The physical blows played over and over in my mind. At times it was realistic, sometimes just a sensation, always a stab of fear. No! A flinch. A sense of motion approaching me. A jerk. The blows. The blows wouldn’t stop. Please… stop. I don’t know how long it continued but I watched it playing endlessly before me. Every needle jab became another shock from Stern. Every movement was a swinging fist. Every touch became another hit.
Again. The blows, the flinch. I couldn’t move. My arms wouldn’t move. He was killing me. Please, stop… the flinch again.
I drifted, unfeeling. At least the drifting was peaceful. But it didn’t last.
Voices. Pressure next to me. A perceived threat. An attempted jerk away. Gentle voices. The pressure changed. I struggled. I couldn’t move right. What was wrong? Sad voices. A hand on mine. A perceived threat and another jerk away.
More drifting. Yes, the drifting helped. Much needed peace.
“He’s broken her. Kelly, what if her mind is gone?”
“You can’t think like that…”
“I can’t even get near her. She fights anything. Anything real, anything imagined.”
“Give her time. She’s been through hell.”
Someone moved and I instinctively flinched. Why couldn’t I move my arms? Must shield my face. He’s broken her. He’s broken her. Can’t think like that.
How long… please, somebody… Rusty… a movement, a flinch.
He’s broken her… no… no Stern’s going to break me. I’ll beat this. No satisfaction for Stern. I will not give in. I’ll fight it… Fight it. Wait. Logical thoughts. I’ve got real thoughts! I tried opening my eyes, nothing. I tried my fingers, nothing. I tried speaking, but couldn’t form words.
“Cass?”
It was like a shock. I flinched. Gradually I calmed again. Try to form a word, Cass. Just one word.
“Rus…”
“Okay, it’s a start. Babe, it’s a start. Come on, think. Don’t think about fights. The fight’s over. Just think happy thoughts. What do you want to do when you get out of here?”
Too much. Too much at once. Fight’s over.
“You still there?” he asked.
Form a word, Cass.
“Rus… can’t.”
“It’s okay, someday you will. We’re going to get you out of here and do something just for us. You need to ride at the ranch again to get your balance back. You need Cody to play practical jokes on you.”
No, stop. “Short… too much.”
He backed off.
“Can’t move.”
“It’ll come with time.”
“Arms.”
“Babe, your arms are tied down. Don’t worry about your arms. Try your toes.”
Toes. No toes, but my feet moved.
“There you go. Can you open your eyes? I want to see your eyes.”
I tried but only saw through slits.
“Can you see me?” he asked.
“I see… not you.”
He moved and came into view. I pulled away, then stopped. Rusty, it’s Rusty. I tried to smile.
Consciousness came then left, my mind drifted then came back. It became confusing and I was unable to distinguish a difference between the two states. I was drifting again and my hand flinched. Rusty took hold of it gently.
“Come on, babe, show me you’re there.”
Nothing. He squeezed a little.
Then another familiar phrase “Cassidy, are you ready? Come on, babe, show me what you’ve got.”
I stiffened immediately and yelled, “No!” I couldn’t form the whole response but I turned and pulled away desperately! “Won’t!… No!”
“Babe, shhhh, oh Cass, what did I do? It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s just me. Cass, please, trust me. It’s just Rusty. Don’t move. Don’t hurt yourself. Oh, Cass, what did he do to you? What did he do?”
He had to back off. Every touch was Stern. I came to, crying. Or maybe I woke up. I no longer knew one from the other. I opened my eyes.
“Cass? Oh babe, what did I do? Are you there?”
“Rusty?”
“Okay. We’re okay again. Babe, what did I do wrong?”
It took me a while to realize I was still struggling, fighting the bindings, and trying to get away. When I finally calmed down I could only mumble, “Don’t have… words… later.”
Later was a long time coming. I had visitors. Landon stopped in almost every day. He sat for an hour or so trying to encourage me to talk but I couldn’t process my thoughts well enough to form sentences. He was patient. He flirted with me when Rusty wasn’t there, but I didn’t have the strength to tell him off. Strict came. He stood silently by the door watching Rusty talk to me. Watched me try and form sentences. Victor came once. He knew I wasn’t up to much but he told me search stories, saying how much easier it would have been if I’d been there. Cody and Chase even showed up from San Diego. Cody called me his little sis and joked around. Chase wanted the facts. Who did it and were they dead yet? He brought get-well wishes from Rusty’s parents. Kelly came often. Sometimes he was there with Rusty when I woke up, but one day when I awoke Kelly was there alone.
