Thanks to all who reviewed! Let me know what you think of this one :) Sorry for the cliffhangers, I'll do my best not to do that again.......well, umm, maybe :)
Still don't own, still make no money.
Chapter 9: Nightmare Come True
Craig knew that Jeremiah's presence in the house so soon after going to talk to Green couldn't be a good thing. He watched the man move past him to the dining room, joining his brothers there. Bobby said something about Green's news before offering Jerry a beer. Craig let the tree rest in the middle of the floor on its side and walked slowly to the dining room door in time to hear Jeremiah tell Bobby he was going to need something stronger than beer. He watched and listened; breathing extra shallow for fear that Bobby would see him and tell him to get out of earshot of their conversation. He felt his insides twist up on him when Bobby went for the whiskey, and it bothered him a little when his brothers all took their drinks. It was scary to think that the news was going to be so bad that Jeremiah thought Bobby needed a good hard drink. He wanted to know what Green had said just as badly as his brothers, and he had just as much a right to know as any of them did. It involved him too.
He watched as Bobby filled his own glass nearly to the brim, draining the bottle completely. Blood swished in his hears, and he knew he should duck back into the living room before Bobby yelled at him for listening in. Instead he stood there and observed as Bobby downed the tall glass of whiskey before slamming his glass back to the table. He felt his insides flinch as the sound of glass making contact with the wood table cracked through the air.
"Well, Bobby, it's pretty simple really." Jeremiah looked towards Craig and hesitated.
Bobby looked over and his scowl deepened. "Is that tree out on the curb yet?" He asked; his irritation showing. He was no longer joking like he had been just a minute before.
"I want to know." Craig muttered. "I should be able to hear this too." He was sure that he was about to get his ass chewed out.
Bobby opened his mouth to argue, but Jack spoke up first. "He has a right to know."
Bobby turned to Jack. "I'll tell him myself, when I'm damn good and ready." He shifted on his feet for a moment before turning back to Craig. He started to yell at him, Craig could see it in his eyes. Instead he held a finger up towards him. "You keep your ass quiet, no matter what?" He asked him.
Craig nodded his head slowly, not one hundred percent sure that Bobby was giving in.
"Okay, you get your ass over here and sit down." Bobby pulled his own chair back from the table.
Craig stared at him for a long moment, "Really?" He finally managed to find his voice.
"Don't make me say it again. You sit and keep your mouth shut, no matter what you hear. You let us talk this out before you get all fucked in the head over it, you understand me?" Bobby pointed to the chair.
Craig walked over and sat. He felt Bobby move in right behind him. "Okay, Jerr', spit it out already." His brother snapped.
Jeremiah drew in a deep breath. "You're sure you want him to hear this?" He didn't sound as if he thought it was such a good idea.
"It will keep him from being tempted to sneak around behind my back, a nasty habit that I plan on breaking. Just tell us what the hell Green said already?" Bobby's voice came out loud.
Jeremiah sucked in a deep breath. "Well, it looks like Adam Macks has some kind of connection to our friend, FBI Agent Harris." He locked eyes with Bobby. "He was working for him, and now Harris is out for some blood."
"What?" Angel's voice was quiet. "That's bullshit." He shook his head. "There ain't no way that sick fucker was working for the Feds, they went after his ass in Ohio."
"It ain't bullshit, you think about it. He was released from prison for a reason, and it wasn't because of some crappy technicality." Jeremiah sighed heavily and managed to divert his attention to Angel. "Harris busted him out of prison, to work for him. Apparently he was supposed to get in close with some big shot gangsters and report shit back to the Feds. Are you with me so far on that?" His tone turned hard. "It ain't bullshit, and it ain't a joke. We got serious problems here." He rested his elbows on the table and pressed his face into his hands as if it would help ease pressure from somewhere deep inside. He continued speaking into his palms, any expression on his face shielded for the moment. "I guess the whole Sweet business was part of that. There was another agent in the mix somewhere, he was supposed to be working with Macks, keeping tabs on his ass, but he came up missing a couple of months back. The government had offered Macks full immunity from any charges, so long as he got the information they wanted. He had free reign to acquire that information in any form necessary."
