Southern Heart (Southern 5)

"You're in my house, and the walls are not soundproof." I look over at my uncle Casey. "So yeah, I heard."

"Good," Mayson says. "Saves me time to rehash it." He tries to sit up, but he winces. The day after he got here, Casey showed up with a hospital bed. I was shocked that in thirty minutes, my old bed was out, and the hospital bed was in. To be honest, it was more convenient for me.

I walk over to the side table and grab his glass of water and hand it to him. "This will help." He nods at me and takes a couple of sips.

"I joined the military as Mayson." He continues his story. "Every single day, I was petrified they would find out what I did. Every single time I got summoned, I thought this is it. I’m going to jail for murder." He smirks now. "But nothing. No one knew or found out. I made sure I never got a credit card. I paid for everything in cash. Stayed in a motel to avoid getting an apartment so they wouldn’t do a background check. I went back to the trailer park and found that the whole park had been wiped out. Turns out, that night a tornado had come through and wrecked everything."

"Did you check for a death certificate?" Uncle Casey asks him, and he shakes his head. He takes the phone out of his pocket typing something into it.

"I had just come back from my last tour. Three weeks ago, I guess. I walked into the cabin and knew right away something wasn’t right. Felt it in my stomach and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up." He looks down as his hands start to shake. "For the past eight years, I’ve been leaving things in a certain way to make sure no one surprised me." He looks at Ethan, faking laughing. "Must be the training." Ethan laughs with him. "He swung the bat before I was able to grab the gun," he says. "Knocked me out."

"How long?" Ethan asks him, and he looks down.

"Long enough to drag me out behind the cabin," he says, looking at him, "and tie me to a tree."

"Wait a second," I say, stepping forward, and he stops talking. My heart speeds up as I think about him locked up, not only for an hour but a week. "Are you telling me that you were locked up for a whole week?"

"Five days," he corrects me.

"It’s fine," he tells me, looking me in the eyes. He tries to smile at me, but it’s a sad fucking smile. "He tied me to the tree, and every day, he would come out and knock me around." Quinn hisses, and I look over at him, and he shakes his head and holds his neck in his hand. "Three," he says the number. "Always three knocks in a row."

"This is insane." The words come out of my mouth.

"Chelsea," my father says my name. "Let him finish."

I shake my head and put my hand to my stomach. "He stabbed me six times but got the same one twice." I shake my head, trying to block out the words. "He dropped the knife one night and forgot about it."

"Was this before or after you were shot?" I ask him, looking over at the men in the room and wondering why the fuck they haven’t said shit to him.

"Same day," he says. "He did my legs first, and then when he dropped the knife, he took the gun out."

"For fuck’s sake," Ethan says now, and I want him to get angry. I want him to ask all the fucking questions.

"I got the knife and hid it. But not before he came out and hit me some more," he says, and I look at him.

"I’ve seen your wounds," I say. "There is no way that was done with a hand."

"You're right," he says, looking straight at me. "Sometimes, they were his steel-toed boots. Other times, it was the bat just for good measure," he says. "I got loose and waited or maybe I passed out, but I knew the lay of the land." He looks at Ethan. "I know the surroundings like I know the back of my hand. I waited until I knew he passed out and then crawled." He sits up now as proud as can be, this man who just spent five days being tortured by the person who should have protected him. "I don’t know if you can call it crawling." I look down at his hands. "I pulled myself inch by fucking inch," he says, and my stomach starts to turn. "It took me over eight hours to get to my neighbor’s land, which takes thirty minutes to hike." My head spins around and around as he says the next part. "There was no way he would have left me alive. Not this time."