“Hey girl,” he said, “I sent Rusty out. He needed a break, but he’d never admit it. He’s going to be mad if he finds out he missed visiting with you.”
“I’ll try and… stick around,” I replied weakly.
“That’s better.”
“I want… my arms back.”
“That’s going to take time, kiddo. You’ve got broken bones in there and you still react too violently when you see a threat coming.”
“What’s broke?”
“I haven’t talked to the doctor. That’s Rusty’s job. But at least your collar bone.”
“Cattle prod… probably from the cattle prod.”
Kelly studied me in stunned silence, then asked, “What? Cassidy, did he use a cattle prod on you? No one knows what you’ve been through. This is the first clue we’ve got.”
“Shocked me… hit me with it.”
“Can you talk about it? Anything… any clues at all to help us understand?”
“Don’t know… Where to start?”
“It doesn’t matter. Anything. It’ll help you to get it out and we need to know.”
I tried to think through what had happened but it brought on flashbacks.
“Black eye… from push into coffee table.”
“Cassidy, your whole face was swollen when they brought you in here.”
“Lived in a cage… ate dog food.”
The beatings flashed through my mind. No! Don’t! I flinched away from an imagined blow.
“Hey! It’s okay, Cassidy, settle, settle, it’s okay.”
“I’m sorry,” I cried.
“It’s okay. Stop. I didn’t mean to push you that far. And that’s why you can’t have your arms back. They’re trying to keep your arm still, but it’s not working very well.”
He gave me some time to calm down before continuing.
“Let’s talk about something safer. I know Rhonda already did but I wanted to thank you for the wedding pictures. Sorry to be biased, but I’m especially glad to get a portrait of Rhonda and me. We’ll never be able to afford to go have one taken and it means a lot to see it on the mantle.”
“Wanted you… to have it.”
“Rhonda takes it a little differently. She remembers what it felt like to be all fixed up. She’s been buying things here and there to try and get a look out of me. So thanks for that, too,” he said with a wink.
“She needs to go… oh shoot. She needs to go… shopping… with Sandy.”
“Rusty’s sister?”
“Yeah, Sandy knows… oh Kelly, I can’t…”
“It’s okay, rest. You don’t have to talk.”
“Knows what… looks good on a girl.”
“Shhh, rest. Just rest. Try and be awake when Rusty gets back.”
“K.”
“A lot of people are rooting for you. You’ve got more friends than you know…” he kept talking and I think I faded out, but I faded back in, too, and I heard when Rusty walked into the room. I opened my eyes.
“Let me talk to him for a minute, then he’s all yours.”
“K.”
He steered Rusty out of the room and then they returned a few minutes later.
“Just keep it upbeat,” Kelly said as he left.
Rusty sat on a chair next to the bed. After his conversation with Kelly he didn’t know where to start.
“Can I sit up?” I asked.
“Tell me if it hurts.” He found the control and pushed the button to raise the head of my bed.
“Stop, okay… maybe the feet?”
He pushed the button and raised my feet a little.
“Thanks.”
He smiled but it didn’t reach his eyes, he was still looking troubled.
“Don’t think about it.”
“About what?”
“What Kelly told you.”
“I can’t help it. How do you feel?”
“I hurt… I want my arms back.”
“I’ll ask the nurse. You need to try to control your reactions. Can you tell me what set you off? I don’t know what I said but you panicked. I need some clues here.”
“Rusty, I was only half conscious… when you said it…. If you said it now… I wouldn’t react... the same way.”
“Still, babe, what was it?”
My breathing quickened. Why that? Why did he have to ask me that? It meant I had to say the words. I pictured Stern standing in front of me again and asking, “Are you ready to show me what you’ve got?”
“Cassidy, stop, whatever is going on inside that head of yours, please stop. You’ve got to get a handle on it.”
Once I’d calmed down he tried again. “I want you to tell me what triggered it, and don’t let your thoughts get carried away. If you have to stop, it’s okay. Just get the explanation out without panicking. Control your thoughts. I don’t care if it takes all day. Just try.”
“I can’t… too many words… Can’t find the words.”
“Just try. Take your time.”
I took a deep breath. My thoughts were already racing ahead of my ability to speak. I had to focus. “Stern liked using psychol… psychol…”
“Psychological?”
