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Tegan’s driveway approaches, and just as I’m about to pull onto the gravel, I slam on the brakes. A car is peelingout of it, a cop car, I realize. I scowl as Smith whips his car onto the road, his face ghost-white and his eyes wide. Sitting in the passenger seat, the barrel propped against the window, is a shotgun. As he whips around the corner, it falls over.
Did Tegan find something? Did she call him? If she had, why aren’t his lights flashing? And why would he be leaving instead of calling in the cavalry?
A terrible feeling settles in my gut that something is so wrong, forcing him to leave in such a hurry.
Once he’s fully on the road, racing away, I pull into the driveway and head toward the house. I remind myself, yet again, that this driveway needs new gravel because all the holes are throwing me around my cab. I can’t imagine what Tegan’s car is like, trying to make it through this mess.
Parking my truck behind Tegan’s car, I hop out and grab the two shovels, one in each hand. If I know Tegan, and based on the fact that Smith was here, she’s already in the back, probably deciding her plan of action on how to get the roses out of the way.
I head around the house hurriedly because she just might be crazed enough to try to pull them out by hand. Wading through the tall grass of the backyard, I frown when I don’t see her. The barbed wire is half removed, and a portion of the roses is uprooted, but still, no Tegan in sight. Did she go back to the house?
I glance once at the house. Maybe she didn’t find anything? Maybe she’s waiting for me to get here?
It’s a little awkward, but I slide through the fence and make my way to the rose bed, carefully watching my step to avoid a few piles of horse manure. As soon as I get there though, I stop because anyone would stop if they saw a skull.
“Fuck,” I whisper. She’d been right. I glance back toward the house. If she was right, why isn’t she still out here? If she’s right, why wouldn’t Smith still be here? Why wouldn’t there be more cops?
As I swivel back toward the grave, I see it. The body in the grass, face down. A head of blonde hair. Familiar clothes stained red.
At first, my mind doesn’t believe it, but then my heart thuds in my chest, and my stomach sinks to my gut. The breath whooshes from my lungs as though I’d been punched.
True fear cripples me as I throw the shovels to the ground andrunto Tegan. I drop down beside her, cursing. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what happened here. The gun in Smith’s car, the look on his face, the blood all over Tegan. Whether she called him or he came on his own, I don’t know, but she showed him the evidence, and he shot her for it.
The only reason he’d shoot her was to hide what truly happened that day that Neil disappeared.
“Tegan,” I call, brushing hair from her face. Her back barely rises and falls with each breath, and her eyes are shut. Blood seeps from the corner of her mouth, and my fear skyrockets.
I can’t lose another person. I can’t!
I whip out my phone and call 9-1-1. As soon as they answer, I prattle off the address, telling them that Tegan had been shot, and then I hang up because, as I watch, Tegan’s breathing becomes more shallow.
Gently, I turn her over. She doesn’t make a sound as I do, even though it has to hurt like hell. Maybe she’s too far gone to feel it? The thought does absolutely nothing to comfort me.
As soon as she’s on her back, I tap her cheek. “Tegan, open your eyes!”
A bubbling cough comes from her mouth, and blood gushes out. Her eyelids flutter for a moment, but she can’t seem to keep them open.
“Tegan! Open your damn eyes!”
I tap her cheek again, but her head rolls around. My fear intensifies. There’s no way an ambulance will make it in time, and there’s no way I can get her to the doctor in time either. I don’t know anything about injuries like this!
My voice is deep and full of emotion as I gather her to my chest. I cradle her head and rock her back and forth. “Stay with me, sweetheart. Please don’t leave. Stay with me.”
I listen to her labored, slow breaths as I murmur to her. I tell her what she means to me, about how I can’t live without her. Fresh tears fall down my cheeks, and it takes me a moment to realize I’m doing it, but over and over again I’m whispering, “I love you.”
And I know it to be true. I feel it in my soul, in the way I’m terrified that she will actually die. I want the last words she hears to be the truth. I love her. I’d do anything for her. I’d trade places and die for her.
The sirens sound in the distance, and I shake her a little. “Help is here, do you hear me? Help is here, sweetheart.”
I peer down at her face as the last breath leaves her lungs. “Tegan?” My heart races so fast that it rushes through my ears, drowning out the noise of the approaching ambulance.
Cursing under my breath, I lay her flat and start giving her chest compressions. “Stay with me, damn it,” I growl as I shove against her heart.
Vaguely, I’m aware of the ambulance on the property. Ihear their doors open, and I shout for them. Sweat gathers down my spine, both from terror and from trying to keep her heart beating. But she just lies there, her head jostling as I shove down her chest over and over again.
The next thing I know, paramedics are beside me, one barking orders at the other. I keep giving compressions, solely fixed on her heart, hoping she breathes again until someone pulls me away from her.
“We’ve got it from here,” the paramedic says.
