His sister. His f**king sister.

Chace was right. There was a sibling. All he’d done was for her.

Faye leaned heavily into the side of his back and whispered, “My sister.”

Then he felt her body buck and he knew she was fighting tears.

Chace had to hope she could hold it together as he leaned back a bit to give her the cue, she took her weight from him and he crouched low.

“Rebecca’s got no shoes on, Malachi. It’s cold, snowy and muddy. Can I carry her home?” he asked.

Malachi looked at Chace then twisted his neck to look at his sister then he looked back at Chace and nodded.

Chace carefully lifted one hand toward Rebecca, she cowered back behind Malachi and whimpered.

Malachi’s scratchy voice came back. “It’s okay, Becky.”

“Doan wanna,” she murmured.

More of Malachi’s rough, quiet whisper. “He got me a sleeping bag.”

“Doan wanna.”

“He’s nice.”

“Doan wanna!”

“Becky, honey, look at me.”

This came from Faye who had moved and was now crouching beside Chace.

She spoke again when Becky peered fearfully from around Malachi.

“I’m Faye. This is Chace,” she motioned to him then she tipped her head up to Deck so both kids tilted their heads way back to look at Deck. “That gentle giant is Jacob Decker. It’s cold, sweetheart, and you need some food in your belly.” At the mention of food, Becky’s eyes shot back to Faye and, at what this said, Chace’s gut twisted. “You can walk with us, of course, but we’d get you warmed up and food in you a lot faster if you let Chace carry you.”

There was nothing then, softly, “Gentle giant?”

“Yeah, he’s big but he’s sweet,” Faye told her.

“What’s he?” Becky asked, pressing into Malachi but jerking her chin to Chace.

“He’s a white knight on a fiery steed except his steed comes in the form of an SUV and it’s not fiery. It’s burgundy.”

Becky kept pressing into her brother then she whispered, “Did he buy Miah a sleeping bag?”

Miah?

Faye wisely didn’t question the name. She just answered, “Yes, honey, he got him a sleeping bag and camp cutlery and candy bars and energy drinks and lots of stuff. That’s what white knights do. They save damsels in distress but they also look after kids who don’t have it very good.”

Becky’s eyes moved over Chace in the moonlight.

Then slowly she shifted out from behind Malachi, took two steps toward him and lifted her hand his way. Moving carefully, Chace reached out toward her.

Her little, pale fingers curled around his.

He cautiously moved forward and slowly swung her up in his arms.

Then he whispered, “Let’s get them home,” and moved swiftly through the wood.

“Take my hand, sweetheart,” he heard from behind him and he knew Faye was looking after Malachi but Chace didn’t miss a step.

But when her little, trembling body caught his attention, he stopped, put her down gently, shrugged off his jacket, wrapped it low around her in an effort to cover her legs and feet and lifted her back up.

While he was doing that, he heard Deck ask Malachi, “Piggyback?” which meant if Deck carried Malachi, they could keep up.

The scratchy voice came back, a hint of excitement in it, “Yeah.”

Chace forged through the forest hearing them coming after him.

After five minutes he heard Deck’s, “Gentle giant?”

Then he heard Faye’s, “Shut up.”

He did not smile. The girl in his arms was freezing, dirty, underfed and her brother just saved her from some unknown “she” who was at the town meeting.

Five minutes later he heard Deck’s, “White knight on a fiery steed?”

Then he heard Faye’s, “Deck, shut… up.”

Then he heard Malachi’s laugh.

Only then did he smile.

But it was not a big one.

* * * * *

Chace forced himself to drive slower than the speed limit on his way to the hospital. He did this to give himself time to control his fury.

He’d just left the Station. They were processing Enid Eglund for homicide and kidnapping while her sister Mary blustered to the Cap in the reception area.

As she did, Tate, Ty, Deke, Bubba, Wood, Max and Deck as well as half the Carnal police officers looked on with varying expressions of disgust. Chace was angry, having difficulty controlling it but still he knew those men were there and not home with their women because they were worried they’d have to help him keep a hold on his shit.

He finally left when Ty broke into Mary’s harangue, clearly a woman with a little power who thought she had a lot more and it was backed by God, and he did it with, “Bitch, give it up. Your whackjob of a sister isn’t gonna fry even though she should, but she is gonna pay. You talkin’ yourself sick and borin’ everyone to death is not gonna stop it.”

Mary glared at him, visibly fighting the urge to lash out but wisely not doing it considering it would have no effect, not to mention the fact that Ty was a six foot seven powerhouse and there were very few who had the courage to give him lip and fewer still were women. Lexie was one of the only ones he knew who did it and did it with regularity. That and the way she looked, Chace reckoned, were the reasons she warmed his bed with his baby inside her.

