Rest & Trust

REST & TRUST

The Night Horde SoCal Series

Book Five

Susan Fanetti

Published by Susan Fanetti at Smashwords

Copyright 2015 Susan Fanetti

THE FREAK CIRCLE PRESS

Rest & Trust © 2015 Susan Fanetti

All rights reserved

Susan Fanetti has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this book under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

ALSO BY SUSAN FANETTI

The Night Horde SoCal Series:

(MC Romance)

Strength & Courage, Book 1

Shadow & Soul, Book 2

Today & Tomorrow, Book 2.5

Fire & Dark, Book 3

Dream & Dare, Book 3.5

Knife & Flesh, Book 4

The Pagano Family Series:

(Family Saga)

Footsteps, Book 1

Touch, Book 2

Rooted, Book 3

Deep, Book 4

The Signal Bend Series:

(The first Night Horde series)

(MC Romance)

Move the Sun, Book 1

Behold the Stars, Book 2

Into the Storm, Book 3

Alone on Earth, Book 4

In Dark Woods, Book 4.5

All the Sky, Book 5

Show the Fire, Book 6

Leave a Trail, Book 7

To rest and trust; to give your soul in confidence: I need this.

I need someone to pour myself into.

~Sylvia Plath

CHAPTER ONE

Sherlock aimed carefully and threw his last grenade.

It was a good hit. The explosion rattled the floors and walls, and fire and flying body parts filled the warehouse.

Woo-hoo! the eight-year-old at Sherlock’s side shouted and put up his hand for a high-five. DIE MUTHAFUCKAS!

Sherlock slapped his palm. Dyl, dude. Play it cool, he muttered. Your mom’ll kick both our a—butts.

Playing with her dolls at a small pink table across the room, Dylan’s little sister, Chelsea, shrieked, Mommy! Dylan said a Very Bad Word!

Shut up, you stupid bitch, Dylan snarled at her.

Sherlock paused the game, glancing toward the doorway to the kitchen as he spoke. Dylan. No. Over the line.

MOM-MEEE! four-year-old Chelsea wailed.

As Sherlock set his controller aside and stood to go to her, to try to calm her down, Dylan and Chelsea’s mother, Taryn, came into the doorway. She held a bottle of Tabasco in her hand.

Dylan Jonathan Wilkes, get in here right now.

Dylan’s eyes were wide and already getting wet. No, Mom. Please! I’m sorry!

Now, or you’ll have to take two.

Sherlock fucking hated that she dealt that way with Dylan’s recently rebellious mouth. Tare, c’mon.

She turned tired, angry eyes on him. Shut your mouth, Tim. You’re not their father. You’re nothing but their playmate.

Already crying, Dylan threw his controller on the sofa and stood, then trudged toward the kitchen. Sherlock was too pissed and worried about what was happening there to spend much time being pissed about the way Taryn had, yet again, pushed him to the side, but he took a beat and let the irritation make its way through.

Almost six years, they’d been together. On and off, long cycles of each. Sure, neither had ever thrown the ‘L’ word around, and sure, they’d never gone on anything like a date, but he was over here all the time. Fuck, he’d been around before Chelsea had even been born. Or conceived.

Chelsea wasn’t his—both kids had the same father, and Sherlock had inadvertently found himself in the middle of Taryn’s marriage, separation, reunion, separation, and divorce drama when they’d first met—but he had been around enough during Chelsea’s whole life that she sometimes called him ‘Daddy Tim.’ Taryn always corrected her when she did.

It was Taryn holding back. Always her. He dealt with it because…well, she was a great lay, and he liked her kids—more than that—and he liked coming over and having a normal night with homework and games and dinner and bedtime. His mom had worked nights, and his dad had split when he was little. He and Thomas, his older brother, had been on their own most of the time. He hadn’t had normal family nights as a kid.

He was a sap; sue him.

