The Heart of Cars

Chapter 38

I open my eyes and look around to see my dad, Tyler, Colton, Jack, Chase, and Brett all standing around me in a hospital bed. "Don't give me that look." I say with a very scratchy voice. Tyler helps me sit up and Jack hands me a cup of water. I take small sips and lean against the pillows. "Next time, maybe you'll listen to the guy that's a bomb expert?" I frown and grumble about how unfair it was and that I was fine, that they just overreacted. "Everyone but Colton and Dustin, leave." I flinch at the loudness of Brett's voice and they leave quietly. I stay quiet and watch as he paces back and forth. "You are discharged. You can have your divorce, but you will not work in the army again. I can't have some foolhardy little girl running around and getting hurt because things don't go her way." I bite my cheek until I taste blood so I don't talk back to him. I can tell by his tone that I shouldn't go against him on this. I just nod silently and he walks out. I take small sips of the water again to try to calm down. I hear the door slam and look up to see everyone but Colton is in the room. "Jo?" I sigh and play with the edge of the cup. "Jolene, what did my dad say?" I shake my head and take a deep soothing breath. "He gave me the divorce like I wanted." I say, not able to look at him. "What else?"

"There wasn't anything else." I clear my throat and sigh, knowing I only do that when I lie. "I don't want to talk about it Tyler." He looks pissed but just nods his head and walks out, slamming the door as he does. "Well, that went well." I laugh at my dad's assessment and nod. "So when will you be ready to get back out there? I think the four of us make an excellent team and we could be the best out there. Well, once we have a little more time together and stuff." I shake my head at Chase's words. "I won't be getting back out there. This was it. They just needed me for my knowledge of this one specific escapee. I finished my year. I'm done." Jack and Chase give each other a shocked look. "That can't be right. For one, you were in the army longer than a year already, we read your file. And two, how could you have knowledge nobody else did for this case? They don't let ex-cons join the army for a reason and that's the only way you could know more about her than anyone else." I look at my dad who just walked in but he shakes his head. "I can't help you with this one kid. It's all you."

"You're such a big help." I grumble and he just walks out of the room. "They do let ex-cons join. They just don't tell anyone except the ex-cons." I say quietly. "No, that's a lie. Why would they let convicts have guns? And the knowledge on how our military deal with convicts? That doesn't make any sense." Jack says as the door opens and Colton walks back into the room. "I heard it was story time," is all he says as he sits on a chair in the corner of the room. "Because not all ex-cons are given the chance, and they never let the ex-cons know everything."

"How do you even know all of this if they only tell ex-cons..." Chase trails off as he figures it out. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you two." I tell them after a few minutes of their shocked silence. "Just the two of us? He knew?" He gestures towards Colton and I shrug. "He had to know. He was my commanding officer." Jack scoffs, "I heard he was more than that before you chose wrong." I nod slowly and don't look over at Colton. "When I was younger, I went to River Run. I told everyone it was for grand theft auto, but it wasn't. What I did, it really doesn't matter, but when I got caught it was an automatic sentence to there. When I was inside, I met her. She tried to bully me and it backfired on her. Some of the girls went to the hospital, some went," I clear my throat and look down at my hands, "home, but Denise stayed. I'm not so sure why she didn't go to the hospital like her friends but she didn't. I kept hitting her and hitting her, worse than the other girls, but she never left River Run. She kept hounding me, trying to figure out what I did to get in there after that, because she was right, nobody got put in there for stealing a car and going for a joy ride. So I started asking about her. My dad had friends that worked there, and they didn't give me much special treatment, just the fact that they didn't tell anyone who I was. No matter how much they got bribed, my name was kept a secret. I told them my name was Rose and most of them left me alone after I took on those girls so I didn't have much trouble getting information." I hear a laugh and look up at Chase and Jack. "Sorry, but really? You expect us to believe that?" I sigh and nod to answer Chase's questions. "I'm not sure how I can prove it to you, but it's the truth. I'm not sadistic enough to make up a story about there."

"What did you do to get an automatic sentence?" I flinch at the question and close my eyes for a second. "I killed three men." Even the air seemed to freeze as I said those words. I promised myself nobody would ever know, but if she ever got out again, they would need to know everything about her; which means they needed to know everything about me, apparently. "Why three?" I look up at Jack, confused. "Why did you stop at three? Why not more? Why not less?"

"I heard some things and they knew what happened to my mom. I couldn't find anyone else who knew about her, just those three."

"How did you find them? How old were you? How did you kill them?" I fidget with the cup of water and Colton speaks up for the first time. "Her mom went missing when she was little. What were you, four years old or so?" I nod and keep looking at my hands. "Well, nobody ever found her body or where she went. Her dad couldn't find her and after that, Dustin let her run wild. He would drop her off at daycare, expecting her to walk inside but she didn't. She walked around town, looking for her mom, and listening in to see if anyone would talk about her mother. He did the same with school. Once she was eleven, her dad got a call that one of his officers seen her down by the docks, where the black market was supposed to be. When Dustin got there, he couldn't find Jo anywhere. It was just like she had vanished, just like her mother did. Dustin started looking again but he didn't find her until a year later, laying, unconscious, on the roof of the building where three men from that black market had been killed. Or at least, that's what her dad told me."

*edited*