“Just hit the call button if you need anything else.”
“Wait,” I rasp before she can leave the room. “I need to make a phone call.”
She looks from me to the phone on the table beside the hospital bed before walking up and holding out her cell phone. “Long-distance calls from the hospital are billed at an astronomical rate. Use mine. You’ve been through enough already. I’ll come back and get it in a while.”
Tears are once again streaking down my face at her kindness. I had given up on the world so many times in the last couple of days. I was certain there wasn’t a decent human being left, but she just proved me wrong.
I clutch the phone to my chest as I cry, needing a few minutes to get it out of my system before I place my call. When the flow of tears begins to taper off, I dial one of the few numbers I’ve committed to heart.
“Hello?” The phone is answered on the first ring, and it tells me that she’s so worried, she’s not screening her calls like she normally would be.
“Aunt Diane?”
“Oh God! Gracie, is that you?”
“It’s me,” I assure her. I know my voice right now is nothing like it normally is.
“Where are you? Oh God, are you okay?”
“I’m in Nebraska. I’m safe.”
“You were taken. The police showed me the video. I’ve been scared to death, worried about what was happening to you.”
“I’m okay.”
“I’m coming. Tell me what hospital and I’m coming.”
“You don’t need to do that,” I whisper, knowing she’s terrified of flying. She did it once before after getting a call from social services when I was a little girl, and she’s avoided it ever since.
“Did Kincaid find you?”
I freeze, having not heard that name in years.
“What?”
“Cerberus. They’ve been looking for you. I didn’t know who else to call. The police here didn’t seem helpful, so I called Kaleb.”
Kaleb Perez, the man my parents tried to destroy by kidnapping his girlfriend and locking her away in a closet in my childhood home for days. My parents died the day Cerberus found her, a consequence of their twisted actions. Diego Anderson, also known as Kincaid, the president of the Cerberus MC, is Kaleb’s cousin. His team was called in from New Mexico to Denver to assist in searching for her.
“I haven’t seen them,” I tell her, suddenly overcome with more emotions than my body can handle. “I have to go, Aunt Diane. I’ll call you again soon.”
I end the call, dropping the borrowed cell phone to my lap.
I’ve tried for years to forget about Kincaid and his crew who raided the house I lived in as a child. Those memories always gut me, and not because my parents died that day. Getting away from them was the best thing that ever could’ve happened to me. My guilt was always from knowing that Josie Bennett was locked in a closet inside the house, and I knew about it from day one. They didn’t find her for sixteen days. Granted, I eventually told Misty, a woman that worked at my school that she was there, but it took over two weeks for me to build enough courage to defy my parents.
The sickness I always feel when thinking about that time begins to swirl around in my gut once again. I hate being so weak. Despite the gratefulness they all expressed with me coming forward, I’ve always felt like I betrayed them by waiting so long.
My eyes close, weariness taking over as I imagine Cerberus looking for me with the same ferocity they looked for Josie. She deserved it. I’m not so sure I did.
Thankful that woman left me alone instead of stabbing me to death sits in the back of my mind. I can’t really say I saved myself because it was her mercy that is allowing me to lie in the hospital bed, but I’m grateful I don’t owe anything to Cerberus. I don’t think I could live with what happened to me and have to show gratitude to a team of men who feel gracious for something I barely had the courage to do over twenty years ago.
I know the psychology of it. I know that kids are malleable and less likely to snitch on parents even when there’s abuse and neglect in the home. I know I would never blame a child for being afraid to speak out on something like that, but that doesn’t negate the guilt I still feel to this very day.
The door opens, but I’m just too tired to open my eyes.
“Thank you for letting me use your phone,” I tell the nurse, but it’s a male’s throat clearing.
I lift my eyelids, blinking rapidly at the person standing just inside of my room. Maybe she gave me more than just Tylenol because my mind is playing tricks on me.