Club girls were fine, and when Taryn went through one of her ‘we’re done’ spells, he took liberal advantage of the offerings in the Hall. But he’d hadn’t tried to get serious with any other girl, in the club or out of it, since he’d met Taryn. He didn’t know why. He didn’t love her. She was too emotionally cold, her shell too hard, to love. But he loved her life, so when she wanted him in it, he came, and when she didn’t, he left.

He knew the signs after all this time, so he knew she was coming to the point where she’d want him away. He thought he might finally be reaching the end of his patience with the revolving door game.

That was a fight they could have after the kids had gone to bed. Right now, hearing Dylan gagging, coughing, and crying, he set a quieted Chelsea back on the floor and walked toward the kitchen.

He met Dylan in the doorway. The poor kid’s face was wet with tears and beet red, and he had his mouth open, his tongue sticking out. She wouldn’t even let him rinse afterward. This was a thing that happened fairly often of late. Dylan, in third grade, had learned the power of foul language. He’d also developed a rebellious streak. He didn’t seem capable of controlling either, even knowing the consequences.

It wasn’t just his mouth. Recently when Sherlock had been over, Dylan had refused to complete a homework assignment he’d been struggling with. Taryn had made him stand in a corner until he’d agree to finish.

Sherlock hadn’t stuck around that night, but she’d told him later that Dylan had stood in that corner all night, all the way until it was time to go to school the next day. Then he’d gotten detention for sleeping in class. And he’d lost electronics privileges for that. Mom and son were starting a downward spiral.

Sherlock wanted to talk to him, to try to get him to see around the fight in front of him to the bigger picture, but Taryn didn’t want him parenting her kids. Even after all these years.

Shrugging off Sherlock’s comforting hand, Dylan slunk back to the sofa and sat down. Sherlock stood in the doorway. Taryn had her back to him, doing something for the meal she was preparing.

Don’t you fucking say a word, she spat without turning. You’ve stated your opinion. I don’t need to hear it again. He needs to learn respect.

Despite her warning, Sherlock spoke. There’s got to be a better way. That’s so… he wanted to say ‘abusive,’ but he landed on the less fraught, …extreme.

Dammit, Tim. Shut. Up. I’m making the decisions here.

Though he’d been Sherlock when they’d met, and he’d introduced himself to her as Sherlock, she’d immediately demanded his ‘real’ name. Lost in her bright green eyes and a whole lot of whiskey, he’d told her that his ‘real’ name was Timothy. She’d called him Tim since, and he’d quickly given up trying to change that. His small blood family and this weird faux family all called him Tim. Everywhere else in his life, he was Sherlock.

Sherlock Holmes. Yeah, it was ridiculous, but his brothers had given him the name, and that made it his real real name.

I’m gonna head out. Taryn had been in a mood since he’d arrived, and now the kids were bottoming out. It wasn’t a good night, and he was only making things worse.

At that, she turned around. Her face was creased with exhaustion. She wasn’t a beautiful woman; Sherlock wasn’t much attracted to beautiful women—a woman like Trick’s new wife, Juliana, whose beauty was fucking perfect, just intimidated him. Maybe it was a holdover from his adolescence, when he was the scrawny geek no girl noticed except to sneer at, but too much beauty gave him a twitch. Sherlock liked women with flaws. Didn’t matter what kind of flaws. Just something that made them real. Tangible.

Taryn could be pretty—she’d been pretty when he’d met her, during her first separation, the only time they’d been out in the world together. But she had to try, and she didn’t try often. Usually, she pulled her bright red hair into a severe ponytail, she wore no makeup to speak of, which made her ginger brows and lashes sort of fade in with her pale skin, and she dressed almost exclusively in either her work scrubs—she was a phlebotomist at the nearby managed-care clinic—or yoga pants and t-shirts. Her belly and ass had gone flabby after Chelsea, and yoga pants weren’t exactly hot on her. Scrubs weren’t hot on any woman.

