Lost Bird (17 page)

With smiles growing on their faces, they looked at each other, nodding, before returning their focus to her and nodding even harder.

They looked so cute.

“Okay.” She let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. “And if things don’t work out between us, I’m good with just being friends. It also won’t affect the investigation. Got it?”

They nodded harder, both of them grinning now.

“Good. Now that we got that out of the way, we can enjoy our dinner and talk about our options without dancing around the issue all night and wasting time.”

* * * *

Oscar had never fainted in his life. But hearing Sachi admit she wanted to explore their relationship options sucked all the oxygen out of his lungs.

Both of us?

It was perfect.

That she was the one to speak it out loud to them only cemented in his mind that it could work.

And from the look of relief on John’s face, he suspected his friend felt the same way.

They wouldn’t have to worry that she might choose one over the other.

He wouldn’t have to worry about losing his friend over it.

He could have his cake and eat it, too.

Hell, yeah, I’m good with that.

He remembered he was supposed to be getting dinner ready. Outside, lightning flashed and more thunder ominously rolled through as ferocious rain beat down on the roof. He left John to talk with Sachi while he got the ground beef mixed together with spices the way he liked to make his burgers before forming the patties.

John had led her over to the kitchen and was about to offer her a drink when she let out what sounded like a shocked gasp.

Oscar turned to see her, wide-eyed in horror, staring at the counter.

Following her gaze, he didn’t see anything there except things he’d picked up to go with dinner, including a jar of cheese dip and a large can of baked beans.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

She’d gone white, one hand up and backing away from them until she bumped against the back of the couch.

He washed his hands and tried to follow her, but now she was warding them off with both hands.

“Just…give me a minute.” She sounded horrible, like she might be sick.

John looked at him, then back at the counter.

* * * *

Fuck.

Sachi’s relationship with Tom, as well as lots of therapy, self-work, and hours spent blasting clay birds on the skeet field had helped her overcome a lot of her trauma. It was rare now that something triggered her PTSD this strongly.

She couldn’t take her eyes off the can of baked beans on the counter, the large can, the same brand, the same size…

She swallowed hard, trying to hold back the nausea threatening to overtake her.

The guys didn’t know. They didn’t understand. They had no clue.

“Put it away, please,” she whispered. “Now.”

“What?” John asked.

“The beans. The can of beans.” She tried not to scream it, so it came out a whisper instead.

The men exchanged a puzzled glance before turning. Oscar spotted it first and stepped over, grabbing it and shoving it into a cabinet.

Once it was out of sight, she sat against the couch, her fingers curled around the top of it, her body trembling as she closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing.

The men slowly approached. She felt them rather than saw them.

“Are you all right?” John said.

She wanted to scream that no, she was not fucking all right.

But they hadn’t known.

They didn’t have the memory of the dented can, slick with Jacob Clary’s blood, falling from her hand and rolling across the floor after she’d bashed his skull in with it trying to get him to quit killing her mother.

After a few more deep breaths, she forced her eyes open. Both men looked worried, their auras dark with it now. Worry for her.

For
her.

It was times like this she thanked the Goddess for her ability to see auras.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Sometimes…I trigger. That’s a massive trigger.”

“I’m sorry,” they parroted, not taking their focus off her.

That made her smile and broke the spell completely. She took a deep breath and slowly let it out again. “I guess we
really
need to talk. There’s a lot you need to know about me before you guys can decide if you even
want
to have someone like me in your lives.”

* * * *

John didn’t know what had just happened, but he felt both guilty as hell over inadvertently causing Sachi’s reaction, and pissed off beyond belief at the events in her past that had triggered it.

Pissed off that he couldn’t reach into the past and wipe those events away for her, make it better for her.

Protect her from that kind of emotional trauma.

He suspected it was related to what had happened to her years ago, and something she was about to detail to them. He knew it would be best to let her reveal to them what she wanted, in her way.

After getting her a glass of iced tea, he and Oscar settled on the couch while she took the chair. Dinner was forgotten, their focus on her.

For a moment her blue eyes stared at the floor before she met their gazes and softly started.

“I guess you both know I kind of got famous around here a few weeks back.”

They both nodded, but neither of them interrupted.

“The guy who shot me was Jackson Clary. His son, Jacob Clary, raped me and killed my mom when I was fifteen.” Her focus dropped to the floor again as she held the glass with both hands, her shoulders rounded, elbows resting on her thighs as if trying to make herself small so the past couldn’t see her sitting there and telling the story.

“It was out in Montana. My dad moved us out there from New Jersey when I was thirteen. I went to school with Jacob. He was older than me and on the junior skeet team I joined. I was younger than him and half-Japanese and half-Jewish in a hick town where people were either nice or assholes. I also outshot him at a state juniors competition only six months after joining the team. My dad made better money as an airplane mechanic than Jacob’s dad did as a deputy who had aspirations on running for sheriff. My dad bought me the best gun and reloader he could afford, and my popularity went up with kids who no longer wanted to give Jacob, who was usually a jerk on the best of days anyway, the time of day.

“I was home alone when he showed up. When I tried to run, he caught me in the dining room and was…” She took a swallow of tea. “Mom came in, bags of groceries in her arms, at the end of it.”

She sniffled. “Mom was a little shorter than me. Tiny woman. Jacob was on the football team, healthy Montana farmstock kind of dude. She dropped the groceries and started screaming and beating on him, trying to get him off me. He shoved her against the wall and started hitting her, choking her.”

