Patterson Clachan was here on personal business to see his sister. He wanted his knife back. He wanted his life back. She’d been trying to act like his puppeteer for far too long. It was time she learned her place.
Of course, he’d lost all semblance of a normal life years ago. He couldn’t get it back, but he could get revenge. All those years ago, Gertrude had tried to convince him to take the boy and raise him as his own. He had his own children to think about and when she’d failed to manage talking him into it, she’d turned his wife against him. He’d never forgiven his sister.
The fight that night about the young bastard child that belonged to his sister. It had raged into the night. Lila had been all for taking the child in, raising him with their own children, doing what was best for him. Gertrude and Lee couldn’t provide for him, especially with the amputated foot. The following day, after lunch, while the children were all at school, the fight had resumed. Lila had even hinted that the accident had been his fault.
It was his fault, but it wasn’t an accident. He’d tried to explain his reasons to her, but she’d been so damned stubborn and then, Gertrude had called. Lila and her had talked for a while and when they hung up, Lila laid into him like never before. The normally respectful woman he’d married had been replaced by a harpie of his sister’s creating.
In the beginning, he hadn’t meant to kill her. It had just happened. They’d been fighting in the kitchen and he’d grabbed the knife. Next thing he knew, he was chasing Lila around the house.
This led to his children being raised by his brother, Fritz who was better known by the nickname, Chub. The only good thing was that they hadn’t gone to live with Gertrude and her horrid son.
August had been damaged from birth. He could see that. He’d caught the toddler masturbating over a dead chicken. A few days later, the family dog had gone missing and August had been found covered in its blood. At the time, he couldn’t think of anything else to do, he’d tried to feed August to the hogs. He hadn’t planned on Lee being within ear shot. He’d had to kill the hog and save the boy.
That led up to the incident with Lila only a week later. He’d been living under assumed names ever since. He didn’t mind so much. He did miss his family, but he watched his granddaughters from afar and tried to keep them safe. Not that either needed much guardian angel bullshit, they were tough as nails those two, able to take care of themselves.
Now, one of them was in town, looking into the murders of her deranged cousin and didn’t know it. He tried to warn her off, but the message was intercepted by someone on her team named John. He’d tried to tell her it was August Clachan doing the killings, but that was also foiled by the 911 dispatcher. After all, August Clachan was listed as dead.
Since, his granddaughter, Aislinn Cain, was working the case of a voraphiliac, he felt the need to stick around. If he could find the location of August’s lair, he’d kill him and save her the trouble.
So, he sat in a cold car in January, waiting for his sister to slip up and lead the way to the bastard son whom she was protecting.
As the hours slipped by, memories fluttered in and out of his mind. It wasn’t Gertrude’s fault that she and Nina had been raped. It had been Lee’s. Lee was supposed to have been there, escorting them to that stupid party where someone had been spiking drinks with LSD. He’d found the host a few months after the party and slit him like the pig he was, after he confessed to being the one dosing the women.
Nearly forty years had passed before he’d had a chance to kill the son of a bitch that had fathered the monster. And that had been pure luck, thanks mostly in part to his granddaughter Aislinn and her friendship with Malachi Blake. The moment he laid eyes on Malachi Blake, he knew someone in that family was responsible for creating August Clachan. They each had deep green eyes, greener and darker than any prized emerald. So green, they nearly glowed in the dark. After that, it had just been a process of elimination.
Elimination had led to Tennyson Unger, Malachi Blake’s maternal grandfather. The old man had died an undignified death. Begging and pleading for forgiveness, willing to do whatever to make up for creating August. However, the only redemption was death and they had both known it. He’d broken Tennyson’s legs and let the mongrel dog that Tennyson abused have at it. It was poetic, considering August liked to watch people be eaten alive.
He’d meant to go after August a few years ago, after finding out he’d faked his own death. However, Aislinn had kept him hopping. Her night time visitors were a pain in the ass. Then she’d joined the Marshals and it was even harder to keep track of her. Years ago, he’d managed to get a GPS tracker and install it in her Charger, but she rarely drove it, so it was nearly pointless.
With Patterson’s grandchildren, there was always something. He’d been quietly hiding in the house of a killer when Eric had climbed on top of a building and started shooting people. While he was proud of his grandson’s ambition, if he’d just waited a few hours, Patterson would have taken care of the miscarriage of justice. His plan had been to wait for the family to come home and go to sleep, then he was going to kill everyone quickly except the actual man that had brutally murdered his granddaughter and son. He’d planned a slow, agonizing death for him. But Eric had beaten him to the job, putting a bullet in his head instead. The death had been too quick for Patterson’s taste.
He shook himself from his memories. The house he watched was going dark. The occupants headed to bed. If Aislinn hadn’t been in town, he would have slipped inside and tortured the information out of them.
However, with Aislinn and the Marshals in town poking around, that would raise more questions and possibly, more ghosts. Instead, he wrote a note stating that August was alive and Gertrude knew how to find him. He drove back into town.
Maybe he could get the Marshals out of town quickly. He reached their hotel and, pulling on an older suit jacket, walked inside. His age was never a hindrance. Most people thought of him as a harmless old man, if a bit eccentric. They didn’t realize he could overpower most healthy, young adult males.
“May I help you?” The woman at the desk asked.
“Yes, I’d like to leave a note for Aislinn Cain,” he said.
“I believe she’s in, sir, if you’d like I can call her.”
“No, it’s just a note, no need to wake her. If you could just give it to her in the morning that would be fine.” He slipped the envelop across the desk. He’d printed Aislinn Cain in large, flowing letters on the front and sealed it.
Tomorrow, this would all be over. She’d get the note, they’d go track down August and take him into custody.