But he loved her body. He knew it completely, and he knew exactly how to make it sing. They were perfectly compatible fuckmates.

When they were good, they were great. Out of bed, they didn’t have much in common, in taste or personality, but she had a ribald sense of humor and an adventurous spirit, and when she was in a good mood, she laughed easily and often. Her musical laughter and bright smile made her beautiful.

Tonight, she seemed almost ugly. More than fatigue and anger warped her features. He couldn’t place it, but she was just…dull.

Don’t go. We need to talk.

Yeah. As he’d suspected, it was time for her to tell him to hit the road. Very much over it, he sighed. I know this scene. Why don’t we just cut to the part where I storm out?

It’s not that. Well—we need to talk. Stay. She put a smile on her face. It wasn’t a successful effort.

The sound of the game he and Dylan had been co-opping started up, and Sherlock glanced over to see the boy with the blue controller in his hands. He’d overcome the latest Tabasco Incident.

Sherlock turned back to Dylan’s mother. Yeah, okay. Without waiting for more from her, he returned to the sofa and picked up the black controller. I bet we can clear one more level before it’s time to eat.

~oOo~

He sat on the sofa and watched some reality show while she put the kids to bed. Another thing he wasn’t allowed to do: participate in the bedtime routine. He said his goodnights in the living room, before they went down the hall to bed.

When she came back up the hall, she went right by him and into the kitchen. She returned with a glass of whiskey for him and a huge glass of white wine for her. And her stash tin.

Handing him the whiskey, she said, C’mon. Let’s go sit outside. She headed out the front door, and he stood and followed.

The front was not the most comfortable place for a conversation. She had a patio out back with a cozy little furniture set. But the back yard was fenced with a six-foot privacy fence and rimmed with cypresses. Very secluded—they’d fucked out there a few times. On the other hand, the little wooden bench on the front porch sat in full view of at least seven different houses on this subdivision circle lane.

As they sat on the bench, Sherlock had the impression that Taryn wanted witnesses. Since he wasn’t known for an unreasonable temper and had never laid an unwanted hand on her, and since a breakup would be right on schedule, his nerves twitched hard. Whatever she wanted to talk about was more than that and had to be bad. He drank down his whiskey and set the empty glass on the concrete.

She pulled a joint from her tin and lit it. Weed had been legal throughout the country for years, but Sherlock hadn’t lost that sense of furtive rebellion he’d always felt when he blazed one.

After a long hit, she handed the joint to him. He took it between his fingers but didn’t put it to his mouth. What the fuck is up, Tare?

Whatever it was required half a big glass of wine as well as a monster hit of high-octane weed. While she chugged, Sherlock stared at the joint without interest.

She took it out of his hand. I’m pregnant, she muttered and punctuated that shocking statement with another big hit.

What?

Holding the smoke in her lungs, she croaked, Pregnant. Me.

He knocked the joint to the porch floor and crushed it under his scuffed Doc. Then what the fuck are you doing?

She expelled the smoke on a laugh. It doesn’t matter. I’m not keeping it.

Though data was Sherlock’s stock in trade, he couldn’t keep up with the information coming at him now. What? What do you mean?

What do you think I mean, Tim? I’m getting rid of it. Having an abortion. Terminating the pregnancy. Is there a way I can make that more clear?

Is it mine? He didn’t know why he’d asked—it had to be his. This ‘on’ phase had been going smoothly for about six months, maybe more. As rocky and cyclical as they’d been, he was sure they were exclusive when they were together. He could drop by at will, and he did a few times a week. She was on the Pill—he’d thought she was on the Pill—and they both got tested, so he didn’t use condoms with her.

But she said, No. Before he could process that shock, she added, It’s mine. But you’re the sperm donor. Doesn’t matter. I’m making the decisions here, and I’m not keeping it.

