Living With No Regrets (24 page)

“She never said who, just that it was from a reliable source, and if you didn’t want her to come back, she wouldn’t force herself on you.”

“Did she mention the pastor at all?”

“No.  By the time Charlie and I became part of the family, she had already found another church and was getting counseling from the pastor there.”

Russ’ phone started ringing, so he answered it as he tried to keep an ear on the conversation that Zander, his dad, and Mark were still having.  Bill had pretty much withdrew into himself and was no longer saying anything.

“Russ dear,” Russ tensed up as soon as he heard Maybelle’s voice.  He knew, with the recent revelations, that something bad was about to happen.   Stuff like that was only supposed to happen in movies.  “I was going to bring Randy home, but Barbra stopped by and needs my help with something.  Is there any way that either you or Leigh could swing by?”

“Leigh’s not there?”

He could have hit himself in the head for that stupid question.  Obviously, if she were there, he wouldn’t be talking to Maybelle on the phone.

“She never made it,” her voice seemed more hesitant now.  “Leigh had told me that she was stopping at the cemetery on the way to put fresh flowers on her parents’ grave.  I just figured that she had decided to just go home.  I do know how hard that can be; whether it’s been a month, a year, or ten years…It never gets easier.”

Maybelle had lost her children and husband in different ways – accidents and health issues – and her grandson was all she had left, so he knew what she meant by that.  “I’m at her house, and she’s not here.  She would have called you if she wasn’t coming.”

By that point, he had the attention of the sheriffs, Mark, and Bill.  They had heard that Leigh wasn’t where she was supposed to be, and both Zander and William immediately got on their phones, calling in orders.  Mark was on his phone, Russ figured he was trying Leigh’s cell.

“Can you do me two favors, Maybelle?  Can Randy stay with Lucas tonight, and can you call around and ask if anyone has seen Leigh?”

Sensing the urgency, she readily agreed.  “I’ll call if I find out anything, and you please do the same.”

“I will, and thank you Maybelle.  I don’t have to tell you to please try and keep this from Randy for now?”

“Of course, dear.  You do what you gotta do.”

The next little while was spent with all of them trying to get any info or evidence as to where she’d been taken.  Zander had called a deputy to book Bill in and get him situated, and then tapes were pulled from anywhere they could think of.  City cameras, gas stations, and ATMs. 

Though they had already known who she was probably taken by, but traffic cameras confirmed that it was Pastor Daniel, and that Leigh was unconscious in the passenger seat.  They traced what route he took driving toward the north-western edge of town before losing the car completely.

There was a moment when Russ felt lost, hopeless, and even worse than that…useless.  How much would Leigh have to endure in this life?  He’d promised himself, after finding out the truth of what had happened, that from that point on, that he would shield her from as much suffering as he could, but he hadn’t been successful at all.

She had surgery on her brain, for heaven’s sake, he couldn’t shield her from that.  She’d been shunned because of him, and he was relieved that people listened to him when he addressed them all.  She lost her mother.  He’d been blessed enough not to have lost anyone close to him, so he couldn’t even sympathize, but he tried to be there in any capacity Leigh needed him to be.  And now…Russ was at a loss as to what to do.

“We’re going to get her back.”  He looked over his shoulder at Mark, who seemed to have answered his thoughts.  “Beyond that, we will do whatever we have to do to help her.”

That statement let Russ know that they were on the same wavelength; wondering what that man was doing to her.  Praying that their imagination was worse than her reality.

And then the sun broke through the clouds with one yelled statement.

“We have a location!”

*****

Leigh was trying to keep her head in a place where she didn’t have to face the pain of reality at that moment.  She had been so stupid.  Even though she and Russ knew that Pastor Daniel had played them against each other back then, she never imagined the evil that had taken him over, so when he’d pulled up beside her and asked to have a talk with her, she never thought he’d attack her with a hypodermic needle full of something that knocked her out.

When she woke, she was in immense pain from where Daniel had used a knife to cut into her abdomen.  Her mind had blocked any thought of why he’d do that. It wouldn’t allow her to consider the loss.  She was naked and tied to the rungs of the headboard.

Currently Daniel was practicing his rights as her ‘husband’.  Not being able to deal with it, her mind roamed to happy places and times that she’d experienced in her life.  Prom night with Russell.  The night he proposed.  Their first time together.  Randy’s birth…

The remembered scenes went on and on, the only thing making it difficult was the migraine that was steadily getting worse and worse.  Soon, the headache was all she could concentrate on.  She didn’t even notice when Daniel finished and rolled off of her to her right side.

H must have said something to her which she didn’t hear, because all of a sudden, pain exploded a hundred fold on the left side of her head when he slapped her from his position of sitting up beside her.

“Answer me when I speak to you!” he yelled.

“I’m sorry,” she said.  Her vision was blurred and speech slurred.  “My head hurts.  I didn’t hear you.”

“I said that I’m so happy that we can finally be together.  You’ve belonged to me since you were thirteen.  I just had to be patient, but you didn’t save yourself for me did you?”

“I didn’t know.” 

She realized that it was the wrong thing to say as soon as the words left her mouth.  Daniel climbed over her, straddling her legs and just kept hitting her; yelling about how her father had given her to him and arranged it all.  Before long, Leigh welcomed sweet oblivion of darkness as she passed out.

She dreamed of the time that it had come out that her father was grooming her to be a reverend’s wife.  The scene played out just as it always had, just as she remembered it, but this time the scene skipped forward to that night and a whispered conversation between her parents when they thought she’d already went to sleep.

“Whatever made you do something like that?” her mom asked.

