I’d missed, trying to see how I could’ve done things differently. I couldn’t seem to think of any other words to type—my mind consumed with what ifs—until I received a text asking me where I was. For some reason, the thought of telling anyone where I was hiding made me feel like I was crawling out of my skin, and he had to send the question seven times before I could make myself reply, “crawlspace.”
The last time I’d seen my mom, she was standing with her shoulders back, her robe tied tightly around her waist, showing off her hourglass figure. Her back was to me, so I hadn’t seen her face, but I knew which expression she’d worn with that body language. She was bluffing. The raised chin and rigid posture I’d seen whenever she felt uncomfortable was in full view as I’d left her.
She’d stood her ground for one reason. If they’d known who we were, or even if they hadn’t, they would’ve expected to find my mom somewhere in the house—but a teenage daughter could be absent without raising any red flags.
If my mom would have followed me into the crawlspace, they would’ve known there was somewhere to hide and would have searched until they found us.
So instead, she’d faced them like a lioness, fiercely, and with absolutely no reservation.
I wasn’t sure about the passing of time, and it didn’t matter—not really. Because the moment I figured out why my mother hadn’t hidden with me, I shut down and retreated into my own mind—effectively blocking the outside world and anything with the potential to hurt me further.
Chapter 9
Callie
I was yanked out of my quiet place by a loud hammering coming from my bedroom. I’d been so out of it that I hadn’t heard anyone come into the house, and my heart started racing like a scared rabbit’s when my phone lit up beside me with an incoming call from ‘Grease’. I didn’t answer it, like I hadn’t all day, too afraid to make any noise. The pounding grew louder, and I heard someone cursing, when all of a sudden I got a new text message. “We’re here,” was all it said, and I was hit with a surge of relief mixed with panic. I wasn’t sure what to do, and my thoughts were so jumbled that I just sat there, staring at the screen as the cursing and pounding became louder. Was he here as in my house, or here as in San Diego County? I couldn’t be sure if the noise in my room was him, or someone ran
sacking the house. I couldn’t be sure of anything.
While I sat staring at the screen, I heard the sounds move to the hallway, and I froze in terror as they came closer. Just then, another text came through, and I almost dropped the phone from my shaking hands as I checked it.
“Where are you?”
The voices came into my parents’ room and started knocking as I slowly pushed the reply button and typed a message back. “There’s some1 in the house”. I tried to listen closely to the voices on the other side of the wall, but my mind was racing so quickly I couldn’t interpret what they were saying. I started rocking again, my hand in my hair, but the movements were jerky and short as I tried to be as silent as possible.
The voices in the room grew louder after my text, and I started hyperventilating when I realized that one of the words they were using was my name.
Still, I said nothing. I just waited; staring at my phone like it was my last link to sanity.
The pounding came closer and closer as I tried to slow my breathing, and eventually it stopped right above the little sliding door of my hiding place. Someone called out, and I whimpered quietly in the back of my throat as the door of the crawlspace slowly slid open.
I watched in terror as the boxes closest to the door were moved out of the way, slowly dismantling the only thing that had kept me safe. I kept my eyes on the opening and the arms reaching inside as I used my heels to push myself tightly against the wall, curling into myself. I vaguely registered when Asa’s voice filtered into the space, but I couldn’t understand why I was hearing him.
Man, it smells like piss in here. You sure she said the crawlspace? It just looks like a bunch of Christmas shit.
She’s there. Keep going.
Fuck, man. If she’s in here then why the fuck isn’t she saying anything?
A dark haired man slid the last of the boxes out of the storage, and once he had a clear view I saw the whites of his eyes as they opened wide in surprise. I couldn’t really see his face, his back was to the light, but I could hear the glee in his voice as he called out behind him, “Yup! She’s here!” before crawling further inside. When he reached me and lifted his arm as if to pull me forward, I kicked out with one of my heels, smashing it into his chin like a karate master.
“What the fuck?” he yelled at me, causing me to retreat back into my corner as he scrambled back out the door. “Bitch just kicked me in the face!”
“What the fuck did you do?” a voice I recognized roared.
In the next second, broad shoulders wedged themselves through the door, and a familiar face was gazing at me in the sliver of light coming through the small gap between his chest and the doorway.
“Hey, Sugar. You okay in here?” he asked me gently as his eyes ran up and down my body as if checking for himself.
I wanted to answer him. I’d been waiting so long for him to come get me, but once the moment was there, I was still frozen in my little corner, silent and unable to move. It wasn’t safe out there. I knew that now. It wasn’t safe in my house, it wasn’t safe anywhere. If I moved, they could find me, whoever those men were. I was too afraid to do anything but stare at him.
“Callie, sweetheart, I can’t get in there. I’m too fuckin’ big.” He watched me closely as I silently twirled my hand round and round in my hair. “You’re gonna have to come to me, baby.”
I jerked my head once and began rocking again, the nervous habit forcing my body back and forth as he watched, unable to reach me.
“Calliope, I’m not gonna let anything hurt you, but we gotta get out of here. There’s still crime scene tape on the door—” he stopped when I flinched at his words.
He was leaning on one elbow, and the arm that had been resting on the floor reached up into his shirt pocket and pulled out a cell phone. I watched in confusion as he typed something out on it and then set it back in his pocket. I jumped when my own phone went off in my hand. I looked between the phone and him a couple times before reading the text. “You gotta come out of here. I promise I won’t let anything happen. Come to me.”
