F*ck Club: Con Read online

  Her mouth spasmed. “Bastard.”

  “Ambulance. Get back, Steele, ma’am.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “How is she?”

  Con looked up from the magazine he’d been pretending to read. So far, he’d made it past the perfume ad on the inner cover and he figured he’d been staring at the table of contents for maybe twenty minutes.

  Shawntelle sat in front of him, her face sober.

  He’d call his brother and Riley said he’d take care of letting the others know.

  Kyle was dead. Some women would probably sleep easier.

  But Carla Hopewell, a nice woman, a good cop, was still in surgery. “Her husband came by earlier. The bullet hit the femoral artery. She’s already had to be given blood.”

  Shawntelle looked down at her folded hands. “I’m sorry. If I’d known…” She sighed and looked away.

  “How do you know— How did you know Mobley?”

  She flinched at the sound of his name and she was quiet for so long, he started to wonder if she would answer him at all.

  “He’s…he was my brother.” She looked back at him, a faint smile on her face. “My step-brother. His dad was married to my mom for nearly ten years.”

  Of all the things Con had been expecting to hear, that was the very last thing.

  “Excuse me— What?”

  “You heard me. I was five when they got married. Kyle was a few years older than me. We didn’t know it, but the abuse had already been going on with him, probably from day one. It wasn’t bad at first, really.” She lifted a shoulder. “Then, when it started, it was so subtle, I didn’t know how to handle it. Mama was happy again, so I was quiet when I shouldn’t have been. I…” She stopped and bit her lip. “I don’t want to talk about everything that happened. I just…can’t. Not now anyway. But Kyle was turning out just like his father. She’d caught him watching her in the shower and when she tried to send him to his room and he slapped her. She was so stunned, she couldn’t even think. But he went to do it again and…well, she wasn’t so stunned then. Mama was…well, she was an amazon and no eleven-year-old punk was going to do that to her. She confronted David—that was Kyle’s father—later that night and he…” She licked her lips. “He beat her. Bad. I was too afraid to do anything because he’d been hurting me in small ways for years at that point.”

  She sucked in a breath, then blew it out in a hard, heavy puff. “Damn. I haven’t talked to anybody about this in a long, long time. The next day, while Kyle was at school and David was at work, my mama packed up everything that was ours. She came and got me, signed me out of school and we left. She filed for divorce from two states away, while we were living with her brother. He’s a cop in Ohio. David tried to come get us…once. And he brought Kyle. It didn’t go as planned.”

  Con gripped the arms of the chair. It was that or get up and hit something, and he doubted that would help.

  He didn’t doubt a single word she said.

  “He moved with his dad the next year, from Louisville to Bardstown. I didn’t hear from him until my mama died. He came to the funeral, told me all this bullshit about how sorry he was for the way things went when we were younger. I didn’t believe any of it. I’d gotten counseling, believed myself to be a survivor, but I listened and nodded along, just so he would shut up and leave.”

  Another lapse into silence and Con waited, listening to each ragged breath. She got up to pace and each circuit took her farther away from him.

  “When he got arrested, he called me again. Told me he knew all about my career and that he needed my help. Needed me to help prove that you and your brother were just a couple of sick, lying dogs, and that the women all lied about him because you asked.”

  Con stiffened.

  As if she sensed his response, Shawntelle turned to face him. “I had no intention of doing any of it, Con. All I ever wanted to do was get him to leave me alone. I told him no at first, but he kept calling and calling. So I said I’d talk to you all. And I thought maybe I’d dig around, see if I could find out more about him. I wanted to talk to Brianna, if I could, get her story, because I am good at what I do. I tell the story from the side of the survivor and make people see them for who they are—and people would have hated Kyle even more by the time I was done. It would have been my petty revenge against him.”

  “Bree doesn’t need to be used like that.” Con had ridden the roller coaster of emotions in the past few minutes and he was worn out from it. Now all he felt was exhaustion.

  “I know. And I was…” She stopped, looking away.

  “You were what?” When she was still silent, he came up out of the chair, moving toward her. “Was it getting harder to bullshit that psycho brother? What?”

  “I was getting too damn attracted to you!” she snapped. “I couldn’t keep lying to you or myself. So I had to end all of it.”

  The words were as effective as a slap.

  “You…” He hesitated, because there was too much unsaid, too much left exposed.

  And before he could figure just what they should do or if they should even try, the door opened and a nurse called out his name. “Carla’s out of surgery, Con. Her husband wanted me to let you know.”

  He dropped into a chair, his eyes closing as relief washed over him.

  When he opened them, Shawntelle was gone.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Her house was empty.

  Sometime in the past three days, Shawntelle had completely removed any trace of her time in Bardstown.

  Con had tried bribing her landlord for any information on her, but the man had nothing to tell him. “She paid first and last month’s rent in cash, as well as the security deposit with no whining. She left with two weeks still to go before she had to pay again and she didn’t even ask about getting the money back.” Tim Hook had shrugged and said, “Now I’ve got a couple coming in to the look at the house, so if you’ll excuse me.”

