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She looks like someone else.
Someone fake, all dolled up in that expensive red dress that costs more than our house, wearing it just because that man gave it to her. Her hair’s tied up in this weird twist of knots, and she’s wearing stark red lipstick that makes her mouth look cruel and angry. The thick mascara and eyeliner make her eyes look less green and more white, more cold and furious.
That’s not my sister—my earthy, messy, scatterbrained sister.
That’s a doll created by Montero Arrendell.
Not a real person at all.
But the anger in her voice is very real as she snaps, “You’re only seventeen! You’re too young for the Navy, dammit.”
“Jesus, Cel, it’s preliminary.” I scowl. “Can’t go till I’m eighteen, anyway—and they want me to finish high school first. Hell, after I serve my first tour, they’ll pay for college. How the hell else we gonna pay for it?”
“I don’t know!” she flares. “Look, this—this whole stupid thing, it didn’t come with an instruction manual, Lucas. Mom and Dad didn’t leave me a step-by-step guide to raising you, but we could—we could sell the house—”
“No way. We’re not selling this place. It’s all we’ve got left of them,” I spit back. “Screw it. I’m not going to college at all if that’s what it takes!”
“You have to go.” She shakes her head sharply, her fingers tightening until the papers she’s clutching crumple. “They would’ve wanted it. But not like this. The military... Jesus Christ. You won’t even survive to take your first classes. Do you know how dangerous it is over there? We’re at war.”
“Iraq? Afghanistan? Those are brush fires, not World War Two,” I throw back in all my youthful ignorance. “I just gotta make it through a full tour or two, and half the time I’ll be polishing ship decks. It’s not that scary, Cel.”
“You don’t know that. You—”
An impatient honk from a horn outside stops her.
There’s a limo waiting, black and gleaming as a snake.
Her face transforms and it scares me.
This desperation I’ve never seen before, this hope, almost like she’s in thrall to some horrible beast she can’t resist even as it drains the life from her.
And is that fear underneath it?
It’s funny how terror and longing look the same sometimes.
Her hands go lax and my papers drop to the floor.
“I don’t have time for this. We’ll talk more when I get home,” she says hollowly. She won’t even look at me now. “You’re not enlisting, and that’s final.”
She gathers up her skirts, the bracelet on her wrist jingling and flashing.
Then she’s gone.
Right off to him again, so he can parade her around on his arm in front of all his rich friends, in front of his wife. Showing my sister off like a toy he’ll throw away tomorrow.
I fucking hate it.
I hate him.
I hate the way she is when she’s around him.
I hate everything.
Hate waking up in the morning and hate realizing my sister hasn’t come home.
Hate that no one’s seen her since yesterday.
But more than anything, I hate the fake-ass look on Montero Arrendell’s face when I go storming up to the big house and fling myself past his fancy butlers and doormen to roar in his face, to demand he give my sister back.
“Poor boy,” he says, smiling, wearing the cold eyes of a man asking What are you going to do? What can you do? “Your sister told me she was done with me long before my invitation to last night’s soiree. I’d asked her to attend in the hopes of making amends and restoring our—friendship—but when she never arrived, I assumed I’d been soundly rejected. You’re looking in the wrong place, son. Perhaps a flighty girl like her just couldn’t handle the pressure of raising a teenager all on her lonesome.”
It’s a goddamned lie and I know it.
A hurtful, hateful lie that hits my deepest fears.
I want to hurl myself at him and claw his eyes out.
I don’t even realize I’m dangerously close to doing it, his cold green eyes blurring into mist with the furious tears streaming down my face. Not until hands are on me, pulling me back.
Those butlers and doormen I dodged before are dragging me now and I’m kicking and shouting and blind with rage.
They chuck me out of the house with lots of threats about calling the cops.
When my senses come back, I’m down the hill, left in the dirt in a sobbing heap.
All I can do is make a vow.
I’ll never fucking stop.
Not till I know the truth about where my sister’s gone.
Present
All those years.
All those years, multiple tours of duty with the Navy, coming back home to Redhaven to sign on with the police, and I still haven’t found my answers.
I still haven’t found my sister.
But I know she didn’t leave me that night.
