JAKE AND MAYA WENT back to the Bed & Breakfast. They hadn’t been together since Jake proposed. They made love and made promises. They decided they were getting married and damn the consequences. But, reality caught up with them fast. He held her while they talked.
“Why? Why can’t we leave? Check into a good hospital and let the professionals detox us?”
“It doesn’t work that way, Jake.”
“The FBI is up the road. You’re a better witness than Sonny and I. You could have them arrested. Make it so they have to give us whatever the hell it is to get better. What is it anyway?”
“I will not be a witness against the Bishops. I already made that mistake once. I’ve never seen them give anyone a third chance. I don’t know what they give us. Nobody knows. When I was in New York, they sent me a vitamin once a month and I had to come back every other month for some sort of booster.”
Jake listened, wishing he could get a hold of the vitamins...his mind backtracked. “What do you mean, you already made that mistake?”
Maya shifted. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s something. Come on, honey, we can’t have any more secrets.”
He was right. She knew it. “Not everyone here gets to go to college. Let alone, out of state. But my grandmother and Nile’s grandfather were a couple. My family was a part of the Bishop clan. I benefitted a lot.”
He stayed silent, giving her time to recall.
She thought through her wording. “I guess you could say, I got a little too big for myself. I resented my ties to Rain. Having to always go back. Not telling anyone...I started talking. Actually, I was set up.” She remembered. “A guy I dated got me talking. Turns out, I was a mark. He worked for some government group. They’re targeting the Bishops. Thanks to me and my big mouth...” She began to cry.
He held her tight.
“...They... they grabbed Grandpa Will. They kidnapped him because he was the engineer. Rather than become a guinea pig for their experiments, he threw himself out of a moving truck... He was eighty-seven...my grandmother loved him...we all did...” She broke down completely.
He let her, rubbing her back and soothing her.
When she could talk again, she said, “I was so ashamed, I wouldn’t come home. Not even for my boosters...which I needed. Regardless of what I did, the vitamins kept coming. Boosters too...” Here she cried a little more. “Unbeknownst to me...to anybody, the Bishops weren’t sending me boosters. My grandmother was. She sent me her dosage. We found out when she died. I killed them both.”
“No, honey, it wasn’t you. They could have helped—”
“It was me. I betrayed them. I got the government involved. I was the coward who hid while my grandma protected me. I did all that, Jake. As a courtesy to my family, they agreed to continue medicating me while I studied—I think it was so Miss Keisha didn’t have to look at me. Regardless, I have no standing and no grounds for asking favors. I moved to Bridgeport to finish school and pretend it never happened.”
It was a lot to deal with, but Jake chose to accept it.
“It wasn’t an option to say, ‘here’s an outsider, accept it.’ The last time I involved an outsider, our grandparents died.”
“Then we show up like gangbusters and threaten to expose them because we didn’t like their attitudes.” Jake felt like a bad guy.
“I don’t know what accommodations they had to make for Dylan and Sonny, but they extended themselves on our behalf. That won’t happen anymore. I can’t say I blame them. If you leave, the damage might not be lasting. Or, maybe they will help. They’ll take care of me here, but if I leave Rain again, I’m on my own. They’re not sending me any vitamins.”
He picked up her line of reasoning. “If you stay, you’re good, but I’m a walking time-bomb as long as they have to look at me.”
Her silence was an affirmation.
“Can we pay them? Buy whatever it is they make? Everybody has a price.”
She looked at him like he shot a gun. “Try that and you’ll be dead by tomorrow. The Bishops don’t sell their service. They don’t bargain or haggle. They don’t work for anyone, and they don’t make deals. Pushing any of those buttons will have the same effect as threatening them did.”
“So what? Do nothing? If we stay together one of us dies? How is that fair?”
“Who said fair had anything to do with it? And...”
“And what?”
She sighed. “And, who said the Bishops had to do anything about our problems? They didn’t cause them.”
“Because they can.”
“That doesn’t mean they should.”
Jake took a moment to respond. “I heard everything you said. I get it. I understand. But, I don’t care. I will not resign myself to dying or letting you die when there is help available. I don’t care what I have to do, I’ll try everything. I’ll move this damned mountain and whichever way it falls, we’ll be on the same side of it.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
The conversation had become too intense for the kitchen. Dylan and Nile moved to the living room where they could put their feet up and attempt to relax. Dylan sat on the sofa and pulled her down next to him.
They both felt it. She fit.
“Full disclosure. I’m fast losing interest.”
That made her laugh. “What? This riveting tale doesn’t have you captivated?”
“I am captivated by a riveting tail, but that’s a different topic altogether.” He winked.
She grinned and looked away. “I can’t do flirting and sexy talk and all that turn-on stuff like you.”
“You don’t need it.” He kissed her fingers. “Back to business?”
“Back to business,” she agreed, wondering how that was going to be possible. She cleared her throat and tried to focus. “You know there are four blood groups and eight blood types, A, B, AB, O, positive, negative, all that jazz.”
“Okay.” He didn’t know if he knew it or not. But, she just told him so there was that.
She shook her head no. “There’s another group with two types.”
He hunched his shoulders.
“Ever hear of Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin, or straight up dioxin, or VX?”
“Nope.”
“VX is...was a pesticide. It’s too deadly to use. Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin is what they used to make Agent Orange; the dioxin being the extra deadly part... What about Emulsion styrene-butadiene rubber?”
“Nope.”
“E-SBR is a synthetic rubber.”
“I’m not a scientist.”
“Me either. It’s just the necessary details of my life in Rain.”
“By all means, explain away.”
“I’ll try for laymen's terms.”
Her smile was sweet. He was drawn to it. “I appreciate it.”
“The rubber factory here employs most of the town. They use E-SBR to make tires.”
“Makes sense.”
“Years ago, the plant made tires and did other things.”
“What other things?”
“Experiments. Secret experiments - chemical and biological warfare. The factory was mostly a front to conduct experiments. They used segregation laws to turn people of color into lab rats without their knowledge.”