Close Cover (Masters and Mercenaries #16)(53)

“I explained about our mom. There was a distant relation who lived in the same trailer park we did. A cousin of our mom’s. She would sign the paperwork, agree to be our guardian on paper for the powers that be. She had no intention of actually taking care of us, but the girls and I would help out around her place and she would give us a little money and let us be during those times when Mom was in prison.”

Remy couldn’t imagine Lisa growing up in those weeds. She was such a gorgeous, well cared for flower. “None of your dads cared enough to take you all in?”

“Lisa’s dad was the only one Mom ever acknowledged,” Will replied. “He was a pastor. Not the regular kind. Not the kind who took care of his flock and fostered a family there. It’s funny because I avoided church for years because of that man. Another thing Bridget helped me with. But Father Frank, as he called himself, was the guy who went to college campuses and told coeds they’re going to hell.”

He knew the type. They were nothing like the kindly pastors and priests from his home. “He came for Lisa?”

“I was an adult at the time, but I didn’t have legal custody of my sisters. That would have required far more cash than we had. I still don’t know how he found out where we lived, but he showed up with a social worker who decided Lisa needed her father. Naturally Mom had just started a six-month stint for possession. I remember how powerless I felt. I couldn’t admit that I was the one taking care of them and Cousin Marie simply signed the papers and let her go. Lisa had never even spent the night away from home.”

“What happened to her and is her father still alive?” Because Remy got the feeling he was going to want to kill the man.

“From what I understand it wasn’t bad at first. Frank had married and the woman seemed fine, but they refused to allow Lisa to contact us. We were poor influences, according to her father.” Every word out of Will’s mouth was measured, as though he was forcing them out, forcing the tone he used to be calm. “Luckily we were in the same school district. She and Laurel were in the same school, so we at least had that. But then one day, Lisa stopped coming to school.”

“He kept her at home because he was abusing her?”

“Not in the way you think,” Will replied. “According to Lisa, he never hit her or touched her inappropriately, but his punishments could only be considered cruel. When she wasn’t respectful enough, he took away things. Not things like her cell phone. He took away the light bulbs in her bedroom and her toothbrush, and shut off the water to her bathroom. He refused to wash her clothes. He locked away the soap and shampoo in the house and she was told that if she wanted them back, wanted him to provide for her as a father should, then she would be a good daughter to him.”

She’d been young and vulnerable, and her father had taken all her comforts. She would have been embarrassed to have no way to stay clean. “And this asshole thought she would bow down to him?”

“He didn’t know her very well,” Will allowed. “The problem got worse because Lisa got good at finding ways around him. She showered at the school. She wasn’t on a team, but the coaches came to believe her family was poor and had the water cut off. Lisa did not disabuse them of the notion and soon those coaches had used their own money to supply the girls’ locker room with everything she and any other girls without means would need. Shampoo, deodorant, toothpaste, pads, and tampons. When her father wouldn’t feed her, the actual real live pastor in town and his wife would find her on their doorstep on her way back home and give her a bowl of soup or a sandwich. Pastor Edwards called the county a dozen times, but every time child services left her there and it got worse. Until one night, Frank got angry enough that he locked her in a shed in the back of the house. It was pitch dark and she couldn’t move because the place was filthy and there were tools everywhere.”

“She must have been terrified.”

“Oh, yes. There was also a nest of snakes in the shed. By the time he came to let her out, she’d been bitten many times. Luckily they weren’t venomous, but she’d panicked and stepped on a garden hoe that cut her up pretty bad. They refused to take her to a hospital. I think his wife tried to clean her up, but the cuts got infected. We think she was there for at least three days, lying on a bed, dying of sepsis. My mom got out of jail and I have never seen her… She wasn’t the best mom, but she did love us. She didn’t wait for the caseworkers. She borrowed a shotgun and her cousin’s beat-up Ford and she brought Lisa to the hospital and then home. I don’t know what she said or did that day, but he never came around again. He died a few years later of cancer. Mom was all right for a couple of months after that. While Lisa was recovering, we were almost like a normal family. It didn’t last, but I remember those months fondly.”

“So when Biondo shut her in that trunk, it was like she was going into the shed all over again.” His heart ached at the thought and he wished he could go back in time, step in front of that man, and save his girl all that pain.

“I can only imagine. This is why we couldn’t put her in custody like that,” Will said. “Even a locked door can trigger her. She can lock herself in, but she has to know she can get out. And she can’t sleep in the dark.”

“Yes, she can. That night-light thing of hers bugged me. I’m a total-dark sleeper. She told me she would turn it off if I would hold her. She can sleep in the dark if I’m there to hold her. Will, I’m in love with your sister. We need to talk about the payment. I can’t…”