Finally, Sherlock caught up—and a spike of fury drove straight up his spine and sank into his head. Maybe she needed witnesses after all. He leapt to his feet and stalked away before he lost it and laid hands on her. You can’t kill my kid.

Until those words were out of his mouth, Sherlock had had no idea he would have felt that way. He’d never thought much about being a father. He loved Dylan and Chelsea, but he’d never been a father to them; Taryn had seen to that. And he’d never thought he and Taryn would be more to each other than they were; she’d seen to that, too.

That had been fine with him. He was thirty-eight, but he’d never really expected to be a man who ‘settled down.’ Even as brother after brother had taken an old lady—married her or at least marked her—Sherlock hadn’t thought he wanted to be one of them. He liked what he had here, when he had it—a little family for a while, a nice fuck and a cozy sleep, and then off to his own place, set up the way he liked, where he could game without getting shit for it, and sit in his boxers and watch television, leave his clean clothes in the laundry basket, and have cold pizza out of the box for breakfast.

But she was sitting here telling him that there was a baby—his baby—inside her, and that she was going to throw it away, and the thought made his hands shake.

You can’t fucking kill my kid.

"Don’t be melodramatic. You’re no fundie Christer. I’m not killing your kid. I’m having a clump of cells removed from my body before it can become a kid. This is my choice, and I don’t want another baby. I’ve got my hands full as it is."

He turned and looked at her again. She was finishing her glass of wine, and he had a strong urge to smash that glass into her face—and urge so strong he could see it happening.

Giving his head a brisk shake, he tried to clear that insanity away. Christ. With a breath to smooth out his nerves a little—he was wishing he hadn’t stomped out the joint now—he spoke more calmly. I’d help. I’d be there—for you and the kid. All the kids.

Again that derisive laugh. Please. You’re not father material, Tim. Look at you. Half your life, you’re an almost forty-year-old teenager who plays video games and argues with my third-grader about Star Wars movies, and the other half you’re a criminal. No, I think I don’t want to bind my life to yours with a child.

His shock at all this was still too great for her words to slice deeply, but they managed to sting. Then why did you fucking tell me at all? Just to fuck with me?

She sighed. It’s expensive. I need help paying for it.

Now it was his turn to laugh. You have got to be out of your mind.

Again she sighed, this time setting her glass and tin on the porch floor and standing up. She walked over to him—and damn, she was ugly as fuck now—and stopped just in front of him. When she laid her hands on his chest, he caught them and pushed her away.

"I’m sorry, Tim. Maybe I should have done this differently, but it’s easier not to get emotional about this. What we’ve had was good most of the time, but there’s nothing real between us, and you know it as well as I do. Our lives don’t work together. I told you because I think you have the right to know—but that’s all you have a right to. This is my call, and I’ve made it. It’s for the best—for all of us. If you don’t want to help me pay for it, then that’s your call. I’ll work it out another way."

I’m not fucking paying for you to kill my kid.

She nodded, as if she’d expected no better from him. Fine. Wait here. I’ll get your kutte and the rest of your stuff. We’re done, you and me. For good this time.

No shit, he snarled. Then he remembered Dylan and Chelsea. I want to say goodbye—

With a shake of her head, she cut him off. No. They’re used to you coming and going. They’ll forget you before they think it’s weird you haven’t come back.

That stung as much as anything else she’d said. Christ, Tare, when did you get to be such a bitch?

Smiling coldly, she didn’t answer him, but turned and went back into her house. He stood on her porch, trying to organize his thoughts. He felt furious and powerless, and like he’d been a fucking fool for years. He’d never realized that she’d thought so little of him.

Rocked by a rage unfamiliar in its power, he picked up the wooden bench and hurled it into her yard with a fierce shout. It landed in the grass and broke apart, and he felt absolutely no better.

When she came back out, she gave the fresh rubble on her lawn a long look but said nothing. He snatched his kutte out of her hands and pulled it on. Then he filled his pockets with the rest of his crap and stalked off to his bike without a word.