“Yeah, tricks… He didn’t ask for much… but I knew to give in… to give in to one...” I could feel my breathing quickening again.
“It’s okay, babe, you’re doing good.”
I shook my head no.
“I knew to give into one… would just invite another.”
He understood and knew it was true, too.
“He broke into the house… after you left… so he found me still in bed…. He was really disappointed,” slow down, Cass, slow down, “when he pulled back the covers and I… was fully clothed.”
I could picture Stern standing there when he said, “Your poor husband…”
“Cass, hey.” Rusty waved a hand in front of my eyes. “Focus.”
“He asked me to… to take my clothes off… and I refused. So he used that again… and again. That was the first thing he wanted me to do to get better… treatment out of him.” My head was spinning from the effort of talking so long, corralling my thoughts. “Marissa said… if I did it he would treat me better… but I knew it was a trick.” I had to stop. I could feel the words coming, hear Stern’s voice when he said them. “A couple of times a day he would ask me and I would refuse… sometimes he just liked seeing me be stubborn…” Make it stop, Cass, don’t go on. But I did go on, for Rusty’s sake. “And sometimes he would… get mad and beat me.” I needed my arms! I needed to curl up in a little ball where it was safe. “The phrase he always used was… was ‘Are… are you ready… to… to show me what you’ve got?’”
When Rusty heard the phrase something inside him clicked.
“Oh Lord,” he said softly, “I didn’t know.”
“He’d say it… and I’d refuse and… and I never knew what kind of a reaction I’d get… but I refused anyway.”
“Okay, babe,” he said softly, “it’s okay, you can stop. If it hurts you can stop. I know now.”
“Rusty? How is Marissa? She seemed like a city kid. She shouldn’t have been in a place like that. She wasn’t coping. She was only existing.”
“Hon, are you sure you want to know?”
“Why? It’s got to be better than how I ended up. Stern blamed me. At the last he went after me. Then the shots...”
“Cass, Marissa was there a lot longer than you. She... needs help. Real help. But... let me just say, she’s as shell shocked as you are, but more subtly. She can’t walk right. She’s meeting with detectives but it’s hard. She’s assigned to a female officer, because she doesn’t trust men. She was abused, yes, but she gave in to Stern. As she put it she ‘earned her keep’.”
I wondered what she had to do to ‘earn her keep’ and decided I’d done the right thing, even if I’d taken the brunt of Stern’s anger. I lay there shaking. All my energy had been spent in detailing Stern’s behavior. Rusty sat with me, mulling over everything he’d learned that day.
“Rusty,” one last question. “How did you find me?… How did you… know about the barn?”
A long pause.
“The graves,” he answered quietly. “They held mostly dogs. Two recent additions were battle-scarred fighting dogs. The bodies were two women and we were able to identify one of them. I questioned her family and they expressed concern about their daughter going to the fights. I got some connections, made some calls. I arranged for an undercover cop to talk to Stern in a bar. He acted like he was addicted to gambling, said he did the horses and had lost a small fortune in Vegas. Stern welcomed him into his little clique, invited him to the next fight and even gave him directions. So the officer went to the fight, took some notes, lost some money, and then called us in. When I saw the place, I couldn’t stay in the barn. To me, knowing Stern, I saw it as a prison. An inhumane prison. I hurt thinking of you there. And I knew you wouldn’t be in the barn if it was full of people attending the fight. Then Jayce called me to the office. The code said critical. Critical. I kept telling myself it might not be you. I’d heard the gunfire and knew it could be Stern. But when I walked in I couldn’t deny it anymore. Babe if I hadn’t known it was you I’d have never recognized you. You hung by a thread. They wouldn’t let me in the ambulance. Landon spoke up for me, but they still wouldn’t let me. Then they whisked you away. Schroeder sent me with Ben and we took off after the ambulance. Landon somehow recognized Shadow in the cages and took him before animal control went through the barn. Every day when I sat with you I wondered what might have happened if something hadn’t tipped you off about the mountain lion. What if I hadn’t gone with you? What if I had no clues to go by? How long would he have kept you? How long could you have survived under those conditions? All those questions and more. People would come and worry with me and…”
I faded out.
The mountain lion. My first mountain lion sighting and it had saved my life, just barely. I wondered later what would have happened if the police hadn’t raided the fight. Would I have been beaten? Eventually, yeah, I would have. Stern never wasted any opportunities for violence.