Black Horse (Breaking Black)

B
lack Horse

Addison Kline

All rights reserved.

Black Horse
is
a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or places is strictly and entirely coincidental.

This is a self-published work. All rights belong to the author
Addison Kline.

Please note that no parts of this book may be copied, used, or redistributed in any manner without written consent from the author.

Cover images obtained legally from Fotolia
:
Copyrights belong to CURAphotography, Coka, Netfalls and Kseniya Abramova.

Fonts legally obtained from Font Squirrel and 1001 Free Fonts and have open licenses for creative and commercial use. Fonts used include Lover’s Quarrel and CAC Script. Times New Roman used for
Smashwords only.

“Nothing is permament in this wicked world… not even our troubles.”

-Charlie Chaplin

To my readers:

Thank you for making my dream a reality. Your loyalty means so much to me.

Love,

Addison

Prologue

There is no sensation, no experience so delicious and tempting to the senses as the taste of forbidden love. The longing… The desire… The unquenched thirst for his touch. He was the man I was never supposed to love. I was supposed to hate him. I suppose part of me did and that is what made the desire so much more intense. He set a fire under my skin that burned white hot with every smoldering glance. He sets my soul ablaze, the slow burn of passion aching in every inch of my body.

Black Horse. The name haunts my dreams… But regardless of family vendettas, old hurts and contemptuous blood shed, the heart wants what it wants… and mine has a mind of its own. The realm of my heart only knows one king: Colt McClain.

His family is known by his father’s nickname: Black Horse. Like one of the four horses flying out of the gates of hell, Tom “Black Horse” McClain ripped my world apart twenty years ago. I was only five when I found my mother and father dead in their beds, with Tom McClain standing over them with a blood stained butcher knife. He would have come for me, too, had my brother not saved me.  Seth, my older brother, swooped me up before I had the chance to scream and covered my mouth with his trembling hand. My other brothers Randy and Tim had the great fortune of sleeping at a friend’s house that night. Seth and I weren’t so lucky.

Tom McClain sought out the services of my father in a time of great need. My father, Nathan Ford, was a highly reputable criminal defense attorney, who took on Tom’s case when he was accused of murdering his wife after she was caught in bed with another man. Tom didn’t have the money to pay for my father’s services, so he took on the case pro bono because he believed it was the right thing to do. I remember my dad meeting with Tom in his study while my mother looked after Colton, my brothers and I in the kitchen. We had become very close. My brothers once considered Colt their best friend. Not anymore.

My father got Tom off on a technicality. The prosecution had no reliable witnesses and they weren’t about to rely on the testimony of a five year old boy; Colton himself. He had witnessed the whole ordeal. How does Tom repay my father for his kindness and generosity? He murdered him in his sleep. He killed Daddy first. Momma screamed when she saw a man standing over her bed, and that is what woke me. In just my nightgown and socks, I tip-toed down the hall past Timmy, Randy and Seth’s bedrooms and as I entered the doorway to Momma and Daddy’s room, Tom McClain plunged a knife through my mother’s chest. My blood ran cold. I tried to scream but no sound would come out. The next thing I knew, Seth had his hand over my mouth and we hid in the hall closet. Tears streamed down my face as my arms and legs shook. I could hear Tom’s boot echo against the hard wood floor of the hall.

“Sssh… Don’t say a word…” I remember Seth urging.

The air in the closet was stifling; warm and dead like a coffin. I could hear my brother’s heavy breathing. Our dog Micah’s frantic barking from the back yard. She knew something was horribly wrong. His boot falls were getting closer… louder… I took a deep breath and didn’t dare exhale in fear that he would hear me. Somehow, I was able to stifle my tears, but something happened that was out of my control. My throat caught from my sobbing. Tom heard it. The foot steps intensified, beating a path to the closet door. Seth, still firmly holding me, swung around so that I was facing the inside of the closet. I focused on the faded floral pattern of the shelf lining that was barely visible in the dim lighting of the closet. I tried to focus on anything but the sound of Tom McClain’s approaching footsteps. Then a loud clicking sound made it impossible. The echo of a shot gun barrel banging into place. He didn’t even bother to open the door.

Bang! Bang!
Then silence.

Out of instinct I jumped into the shelf before me and cowered beneath the extra blankets Momma kept neatly stored on the shelf. I was stunned that I was still alive, until reality set in. Seth had slumped down against the door of the closet, unrecognizable and motionless. The shotgun blast had obliterated his once handsome face.

I am supposed to hate Colt McClain, but I can’t. When the police showed up the next day, they found Colton locked in his father’s pick-up a block away, hungry, thirsty and distraught.  He was taken away by the State and put in foster care because none of his relatives wanted to have anything to do with the Black Horse name. They were scared. Black Horse was caught trying to jump the border with my father’s wallet in his pocket and $10,000 in cash in a duffel bag. He traveled alone, having abandoned Colton in his truck back in Oakeley. I guess his boy knew too much. When officials apprehended him, they ran my Daddy’s license and discovered that Black Horse wasn’t who he said he was. Tom pleaded insanity, but after a thorough psychiatric evaluation, it was concluded that Tom McClain knew exactly what he was doing. He was sentenced to prison for twenty years, having received a lenient judge; a rarity in the State of Texas.