The thought that he was walking away from his kid sank into the base of his skull and got comfortable, but he didn’t know what else to do. He couldn’t force her to have it, and the things she’d said—he didn’t want to be bound to her, either. All he felt for her now was contempt. Loathing. Violent rage.

So he mounted his bike and rode away.

CHAPTER TWO

Okay, Mr. Penney. To see what’s going on, I need to get remote access to your unit.

Eh?

That means I need to take over your laptop for a few minutes so I can find the problem.

The gruff, shaky voice of an elderly lifelong smoker filled Sadie’s ear. Oh…oh…is that legal?

It is if you say it’s okay.

I don’t want you to hack me. I saw it on the news about the hacking.

Sadie rolled her eyes. Mr. Penney was eighty if he was a day, and she was fairly certain he thought the internet was an elaborate system of strings and tin cans. He’d called customer support because he couldn’t make ‘The Facebook’ open on his ancient laptop. The first level of troubleshooting—checking the power source, rebooting, etc.—was handled by the initial call center rep. Sadie didn’t get passed a call unless that didn’t fix a problem.

I’m not hacking you, sir, because you’re letting me in. This is like you inviting me over so I can sit next to you and see the problem on your screen. Okay?

O-okay. You have a sweet voice. He made a sound in her ear like he’d just sucked a grape through his nose and then hawked it out. Gross. She hoped that didn’t have anything to do with her ‘sweet’ voice.

Good. Now, I need you to do a couple of things first. Can you go into System Preferences for me? She knew it was an absurd question, but sometimes she got lucky.

Eh? Uh—eh?

In the dock—in the strip of pictures on bottom of your screen. One of them should be a box with what looks like a gear in the middle. See it?

Oh! Next to the ‘W,’ you mean?

Sure, dude. Whatever. Sounds like it. Okay. Click that for me.

I got lots of other pictures that came up. He began to read: ‘General,’ ‘Desktop and Screen Saver,’ ‘Dock’…

Okay, good. You’re in the right place. One of those pictures should be a blue folder with a street sign, like a ‘crosswalk ahead’ sign. It should say ‘Sharing.’ Can you find that?

Next to the cloud?

Yep. Click that for me. You should see a menu, and the top item should say ‘Screen Sharing.’ Got it?

I do! He sounded so excited that Sadie had to grin.

Good work. Just click the box next to it so a checkmark shows up, and then I can take it from there.

After a few more keystrokes, Sadie had control of Mr. Penney’s unit. As soon as his desktop came up on her screen, she slammed her hand on the side of her head, killing her mic.

HOLY FUCK! she yelled into her empty apartment. Getting control of herself again, she activated the mic on her headset and forced herself to speak in the same tone she’d been using. Okay, Mr. Penney. I’m going to look around and find the problem. It might take a few minutes. As long as you hear music, that means I’m on the job. I’ll check back in when I figure out the problem or if I have more questions.

The voice of what she’d thought was a sweet, dotty old man filled her ear again. Okay, honey. What should I do?

The word ‘honey’ made her cringe, but she kept a smile in her voice. Just sit tight, Mr. Penney.

"I’ve got the TV right here. Can I watch The Price Is Right?"

Sure. That’s a good idea.

She killed her mic again and pulled up her cohort chat. The members of her cohort were located all over the western half of the country—Sadie herself was in Southern California—but they were based in Dallas, and that was where their supervisor was. When they had staff meetings they used video chat, but text chat was easier to do referrals and troubleshoot problems with each other during their shift.

Probably all tech support reps everywhere were geeks, but Sadie liked to think that her cohort were the geekiest. Whenever they had slow spells, their chat was full of awesome geek talk. They could keep a riff going on a topic for days. They’d once chatted the entire script of The Wrath of Khan. From memory. Around their customer calls.

