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Ellis hung up on her and looked at his brothers. “Bree’s in trouble and help’s too far away. We need to find her.”
Nate and Damian said nothing, but their silence spoke louder than words.
“What?” he demanded.
“We?” Damian said, enunciating the word. “Since when has there been awein this family?”
“I hear you. I do. But we don’t have time for this right now. As soon as Bree is safe, we can—”
“There is nowe.”
“Day, c’mon,” Nate said softly and set a hand on Damian’s shoulder, only to be shrugged off.
“Don’t, Nate. Don’t even start that bullshit peacemaker thing you do. I know you feel the exact same way. Ellis has no right to ask us to follow him on a suicide mission when he left us.” He jabbed a bloody finger hard into Ellis’s chest. “You. Left. Us.”
Jesus, he didn’t have time for this. “Yeah, I left. I had to. Why was my responsibility to stay?”
Damian opened his mouth but closed it again without saying anything. Silence poured into the space between the three of them, filling the air with tension. A balloon about to pop.
“Because you were all we had,” Nate finally said in little more than a whisper. “We needed you.”
“But you abandoned us just like Dad,” Damian added. The fight had drained out of him and he just sounded exhausted. “We owe you nothing.”
“You’re right.”
And there it was, the balloon popping, all the air rushing out of the argument like a long-held breath.
Caught off-guard by the sudden acquiescence, Damian took a step backward. “What?”
“You’re absolutely right,” Ellis repeated. “You owe me nothing, but I’m not asking for me. This isn’t about us. Or even about Dad anymore. This is about saving Bree, whose only fault is blind devotion to a man that has fucking destroyed us all. But he’s never hurt her. He’s never given her a reason to doubt him.”
Damian muttered something under his breath and walked away.
“You love her.” Not a question, but a statement in Nate’s very matter-of-fact way.
Ellis shook his head in immediate denial, but then made a sound that was too raw to be a laugh. “What the fuck is love? None of us know anything about it.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I respect the hell out of her. She’s not like anyone I’ve ever met and if she dies—” His throat closed up. He couldn’t finish the thought. Couldn’t imagine a world without Bree in it. Didn’t want to even try. “Yeah. Fuck it. I love her. And, yeah, it was my responsibility as your older brother to take care of you guys. I let you down and I can’t change that, but now it’s my responsibility to make sure Bree doesn’t get hurt because of our fucked-up family. I ran away once. I’m not doing it again.”
Damian returned. His shirt was still bloody, but his hands were clean. He carried a blanket that he gently draped over Coop’s body. Then he straightened and held up a set of keys with a small metal helicopter dangling from the chain. “If I’m going to be accused of murder, I might as well add grand theft to it. Let’s go find Bree.”
32
God, it was cold.
Bree’s teeth chattered and she pulled herself into a tighter knot underneath the trunk of a fallen tree. The wind had picked up, screaming through the branches over her head like a wild animal, ushering in a blast of arctic air from the north. The tree’s meager shelter hid her, but it wasn’t enough protection from the cold. She had to move soon, buthewas still out there.
Waiting. Stalking. Hunting.
She swallowed back a sob, not daring to make any noise. He probably wouldn’t hear her over the incoming storm, but she wasn’t going to take any chances.
She’d spent her life in isolation, but she’d never felt more alone than she did at that moment. She wanted her dogs. Had he found them? Killed them? She wanted Ellis to hold her and tell her everything would be okay. She could almost feel his arms around her. The warmth. The safety. The love…
She jolted awake, realizing with dismay that she’d stopped shivering and could barely keep her eyes open. She couldn’t fall asleep here. If she did, this tree would become her gravestone.
She couldn’t keep hiding.
