Devin-2 (6 page)

Ronnie had woken up screaming—at least in her head—in the hospital room.

She had not been able to do anything very well with her face wired together, but she did try to look around. The pain shot through her like a rocket. And then, just as suddenly, she was down again, slipping into the welcoming darkness.

Over the next few weeks, that was how her life was measured, horrible pain then thankful darkness with only a few minutes of awareness with each awaking.

After two months of drifting in and out, Ronnie opened her eyes fully one morning. She had been waking more and more, but had made sure of who was in the room with her before she made her wakefulness known to others. She could stay conscious more and more during the day, though she hid that as much as she could too. She still had pain, horrible, gut-wrenching pain, but she was getting better at seeing past it. At times, when she saw her father there, she simply did not move and waited for him to leave again. He rarely stayed long anyway and would only sit and watch the television in the room, ignoring everything but it.

She looked around the room she was in, trying to find an escape route, even though she could not move. That was when she saw the woman policeman.

Why, oh, why?
How could someone be so cruel?
she thought when she realized she was still alive.

“Hi, honey. How are you doing? I know you can’t talk very well, but can you blink for me? Blink once for yes, two times for no.” The officer moved in front of Ronnie. “I’m here to keep you safe, to protect you, you understand? I want you to trust me to keep you safe. They never caught the man who did this to you and we don’t know if you saw him or not. We don’t want to take the chance of him coming back. Can you remember what happened?”

Someone had been asking her those same questions every time she woke up for the past few days. She wanted to scream that yes, she had seen the person who hurt her, but no, she did not know how she came to still be alive. She had gathered from the talk around her that the story was someone had broken into her family’s home and tried to rob them while her parents were out spreading Christmas cheer in the neighborhood. And Ronnie, God bless her stupid little tough soul, had taken it upon herself to save her terrified little sisters from all manner of harm. For her troubles, Ronnie had gotten herself beaten to a bloody pulp and nearly killed. But she had saved the day, her sisters and Christmas, thank the Good Lord. If she could have, she was sure she would have puked.

Ronnie just stared at the policewoman. Trust? Who was this woman kidding? Trust? No, was not anything she would ever give again.

“My name is Officer Frey, Mary Frey. I want to help you. All right?” Ronnie may have been only six, but she was far from stupid. She did not blink at the officer, but had turned away and closed her eyes. She knew there was no help for her, not from this person, or anyone else. So, as she had every other time, she pretended to slip into the abyss of welcoming darkness and escapism.

Six months later, she was gone. Planning, hording foodstuffs, and pretending got her away.

~Chapter 6~

Ronnie woke with a start and looked over at the clock beside her bed and realized that it was only one o’clock in the morning. She got out of bed and took a shower. She knew from experience that she would not get any more sleep tonight. After leaving her bedroom, she made her way to the kitchen.

Ronnie baked when she was depressed. She baked cookies mostly, though sometimes, she would whip up a batch of cinnamon rolls or a cake or two. Ben always made sure there was at least two twenty-five pound bags of flour in the pantry and enough sweet add-ins that bakeries would be in awe. She pulled out the big bag and took it to the kitchen to work off some stress.

Ronnie did not need recipes to cook. She had been cooking since she was old enough to pull a chair over to the stove on her own. And she could dream up more concoctions that turned out perfectly than Ben could cook with step by step instructions. When Ben came into the kitchen later that morning, she looked up in surprise. She thought she had woken him up.

“I could smell the sweetness all the way upstairs. Is there anything for breakfast yet, or do I have to wait?” he asked her with a huge grin.

Ronnie looked up at the clock over the stove and was startled by the hour.

Ronnie looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time. She had been baking for nearly six hours and the room looked it.

