“I told you, gone. Gerard, your son has to have his hearing checked.”
My rage is rising faster than high tide. He’s wasting our time. I take two threatening steps toward him, and he holds the barrel up under his jaw. “One more step, and I pull the trigger.”
We are all left flabbergasted. “Like I said, kill me, and you’ll never find out where your little mermaid is.”
What kind of sick joke is he playing?
I start to breathe harder, my body searching for an outlet for the building stress.
“Nothing,” Breaker reports back. “She isn’t in the house. We looked everywhere, even pulled up squeaky floor boards.”
“A basement? Storm cellar?” I demand.
“No,” he sounds confident.
Fuck.
“What do you want, Deacon? What will fix this?” my father appeals to him.
“Seeing you suffer will be the only thing that fixes anything. And like I told Kira, she was a plot twist I didn’t see coming. I was just going to kill your wife, but your stepdaughter? So much sweeter. Her death causes a domino effect. You, your wife, your son. Everyone hurts. One continuous, vicious cycle.”
“Death.”I lunge at Deacon but am restrained by Bone and Breaker. “You tell me where the fuck she is, old man, or I will beat you within an inch of your pathetic life and dangle you there.”
“No place I haven’t been before, kid.” He squeezes the trigger, and a shot of adrenaline has me speeding toward him like a bullet from a Semi. I knock him off the chair, and we wrestle on the floor. We grapple around for the gun, both grabbing it at the same time. Several shots pop off, and blood suddenly pools beneath our bodies. It all happened so fast, my mind is having difficulty catching up to my body. I’m ripped off the floor and hauled to my feet by Bone and Breaker.
“Ky, you’re shot.” Hawk lunges toward me, pressing his bare hands to the wound.
“So is Deacon.” Fender inspects his injury, feeling for a pulse. I see him shake his head.
My father falls to his knees. “John,” he calls him by his God-given name. “Where is Kira? Where the fuck is she?” He shakes him violently, but there’s nothing, no response. He’s dead.
“No, no, no,” I slip into denial. “That can’t be it. We didn’t find her.”
My father looks up at me with a gallon of tears in his blue eyes.My father,the strongest man I know. Crying.
“Slash, we gotta get you to a hospital, man, before you’re the next one to meet the Reaper.” Hawk begins to push me to the door.
“I’m not going anywhere. We have to find her!” Woozy on my feet, I fight to stand on my own.
“She’s gone.” Hawk puts his hands on my shoulders and looks me square in the eyes.
“No,” I break down. My legs turning to jelly.
Bone and Breaker support me as Fender presses a kitchen towel to my side. “Keep pressure on it.”
My father rummages around the small kitchen until he finds what he’s looking for. “Keys. To the truck outside. Get him in the flatbed.”
“No!” I scream in pain. And not the pain from the gunshot wound. The pain from my heart being pulverized into dust.
“Ky.” My father grabs hold of my neck and presses his forehead to mine. “We have to go. I can’t lose you, too. Listen to Fender, or we will drag your unconscious ass out of here. Time is not on our side.”
I bawl like a baby in my father’s grasp. “She can’t be gone.”
“It looks that way.” Two streams of tears race so fast down his face, you could name them like rivers.
“Yo,” Vet’s voice suddenly cuts through the chaos. “We found a shovel with fresh earth on the side of the house. Looks like there’s a grave about twenty yards out into the woods.”
I perk up at his sudden announcement. I push my way forward as we all haul ass out of the house.
