Please Daddy by Dani Wyatt

Chapter 13

Merrick

My pager goes off as my cell phone rings, and I look down to see it’s Malcolm calling and paging at the same time, which means something is urgent.

I look across at my mom, then at the others at the table. “I have to go out and take a call. Make sure you take care of Kezia when she comes back.”

“I’ll treat her like my own daughter.” My mother smiles.

“Good, because that’s who she’s going to be as soon as I can get a ring on her.” I surprise myself with the admission but ignore the gasps and laughter from the table.

It feels right. I’m marrying her as soon as I can, I just need to get things arranged.

I take a look back toward the hallway with the restrooms, but the diner is so full I can’t see past all the standing patrons waiting for tables as I head out the front door.

I tap the screen as the warmth of the summer afternoon envelops me.

“What’s up?”

“We have a situation. I just got a report from one of the workers at the fair out there on Baldwin Road. You need to come in, man. I hate to have to tell you this, but the girl you’ve been with the last couple days…her name is Kezia, right?”

“Yeah, what about her?”

“Her father says you kidnapped her.”

“What? Jesus…” I shake my head, holding my temples with my fingers. “That’s bullshit and he knows it. She’ll confirm.”

“I figured as much, but still this is going to have to be handled delicately because that’s not the worst of it.”

My head is already pounding and I can’t imagine what could be worse.

“She’s only sixteen, man. I know you probably asked, and maybe she lied, she looks older or you didn’t ask and just assumed…but the father says she’s underage. Says he has a birth certificate to prove it.”

I feel the forever I wanted with Kezia evaporating into the ether. She said she was nineteen.

Fuck, yeah, she looks a little younger, but what the fuck? Not sixteen.

I know she wouldn’t lie about that. I know it. Something else is going on here, I just haven’t figured out what yet.

“I’ll be on my way in a few minutes.” I look down at the screen and tap on the tracking app that pings Kezia’s anklet charm I gave her, seeing it moving outside the back parking lot of the diner just as Malcolm’s voice comes through the speaker.

“You should probably get a lawyer…”

I’m already barging through the diner, headed to the back hallway and rear exit when my father sees me.

“What’s wrong?” His decades of law enforcement instinct are still sharp.

“It’s Kezia.” I look around the table, her seat still empty.

“She hasn’t come back yet,” my mother says, her eyes searching the crowd.

“Something’s wrong. Go out front, around the sides of the building…I’m going out the back…”

Out of my peripheral vision, I see my friends and family racing for the front door, no questions asked.

My stomach knots, bile stings the back of my tongue as alternatives tumble in my mind. Either I’ve been set up or, fuck, I’m a child predator…if it’s true, my life is over and I’ll never forgive myself.

I barge through the back hallway, the little red dot on the tracker moving just outside the rear of the building, so I don’t bother checking the ladies’ room before I slam through the rear door and scan.

There’s a black, older model van parked on the street and I hear a door slam shut and the engine start. I’m bolting in that direction, my hand on my gun as I move around to the side of the van, just as the side doors are sliding shut.

It’s Kezia’s ‘father’.

“She’s my daughter. I’m taking her back. You will be in prison for a very, very long time, Sheriff.”

I aim at his head, my finger twitching to tug at the trigger, but he’s secondary right now. My head is spinning, but I need Kezia out of that vehicle. No matter what happens, she’s not going back with him. The vehicle is started which means someone else is in the driver’s seat and they could take off at any moment.

“Move to the front of the vehicle and put your hands on the hood,” I order as my mother, father and Margaret come down the sidewalk, then Summer comes running, breathless, from the back parking lot.

“Do as he says.” My father pulls his gun as well, backing me up like he always does.

“You’re only digging your grave deeper.” Her father smiles, raising his hands and placing them on the hood of the running van as I look behind the wheel and see one of the other men from the troupe.

“You.” I point my pistol though the windshield and it holds his hands up. “Turn off the vehicle, put the keys on the dash and exit the van, hands on the hood next to your partner here.” I look at my dad. “Cover him.”

He nods as I shift to the side doors, keeping my pistol aimed as I push the button on the handle and ease the door open.

The back is empty except for Kezia, a red handprint on her cheek but her eyes are defiant and there are no tears.