My surviving brothers, Randy and Tim, could never know about Colton and I. They’ve had it out for him for years. Bloodlines run thick around here. The sins of the fathers will forever haunt the sons, and women are to stand back and stay out of the way. Well, I have something to say about that…
Fuck that
, Colton McClain didn’t murder my family. His father did… and he suffered just as much as we did. Now twenty years after the crime that screwed both of our lives up royally, Black Horse is getting out of jail. Just four days until his release. Colton wants to hide me. He said we can run… Start over somewhere else. My brothers are armed to the teeth and a war is about to break out. I have no intentions of sitting down or running away like a little girl. We cannot hide from this anymore.

Our past does not own us, and we owe it to our hearts to show the world that love can arise from the darkest of places. We only have to survive to tell the tale.

~Averi Ford

Chapter One

The Officer’s Appeal

Ladies and Gentlemen of the State of Texas Parole Board:

I hope this letter finds you well. I am writing to you this day with a plea. Not for a man’s innocence or freedom, quite the opposite; for his damnation.

Thomas “Black Horse” McClain is a danger to society. I know he is scheduled for a parole hearing this month and since my previous twelve letters were ignored, I felt obligated to send a thirteenth. I appeal to you, not only as a concerned citizen and relative of three of Black Horse’s victims, but also as the first responding officer at the scene of the triple homicide at 2419 Partridge Terrace, in Oakeley, Texas on August 17, 1993.

My name is Captain Shawn Hall, badge number 2469 of Oakeley, Texas. I am the Captain of the Oakeley Police force. Black Horse murdered my sister Corinne
, her husband Nathan and my nephew Seth. My niece, Averi, who witnessed the crimes, was deeply traumatized by what she witnessed. Hell, I was traumatized by what I saw and I was a detective in Homicide for five years by then. I’ve been on the force for thirty-two years now. To this date, I have never encountered a crime scene so gruesome since that horrible night.

Black Horse is an animal with no regard for human life. The Partridge Terrace murders were not his only crime. When his wife was pregnant with his son,
he locked her in a shed and set it on fire when she tried to escape his physical abuse. She survived only to be later gunned down along with my former partner who was trying to help her gain freedom from her abusive husband. Black Horse left his own son, who was only five years old at the time, locked in his truck hungry, screaming and scared while he ran for the border. Tom McClain is a sociopath with no remorse, no sorrow for what he has done and there is no end to his depravity.

I beg of you, for the State of Texas, for the people of Oakeley, and for the surviving members of my family, please deny Thomas McClain’s request for parole.

Sincerely,

Captain Shawn P. Hall

Oakeley Police Department

Chapter Two

Dirty Little Secret

It was yet another busy Saturday night
at the Monkey Bar in Oakeley, Texas; the hottest little hole in the wall this side of San Anton’. Averi Ford was behind the bar, mixing drinks and playing psychiatrist to the patrons that came in to get their drink on and tell her their life stories. She didn’t mind listening, but she was convinced that she wasn’t paid enough.

I need a goddamn raise
, thought Averi as she rolled her eyes while Jimmy Hearns asked her to marry him for the seventh time this month.

“Aww, honey. You’ll find the one. It’s just not me,” Averi said in a sweet voice laced with a heavy Texas twang.

Averi didn’t mind working at the bar. It paid the bills and got her out of the house, away from the prying eyes of her overprotective brothers that lived right around the corner. She knew her parents wouldn’t have approved of her night job, but she had bills to pay and working 9-5 at Dr. Tasco’s office just wasn’t cutting it. Besides, they weren’t around anymore thanks to Black Horse.

The bar was jam packed; full of the usual Saturday night crowd. A group of older men crowded around the dart board, while two mechanics who had just gotten off work racked the balls at the pool table. Debbie Combes was gyrating her hips in a pair of too tight, acid washed jeans that should have been retired at least twenty years ago.

Shelly, a fellow bartender, nudged Averi in her side as she brought her attention to Debbie’s desperate attempts to reel in a man.

“Poor Debbie… Fishin’ for husband number five…”

“If I were her, I’d stay single for a while…” Averi replied.

Shelly shook her head as she dropped a maraschino cherry into a black cherry martini. Averi noticed that Jimmy Hearns’ attention had moved on from her, to Shelly’s cleavage.

“Hey Shelly,” Jimmy said giving her a sly smile.

“Hey yourself… You still owe me money from last Saturday night when you left without payin’ your tab.”

Jimmy gave her a sheepish look before slamming a twenty dollar bill on the counter. He walked off and sat at a booth with a couple of his buddies.

“Goddamn loser…” Shelly said as she took the twenty and deposited it in the register.

Averi hated the uniforms they had to wear at the Monkey Bar. Jean shorts, a tight back top that showed off her belly and cleavage and whatever kind of shoes they wanted. It’s not like she didn’t have a great body. She just didn’t like the attention she got… and Colton tended to be the possessive type.

Maybe if people knew we were going out, we wouldn’t have this problem
, thought Averi.