Jeremiah sucked in a deep breath, pulled his face from his hands and looked up at Bobby. There was a long moment of silence, as if he was waiting for the eldest Mercer to say something. He finally nodded his head slowly and continued speaking. "If he hadn't died, he wouldn't have been facing any jail time, that's why he didn't give a fuck about getting caught. That's the reason he came after…"He looked back down at Craig and stopped speaking in mid sentence and seemed to switch the direction he was headed with his statement. "He would have been arrested by the local cops; the feds would have just swooped in and nabbed his ass, pulling him back to where ever the hell they needed to in order keep his cover safe."
"Well, he's dead, there's not much they can do about that now." Jack spoke quietly.
"Yeah, dick-weed, he's dead. That's the problem." Angel looked at Jack. "If their informant is dead, how the hell are they gonna get their fucking information? Macks must have known something pretty important that they didn't want to leak out to anyone else. Now, Harris is gonna go after anyone he thinks might know what the hell Macks knew."
Bobby cleared his throat. "He's gonna be on us like stink on shit." His voice sounded tight, but quiet. "He ain't gonna care so much that we don't know what the fuck Macks knew, he's just gonna want to pin his problems on someone, and that's gonna be us."
A heavy silence filled the room; no one spoke, or moved for what seemed a long time. Craig wondered if it was too late to pretend he hadn't heard any of what had just been said. He could go back to the living room and struggle with dragging the Christmas tree out of the house and to the front curb and go on with his life under the false pretense that everything was fine. He wanted to forget about Adam Macks and forget everything that had happened to him since his mother's death. How could he if Harris was going to hover over them? That's what Jeremiah was saying, Harris was going to circle them like a hawk honing in on its prey, ready to draw blood at the first opportunity that arose.
"Ain't nothin' they can do, they can't pin Mack's death on us. The crazy son of a bitch was out to kill us; or worse." Bobby spoke suddenly from right behind Craig while his hands took a hold of the boy's shoulders and gave them a squeeze. "Okay kid, you know exactly the same shit we know. You get your ass back in there and get that tree out of the living room." He seemed calm enough.
Craig wasn't sure if Bobby and calm were a good combination right then. How could any of them be calm at that moment after hearing the news? He didn't move at first, his body was trying to catch up to the reality that his mind was already rejecting. In that moment of hesitation it dawned on him that Bobby was trying to get rid of him so they could talk.
Craig stood slowly as Bobby's hands pulled away. He turned and looked at Bobby. "What are you going to do?" He wanted his brother to know that he wasn't as stupid as he might have looked.
"I'm gonna have another fucking drink before I come in to check on your progress with that tree." Bobby was avoiding the question.
Craig swallowed back the argument that was working up inside of him. Just three seconds before he had been trying to figure out a way to hide from the facts Jeremiah had spilled out. He didn't like what was happening, but at the time he didn't want to be left out. He had a right to know what was going on, and his brothers were going to make plans of some kind as soon as he was out of the room.
"You don't worry about this." Bobby seemed to be reading his mind. "We ain't gonna do shit until we've talked to Robert Bradford. I promise when we do figure something out you will be the first to know, okay?"
Craig was sure that was a line being fed to him to get him out of their way, but he turned and walked into the living room without saying anything else. He stood there and stared at the dry, brittle evergreen lying on the floor in front of him. He could feel the frustration inside of him growing. His father was still screwing around with his head and he wasn't even alive. How could the monster still be there, hiding behind Federal agents and immunity when he had been killed days earlier?
He grabbed hold of the tree and started dragging it across the floor with him, towards the foyer. He allowed his frustration to focus on the awkward feel of the dying wood in his grasp. It was taller than he was, and it wanted to roll from side to side, clunking against the floor to splash browning needles to the floor with every step closer he got to the door.
"Don't scratch up the fucking floor with that thing either!" Bobby yelled from the dining room, though he wasn't within range to see what was happening in the living room. Craig quickly checked the floor behind the tree to make sure he wasn't going to have a trail etched into the floor behind him. Once he was sure it was safe he continued moving.