“You okay, baby?”

“I am now,” she answers, scooting across the bare metal floor of the van interior and stepping out beside me. “I tried to get away, but with two of them I couldn’t.”

“It’s okay. You did your best.”

I pull her behind me, the turmoil raging inside me that her age is in question. But right now, her safety is paramount. I’ll deal with my own problems later.

“You have violated my daughter, kidnapping and more, I’m sure. Your life and career are in ruins and you cannot take her from me.”

“You’re full of shit,” my father interjects.

“Her birth certificate is in my back pocket. See for yourself.”

I nod toward my father, giving him the go ahead to retrieve the piece of paper on which my career, life and reputation hang. What’s printed on there will be entered into evidence. I’ll have to stand in court while they read it out.

My father slips out an aged, white folded paper, my mother, Margaret and Summer all gathering around him while I keep my gun on the two men and Kezia moves next to the group, taking the paper from my father.

“I’ve never seen this,” she says. “No one ever told me where exactly I was born, or my birthday… And anyway, I’ve counted sixteen summers, I’m positive. How can I remember sixteen summers if I’m only sixteen years old?”

“Exactly,” her father says with a laugh. “Sixteen summers. Sixteen years old.”

“No way. I didn’t start counting before I was one!”

“Look at you?” Her father sneers. “You’re a mutant, but I was going to get top dollar for you, Marco was prepared to pay, but only after he confirmed you were still intact.” Intact. He says it like she’s an animal. “But you’ve ruined yourself. You’re soiled now, aren’t you? Aren’t you?”

My father shoves the barrel of his gun right up against Thadius’s nose and he falls silent, shrinking back, as Margaret moves closer, pulling the paper to one side, leaning down while her other hand covers her lips.

Her eyes dart to me, then the men, then at the paper, and finally at Kezia.

“She’s not sixteen.” Margaret snarls at the two men, then fixes her eyes on me. “She’s not sixteen, Merrick.”

“What do you mean? How do you know?”

“Because, she’s my daughter.”

* * *

It’s pushingmid-night as I sit, looking out at the moon, stroking Kezia’s hair as she sleeps with her head on my lap.

I don’t have the heart to move her and possibly wake her because she’s had one hell of a day. I have too, and Margaret and Summer…

Life is stranger than fiction, for sure.

After I called for back-up and we took Thadius and his side-kick Marco into custody, we got down to figure out what the fuck was really going on.

We pieced things together the best we could.

With info from Margaret and Kezia, it looks like Margaret was right. Kezia is her daughter. Summer’s fraternal twin.

The allergies were one clue, but Kezia’s unique brown/blue eyes apparently were her biological father’s genetic anomaly as well.

Those things could have been coincidental, but then Margaret laid out the facts surrounding the home for unwed mothers where she gave birth, and the name of the doctor, which matched the information on Summer’s birth certificate.

When the doctor falsified Kezia’s birth certificate, he didn’t think to change the fact that Kezia was a fraternal twin. The birth year was changed in another forgery attempt by her family in order to try to frame me, but in the end there was more proof to show they were the criminals and when the district attorney gets finished with them, they won’t be moving around and playing their games for a very long time.

The list of crimes committed since the birth of Summer and Kezia went on and on and the people Kezia was sold to by the doctor do this for a living, so after some investigating, there wasn’t much doubt.

What I do know for certain, is my babygirl is here to stay. I’ll do everything in my power to help her adjust to the changes and new information about how her life began and, in the end, I know it was all meant to be.

Some cosmic plan set in motion long ago to bring us all here to the same place and settle each of our souls in its own way.

The last thing we talked about before she fell asleep was the dark-haired girl back at the festival. It’s her ‘sister’ of sorts. She made me promise I would do what I could to get her away as well, and I can’t say no to my baby, so I’ll get to figuring that out as soon as I can.

Tomorrow, Kezia will be wearing an engagement ring. She asked me how I knew they had taken her, so I had to admit the little gold ankle bracelet and charm I gave her was also a GPS tracker.

She twisted up her face for a second, pretending to be mad pointing a finger at my nose. It didn’t last. I told her I would keep her safe, and that is what I’ll do.

My little sprite. She will finally have her home.

And so will I.