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I wondered what had been wrong that had caused him to be considered ‘broken down.’
When he got his truck started, he glanced at something in the back of his truck and reached down, almost as if he was punching whatever the hell it was in his back seat.
I frowned in concentration as I tried to get a better look at what he was doing, but before I could get any better of a look, he was zooming off while talking to himself.
Asshole.
I was so numb, so disconnected from everything, that I didn’t notice at first the woman walking through the door until she was right on top of me.
I looked up into the eyes of my mother.
“MOM!” I cried, launching myself out of the chair.
I didn’t even realize I was crying until she was wiping away my tears and cooing to me softly.
“It’s okay, baby. It’s okay,” she promised.
And I wanted to believe her.
But as the hours passed, the worry started to rise.
It’d been over two hours since the fervor had died down at the scene, and not once had a familiar face that belonged to me in some way come out of the smoke like the rest of the SWAT men did.
I pressed my hand to my belly as the cold chill inside my belly made itself known once again.
My mom being here was great.
But I was still missing three of my people.
“I’m so sorry I didn’t get here earlier,” she whispered into my hair. “I’ve been throwing up for hours. And since we stayed at the cabin last night, I didn’t know until I got home and there were police cars at the house. God, baby. I’m so sorry for scaring you. I’m so sorry.”
I had a feeling she was apologizing for more than just scaring me. She was apologizing because of Sammy.
I felt the tears dripping down my face as I said, “I’m scared.”
“You know your father,” she said, hope in her voice. “He probably stayed to help until the last person was taken off scene. He’s okay.”
I wished I had her optimism.
With it being so many hours later, I wasn’t sure that there was anything else left that they could do.
And surely they would’ve borrowed a phone by now to call.
Right?
No, I didn’t have my mom’s optimism.
My sister, father, and Sammy were dead.
I felt it in my soul.
“Okay,” I said, even though I didn’t feel the surety that she did.
I was just about to pull her to me and retake the seat when a familiar face walked into the room.
Chief Luke Roberts.
He walked directly to us.
Or to me.
He stopped just inside the small waiting room that we found ourselves in and glanced around, doing a roll count in his head.
Behind him came Miller, Mercy, Blue and Sierra, Sammy’s family.
Mercy had tears running down her cheeks, and Sierra looked like she was seconds away from bursting into tears. Blue looked…lost.
It was Miller’s red eyes that were brimming with his own unshed tears that nearly broke me.
I swallowed hard when those eyes, so much like Sammy’s, came to rest on me.
My breath stalled out in my lungs and I knew.
I knew before Luke said a single word that it wasn’t good.
Miller held my eyes as Luke spoke.
“As of now, we’re no longer looking for survivors at the scene,” Luke said. “Now it’s a body recovery.”
Body.
Recovery.
My mother gasped and pressed her hand to her heart.
“There aren’t any more survivors?” I felt a cold hand on my shoulder.
I didn’t look over, but I somehow knew that it was Amelia.
“No,” Luke said. “There are no more signs of life.”
Something squeezed in my chest as my mother gasped, her breath hitching.
Still, I held Miller’s eyes.
I wanted him to say he was joking.
I wanted him to tell me that this was all some sick, twisted dream.
That this wasn’t really happening.
Not to me.
Then Patman came in the room with a smile on his face as his ‘rescuers’ thanked him.
I wanted to vomit.
“You’re sure?” my mother croaked one more time.
I finally tore my eyes away from Miller to see my mother’s face.
“We’re sure, ma’am,” Luke murmured softly, trying to soften the blow that his words would cause.
My mother fell to her knees then, her hand on her chest still.
“Ma’am?”
My mother fell back on her ass.
Then, eyes on me, her eyes rolled back in her head and she fell backward with a gasp.
“Mom!”
***
“I honestly have no clue how she managed to stay standing as long as she did,” I heard the doctor say. “She was having a massive heart attack. Probably had been all day. That would account for the vomiting.”
I looked at my mother’s hand as it hung off the gurney.
Her wedding ring was nearly slipping off her quickly darkening finger.
Was it normal for people to look dead so fast?
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” someone said to me as they picked up my mother’s hand and placed it on her chest.
