1
TWO MONTHS AFTER THE ATTACK ON THE HOMESTEAD
CONNOR
Laughter floats through the still night air, spreading out across the homestead and drifting up to me where I sit on the front porch of my cabin. The happy, joyful sound makes me wince. It only makes my pain worse.
My hand tightens around the glass of bourbon until my knuckles ache, but I don’t loosen it.
I can’t…
Not when that death grip and the alcohol within it are the only things that seem to keep me grounded lately. The more I drink, the less I think. Or at least, the less my thoughts drift to the agonizing, dark place I don’t want to be stuck in.
Yet, that’s where I find myself more often than not, especially on nights like this.
Swirling in that onyx abyss…
Surrounded by brief flashes of moonlight glinting off the axe head as I drove it down?—
No.
I squeeze my eyes closed and take a long drink, hoping the spicy liquor burning down my throat and through my belly will also sear away the memory and the pain.
That’s always the hope, yet it doesn’t.
It might create a kind of haze that dulls the clarity of the memories, but it can never eliminate them completely.
Another peal of laughter reaches me…
Light.
Feminine.
So filled with a brightness I’ve never felt and never will.
Lucky.
The woman’s name fits her so perfectly. Hearing her so happy, so carefree after everything she went through. Listening to Liam’s boom of a laugh joining with hers. That combined happiness should help alleviate the guilt that plagues me. It should wash away the tsunami of anxiety that threatens to drown me every day. It should replace the sound of the gunshots and the axe sinking into flesh and bone. It should reassure me that what I did was right and necessary.
But it doesn’t.
It can’t.
Nothing can.
Nothing I’ve found, anyway.
And I’ve looked.
I’ve scoured every inch of McBride Mountain to find something—literally anything—that might act as a parachute for this downward spiral I’ve found myself in, but it doesn’t exist.
All that does is pain, regret, guilt, and endlessly questioning the actions I took and what they made me.
A killer.
Four men.
Four lives.
