In Plain Sight Read online

  In Plain Sight

  A Casey Cort Novel

  Aime Austin

  Contents

  New Release Newsletter

  Praise for Casey Cort

  Also by Aime Austin

  1. Stephanie Wells

  2. Stephanie

  3. Stephanie

  4. Stephanie

  5. Stephanie

  6. Stephanie

  7. Sledge

  8. Miles Siegel

  9. Casey Cort

  10. Miles

  11. Casey

  12. Miles

  13. Casey

  14. Jarrod Carter

  15. Miles

  16. Casey

  17. Jarrod

  18. Casey

  19. Stephanie

  20. Miles

  21. Miles

  22. Jarrod “Sledge Hammer” Carter

  23. Miles

  24. Stephanie

  25. Jarrod

  26. Stephanie

  27. Casey

  28. Sledge

  29. Miles

  30. Stephanie

  31. Casey

  32. Miles

  33. Stephanie

  34. Miles

  35. Casey

  36. Jarrod

  37. Casey

  38. Stephanie

  39. Jarrod

  40. Casey

  41. Jarrod

  42. Casey

  About the Author

  Also Available from Aime Austin

  This edition published by

  Penner Publishing

  14900 Magnolia Boulevard, #57914

  Los Angeles, California 91413

  www.pennerpublishing.com

  Copyright © 2015 by Sylvie Fox

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or copied without permission. This book is licensed for your personal use only.

  ISBN: 978-1-940811-12-3

  New Release Newsletter

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  Praise for Casey Cort

  What critics are saying about Qualified Immunity, the first in the Casey Cort Series.

  Qualified Immunity ... is a “must read” intriguing new series which crosses several genres.” –Judith D. Collins

  “Qualified Immunity has caught my attention. I’d recommend it to anyone who enjoys fiction about the legal system.” – Long and Short Reviews

  "I found myself unable to stop reading…” –Reader

  “... I was immediately captivated by this legal thriller about family drama and the legal system that governs it.” – Reader

  Praise for Under Color of Law.

  * * *

  “In addition to the wit, humor, drama, intensity, suspense, legal writing, and highly charged social issues and abuse addressed; with Fox’s legal background she knows her way around the courtroom; well-developed flawed and quirky characters, and if you love good women’s fiction, and legal crime thrillers get ready for an engaging and satisfying ride.” — Judith D. Collins

  Also by Aime Austin

  The Casey Cort Series

  * * *

  The Common Pleas Lawyer

  Qualified Immunity

  Under Color of Law

  In Plain Sight

  Conflict of Interest

  * * *

  Romantic Women’s Fiction

  as Sylvie Fox

  * * *

  Unlikely

  Impasse

  Shaken

  Stirred

  Don’t Judge Me

  The Secret Widow

  The Good Enough Husband

  One

  Stephanie Wells

  January 13, 1999

  This was going to be the day I told my momma the truth. I’d waited until she’d stopped wailing. I waited until the cemetery people threw dirt on that motherfucker. I waited until the limo we had no money for slipped and slid through the snowstorm to that man’s house on East Eighty-Eighth Street. I waited until the fake ass church mourners left. I waited until our ancient next door neighbor finished wrapping all the leftovers in plastic, taking to her house what we couldn’t fit into our refrigerator.

  “Steffi, what we gonna do without Clark?” Momma asked. She was on the edge of hysteria. The wailing would start again if I wasn’t careful in what I said.

  “We’ll be okay, Momma,” I assured her. We couldn’t be any worse off, I figured.

  “This here his house,” she said, her sweeping arm taking in the kitchen with its fake brick wall and the living room with its fake stone wall.

  Clark had liked making our house look perfect like the pretty ones on HGTV. Too bad it had been rotten to the core.

  “We can move somewhere else, right?” I wanted to be anywhere else but here. Momma was a nurse. We’d done fine before Clark. We’d be fine after. I didn’t say that, though. That would have pushed her over the edge. I had something of my own to say, anyway.

  “Where we gonna go? My own momma ain’t gonna take me in. She got too many up in there already. Clark’s family say we never married, and I ain’t got no business layin’ up with them anyway.”

  I’d waited long enough. I didn’t want her to wind herself up. I didn’t want her to go searching for a blunt to wind herself down. I wanted my momma, the one from when I was a little kid.

  “I need to tell you something.” My voice was whisper-soft, but she heard me. I knew she heard me because she looked at me out of the corner of her eye and stopped moving for a long beat.

  The wood chair legs scraped across the tile floor, ringing in my ears. But for the first time in a week, my momma sat. She stopped talking. She rested her elbows on the table. Cupped her head in her hands.

  Her eyes pushed me back. I felt for the fake bricks covering the far side of the kitchen and buried my fingers between the thin masonry grooves, brushing against the unnaturally smooth mortar.

  “Clark—”

  “How many times do I have to tell you call him Daddy? He was more a daddy than the guy who made you,” she said, her voice as rough and grating as the stone pushing against my arm.