  He even had a valid reason for needing to find her, if somebody asked.

  The checking account she’d used in town had been closed and all funds emptied out. Now they had no way to pay her the final check—it had been in direct deposit, but now?

  They were required to try to find her, right?

  That was what he told himself as he parked his ass in a chair in front of a skinny bastard by the name of Roger Handy.

  Roger and Con were friends. They’d been in each other’s classes almost all throughout school. Roger had been a skinny, nervous dork pretty much his entire life and he’d been a prime target for bullying.

  Con had been primed for troublemaking even then so it hadn’t been much of a problem for him to throw in with the skinny red-haired kid when a couple of older kids pushed Roger down and sent his books and his Pokémon cards flying back in fifth or six grade. Con couldn’t even remember.

  But he’d waded in, thrown a few punches, gotten punched back.

  Then Riley had shown up and those two older kids had gotten their asses handed to them.

  Riley, Con and those older kids had gotten in trouble.

  Roger had collected his cards, and later had offered one of the rare ones to Con as a thank you.

  They’d been friends since.

  But that friendship wasn’t helping Con out much now. “Look, man, I’m just trying to find her so I can give her her last paycheck,” he insisted, glaring at Roger.

  Roger sat behind his desk, dressed in the stiff uniform of the Bardstown Police Department. Personally, Con hadn’t been surprised that he’d applied for the job after graduating. He’d mentioned it quite a few times, said that after he got some job experience, he wanted to apply to the state police, or maybe bigger, and focus on forensics. But he had to have experience first.

  Rumor had it, he was going to put in for detective soon.

  Con had no doubt he’d make it, either.

  Roger was stubborn, principled and smart.

  But those principles were pissing him off just then.
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  “I can’t help you out, Con. It’s not ethical.” Roger shook his head. “If you want, I can see if I can reach out and pass the message on. If she’s okay with passing the info on, then I’ll do that. Or maybe she’ll request that I just take the check and mail it.”

  “That won’t be ethical on my side,” Con fired back.

  “Oh, please. You know you can trust me.” Roger didn’t even bother to look insulted.

  Con sighed and leaned back in his chair, staring upright. “Come on, Rog.”

  “I can’t.” His voice soft with regret, Roger said it with sincerity. “I’ve…”

  There was a deliberate hesitation in the words that had Con looking back at him. “Look, I…let certain things go because…well, closed doors, consenting adults. Etc.”

  Con narrowed his eyes as he realized what Roger was saying. Yeah, he’d figured a few people in town had clued into what he, Riley and Shame did.

  But Roger?

  “But there are some lines I can’t cross. Not even for a close friend. If she wanted you to know where she was going, she would have told you.” Roger shook his head. “I can’t help you. You’ll have to figure this out on your own.”

  * * * * *

  Figure it out on my own. More than three weeks later, he was still trying to do just that, but he was coming up short.

  Shawntelle had appeared practically out of nowhere and now she’d disappeared into the same nowhere.

  Her jobs had been scattered across the eastern states down to the southern part of the country, as had her education.

  He tried checking to see if she listed a place of residence on her Twitter profile or Facebook. She was a fucking pop-culture celebrity. Why shouldn’t she?

  But nope.

  That info wasn’t posted.

  He crawled through tweets.

  He dug through her Facebook.

  Mentions would be made of where she went for research, but that was after the fact.

  The past few months, her feed had been silent.

  The last tweet, posted at the top, read: Taking some time away. Be back when I can.

  It had almost a thousand follow-ups, everything ranging from: Miss you, S! to Come back with something awww-summmm!

  Then the responses started to turn, You been gone a long time. Where are you? And more persistent, bordering on rude. You ever gonna come back? This ain’t how you treat fans!

  “You’re turning into a stalker, brother mine.”

  The voice, low and amused, came from behind him. He didn’t even glance up as Charli came around and dropped down opposite him. She gave him a wry look, one brow arched.

  “What?”

  She held out her hand.

  He scowled at her.

  She snatched the phone away.

  Granted, he didn’t really try to stop her, so it wasn’t hard.

  She studied the screen and when she started to flick, he closed his eyes and asked, “What are you doing?”

  “Looking at your history for oh…the past…damn, you are turning into a stalker. You’ve been visiting her Twitter page every day for almost two weeks. And her Facebook… Shit.”

  She lowered the phone and stared at him.

  “What?” He started to squirm uncomfortably, hoping she hadn’t accessed his photo gallery. It wasn’t that big of a deal. So what if he’d gone and downloaded a couple of her pictures. He’d had a thing with her. Kind of missed her.

  Why shouldn’t he have a picture or two?

  “I just sent her a friend request from your Facebook. Since you haven’t.” She shrugged and slid out of the booth before putting his phone down and pushing it across the table to him.

  “You…wait, what?”

  He came out of the booth, glaring at her.

  “You heard me. You should have already tried that route, Con. Instead of this passive-aggressive, maybe-I-can-track-her-down-and-call-her shit.”

  “Hey! I’m not being passive-aggressive,” he said, affronted.