After nearly five minutes of pulling and tugging the branches past the front door he managed to free the tree, at least it was on the front porch. He turned and looked at the trail of broken stems and needles along the floor of the foyer. He would have to clean that up, and he was seriously considering the needles in the underwear threat from earlier.
Before he could worry about the mess he was leaving behind he needed to get the tree the rest of the way out of the house. His brow had broken into a sweat, and he felt out of breath. The past week had taken a toll on him he hadn't been aware of, obviously. He shouldn't have had such a hard time dragging the thing out of the house. Awkward was understandable, the thing was bigger than he was, but this damn hard was ridiculous. Adam Macks kept trying to push his way into his brain, but he managed to keep him at bay by concentrating on the tree and allowing himself to get irritated with the task at hand.
Craig managed to pull the top part of the tree out the door behind him, stumbling on the cement steps as he moved down them. The limbs grabbed onto the interior wall and seemed to take hold. Craig stepped back on the sidewalk and examined the sight in front of him. The top, narrow half of the tree was hanging out past the new storm door and he realized he'd tried to drag the wrong end first. The growth of the branches would have made dragging the bottom half out first much easier; they would have folded in easily offering little resistance.
He grabbed hold again, and started pushing the beast back inside, convinced he would be able to turn it on around and try his theory. It wouldn't move. He gave it another push, and tried to shift the trunk up and down to get it to move; nothing happened. "Shit." He felt the frustration inside growing. "Move, you son of a bitch," He muttered and have it a hard pull and then another push.
His patience had reached its limits after a few more attempts. He knew it wasn't really the tree that was pulling his anger and frustration from deep inside. It was the fears that were churning around, again. New fears and new thoughts of everything that could go wrong were building inside, ready to erupt any moment. The tree was a good reason to draw it all out. He wanted to stop feeling again. Why did his mind have to choose today of all days to rediscover the emotions churning around in him?
On top of the resurgence of the feelings he'd been safe from in recent days, his mind felt groggy from the pills and his body didn't want to follow the mental directions he was trying to command of it. The pills were really starting to work now, they were preventing him from blocking out the images of his father's face. The man's laugh echoed in his head and Jeremiah's revelation seemed to intensify the frustration burning at his chest.
His anger at the tree was quickly shifting to the thoughts running through his mind. Someone had made a decision to let his father out of prison, supposedly so he could spy on some thugs. If Adam Macks had been undercover for the FBI, as Jeremiah claimed, it hadn't changed anything about him. He had used his freedom to make Craig's life hell. He had gone after what was his, staked his claim and blindly ravaged everything in Craig's life. His ties with the criminal element may have been a ruse as far as the government was concerned, but it had been a well established relationship that his father had worked hard at building long before he'd been sentenced to prison for the murder of his wife, and the abuse and attempted murder of his son.
If Adam Macks had taken the FBI up on their offer, it was only to gain his freedom and form his plans; plans that had almost played out in his favor. If he had been feeding the FBI any information, it had to be bogus, or just enough valid little tidbits to keep his freedom.
"Hey, what the hell are you doing?" Jack's voice brought the boy out of his thoughts. He realized he had stopped struggling with the tree and was standing there, staring at it, not really seeing it. He looked up to see Jack standing on the other side of door, the tree blocking his exit from the porch.
The cool air hit his hot face and he realized there were tears running down his cheeks. He looked at Jack for a long moment. "It got stuck." He muttered, hoping Jack wouldn't make any jokes about the tree he'd managed to jam in the doorway.
Jack looked at the obstacle blocking his path and then at Craig. "Yep, it sure did." He pulled a cigarette out of the pack he was holding in his hand and stuck it in his mouth. "Are you trying some kind of mental telepathy on it or what?" He spoke over the filter tip while he dug for his lighter in his pants pocket.
Craig shrugged his shoulders, feeling embarrassed that Jack had caught him losing his self control for a moment.
"Well, if I pull on this end and you push on that end, we can get it back in here and turn it around. It's going to out a lot easier if you turn it around" Jack kept his eyes fixed on him while he lit his cigarette. "You okay?" He finally asked.
