Hallowed Ground (12 page)

“He forgot to what, Rondelle?”

“Never mind. He scared me. I never felt so ...”

Dirty. Helpless. Used.

“So stupid. I shoulda known better.” She cleared her throat. “Anyway, you get the picture.”

A picture I didn’t want.

“And so did I. I got the picture.” At my baffled look she said, “You ever noticed all them cameras in casinos watching everything goin’ on?”

I nodded.

“They’re even upstairs. They change them disks every twenty-four hours but they gotta keep records for seven days.”

My mouth dropped. “The whole thing is on disk?”

“Yep. He got so riled up he forgot ‘bout the security camera.” Her voice trickled to a whisper.

“But I didn’t forget. I’ll never forget.”

I forced myself to focus on the details, not the distress in her every movement. “How’d you get the disk?”

She fidgeted. “Lifted it from the security room.”

“By yourself? Weren’t the security guards suspicious?”

“Nah. I’d been hangin’ out with them ever since I started the job. Nice guys. Lonely. Told me more than they shoulda about the security system. I knew those upstairs cameras were on a different video feed. Little Joe didn’t like no one checkin’ up on him so the monitors in the security room were always off.

“Plus, since I worked the cage and was around money all the time I had security clearance to be in there. They didn’t have no reason not to trust me. Nobody ever goes back and checks them disks anyway. Especially the ones from upstairs.”

“Where is the disk now?”

“Safe.”

“Like Chloe is safe?”

Her chin drooped to her chest and I felt like a total bitch.

I softened my tone. “Rondelle, this is beyond dangerous.”

“I know. That’s why I wanna ask you something important.”

A strange foreboding seized me: This case would change drastically in the next ten seconds.

“Stop lookin’ for Chloe for a couple of days.”

Wasn’t expecting that.

“After, when you find her, call me and I’ll disappear with her for awhile.”

I thought about Donovan, fighting for his life in the hospital. How would he feel if he woke up and realized he might never see his daughter again? Wouldn’t he rather have her gone, than dead? How could I possibly have a hand in making that decision?

“Can I ask you something?” she said softly.

“I guess.”

“Who’s the one person you’d trust with your life? Trust to do the right thing by you no matter what?”

I didn’t hesitate. “Sheriff Tom Richards.”

“Yeah? Why him? ’Cause he’s a cop?”

“No. Because his sense of right and wrong is black and white. Mine isn’t. That’s why I had to stop working for him, but I’d put my life in his hands any day.”

What did it say for my partnership with Kevin that his name wasn’t at the top of my list?

“I only got one other person I can rely on.”

The way she worded the sentence led me to believe she’d decided to put her faith in me. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Back up. Why am I on the short list?”

Her doe-like eyes held trust I didn’t want and sure as hell hadn’t earned.

“Because you didn’t roll over for Tony or Harvey or Donovan, or for me for that matter. But mostly because you understand what it’s like.”

Despite the balmy night my blood ran cold. Not rape.
It.

Jesus. How the hell had she recognized the victim in me when I tried so damn hard to keep her hidden?

“I keep tellin’ myself it ain’t so bad.” Sour laughter followed. “I’m sure he don’t think he did nothin’ wrong since I’d been with him before. But not like that. I’d never let him do that to me.”

Rondelle was a lot tougher than I was, facing her rapist after the fact.

“How do you deal with it?” Her staccato breath cut the balmy air as she toed the gravel with her girlish pink tennis shoe.

I could lie, or deny, but I heard myself saying, “The usual. I drink. Smoke. Pretend it never happened.”

“What a coincidence. Me too.”

The parallels between us hit me then. Left motherless. Floating through life with sporadic support. But she’d turned on her brother and I’d turned to mine.

“Rondelle—”

“Please. Don’t say no. I need your help. If somethin’ comes up, promise you’ll call my friend, the one I trust. He’s the only one who can get in touch with me.”

“Why would he trust
me
?”

“He won’t. Not until you give him the code word.”

Rondelle had code words and escape routes set up? Crap. I felt myself sinking deeper.

If Martinez found out all the lies Rondelle told, and that I was covering for her . . . I couldn’t think about that. Chloe was her kid. She did have a right to make decisions for her, more so than Harvey or Tony, no matter who was paying the bills.

That attack of conscience dealt with, I snagged a notebook and pen from inside my purse. “Write it down.”

She scribbled, then held the notebook tightly to her chest. “Who’s gonna see this?”

“Just me. I’ll transfer the information to my computer at the office just as soon as I leave here.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

“Okay.” Rondelle’s chin trembled. “This is really, really important. Don’t talk to no one ’bout this. If anyone calls you or contacts you and claims to be my friend, don’t believe ’em. I ain’t got no friends.”

Sorrow punched a hole in my heart. So young to be without hope and so alone. “Have you told me everything?”

“Everything you need to know for now.” She passed me the notebook. I looked at the single word she’d written:
tiblo
. Lakota for brother. Shivers raced down my spine.