The text message brought everything back together and my eyes snapped up to his. It was as if the tornado in my mind had come to a complete stop and left one single thing undisturbed. One thing to focus on. One thing to count on. This was the man I’d been waiting for. This was the man that had saved me. Grease. Asa.
I slowly crawled toward him, my knuckles scratching on the unfinished floor because I refused to let go of my phone. But he didn’t move out of the way so I could climb out of the storage. When I reached him, he gently lifted his hand and slid it across my cheek and behind my head, pulling me to him so my face was resting against his neck. I scooted my knees under my body and knelt on the floor, letting him soothe me with whispered promises and a gentle hand running through my hair.
I’m not sure how long we sat there, but eventually a voice outside our cocoon told us we needed to go. Asa pulled back and started scooting his big body out the door, moving his hand from resting on the floor to grip my thigh, never severing the connection between us. When he was mostly out the door and on his feet, he slid his hand up my torso and down my arm, never once letting go, in order to grip my hand tightly.
“Okay, baby. Almost there—come on out,” he told me gently, watching my face closely.
I scooted to the doorway, wincing as the waning sunlight coming through the windows hit my eyes. I closed them tight, shuddering as I tried to make my way out. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t make myself get out of the space. Fear slammed into me with the power of a freight train, and I whimpered as once again I was unable to make my limbs move. My hand went limp in his, but before I could scoot back into my safe haven, Asa had made a growling noise in his throat and grabbed a hold of me under my arms, lifting me like a child.
I twisted once, trying to pull away, before he jerked me to his chest and put his mouth to my ear.
“You’re okay, sweetheart. You’re okay. Just hold on, I’m not gonna let anything happen to you,” he told me over and over again until it finally pierced the paralyzing fear in my head. I wrapped my body around him like a monkey, and he wrapped his arms under my thighs to support me, finally leaving us in a somewhat comfortable position.
I was holding on to him as he turned to leave, when another voice spoke up in the room, jolting me from the little comfort I was feeling.
“Man, she’s gonna fuck up your leathers. Girl stinks to high heaven,” the voice warned, instantly reminding me that I had peed my pants and causing me to let go of Asa as I tried to scramble off him. I started crying again, like a baby, and for one minute I wasn’t thinking about how very afraid I was.
“Shut the fuck up, Tommy,” Asa growled in a voice I hadn’t heard him use before, his chest expanding as one of his arms wrapped around my back to hold me in place. “She’s fuckin’ fine where she’s at.”
He walked out of the room as I quietly cried and buried my face in his neck, afraid to see the hallway where I’d left my mom. He walked me straight through my room and into the connecting bathroom without stopping, pausing only once to switch on the light and shut the door before he loosened his arms around me. He let go completely and set me on my feet, but I was too embarrassed to look at his face as he studied me, instead watching my brightly polished toes.
“Hey, pretty girl, look at me, yeah?” he mumbled gently, running his hand up the side of my face and into the hair by my ear, gripping it so he could tilt my face up. “You ain’t got nothing to be embarrassed about. Anybody’d stink after being stuck in a fucking storage closet for eleven hours. Coulda been worse, baby, what if you’d shit your pants?” he asked with a smile, trying to tease me.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, my voice raw from disuse.
“Fuck that, Callie.” His grip tightened in my hair. “Nothing for you to be sorry about. You coulda been covered in shit and vomit and I still woulda carried you outta there. I got you, Sugar, nothing’s gonna change that.”
&nbs
p; He waited until I nodded, acknowledging his words, and looked around my bathroom. “You need to take a shower and get dressed. Can’t get on my bike the way you are,” he informed me, embarrassing me again before clarifying, “shorts and a tank top ain’t gonna work. You want me to grab you some clothes?”
“Yes, please.”
“Okay, you get in and I’ll bring them to you,” he mumbled into my forehead, kissing me there before letting go and walking out.
I stood there for a second, watching him leave, as my body started to shake. Once he was out of the room and the door was closed, I walked to the shower and turned it on, my hands trembling so badly that I didn’t even worry about trying to change the temperature. I got undressed and climbed in, trying to blank my mind as I quickly washed off, but it wasn’t long before the memories assaulted me and I lost all feeling in my legs, sliding to the shower floor in a heap.
Chapter 10
Grease
She was taking a long-ass time in the shower.
I went through her shit, finding all sorts of sexy underwear that I hadn’t expected, and finally picked the least appealing ones for her to wear. She was a mess, and I didn’t want to be thinking about how badly I wanted to see her wearing a lacy pink pair of boyshorts with little half-moons of her ass hanging out the bottom—but I was twenty years old; most of the time I was thinking with my dick. I grabbed a bra, hoodie, and some jeans and set them on the bathroom counter, thinking I should probably say something, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to scare her any more than she already was by letting her know I was in the bathroom while she was showering.
Fuck, but I had no idea what I was going to do with her. I couldn’t be her bodyguard, I didn’t fucking live anywhere near her—but I couldn’t just leave her, either. It was my shit—Aces shit—that got her into this mess and I had to find a way to get her out of it. I found a messenger bag full of school shit, reminding me how young she was, and dumped it onto her bed. Ignoring the pencils and assorted mess, I started stuffing a couple changes of clothes into the bag. I had no idea what she’d need, but she wasn’t going to be able to come back, so I figured anything would help.