  “Daddy…” That left a bitter taste in my mouth. I was still waiting for the day my real daddy would come and take me from this place. Maybe he’d have a new, pretty wife who talked all soft and made big, hot breakfasts. I’d have a room with a pink canopy—

  The snap, snap of Momma’s fingers brought me back. “What you need to say?”

  Now that I’d had her attention, finally had all of her attention focused on me like a laser beam, I wanted to back out, run away. I coughed. The afternoon’s lunch pressed at the back of my throat. I swallowed hard, the acid burning a trail down my insides.

  “Clark…Daddy…he…” I wanted to throw up. Sit down. Run out the door. This was a very bad idea. I don’t know why it had seemed so all-fire important when I’d woken up this morning. But God told me that silence wasn’t the way. I listened to God. I wasn’t stupid enough to ignore Him. “He made me…he raped me, Momma.”

  “What you talking about?” Momma’s voice rose. “Speaking ill of the dead like this.” She got louder. “That man cared for us. Bought us
this house.” I wondered if all the neighbors up and down the block could hear her now. “Paid for the clothes on your back.”

  I tried to catch her eyes, but those red-rimmed brown eyes looked everywhere but at me. That laser beam stare was long gone.

  “Are you saying I couldn’t satisfy my man in bed…and he turned to you—a barely developed girl? I don’t believe it.”

  My throat had nearly closed like the time I ate a strawberry and whipped cream cake at Antoine’s sixth birthday party. But I pushed past that feeling. Pushed the words from my throat. “I’m only saying what happened to me.”

  “What about your sister? She always been prettier than you. She ain’t never said nothing ’bout anything like that.”

  Sydney had never said much that wasn’t about complaining or asking for something. She was right about that. “I don’t know about Sydney,” I said. Clark had said I was his special one.

  “That girl has a mouth on her. She’da said something. So I’m left with you saying this now. He dead. Put him in the hard cold ground this morning. What you want me to do? Iff’n it were true, don’t matter anymore, do it?”

  “No, I guess not,” I mumbled into my too tight black blouse. No hug. No tears. No…I don’t know, offer to get me a counselor. That’s what happened on TV talk shows. Ricki and Oprah would’ve hugged me.

  “You ain’t pregnant, is you? Did you get knocked up? You blamin’ some baby on him?”

  “No, Momma, no. I get my period.” Not that a little blood had ever stopped Clark.

  “Maybe if you’d gotten pregnant, we coulda figured out a way to stay in this house, here.”

  I was ready to pack my bags. I didn’t ever want to go down to the basement of this house again. Clark loved to shop at Tops, buying boxes of food like a hurricane was coming. Getting me down to the basement had been his excuse. One day, my momma had gone out to work and he’d asked me to reorganize the shelves down there. He’d pulled me down to the blow-up mattress we sometimes used for his family and told me that he needed to show me what men and boys wanted, so I’d be prepared.

  “Finger, tongue, or prick,” I blurted. That was the choice he’d given me. I told him whatever would hurt the least.

  My momma flew across the room like a scared pigeon in the park. Her hands hit my face like sharply beating bird’s wings and I raised my own to protect myself.

  “Don’t you ever say that again. Ever!” she screamed and cried. Suddenly, she wasn’t hitting me anymore. I dared to lift my lids. Fear and truth and dread filled my mother’s eyes. She closed them and ran up to the one bathroom we’d all shared. The slamming door rattled the entire house.

  He’d said those same words to her.

  I knew then that she believed me.

  Two

  Stephanie

  March 17, 1999

  I needed to go for a walk. Now that Clark was gone, Sydney was back—with her kids. If I didn’t stay late after school or find something to do with myself, I ended up watching her rugrats while she went out and had fun. My sister still treated me like I was one of her kids, but I wasn’t a little girl anymore. Clark had said he’d made me a woman.

  Momma surely treated me that way. She didn’t ask when I was coming or going. Didn’t ask to see my progress reports or report cards anymore. Didn’t ever come into my room. Weekly, she left a wad of money on my dresser. I assumed I was supposed to take care of myself. At fourteen, I figured I was grown enough to do it.

  Forget the walk. I needed a little afternoon break from moving and thinking. Jurassic Park was on in a few.

  “Where you going?” Sydney asked. She had my niece Sheron on her lap. That girl wasn’t a baby and was too big to be lying all over her momma, but nobody asked me. In the second I was standin’ there, her little boy Jaylen pushed his sister off their momma and was pulling at my sister’s top. Sixteen months old and that boy ain’t gave up the titty. I kept to steppin.’

  “You didn’t answer me,” my sister yelled through to the kitchen.

  I pulled the extra butter Orville Redenbacher from the cabinet and slammed it into the microwave.

  “Are you cooking something?”

