Accidental Family
Prologue

Copyright© 2022 by Graybyrd

Love Betrayed

It was a near-ludicrous contrast: Reese Adams, the six-foot, two-inch dusky-skinned half-breed youth squared off across the conference table facing a gaunt sallow-faced lawyer, thin strands of black hair pasted across his pale skull. The lawyer’s eyes, dark and sinister like the weasel the boy shot in his family’s chicken coop last Saturday, twitched and glanced down to the papers spread between himself and the boy — his target and victim — then flicked upward and bored into the boy’s confused eyes.

“You heard me right, Adams. Never! Never again, in any way whatsoever! Her family has removed her and forbidden her to ever contact you. These papers here,” and the lawyer pushed a clipped sheaf of legal documents towards the boy, “are a restraining order forbidding you to attempt any contact now and in future with Katherine Brewster, for any reason. If you violate this order the family has instructed me to seek prosecution for stalking and harassment against you to the fullest extent. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

“No!” Reese protested. “I want to know why? Why would they do this? We’re in love, since ... since grade school. We’re going to be married later this spring. We’ve graduated. We’re going to college together. I’ve already paid this year’s fees for both of us! Just tell me, why?”

“Look at yourself in a mirror,” the lawyer snarled. “You’ll see well-enough why!”


Justice Betrayed

The blinding headlights of the black Escalade sprayed across their faces seconds before it slammed sideways into the side of their car. For a brief second they glimpsed the face of their killer, his eyes wild, unfocused, panicked. The heavier vehicle tore free and scraped past but it was too late. The Adams’ sedan, wrenched from its course, slammed into the guard cable and uprooted the support posts. It hung there for a brief instant, then plunged and rolled sixty feet down into the river.

The white-water torrent, pinched and raging through a boulder-choked narrows, shoved and tumbled their car downstream until it came to rest hidden under thick ice covering a dark, still pool. Hidden there, it would be weeks before rescue crews would find it and summon heavy equipment to winch it free and recover their bodies.

Donald “DJ” Brewster lifted his bleeding head from the steering wheel. He saw nothing in the darkness but his own dash lights. He hung at an awkward angle from his seat belt. The wrecked SUV rested at a sharp downward pitch, hanging from a tree stump halfway down the ditch bank. He choked on hot radiator fumes and his own blood. His head, face, and mouth hurt like hell. He tried to touch his face but he was trapped in the safety belt, hanging helpless.

“Oooh God!” he moaned. His high of the night was gone. That curve ... he’d forgotten that curve, doing 80 into a 45 mph curve, jerking the steering wheel and breaking into a skid. He knew he would die, would drown in the river when he skidded off the curve. But then they were there. Their car. His SUV slammed sideways into them, glanced off them, caromed back across the highway into the opposite ditch. It saved his life. It cost them theirs.

Somehow he pulled his cell phone from its dash mount. Somehow he was twice-lucky. He wasn’t too far into the canyon. The number rang. It was Todd Jenkins, their ranch manager.

The ambulance crew secured DJ’s gurney to the floor clamps, checked the IV drip, and began their silent run down-river to the valley clinic. Todd waited by the wreck for the deputy sheriff. He’d take a few moments to instruct the deputy. Then he’d drive to the clinic and instruct the night crew there.

Chief deputy Colin Rogers gathered the evidence, the half-empty liquor bottle, the beer bottles, and bagged them. He considered for a fleeting moment whether he should retain the evidence for some future bargaining chip. Then he thought better of it. Too damn risky. I’d only be hanging myself, he decided. He tossed the bag into his cruiser. Later, on another stretch of river, he’d throw the bottles into the rapids and they’d sink and be swept away. No evidence, no crime.

Later that evening, Todd whispered to the valley clinic’s ambulance crew EMT who tucked a wad of large bills into his pocket: “No blood sample, no report, no crime!”


Service Betrayed

It was written up as a routine patrol. “Yeah, right! A routine patrol,” Captain Reese Adams snarled. “There’s no such thing as ‘routine’ and we damn sure weren’t on any patrol!”

He twisted his head, a reflex move too late to avoid the spray of sand kicked into his face. Bullets slammed into the berm beside his head and punched into Corporal Evans beside him, shattering the young soldier’s head. It sprayed Reese with blood and brain matter. Reese scurried sideways, raised slightly, and fired answering three-round bursts. Nothing to see out there. They’re so damned well sheltered, rooftops and firing holes and walls. We’re screwed. He pulled a rag from his vest and wiped his face. Smeared it, truth told.

“Anderson,” he yelled. “Where in hell’s that air cover?”

“Five minutes, Cap!” Sgt. Anderson shouted back.

“Fast movers or gun ships?”

“One Apache. That’s all.”

“Shit, shit, shit!” Reese swore, choking it under his breath. “Okay. Hang tough. How’s Bailey?”

“Uhhh ... hangin’ on, Cap. Hangin’ on.”

‘Yeah, hangin’ on. Can’t yell out that a man’s dying when he can still hear,’ Reese knew.

“Doc’s workin’ on ‘im?” Reese yelled.

“No. Doc’s down.”

Moments passed. Enemy fire harassed them. Reese answered with more three-round bursts, knowing it was futile.

A sudden thump-thump of heavy blades and the snarl of a chin-mounted chain gun shattered the air above them, roaring past and rising up in a high-reaching arc, sliding around to circle and spray the buildings with devastating fire raking from side to side. Mud brick walls shattered and collapsed. Men screamed. Sporadic rifle fire blinked and vanished under the hell-fire assault. A dark figure in tattered rags raced from between walls, jumped a fallen heap, and darted toward the doorway of a small side building. The hovering gunship swung its snout like a cat spying a mouse hole and loosed a side-mounted missile that streaked out to chase the man through the door. A billowing orange ball expanded and shattered the structure apart, up and out, the roof collapsing down between crazily tilted walls.

