Ben (The Sherwood)

The woman with her was Lilah Hayes. No family and a stunning woman now that I looked closer at her even if her clothes were a little tattered and dirty right now. She had been taken is how Merci explained it.

She was for Elder Ron’s amusement. She had been kept in the basement of his home as other women had been taken before her were. When they no longer amused him, he had them disposed of.

“Killed?” I asked.

Disa’s eyes met mine. She had mentioned women coming into the compound and not leaving.

“I don’t know,” Merci replied. “Some say sold. Some say killed when they can’t be broken by him.”

“Lilah would you like something clean to wear?” Disa asked. “Maybe a shower?”

She nodded without speaking. Her eyes remained lowered. Her thick lashes sweeping across her lower ones to hide her anguish. She had been abused and more. Bruises covered her arms and that was just what I could see.

Lilah followed Disa out of the dining room, down the hall towards the bathroom leaving Merci with us. I could hear their feet until they hit the carpet in my bedroom. “He hurt her too,” Heath informed us, nodding in Merci’s direction. “Not like Lilah but he was an abusive son-of-a-bitch.”

My brother had a clinical way of speaking without thinking that the victim was in the room and his words were affecting her. Merci almost started crying. I felt helpless to do anything for her, so I hugged her until Disa returned then she could take over.

“He was meeting with the other elders about Disa,” Merci explained. “He wanted to bring her forcibly back to the compound. They were arguing at the house and moved it to the meeting hall, so I wouldn’t hear anything.”

“About?” I asked.

“Your relationship with her. Elder Ron called it unholy without the sanctity of marriage. He wanted to try to save her. The other elders told him no. He requested that they move to the meeting hall for privacy.”

I shook my head and rubbed my hand over jaw. We needed to fix this situation quickly.

“All right, big boy, this is going to hurt,” Daisy told AJ distracting me for a moment. I turned my head to watch them.

He looked over his shoulder and glared at her. A lesser man would have shrunk beneath the look that AJ gave Daisy but not her. She laughed at him. “And you’ll enjoy every minute of it,” he declared.

“I will,” she responded with a smirk.

Daisy was well, she was Daisy. Petit. Slender. A track runner in high school but don’t let her stature fool you. She was strong. Her dark hair was straight, and her eyes were light blue like Disa’s with a crazy splash of color around the

ring of the iris. AJ called her a freak but one time, when they were young, he had loved her. I thought maybe that he still did.

Disa returned to the kitchen and stood beside Merci. The sisters held hands, grateful to be reunited. “I have missed you,” Merci informed her. Her eyes were taking in Disa. It had been six years since she left the compound. I remembered her then and now. Not much had changed about her but I wasn’t seeing her from Merci’s perspective.

“I missed you too.”

“We had to bring them with us,” Heath informed us.

Hawk walked over to us glancing over his shoulder a time or two to check on Daisy and AJ. Dad sat by AJ trying to keep him calm. I couldn’t say that I wanted a bullet dug out of my shoulder without the benefit of any sort of medication. AJ was gritting his teeth against the pain. Daisy was focused on the wound in his shoulder.

I looked at Hawk. “You knew what they were doing?”

“I can’t say that I condone their actions but sometimes, I have to turn my back in order for justice to be served when people like Jameson and Ron get away with things that I can’t prove, or it is in the best interest of the town to not pursue.”

I was surprised by our sheriff’s view on my brother’s vigilante activity. “How so?” I asked. I really wanted to understand this.

Hawk was tired, and I don’t think it was just because it was late. His stance spoke of a man that was worn down. His face was thick with a heavy beard. His eyes were glassy from lack of sleep and maybe a shot or two of whiskey before bedtime.

“Ben, if I had taken Jameson in after what he did to Danni and Walker, his people would have rained down on Sherwood. You know that. That’s just the way it is with them. There’s a code that we follow. You know that. So, we turned our backs. AJ and Heath gave him justice that he won’t soon forget but he’d have a helluva time proving it was them and he would have implicated himself in the process, so everyone is quiet now.”

“Is there more I don’t know about?”

“You don’t need to concern yourself,” Heath informed me.

“How can you say that? You removed Elder Ron’s wife…”