  “Oh, so you didn’t go and talk to Roger about seeing if he could help you track her down? You didn’t go to a cop to help you stalk her?” To his surprise, Charli looked like was about ready to start laughing. Her eyes crinkled and a smile twitched at the corners of her lips.

  She looked…happy.

  It had been a while since she’d looked happy.

  And he’d been so caught up in his own misery, he hadn’t even noticed.

  Abruptly, he reached for her and tugged her close. “Are you okay?”

  Neither of them had talked about what had happened between her and Shame.

  But in that moment, he knew she’d figured out that he knew.

  She sighed and slid her arms around his waist, hugging him. “I’ve reached for the stars all my life, Con. I’ve been lucky, and usually I touch them. I get what I want. This one time…well, it’s not going to happen.” She kissed his cheek. “Maybe that’s why you need to reach for the stars. Stop being a pussy. Stop dancing around this and find her.”

  Then she slipped out of his arms and left.

  * * * * *

  Shawntelle didn’t accept the friend request.

  Con wasn’t going to let it get him down.

  He told himself that every day, and every day he felt himself sinking lower and lower. But still, he wasn’t down. Not really.

  He was just pissed off and irritated.

  And he wasn’t going to let it get him down.

  He was still insisting that was the case a week later when Charli abruptly announced she needed a ride to the airport.

  Charli was already out in front of the house, waiting for him when he pulled up. He started to tease her about being impatient, but then he got a good look at her.

  She was…pale. Beyond pale. There were shadows under her eyes and if he wasn’t mistaken, she’d lost weight since he’d seen her just a week earlier.

  “Are you sick?”

  “No.” She sounded tired and his concern only grew. She’d held up under the pressures of medical school, then internship with quiet determination.

  Now she looked…frail.

  The idea of his ball-busting kid sister looking frail unsettled him.

  “Are you sure? You look…rough.”

  “I’ve had a rough few weeks, Con,” she said shortly. Gesturing at the suitcase, she asked, “Do you mind carrying that? I hurt my back at work.”

  “Okay.” He took that and followed along behind her, still not entirely certain he believed her.

  But on the drive, she seemed to relax, color washing into her cheeks. A few minutes after they pulled onto the interstate, she asked about Riley and Bree and Toby and the tension faded.

  Just a few miles outside of Louisville, she asked if he’d heard from Shawntelle, and there was a smug little smile that lifted his heart more than anything else had in a while.

  “You’ve talked to her, haven’t you?” he demanded.

  But she wouldn’t answer, not even when he begged.

  “Just be patient, okay?” she said, turning her attention to the traffic gathering on I-65 as they drew closer to Louisville International Airport.

  He muttered under his breath, something that normally would have made her laugh. But she just smiled again, then sighed.

  “What’s going on with you, Charli? What’s with the abrupt trip? I thought you couldn’t take time off until you were done with your internship?”

  “I…” She hesitated a moment, then shook her head. “Normally, I wouldn’t be able to, but…well, I’m taking it. I don’t want to talk about it, okay?”

  Because he understood the need for solitude sometimes, he reached over and took her hand. “You know he cares about you.”

  “It’s not…” She swore, her fingers tightening around his hand. “It’s not just about Max, okay? There is some other shit. And I don’t want to talk about it, okay?”

  The rest of the drive passed in silence and as he helped her unload her luggage, he pretended not t
o notice her red eyes. Charli would let him know when she wanted to talk. He took the suitcase to the porter and tipped him ten bucks to make sure he’d get it to the right place so Charli wouldn’t have to do anything with it.

  Then, turning to his sister, he caught her up in a hug. “Be good, Charli.”

  “When am I ever not?” She sounded sad, then squeezed him back. “If…hell, I’m probably fooling myself, but if he asks about me, you don’t know where I am.”

  Con pulled back, gaping at her. “He’d never believe that. Besides, I can’t lie to Shame. He’s my best friend.”

  “And I’m your sister.” She gave him a dark look. “Please. For me.”

  He would have argued, but the misery, and the determination in her eyes, left him stumped. He’d never once felt torn between the guy he loved like a brother and his baby sister, but he did now.

  Charli, though, was his sister.

  “Okay.” He gave her a short nod and said it again, reassuring them both. “Okay, then.”

  “Thanks, Con.” She kissed his cheek and caught her carryon in one hand. Without looking back, she headed off into the airport.

  He had the damnedest feeling he needed to go after her, figure out what she wasn’t telling him. But it wouldn’t do any good. She wouldn’t talk until she was ready.

  So he headed back home, restless and edgy and wishing he could jump on a plane himself, jump on a plane and go…anywhere. No. Not anywhere.

  To Shawntelle.

  The only problem was, he had no idea where to find her.

  Just outside of Bardstown, sitting at a stoplight, he checked the email on his phone.

  The first thing he saw was the tweet notification in his email.

  Yes. He was pathetic. He’d set it so that he’d get a notification if she so much as tweeted.

  Swiping his thumb so he could read the message, he ground his teeth, his heart hammering.

  The horn blasted from the car behind him and had him swearing.

  The email was still loading, too.