Sachi drew in a long, ragged breath. “I was in shock. Everything happened so fast, I didn’t think about going for my gun. I grabbed the first thing I could put my hands on.” She stared at them again and John spotted the tears in her eyes. “A can of baked beans. It had rolled out of a bag of groceries. That size can, that brand. I hit him until he finally let go of Mom and fell over. Then I called 911.” She let go of the glass with her right hand, staring at it as she flexed her fingers. “I only dropped it because it was so slick with his blood that I couldn’t hold on to it.”

Her cynical laugh sounded more like a sob. “Lucky me, Jackson Clary was the responding officer. Jacob wasn’t dead, but apparently he snapped my mom’s neck when he attacked her. The ambulance crew was the one who pulled Jackson off me. He’d almost strangled me to death. Fifteen more seconds and I would have been dead, too.”

“Shit,” Oscar muttered. “I’m so sorry.”

“Jackson was convicted of attempted murder and other stuff. Jacob spent four weeks on life support before his mom finally had the plug pulled. Then she went home later that afternoon and committed suicide with vodka, Valium, and a razor blade in the bathtub.”

“Jesus,” John said.

“Dad got my name changed to protect me and we moved over to Idaho. He was afraid some of Jackson Clary’s friends might try to hurt me. I left home the day I turned eighteen. Dad gave me Mom’s insurance money, and I had money from a lawsuit we filed and settled against the county there for what Jackson did to me. I drove until I hit Florida and settled here. Made a new life. I never went back, and I spent my life looking over my shoulder, afraid one of Jackson Clary’s friends might come after me.”

She let out a snort. “They let Jackson Clary out of jail on a ‘compassionate release’ for inoperable cancer nearly eight months ago. Apparently he blamed me for his woes. When the media went batshit over Julie’s murder, I guess coverage made it out to Montana, and he must have seen me on TV. We had paparazzi falling out our assholes, it felt like. Steven Corey was hugely famous. The fact that he’d snapped and raped and murdered Julie, and attacked his wife and best friend, was front page news.”

The men nodded. John knew all about that. Brooksville had been crawling with international media for days after the events.

“Mandaline and I went to Ellis and Brad’s house, and Jackson followed us there from the store. Well, I should add that the reason I have an alarm at my house now is because we think he tried to break into it before that happened, but I wasn’t home and my neighbor saw it and called it in. Then Mandaline and her guys had me stay there at the store with them, in the apartment upstairs. So Jackson’s next attempt was when he followed us that night.”

She took another swallow of tea. “If it wasn’t for Brad and Ellis, Jackson would have probably killed us both. Brad saved us, but Ellis is the one who finished Jackson off. They showed up just in time.”

“I’m sorry,” John said.

He didn’t know what else to say.

She shrugged. “Not your fault. The attack sort of dredged up a few things, I guess. I’m not as over as much of it as I thought I was.” She laughed again, but it sounded less pained. “Sorry about the beans.”

“No, it’s okay,” Oscar said. “We get it.”

John nodded.

“I can do any other kind of beans,” she said, John spotting her forced humor in an attempt to put them at ease. “Dried or canned. But…” She shrugged. “Sorry.”

“Green beans?” Oscar asked.

She smiled even as she brushed at her eyes with the back of her hand. “I fucking
love
green beans.”

“I’m sorry about your friend Julie,” John said. “I wish I’d met her. She sounds like she was a remarkable woman.”

“She was. She was like a sister to me. I didn’t know her as long as Mandaline did, and I wasn’t as close to her as Mandaline was, but she was the only family I really had here. I spent a lot of years looking over my shoulder and being careful not to let anyone know who I was or what had happened to me. The only other guy I was in a relationship with, I walked away from him because I was terrified someone might have figured out who and where I was and he would get hurt.”

“So what’s your real name?” Oscar asked.

She smiled. “Sachi is my real name.” She waved her hand at them, indicating she was joking. “Miki. Miki Bloomfeld. My dad still calls me Miki. He never could call me Sachi when we were together.”

“How did you pick the name Sachi?”

“It was my mom’s name. I knew at the time it might be stupid, because it’s not like there’s a lot of Japanese Jews in Idaho, either. Duh. But I wanted to honor her. Wolowitz was Dad’s mom’s maiden name.” She let out a sad sigh that echoed to the bottom of his soul. “So there you have the rest of the story.”

Never before had John so badly wanted to pull someone into his arms and soothe their heartache away the way he wanted to with her.

“Sachi’s a beautiful name,” Oscar said.

A sad smile crossed her face. “My mom was a beautiful woman.”

* * * *

Oscar felt guilty as hell that he’d triggered Sachi, but fortunately, now that she’d gotten the story out of her system, she seemed to look a little better.

She even offered to form the hamburger patties for them.

He wanted to hug her, wanted to hold her, wanted to heal her.

No, he and John weren’t broken when compared to her, but she was a thousand times stronger than even the two of them put together, to come through what she had and rebuilt her life so completely.

Made him feel like an ass for whining about being single and losing custody of his new HDTV to Karen when she locked him out two weeks after he’d bought it.

As she made the burgers, she glanced at them occasionally. “So. Now that you’ve heard all that, does it freak you the hell out? Honestly.”

Oscar didn’t know what John felt, but he knew what he felt. “I can’t say I know what you’ve been through or how you feel. That would be total bullshit on my part. But I know that I really like you a lot, and I’m willing to go slow, as slow as you want, to see what might happen.”