There were cookies cooling on every flat surface of the room and some surfaces that were not. There were also trays and trays of stacked cookies, all decorated and iced. Peanut butter ones with white and dark chocolate drizzled on the top. Small sugar cookies decorated and dressed with sprinkles and hard frosting. No bakes had firmed up and were now ready for the containers, and tiny pecan tarts were golden brown and still warm from the oven. There was a batch of fresh cinnamon rolls topped with browned pecans rising in two pans near the warm oven, waiting to be baked for a breakfast treat. Coffee that turned on automatically dinged when she looked at it. It had just finished brewing.

“Oh, Ben, I’m so sorry. I’ll pay for all this. Maybe we can give them away for gifts or something. I was just going to bake a few then try and go back to bed. I’m so sorry.” She was crying and could not seem to be able to stop. Even with all the baking, her level of stress was very high.

“Oh, darling, don’t cry. You know we don’t want you to pay for this. Our employees enjoy the hell out of all this. I’ll go down to that container store today and pick up some really nice Christmassy sealable ones and you and I will divide them up into gifts. How many you think we’ll need? Five...maybe six hundred?” When she started to cry and laugh, Ben pulled her into his arms and held her. She loved these men. They were the best in the world. And she wanted to stay in Ben’s arms forever. The phone ringing did not stop them from their humor and Ben answered it full of silliness.

“Ronnie’s house of ill repute and baked goods, the place where, if you want it hot and naughty, then we have it for you. Head food taster Ben speaking.” She watched as he closed his eyes for a brief second then looked over at her and shook his head. Ronnie knew it was Mr. Grant even without him telling her so and started shaking her head as well.

“Yes, she’s here, but I’m not so sure she wants to talk to you right now. Why don’t you call back in a few years, preferably in about thirty? I can do that, but I guess you’ll need to ask that one yourself. Hang on.” He turned and put the phone on hold and looked at her. “He has some questions about your family and he said that you told him to call if he needed answers. How did he get that information, Ronnie?”

“He had his brother do a background check on me. But it was bound to come out sooner or later. I’m actually surprised that someone hadn’t mentioned it before now. Is he mad?”

“He doesn’t sound like it, but I could be wrong. Do you want to talk to him?

If not, you know I can take care of this for you.” And he would, too, she knew. But she had told Devin to contact her if he had questions. She just wondered if he would think of her differently, but then realized that he already did. She reached for the phone and pushed the hold button to talk.

“Mr. Grant. It’s Ronnie Frey. What can I do for you?”

“My name is Devin, Veronica. I have a few questions I’d like answered, if you have time. I’d really like to do this face to face instead of over the phone. Can you come by my office today? I have time this morning until eleven, then after three the rest of the day.”

“I have a test at ten and it runs until six tonight. I can leave after I’m finished, but I don’t know how long it will be. My Tuesday and Wednesday class is from nine until eleven, Mr. Grant. I think classes will be canceled for Friday, but I don’t know what the profs will do.”

“I want you to call me Devin. All right, I’ll see you here after your test today.

Veronica, I’ll expect you to be honest with me on this. I have your complete file and there are things I’d like to talk to you about before we begin our working relationship.”