The higher-ups could tap into any chat they wanted, but the prevailing philosophy was that friendly play like that during downtimes was good for morale, especially since remote work could be so isolating and solitary. So they encouraged banter and play, as long as it stayed clean and didn’t get in the way of their work.

Sadie and her cohort pals were always changing their avatars to suit some random theme. One of them would change, and within half an hour, they’d all have keyed into the same idea. Currently, they were the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Sadie was Raphael. Their supervisor, Raymond, was Splinter, of course.

For most of the shift, they’d been chatting in character. But Sadie broke character now.

Just RA’d a massively FU unit. Ray—she tagged their supervisor—need a private.

Andy, who was currently posing as Shredder, posted You can’t drop that and not spill. FU how.

She ignored that. Just then, a private chat window came up, and Ray asked, Problem?

I’m looking at kiddie porn, she typed. Really sick. I’m supposed to be making the browser work for this dude, and his wallpaper is freaking me out. It’s his *wallpaper* There are—she stopped and counted—more than two dozen jpgs on his desktop and I can tell from the thumbnails that I do not want to see them more closely.

His answer was nearly immediate. Grab the screen and send it and deets to me, then refer him up. Mark the contact and the call. Then logoff. Chill. I’ll call you asap.

Raymond knew her history, and he’d taken her on anyway last year, so she knew he had a good idea how she’d react and what she’d need. She had never met him in person in her life, but she trusted him completely.

She typed Kthx, grabbed the screen and noted the call details, sent it all to Ray, then swallowed and hit her mic again. Mr. Penney? The muffled cheers of a game show crowd answered her. Mr. Penney?

The rustle of someone picking up a phone. Hello? Hello? the old perv croaked. Now that Sadie had shared the story with her boss, it had gained the weight of reality, and she felt truly freaked and grossed out.

She’d seen all kinds of very weird shit on people’s computers. She’d seen plenty of porn, and a surprising number of dead animal pictures, and just more weird shit than she would have believed existed. People didn’t seem to realize that she was an actual person actually seeing their actual weirdness when they let her into their computers. But what she was looking at right now was by far the most upsetting thing she’d ever seen.

BDSM kiddie porn. There was a little kid in that picture. On the perv’s fucking wallpaper, like it was just normal.

And she still had to be nice to the sick fuck, so he wouldn’t get nervous or suspicious.

Hi, Mr. Penney. I haven’t been able to fix the problem, so I’m going to refer you to our most senior expert. I promise that Ray will be able to fix you. She got some small satisfaction from the double entendre that he knew nothing about.

I…don’t know. It’s taking an awfully long time…

I’m sorry about that sir, but Ray will take care of you.

Okay, then. I guess that’s okay.

Well, you have a great day, Mr. Penney. I’m going to send you over to Ray now.

She couldn’t bring herself to do the end-of-call spiel. Before he could say anything else, she transferred his call.

Then she tore the headset off her ear and tossed it to her desk as if it had gained eight legs and fangs. She pushed herself away, letting the wheels of her ergonomic chair roll back as far as they would.

There was more she needed to do to preserve and mark the evidence, but she was so fucking grossed out. She felt like she needed to bleach her whole area. And burn everything that image had touched. Including her eyeballs and brain.

With a Herculean force of will, she dragged her chair back to her desk. She finished doing what she needed to do to mark the call. The cohort chat was blowing up, but she ignored it and, as soon as she could, logged off.

Her apartment was a studio, designed to resemble a loft—though it was a new building, so the whole industrial aspect was all affect. She walked from her work area to her kitchen area and pulled a can of Diet Coke out of the fridge. Today had suddenly become a day that she could really use something much stronger, but since she was getting her one-year chip in three days, it would be pretty pathetic and humiliating to cave now.

She chugged half the soda down, then went to her desk, picked up her phone, and walked out to her balcony to wait for her boss to call and talk her off the ledge. So to speak.

~oOo~