Divine Savior by Kathi S. Barton Read Free Book Online Page A

right?”
    “ You got it, kiddo.” There was a long pause and Shade was nervous as to why. “The little one, the little girl, she’s in surgery. And they are a working on the boy. They’s in bad shape, you know? But I’ll be right here for ‘em. Just you take care you stay away from that bitch, you hear?”
    Diana had been a nurse for a very long time, and would be for much longer, Shade hoped. Nurses like her were born to care for people and Shade was very glad she knew her.
    “ Yeah, I’ll do that. Thank you, Mrs. Ridge. You don’t know how much…you are a very nice person.”
    She hung up and leaned her head against the wall. The female officer quietly handed her a tissue and walked far enough away for Shade to have a few minutes of privacy. Shade sobbed quietly, crying into the tissue and hurting for the stupidity of it all.
    They held them for nearly fourteen hours. Shade had told them what had happened from the time she had entered the apartments seven times so far. She hurt. She hadn’t realized when it was happening that the man, Bob Peterson, had hit her with his fists quite a few times before she had gotten the better of him. Her jaw and ribs were bruised, and she was sure that a couple of them were cracked. Those injuries would not heal as fast as a life threatening wound would. She would have to suffer through them along with the nightmare she had just witnessed.
    Shade was told that she couldn’t leave town—like she could even if she wanted to—and that she was to appear in court the following Monday morning at eight o’clock. They had appointed her an attorney fresh out of college, an intern. Her name was Madison Harm. She seemed nice enough. The court appearance was in four days.
    Shade used some of her stash and took a cab straight to the hospital. She wanted to be there as soon as the kids woke up. The need to reassure them and herself that everything would hopefully get better soon was paramount. She hoped that the authorities would have enough now to take the kids from Brenda—mother of the year, she was not.
    Diana met her at the emergency room doors. As soon as Shade saw Diana, she knew that something bad had happened to one or both of the children.
    “ I’m so sorry, baby. Little Becca died on the operating table of massive internal injuries late last night,” Diana told her. “She had blunt trauma to her head where someone had apparently swung her against something really hard. The doctor said she must have been screaming up a storm from what they done to her. She’d been raped repeatedly, the doc telled me. She was just too weak and too broken inside to have survived surgery, honey.”
    Shade sat down hard on the floor, her knees too weak to hold her up any longer. She could feel the tears on her face, but couldn’t gather the strength needed to wipe them away. Becca was dead. Her little Becca was gone. It took her several seconds to realize Mrs. Ridge was still speaking.
    “ Maybe if’n she’d of had a little more strength, she might maybe of had a fighting chance. Do you believe she had only been four years old? Brent, that little darling, ain’t much better, I’m afeared. He’s in a medical coma and they’s hoping he’ll be able to pull through, but it don’t look good. That bastard tossed him against the same wall as his baby sister, I’m abetting. Splitting that poor lamb’s head open like a melon and having the surgeon put a hundred and fifty-six stitches in his little skull.”
    “ I tried,” Shade started. “I tried to save them, but I was too late. I’m so sorry. I was too late.”
    “ Shade, honey, there weren’t nothing you could have done to save them. That poor little thing, Brent…he was raped, too, they was a saying, but not by this man, at least not this time. What could you have done, baby, without you getting killed too? They’s momma should have done it; she should have…I’d like to have five minutes with the nasty piece of horse