“I’m always honest, unlike some people. I’ll come straight there after class, Mr. Grant.” And she hung up on him and whatever he had been saying.

~~~

He was laughing when he hung up. She was such a contradiction at times.

One minute, the hard nosed woman who could take on the world, the next, a girl who would call him “Mr. Grant” because she knew it would irritate him.

He looked down at the file again and the pictures spread out over his desk, and sobered. It was hard for him to equate the woman he knew now with the child in the photos. Picking up one particularly horrific one, he tried to see her face in the shot.

She looked broken. And the amount of blood was staggering. The doctor’s report meant nothing to him, but he read it anyway. She had had nearly every bone in her body broken and some more than once. The report said that she had been found in the back yard of the family home in a pit of some sort. It was believed that the person who had tried to rob the house when the adults had been away had taken her with him. Ronnie was not found until three days later by the neighbor’s dog sniffing around in the yard. She had been near death and had it not been for the extreme cold temperatures, she would have been.

Devin called his brother Damon and asked him to come down as soon as he could. Damon was in his office on the second floor of the Grant building and Devin remembered Damon telling him over the weekend that he was only going in this week to finish up some paper work and have the decorators come in and decorate the office for Christmas. He told Devin he would be down in ten minutes.

“I had Nicky start an investigation on the girl that I have working for me.

Veronica Frey. She has a closed file in her records that came to me this morning that no one but you and I know about. I want you to read this report and tell me if it’s as bad as I think it is.” He handed the thick file to his brother as Damon sat down.

“Am I doing something illegal, Devin?” Damon asked even as he opened up the file and began reading.

“No, it is a closed file, but she gave me permission to look into her past when she signed off on me doing a complete background check on her. She’s coming in later to answer some other things I have questions about. But this file...this one scares me, Damon. I’m hoping it’s not near as bad as I think it is.” While Damon read the report, Devin kept himself busy with emails and phone calls. It seemed the legal system did not take holidays. It was perhaps an hour later when Damon threw the file back on his desk.

“This girl, the one in the pictures and the file, it’s your waitress, isn’t it?” Devin did not bother correcting him about it being his waitress, but nodded that he was right. He wanted her to be his waitress and a whole lot more, but right now, he was not sure where they stood. He did, however, want this repost to be better than he thought it was. But he was pretty sure it was going to be worse.

Much, much worse.

“Yes. She works for me now, as an intern. She’ll graduate at the end of this quarter, in January.” He let his brother go at his own pace.

Damon was a processor and Devin knew that he had thrown a lot at him. He watched as Damon paced back and forth. He knew that his brother was a great doctor and something like this, child abuse at this level, would take some time to process.

“The medical records show a six-year-old little girl with enough wounds and injuries that would kill most kids, yet she is still alive. I doubt there is a bone in her body that had not been broken either by what those pictures show or prior to that. According to the records, she spent several months in physical therapy before she disappeared from the hospital one day. What do the records say happened to her and what caused that trauma to her body?”

“That she took on an intruder that was bent on robbing the house and harming her family. She single-handedly kept him from hurting her little sisters who were almost five at the time.”

“You don’t believe that any more than I do. Did you notice the reference to a single gunshot wound to the head? There was also gun residue on her left hand.

What does it say about that?”

“They have no idea, but they guess that she tried to shoot him and he shot back. Damon, what are you thinking?”

Devin hoped they were not on the same path, but he knew that his brother was thinking the same thing when he turned to look at him. Christ, that poor little girl.

“I believe she shot herself. Christ, Devin, she was six fucking years old, the same age as Meggie. I can’t imagine what could drive a child to feel the need to take such drastic measures that she would put a gun to her head and pull the trigger, could you? Was there no help for her? What about her family. Where were they during this time?”

“According to the report, they were out spreading Christmas cheer to the underprivileged. They returned to their home to find the front door broken in and Veronica gone. The little girls were safe and hiding in an upstairs closet where Veronica had told them to hide.”

“They left those children there alone! Christ! Spencer won’t even go to the mail box without finding a sitter for Meggie. I don’t believe that any more than I do the gun shot. Fucking bastard hurt her, didn’t he?” Devin could not say for sure, but he had a pretty good idea that he had.

Devin had never seen a case like this before. But knowing what he had found out about her family from the file Nicky had called him about, he thought the father had had a lot more to do with this than he had said.

“Damon, I like this girl. I like her a lot. She has something about her that draws me in. I’m not sure...she irritates me to the point where I want to strangle her, and other times to the point I want to…” He wanted her, but he could not tell his brother that, even though he was sure he got it.

“Is it because she is so different, or is it because she repels you so much?” Damon was laughing at him.

Devin bristled. Veronica did not repel him, not really. She was mad at him and he felt he deserved that, but repel? Nah, he would grow on her.