“I had been expressing my fears for Leigh’s future, and that I wasn’t raising her right.  Don’t ask me why, but Pastor Rick said that there were many couples who would raise their children in a way that would prepare them for the church wife life.  He said that Daniel was going to be taking over as soon as he got his degree and finished the extra study.  Daniel is a single man, and if I were to teach Leigh the ways of the church, that by the time she was old enough, that Daniel would be established.  He said it would be a perfect match.”

“We don’t have the right to make that decision for her; we talked about this.  I know that your family followed the traditions, but you used to tell me that was why you were happy to have met me first and that your parents accepted me.  We swore that we wouldn’t do that to our child.”

Leigh opened her eyes again when she heard pots and pans clanging around in the kitchen.  Her first thought was of the baby that would now never be born.  Pastor Daniel had said that it was an abomination that should have never been conceived.  She let a few tears of mourning leak out before she controlled the impulse to cry.  If Daniel saw her crying, he would see it as a weakness and teach her a lesson that would strengthen her faith that everything happened for a reason.

It was funny in that ‘its not funny’ way.  He used that reasoning to explain away the murder of an innocent life, when using that reasoning should be saying that the baby was conceived for a reason.

Leigh prayed.  She prayed for the strength to make it through another rape; at least she was still alive.  And she prayed for the mental strength to be able to handle life afterward.  Finally she prayed for help to arrive and get her away from a man who’d twisted his faith to make it fit his messed up thinking.

Leigh was in and out of consciousness for a while.  It was well after dark, but that was all she knew because of the window in the room.  Daniel had never brought her any food or water.  She wasn’t really hungry anyway, but her mouth was so dry it was what some people call cotton mouth.

Daniel came into the room with a smile and went straight to kiss her.  When she didn’t kiss him back, or allow his tongue entry into her mouth, he took hold of her sore, bruised chin, squeezing the sides so hard she had to open her mouth or risk a broken jaw.

“You will learn,” he said as he stood back up.  “Your training can be easy or hard; that’s going to be up to you, but either way, you will submit to my will in the end.”

He leered at her body in a way that made her feel dirty and then started running his hands all over.  “Such a shame,” he said almost to himself when he reached her one breast.  “I’ll get that fixed for you after I can trust you more.”  His hand headed back down until it rubbed over top of the bandaging he put over the cut he’d made.  Just to be cruel, he mashed down, pressing harder and harder until she let out an involuntary scream, then he just smiled and reached into the bedside table drawer, coming out with the needle again.  After injecting her with whatever was in it, he started undressing again.  By the time he was naked and climbing into the bed, the drug had kicked in leaving her feeling high and out of it enough not to comprehend what he was doing to her.  It was like she was watching a movie of someone else’s life.

With the last bit of coherency, she prayed again for someone to come soon and save her.

As the last bit of light faded from her vision, and Daniel climbed on top of her, there was a crash and a bunch of yelling.

*****

Russ, along with Zander, Mark, and William were flying in a helicopter, that belonged to the county Sheriff’s office adjacent to Pine Grove, on their way to Asheville.  Zander had gotten a warrant pushed through, along with extradition papers, for Daniel Peters.  The judge, who’d already known about most of what had happened to Leigh in the past, didn’t hesitate to sign off on them as soon as they presented him with the pictures they’d gathered showing Leigh in the car with him.  The judge even called ahead and let the proper people in Asheville know, and to get them to head on over to Daniel’s house there and arrest him.

“Mr. Peters is in custody, sir,” the pilot informed Zander.   “They have Ms. Hampton and are transporting her to Mission Hospital.”

“Can you request a drop off on their heli-pad?”

“Already done, sir.”

“Did they tell you if she was alright? She’s okay, right?” Russ pleaded.

“I’m sorry, sir.  They just said she was injured; not how or how critical she was.”

The rest of the flight seemed to take forever.  Russ was so anxious that he felt like he could run and get there faster.  Mark put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed reminding him that he wasn’t alone.  Finally reaching the hospital, he was the first one to jump out and he took off running; Mark right on his heels.

“Leigh Hampton?” he huffed when he reached the front desk of the ER.  “She was brought in by ambulance and escorted by the police.”

The receptionist called back to the nurse’s desk and asked.  “She’s in surgery at the moment, sir.  If you’ll have a seat, the doctor will come out to speak with as soon as he can.  There’s a TV monitor on the wall that will let you know where she is at any given time.”

After pacing, then sitting, then looking out the window, Russ sat down and decided to call and check on Randy, and then let his parents know the little bit of information that he knew.

It was about forty minutes later that the doctor finally came out and asked for the Hampton family.

“I’m Dr. Bridges.  I’m the one who has been treating Miss Hampton.  She came in with multiple contusions covering her body.  She been cut in her abdomen, someone trying to surgically abort the fetus.  I operated on it to determine the extent of the damage.  I’m sorry to inform you that she did lose the baby. I had to stitch her uterus and remove the left ovary.  The uterus should heal with no problem, and her still having one ovary, there shouldn’t be any problems with her trying for another baby.”

“Her nose was broken, and there was a crack in the mandible or jaw bone.  She does have a concussion, so between all of those, I’d like to keep her for a few days.”

“When can we go see her?”

“Right now she is in recovery. Once she wakes, she’ll be moved to a room, and you can see her then.”

Mark and Russ both stayed by her side.  Every time she woke up, she would grieve for her baby.  After telling them everything that happened, Russ wanted to go break Daniel out of jail so he could kill him, but of course that didn’t happen.  His parents visited, Randy with them.  Everyone had to keep assuring him that she would be okay, and that the bad man who did it was in jail and wouldn’t be able to hurt her, or anyone else, anymore.