What else could I say? I handed her a business card. “If you need anything, or think of anything else, call me. Day or night.”

“Thanks,” she whispered as she disappeared into the night like smoke, just like Harvey.

Maybe they were more alike than she cared to admit.

I stopped at the office and transferred the information Rondelle had given me into my computer.

Kevin hadn’t been in his office, but I suspected he would be later. I updated the case and whined about having to face my father without him.

Paperwork done, alarm reset, I headed straight to Jasper’s.

Music and beer did make for interesting distractions, but I wasn’t in the party mood after talking to Rondelle. I left early and went home alone.

The next morning, coffee and a shower stimulated my brain cells, but didn’t exactly speed me along to start my day. I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror debating on whether I should bother with make-up. Depending on my dad’s mood, he’d either tell me I looked like a whore or like my dead mother.

Around 12:30 Kell called. “I’m going hiking with T-Rex today.”

Kell’s friend T-Rex was a total loser. His (usually illegal) excursions into the great outdoors involved a cooler of beer, loud tunes, and minimal physical activity.

I didn’t use a hiking trip as an excuse to party. It saved my sanity, spiriting me away from my mental demons.

Female laughter echoed in the receiver and Kell managed an offhand, “Maybe we can hook up later.”

Maybe not. Maybe it was time to admit Kell and I were over.

I couldn’t put off the trip to my dad’s any longer.

The county road to the ranch ran parallel to Bear Butte. It bisected the new gravel road leading to the casino. Increased traffic also increased the amount of dust, even way out here. With my windows rolled up and the vents shut, red motes swirled inside my Sentra, making me cough and leaving a powdery residue on everything.

I held my breath until I passed the grove of dead cottonwood trees marking the turnoff to my dad’s place. Good practice since I figured I’d be holding my breath a lot today.

Scrub oaks lined the rutted lane. I pulled into the yard next to the machine shed, a habit from my teen years.

After my mother’s death, my dad had started over. Sold the only home I’d ever known in Rapid City and bought a ranch in Bear Butte County. I knew he’d been raised on a farm, but I hadn’t had a clue he intended to return to that rural lifestyle. Not that living anywhere in South Dakota isn’t a rural experience.

I didn’t adjust well to life on the ranch. My father didn’t care. He wouldn’t let me do outside chores. Instead, I cooked, cleaned, and undertook more household responsibilities than should be expected of a grieving young girl.

After a year of hard labor, I’d decided if Dad expected me to act like an adult, then I’d take on an adult persona. I started smoking. Drinking. Lost my virginity at age sixteen in the back seat of a Pontiac Firebird to a guy twelve years older than me.

I liked the rebellious Julie.

My father hadn’t.

More and more often he began to give his opinion on my new transformation with his fists. He’d been stingy with physical punishment before my mom had died, waiting until she’d left the house. Then he’d find some sign of disobedience and mete out my discipline with his belt or his hands or whatever was close by.

Clever man that he was, he’d warned me that if I cried to mommy, the next time the punishment would double in severity. I never doubted him. Out of some perverse need to protect my mother from the ugly truth about the monster she’d married, I managed to hide the bruises, and the utter shame.

The punishment was always worse after Ben had been around.

After Mom died all safety parameters vanished.

Kevin began to believe I had turned into the world’s biggest klutz—until one spring night when he came out to the ranch and found me beaten, lying on the kitchen floor.

I’d convinced him not to call 911, begged him not to tell, afraid that somehow my father would destroy our friendship if anyone knew the truth about his violent streak.

Kevin had cleaned and bandaged me and let me cry. But he warned me if it happened again, he’d tell his father—a real threat since at that time Kevin’s dad was a cop with the RCPD.

Of course it happened again. Kevin never knew. He also hadn’t known that night he’d come to my rescue I’d fallen a little bit in love with him.

The screen door on the porch banged open, startling me from the past. I glanced out the car window and waved to Brittney, my father’s ten-year old daughter. Her twelve-year old brother, DJ—short for Doug Junior, naturally—wasn’t on the welcoming committee. He didn’t like me any more than I liked him.

DJ was the spitting image of my father right down to the mean, cold blue stare, black hair, and temper. Brittney favored her mother, Trish, in appearance. Frizzy copper curls, pale green eyes, her square face spotted with freckles. She seemed a nice enough girl, but I hadn’t gone out of my way to befriend her, either.

I suppose that made me a hypocrite. Maybe it was resentment. I knew my father’s wife would never let him treat their kids the way he’d treated me. Their lives, their perception of our father, was one I’d never share and certainly never understand.

I climbed out of the car, stopping to admire a yellow rose bush bursting with blooms. Trish had spruced up the sixty-year old farmhouse and made the ideal ranch wife. She gardened, canned, cooked, and liked being hauled out of bed at two in the morning when a blizzard threatened the livestock.