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He didn’t bother to put his stand down. He barely bothered to come to a full stop. He dropped his bike and leapt toward her, landing at a run. “Petra!” he shouted, terrified, and took maybe his first breath in ten minutes when she stirred. Just slightly, enough to curl up more tightly, but it meant she was alive.
Simon and Duncan were off their bikes now, too, and he registered that they’d both drawn their pieces. Jay should have as well; he had no idea what was wrong, why she was on the ground, what she meant about her father, nothing. Only that he was needed.
He dropped to his knees before her. He saw no blood, no bruise, no slash. Her eyes were closed, and her face was so wet with tears blades of grass had stuck to her cheek. When he reached to check her pulse at her throat, her eyes opened—red and swollen.
Despite her obvious misery, Jay felt a burst of relief so big and bright he nearly smiled.
“Dunc,” Simon said behind him, his voice low and careful. “We gotta clear the scene. Go ‘round to the right. I’ll go left. Check all the windows. We’ll meet in front.”
“On it,” Duncan said. Jay went back to ignoring them. His attention belonged elsewhere.
“Hey, babe.” At the sound of his voice, Petra tried to sit up, and he helped her. “Are you hurt? What happened?”
She didn’t speak, but her expression was pure despair. She held out a tightly bunched fist. There was something in it. When he put his hand up, ready to take what she was offering, she didn’t release her fist. He began to gently pry her fingers loose, and she let him.
It was a piece of paper, like printer paper. He smoothed it out and saw handwriting not that much different from his father’s. A bold hand, each strong line pressed deeply into the paper.
After a glance to make sure she wouldn’t stop him, that she wanted him to read, he focused on the page.
My beloved daughter,
On the table here is everything you’ll need to sort things—
Right there, Jay understood everything: Petra’s agonized grief, her terrified call to him, why he’d found her curled in a ball in the back yard. Her old man had offed himself. Pussed out and bailed. And he’d left her to find this note and deal with the mess he’d made.
Was that metaphorical? Had he at least been decent and done the deed where somebody else would find him? Or had he left her a fucking mess?
Jay continued reading, skimming the parts about paperwork, until his eyes landed on the sentence that answered every remaining question, and if the asshole had been alive, Jay would have killed him right then.When they get here, send them to the basement. Petra, do not go down there.
He stopped reading and wadded the letter back up.
“Jay,” Duncan said, coming with Simon around from the front of the house. “Hey. Found something.” His voice was low, almost gentle.
“I know,” he answered without taking his eyes from Petra. “Petra. Babe, did you stay away?”
He wouldn’t have thought it possible, but even more anguish filled her eyes, and she gave a creaky, microscopic shake of her head.
Her father had told her to call 911, but since they weren’t here, and this was the kind of neighborhood where emergency services hurried, he doubted she had. “Did you call anybody but me?”
A slightly more pronounced head-shake.
“Okay. Did you touch anything down there?”
This time, her head shook frantically, and she fell forward into his lap, sobbing.
Jay bent over, covering her body with his as if making himself a human shield could protect her from anything right now. He held her until she quieted, then grabbed her shoulders and made her sit up again.
Wiping her cheeks with his thumbs, he said, “I’m going to go in there and take a look around. Okay? If you can think of anything we need to deal with, anything that shouldn’t be here when cops and whoever else they send come, let me know, and we’ll deal with it. But I need you to sit right here and think about that while we go in. Okay?”
She nodded and took a breath that seemed slightly steadier. Jay rolled to his feet. To Duncan, he said, “Let’s go in before you tell me what you saw. Basement, right?”
Duncan nodded. Jay went through the back door of Petra’s father’s house. Duncan and Simon followed.
They came into the kitchen—a nice room, lots of updates, high-end appliances. What you’d expect from a banker’s house. He saw the new groceries on the counter and got a kick in the chest, remembering the morning. How easy and happy it was, how eager Petra had been for Jay to meet her father. This morning, it had felt like her old man’s prison sentence was a bump in an otherwise pretty smooth road. Like Petra and her father would both get over it and continue on.
Simon gave Jay a searching look. “Dunc said you were getting serious with this woman, but I didn’t realize ...”
No, nobody in the club took anything about him seriously. Jay did not have room in his head to give a shit about that. “Yeah. She’s my old lady.”
