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I clenched my teeth, feeling my blood pressure rise every time I thought about what this bastard had done and the hell he’d put Shay and her brother through. Less than twenty-four hours earlier, I’d copped one to the jaw because Shay had drifted back there for a brief moment, and when she’s back in that time, that world, she’s this scared girl who was just trying to make it out alive.
“It’s her father,” I started, letting out a sigh. “Long story short, the mom ran with her and her brother when they were kids. Dad found them several times, but the last time, he stabbed the mom to death and lit the house on fire to try and kill the kids and hide the evidence.”
Each word made it harder and fucking harder, imagining how scared she was.
How this bastard instilled this fear so deeply inside of her that there are still nights she wakes up crying, still nights she can’t sleep because she’s imagining him coming back for her next.
“Fucking hell,” Huntsman cursed down the line. “You sure I can’t just kill him on sight?”
I choked out a laugh. “I need to talk to her about that first. At this stage, I just want to know where he’s at and what he’s doing with his life and then present that to her. Let her decide whether he deserves to keep living his when he’s stolen so much from them.”
“I hear you, brother,” Huntsman said, understanding in his voice. “You send me through his details, and I’ll get started on it as soon as possible.”
I hung up, letting out a heavy sigh.
“You think whoever you were talking to will be able to find my dad?”
My shoulders tightened, and I slowly turned to find Shay watching me from the doorway.
“Thought you went to Backroad with Missy and Kadey,” I said. She nodded toward the table the girls had been sitting at for the past hour helping Kadey plan some fundraiser for school.
Her handbag sat on the table, her phone right beside it.
I walked over and grabbed them, holding them out to her as I approached.
She still hadn’t moved, her hands gripping the doorframe like it was the only thing keeping her upright.
“The girls are waiting, Shay,” I told her, pinching her chin and finally forcing her lost gaze to focus on me. “I don’t know if Huntsman will find your dad. But if he does, we’ll deal with that when it comes.”
Worry flashed in her eyes like emergency lights and sirens screaming down a highway, and I fucking hated the impact that man had on her, the way her emotions instantly switched the moment she had to think of him and the things he did to tear her family apart.
And I had no qualms about putting the bastard in a deep, dark hole six feet deep. Maybe even alive because God fucking knew he deserved to feel even just an ounce of the fear he instilled in her.
Whether or not Shay could give the go-ahead to let me do that, I wasn’t quite sure.
Her heart was still so pure. She believed in helping people, not hurting them.
So we would wait and see, take the information as it came, and then she could decide.
“Shay, go,” I urged, pressing my hand to her stomach and easing her backward out the door. Missy sat in the car a few feet away, with a worried concern on her face as she peered out the window. “Shay.”
She blinked erratically, finally looking up at me. “Sorry.”
I chuckled. “It’s fine. At least you didn’t punch me this time.”
I’d become quite accustomed to her falling in and out of these dazes and learned my lesson about bringing her out of them slowly instead of scaring the crap out of her. Cain had mentioned something about PTSD, which had crossed my mind a few times.
I wanted to talk to her about it. See if we could find her some help. But so far, there just hadn’t been a right time.
How did you create calm within a world of chaos? Because that’s what we were living in at that moment.
Shay had only just gone back to work, we’d dived headfirst into a relationship, and there was still that unknown factor that was a fucking madman determined to make Shay pay for taking something he had decided he owned.
And I still wasn’t sure just how high that price was going to be.
Now she’d overheard me talking to Huntsman about her dad.
“I’ll see you a little later,” she said, leaning in, her lips hovering just above mine. “And we can talk about this and why my brother called me earlier from a rehab facility.”