At this point, however, Chace decided he was done and mumbled to Frank that he was out of there.

Then he got the f**k out of there.

After getting the kids out of the wood, they’d taken Rebecca to the hospital first. While they checked on her, with Deck and Silas close (Faye was in with Becky), he’d spoken to Malachi, or, as they’d learned, Jeremiah and got the story as Jeremiah told it haltingly in his scratchy voice.

Jeremiah and his sister had been kept by a woman called Enid in her basement. They rarely saw the light of day and only when she forced them to do chores in her garden. They had little to eat. They were lectured often and for long-ass periods of time about God, the Bible and how they were both heathens for reasons Chace didn’t get because Jeremiah was too young to understand and explain. Nevertheless, whatever they were was clearly jacked. And whatever they were, she told the children, they needed to be punished for it.

But Jeremiah had been cast out some months ago after Enid had, for some reason, declared him even more unholy than he already was and therefore unfit to be around his sister.

He was cast out but he went back in order to try and free his sister. Upon his returns, he was caught, beaten, sometimes bound and then beaten and cast out again.

He kept going back.

For his sister.

The last time, the worst time, when he was determined to get her because he knew Chace and Faye would take care of her as well as him, she’d broken his arm and on his return to the shed, he’d been caught in the trap.

When he saw Enid at the town meeting, Enid being, Chace reckoned, the person Mary thought would back her play about the library, he’d seen this as his opportunity to get his sister free and he took it.

Incidental information he gave them was that he had not had his reactions to TV, radio and phones because he’d never seen them before but because Enid regularly lectured about the fact that they were the work of the devil. Enid informed the children, repeatedly, they were used to spread gossip and preach sin, she did not allow them access to any of them and she warned the children they’d land in hell if they ever utilized them.

He’d also shared that Enid had told them, again repeatedly, that grown men held evil. They were wicked, existed only to corrupt women and children to their wicked ways and should always be avoided. This was why he, at first, feared and shrunk away from men.

Further, he told them that Enid referred to him as Malachi and refused to address him by his given name, Jeremiah. Jeremiah didn’t understand the reasons for this thus couldn’t share them. Why he gave them Enid’s name for him, rather than his real name, he didn’t explain and considering the difficult information he was sharing, Chace didn’t press.

However, Becky’s name actually was Rebecca but Enid would not allow him to call her by her nickname and he only did so when they were alone. Becky was too young to understand the name change and never called him anything but his nickname, “Miah” for which she got in trouble but, from what Chace could tell from his faltering explanation, Jeremiah paid the price.

Last, he’d shared that he was not nine years old, but eleven. His growth had likely been stunted by malnutrition or perhaps both children came from small parents. Regardless, he didn’t do this to put them off the track. The way he haltingly explained made it seem he did this in order to hide his embarrassment at his lack of schooling which he expected they’d figure out, which they did but they had no idea, considering his real age, how bad it was.

In other words, the bitch wasn’t a whackjob. She was a seriously, f**ked up whackjob.

They didn’t press him for more. He was worried about his sister and what he’d given them was already enough for him to relive for the time being.

Chace called in what he knew and it didn’t take long for them to trace “Enid” to Enid Eglund who lived in that area, about a five minute drive from Tate Jackson’s house.

By the time units got to her house, she’d discovered Becky gone, panicked, read her time was up and she’d taken off. They put a BOLO out on her and one of Mick Shaughnessy’s boys in Gnaw Bone nabbed her and brought her back to Carnal.

Becky was found to be malnourished to the point that her small stature meant Chace had underestimated her age. She wasn’t five or six but eight years old. Her feet were scraped but other than that she was fine. Regardless, they admitted her for observation and a psych evaluation the next day.

Leaving Faye with her father and mother at the hospital, Chace went to the Station and watched in an observation room full of men as Frank interrogated Enid Eglund. It took some time but things she said meant officers left the room to hit computers.

It all came together. Then, when confronted with it, Enid let it all hang out.

Enid Eglund had gone to Wyoming three years ago to attend a revival. Being seriously f**ked in the head, she saw a young woman with two young children and no man. Clearly something about this made a woman living on the verge of snapping, snap. She made assumptions, followed the woman home, murdered her in her sleep, kidnapped her two children, brought them back to Carnal and kept them in captivity.

She was a recluse, came to town to grocery shop and go to Church, lived in the home she’d inherited from her parents and made meager money doing phone sales at home. No one really knew her but her sister and, from Mary Eglund’s rant, even that spinster didn’t know her reclusive spinster sister very well for she had no idea for three years Enid was concealing two children. Nor did she know, or admit to herself, the extent of her sister’s insanity.