  No, I wasn’t cooking nothin’. Sydney could get up off her ass and make some kind of food for her kids. God did not put me on earth to serve them. I wasn’t in the mood. I was getting tired of cooking and cleaning behind those kids. I didn’t say anything, though. Talking had only gotten me into trouble. Momma was working double shifts at the hospital. She said she needed the money to pay for this house. That Clark’s family was practically stealing from us. But I think she didn’t want to have anything to do with me. In two and a half months since the funeral, she’d never once looked me in the eye.

  “Going to have some popcorn. That dinosaur movie’s coming on.” I loved that the star of the movie had a little black girl for a kid and no one ever questioned it. Maybe some rich white man would adopt me. Build me an amusement park. Save me.

  “You ever think of moving down into the basement?”

  I wrenched open the microwave door, snatched out the popcorn, not caring that it burned my thumb. I’d learned to take pain. “No.”

  “Sheron is sayin’ she can’t sleep with Jaylen waking up all times a night.”

  “No.”

  “Hear me out. I’m sure we can fix it up real nice. There’s already a blow-up bed down there.”

  “I said no!” I must have screamed because it got real quiet. Even the kids stopped making all kinds of noise.

  “What’s wrong with you lately? You’ve been off since Clark died. Comin’ and goin’ as you please.”

  “I’m glad Clark’s dead.”

  “Not even playing with your niece and nephew like you used to.”

  I got a big yellow plastic bowl down from the cabinet. Poured in my popcorn. Sprinkled on season salt and garlic powder. Squeezed on the extra butter.

  “You’re not going to answer me?”

  “I don’t have nothing to say except it’s time for my movie.”

  I tossed the toys off the leather couch and got comfortable. I quickly got lost in a world where fake dinosaurs were the worst thing that could ever happen to a teenage girl. Right when that fat guy from Seinfeld was about to be eaten, the screen froze. I didn’t need to look too far to see my sister standing near the TV, remote in one hand, hip in the other.

  “What?” I was seriously going to kill this girl. She all but ignored me all the years before she had them kids. Spending half her time with her daddy and her daddy’s family. Coming home with grins and gifts, while I pretended Momma’s man of the moment could be my own.

  “Can we talk about you moving?”

  “No way in hell am I sleeping down there.”

  “Why?” That whine used to get Momma to give her things. Probably worked on her daddy and them Higgins folk. But my last name was Wells and I wasn’t falling for it.

  “Because I said so.” I was not in the mood to fight. I did not want to have to come up off this couch and hit this girl. But if she tried to shove me down in the basement where Clark had tied me to the pipe next to that air mattress, I couldn’t be responsible for what happened next. “Turn it back on.”

  “No.”

  “Syd. Don’t mess with me. You turn that set back on or I’m gonna toss your kids into the yard behind the house. They can be dinner for those pit bulls.”

  “They’re Rottweilers.”

  “Either way.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  Why were people always playing with me? I picked up little Jaylen from the floor and started to tote him out the back door. I was halfway across the backyard when Syd ran out and rescued her little pup.

  “What in the hell is wrong with you? I leave here for a couple of years and you turn into a serial killer.”

  As close as they were, Momma didn’t tell her. I wanted to punch her and cry at the same time. My fucking relaxation was ruined. I needed to get the hell out of here. This hous
e was smothering me.

  It was fake warm like it could be either summer tomorrow or snow could fall. I didn’t care. Took myself out down East Eighty-Eighth. Turned left on Wade Park. Weren’t ten seconds before some man was honking his horn at me. Dogs in heat, they all were. I gave at least three guys the finger before I got to MLK Park.

  Sat on the swings like I did as a kid. I kicked off and swung back and forth. Reminded me of the time Sydney’s daddy brought me along to one of his family picnics. He’d treated me like I was his kid that day. Made me a plate of barbecued chicken. Pushed me on the swings. Got me one of those three-color popsicles where your mouth look like the Fourth of July exploded in there after you’re done. But after that day, he only picked up Syd. Left me alone with Momma and whoever.

  “You want a push?”

  I whipped around. I hadn’t heard anyone coming. A tall, narrow boy stood off near the diagonal poles holding up the swings. I was usually on my guard in parks. Never knew who was messing around in these places. People think they can do all kinds of things when there aren’t any cars goin’ by. But this boy with his neat cornrows and pressed tan pants looked all right.

  “Nah, I’m fine,” I said, digging my canvas sneaker in the sand, pushing off a little with my foot, giving myself a little swing.

  “You mind?” he asked, gesturing to the empty swing next to me.

  I shook my head. Pushing off again, I got up a little height this time. I’d forgotten how much fun it was to fly.

  The boy started swinging too. I glanced his way. He glanced mine. We reached a silent, tacit agreement. Soon, we were in a little race to see who could go higher. I was flying so high I only saw the blur of trees, clouds, and sky. I was sure if I kept pumping, I’d flip over the bar. That stopped me cold. Without momentum, my swing snapped back with a jerk. Slower and slower I went. My arc got smaller and smaller. Dragging my feet brought me to a stop.