Even over the roar of the gunship Reese heard the sounds he’d prayed never to hear again: children screaming!

Ignoring the killing and the carnage Reese scrambled to his feet and ran to the building, forcing his way through a broken door, praying the wall wouldn’t fall on him. For the rest of his life his nightmares would replay the scene on the grief-stained screen of his mind: torn and shredded bodies, the stench of burned flesh and body parts and blood strewn everywhere. An old man, scorched, headless, his neck still weeping blood, sat sprawled back against the far wall. Scattered in the smoking rubble a circle of torn and lifeless children’s remains lay spread out before him. It had been a class. They’d thought themselves safe in their shelter until the fear-crazed fighter had dashed through their door chased by the missile streaking into their midst.

In the corner, crying, a small moving body drew his eye. Reese scrambled to kneel there and found a girl no more than eight years old. Her leg was gone at the knee, her out-reaching hand gashed and missing its fingers. Her tears streaked from sightless eyes down her burned and blistered cheeks. He pried open his aid kit and shoved a battle bandage against her spurting leg stump.

“MEDIC!” he screamed. “DOC! Here ... in here ... DOC!” he screamed again, forgetting that ‘Doc’ was down, dead, back in their battle line.

He held the trembling child in his arms, his hand trying to staunch the flow of blood weeping through the bandage. He looked down into her unblinking eyes, seeing them fade, go dull and lifeless. Her body twitched and shivered in death, and went still.

Reese jerked his head back and cried a wailing lament not sung since that boyhood summer tragedy, a grief song that poured out of him, an anguished death lament that he’d sung over his grandfather in the language of his mother’s people, the Nez Perce of the northern mountains.

Later, following mission debriefings, he was called into his commanding officer’s office.

“Captain Adams, there’ll sure as hell be NO REPORT forwarded from you, understand?” Colonel Johnston shouted. “It’s COLLATERAL DAMAGE and INSURGENTS KILLED! Nothing else! Dismissed!”


Family Betrayed

Thirty bundles of 100-dollar bills, $300,000, lay scattered on their bed where Shoo dumped it. Melody stood frozen in fear and anger; she dare not shout. The girls were supposedly asleep in their bunk beds in the bedroom just down the hall.

“If that’s what I think it is and if it came from the only place in this city where you could have gotten it, then you’ve just killed us all!” she hissed through her gritted teeth. “You stole that from Angelo, didn’t you? You stupid, stupid...” She turned in frustration, fighting the urge to scream, to throw up, to run from their rented trailer in the slum section of Las Vegas. She wanted to bash her fists against the wall, against Shoo’s face, against her head in frustration and fear and helplessness.

“Big f•©kin’ deal, bitch. He was called out into the street to settle a fight between Jimmy Rodd and two of his ho’s, screechin’ that they’d been hassled and slapped around by another pimp. The damn money was just layin’ there beside his desk, in that open bag. What the hell was I to do? If he didn’t want it stole he shouldn’t have left it open like that, there by itself. What the hell was I s’posed to do? Sit and watch it?”

“You stupid asshole! Do you think they’re just gonna let us go with their money?” she hissed, trying hard not to fall onto him screaming and biting and scratching the droopy, half-lidded eyes out of his face.

“Hell, no, bitch. He ain’t knowin’ where we live! You git the girls packed up and some clothes and stuff. I’m goin’ out to boost a van. Be ready when I git back. We gonna git from this place and they won’t be knowin’ where we be goin’. So shut your mouth and do as I said.

“Jeezus, jeezus, jeezus, we’re dead, f•©kin’ dead. Oh God that stupid f•©kin’ asshole,” Melody moaned while she ransacked the girls’ dressers and closet, grabbing clothes and stuffing them into two suitcases.

“What’s wrong, mommy?” little Bug, her youngest daughter, called from her lower bunk, half asleep and rubbing her eyes. Her oldest sister, Nita, the 13-year-old, stared wordlessly down from the bunk above.

“We gotta go, girl. We gotta run. All of you, get up and be quick. Go to the bathroom, all of you and grab your toothbrushes and combs and stuff and dump ‘em in this bag. Hurry! We gotta run...”

Melody set out bowls of cold cereal and poured the last of the milk that hadn’t soured yet and sat the girls around the table to eat. She sat brooding over a cup of black coffee, thick and bitter from sitting too long on the burner. She thought hard about what was coming.

She jumped to her feet and ran into the girls’ bedroom and there on the floor under Bug’s bed was the stuffed Tigger doll that Bug always carried around by its tail.

She ran with it into her bedroom where the pile of cash bundles lay heaped and scattered. She grabbed two of the half-inch thick packs and from atop the dresser she grabbed her sewing kit. With trembling fingers she snipped the threads in the stuffed toy’s belly seam, pulled out a double-wad of stuffing, and shoved the money packs inside, pressing them down. She packed some stuffing back in to cover them and then, rushing, praying she had time, she threaded a needle and sewed the center seam shut. She picked up the toy, kneaded and squeezed its body to ensure that the stuffing had disguised the feel of the money packs. It felt okay. She breathed a big sigh of relief.

They’d have to abandon her precious girls: Nita, thirteen, the eight-year-old twins, and Lucella Louise, her ‘snugglebug’ four-year-old. They’d leave them with her mother in central Nevada, else they’d be killed if the drug gang caught up with her and Shoo. The money, those hidden packs, would eventually be found inside the toy and would help make up for her sorry mistaken life. She hoped.

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