"They let him out of prison on purpose." Craig muttered.
"Yeah," Jack nodded his head. "So?" He sounded as if he didn't understand how much worse that fact made everything else that had happened in recent weeks.
"So?" Craig couldn't believe Jack didn't understand the importance of his statement.
"Yeah, so what if they let him out on purpose. What difference does that make? He did what he did, and we lived through it." Jack's voice stayed even. "Nothing has changed, except that now we all know the FBI consists of a bunch of stupid dicks in suits, right? It doesn't change a damn thing that's happened up until now."
Craig couldn't explain why Jack's words pissed him off so much. He wanted Jack to understand how terrible everything felt, and how knowing his father was released from prison with a pat on the back and backing from the FBI made everything worse. His father had been given a license to maim and kill and torture. He'd probably been given money by that same federal agency to fund everything he was doing, and everything he'd done was covered in a deal that offered him complete immunity? If he hadn't died, nothing would have been done to him for all of the pain he'd caused. He would have just been set free to do it all again and again, until he finally managed to get what he wanted.
"Craig, it's really hard trying to talk to you like this. Come on, you push, I'll pull." Jack tucked his lips around the cigarette and held it there while he grabbed hold of the tree with his gloved hands; his eyes squinted against the wisps of smoke floating up from the end of his cigarette.
Craig hesitated for a moment, but reached out to maneuver his hands in between the needles with minimal pricking to grab hold of the trunk. The tree seemed to slide backwards easily and within minutes Jack was helping him pull the bothersome thing out the door, bottom first. His brother let go of the tree once they had both cleared the steps and Craig dragged it out to the curb.
"You okay?" Jack waited until Craig was walking back towards him before asking the question.
Craig shrugged his shoulders in response. He didn't want to talk to Jack about the confusion that was building inside. He was still cautious of trusting Jack. He wanted to be able to talk to him, but wasn't quite ready to take that step.
"Hey, don't you think I know what you're thinking? Hell, that son of a bitch never should have been on the streets to start with. They had him, and they opened the door and let him walk. It's bullshit. I get that. But it was how it was and we can't change that." Jack pulled his cigarette from his mouth and blew out a puff of smoke.
Craig drew in a breath as the memories crept in, the sounds and smells that had filled his room the night his father had lost control and killed his mother, his real mother; it all came back so vividly in his mind. He looked down at the sidewalk under his feet and tried to push the images out of his head, but it did no good. The melting snow had soaked every inch of the sidewalk, and he used his foot to tap at a small pool of water under him. "He killed my mother." He muttered. "He was gonna kill me." He didn't look at Jack. "And they let him out so he could do it again. It makes it feel like my mom wasn't important enough for them to keep him locked up. I wasn't important enough." He admitted, unable to keep it inside. "We weren't worth enough for anyone to care about all of that."
"You know that's not true. You know how important you are, at least to us, right?" Jack asked; his voice barely audible.
Craig looked up at Jack and was about to admit to his brother that he still struggled with that concept on a daily basis, but the sound of breaks squealing to a stop in front of the house interrupted what may have been the start of the first real talk he'd had with Jack since he'd found out about his lies and secrets.
Craig barely had a chance to look over towards the numerous black sedans and police cruisers gathering out in front of their house and the men wearing suits and ties that were suddenly swarming their front yard, when a man came up from behind him and grabbed hold of his arm. "Bobby!" Jack's voice cut through the air and Craig could hear the fear.
"Jack?" Craig called out when the man grabbing hold pulled him backwards away from the house. He tried to pull away, but it did no good. Uniformed officers exited their cars, but hung back to let the plainclothes take action.
"Jack Mercer, you are under arrest for the murder of Adam Macks." A familiar man stepped towards Jack and the confusion cleared away just enough for Craig to recognize Agent Harris from his brief meeting that morning.
"What the fuck is going on?" Bobby yelled from the doorway.
"Just stay back, please." Harris barely acknowledged the three men emerging from the house before he started reading Jack his rights. Another man in a black suit and tie pulled out handcuffs and started slapping them around Jack's wrists, pulling his arms behind his back to secure them there.
"Bobby…" Jack turned and looked at Bobby, the confusion and fear clearly present in his eyes.
"Hey what the hell do you think you are doing?" Bobby made a dash towards Harris, but his way was quickly blocked by two other suits. "What the fuck are you doin' Harris? You can't arrest him, he hasn't done anything." Bobby yelled.
"Bobby!" Craig tried to pull free from the grip pulling him towards a car parked at the corner.
"What the hell is going on?" Jeremiah turned towards Craig while Bobby continued to question Harris and quickly moved in his direction.
"Jim Robinson, Children's Services." The man holding onto Craig flipped identification out and flashed it at Jeremiah as he approached. "We are removing Craig Mercer from the household while an investigation is carried out." His voice sounded as hard as Harris', several yards away.
"You can't just come in here and take him!" Jeremiah cried out, reaching for Craig's other arm.
Jim Robinson pulled Craig out of Jeremiah's reach and thrust papers towards him. "As long as the FBI is working the case against you and your brothers, Craig will remain in the custody of the state." He spoke quickly. "We have a court order."
Craig felt his chest constrict and his stomach tightened up. He tried again to pull free of the hold on his arm, only to have another pair of hands grab both of his arms from behind. Jim Robinson released him and allowed his partner, whoever the hell he was ,to hold onto Craig while he turned his full attention to blocking Jeremiah.
Craig's ears started ringing and he looked past Jerry to watch as the agents pulled Jack towards one of the cars. "I'm calling Robert right now Jackie! Don't you talk to anyone about shit, you got that? Not without your lawyer in the room with you!" Bobby was yelling the words, his path to Jack still being blocked by other agents and the uniformed officers. Angel was standing next to Bobby, punching numbers on his cell phone.
"Bobby, do something!" Jack managed to call out just as he was forced into the back of one of the black sedans that had converged on them with no warning.
"We'll get you out Jack!" Bobby tried to reach the car, but was pushed back by the two uniformed officers just as it took off down the street, carrying Jack away.
"Bobby!" Jeremiah called out as he read through the papers.
Bobby turned and took in the site around him. His eyes were hard as stone, but they seemed to flicker with a fire as they soaked in what was going on at the other end of the sidewalk with Jeremiah and Craig. "Hey, no fucking way, you get your mother fucking hands off of him!" His stride was quick as he moved in their direction. "You sons of bitches ain't got no right to touch him, what the fuck you think you're gonna charge him with? He's just a kid!"
"They're with Children's Services Bobby." Jerry spoke quickly. "They ain't cops." He held the papers out towards Bobby.
Craig could still feel his body being pulled away. "Bobby!" He nearly screamed out as the reality of what was happening hit him. It seemed his nightmares were coming to life. His father was still haunting his mind; Jack had just been arrested for killing the monster, and now he was being dragged away from his home. They had come for him, and they were going to take him away from the only family he had.
Bobby slapped at the papers Jeremiah was trying to hold out to him, and moved without hesitation towards the man dragging Craig down the sidewalk. Craig reached out towards him, just as the two uniformed officers intercepted his brother's approach. "Let go of me!" Craig screamed out while the police officers struggled to hold Bobby and Jeremiah back. He could feel the panic growing inside of him as more hands seemed take hold of him, forcing him to lean over and the into the back seat of a car. "Bobby!" He screamed out as the door slammed shut. He tried to grab for the door handle, but arms wrapped around him as automatic locks were engaged. He tried to squirm out of the hold that was on him, using his legs to kick and his arms to thrash out at whatever he could make contact with.
"Just calm down Craig, you're going to be fine. You'll be able to go home once the investigation is over; so long as nothing is found that would suggest the home environment is detrimental to you well being." A strange voice spoke from directly next to him in the seat as the car pulled away from the curb.
Craig managed to twist around enough to see Bobby taking a swing at one of the uniformed officers in front of the house just before the car drove far enough down the street that the sight was blocked by the neighbor's garage. "Bobby!" He screamed out one last time.