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“Lucy… Luc?”
Silence.
Heartbreaking silence.
As I thrash the living hell out of my bike, I say, “Siri, call my home number.”
More silence.
It doesn’t even ring.
When I arrive at the front of my house, I dismount my bike as I did at Aeros’ back entrance. It skids to a stop under a black SUV with a tint not dark enough to hide the slit in the throat of the man seated behind the steering wheel.
“Henley?” I call out after pushing open the front door that was partially ajar.
The house is eerily quiet. It is also in ruins.
Not a single inch of the floor plan is untouched.
After removing a gun taped under the upturned entryway table, I slowly make my way to the living room. The muted television flickers light into the room, but it is thankfully void of the horror scene I faced the last time my heart thudded this fast.
The living room is empty. Nothing but slashed couches fill the space.
With my pulse ringing in my ears, I clear the dining room and kitchen before going to the stairs.
The silence is killing me. It is gripping my throat so firmly that I can hardly breathe, and the situation worsens when I enter the hallway at the top of the stairs. The wall of photos is damaged beyond repair, and several shards of the cracked glass left in the frames are splattered with blood and pieces of snow-white hair.
I move down the hallway so fast that the creak of the floorboards under my boots gives away my approach, but I don’t give a shit.
The further I travel, the direr the situation becomes. Blood splatter coats the walls, and it is obvious someone has endured the fight of their life.
“Fuck,” I breathe out when I enter Henley’s room, like death and despair aren’t common in my field of work.
Seeing Henley sitting propped up against the freestanding closet, battered and bruised, has my memories jumping back almost six years ago, but before they can bombard me with grief, a flurry of black at the side captures my attention.
I fire before issuing a warning, then count the steps of my approach to the open bedroom window with bullets. I discharge my weapon until there’s no ammunition left to disperse, then sling my gun to the door when I hear someone approaching me from behind.
There have been a handful of mock scenarios that hinted at multiple perps.
“Assailant escaped out the window,” Macy shouts into her phone before joining me at the window. “He’s been hit,” she announces while dabbing at the fresh blood pool on the windowsill. “Possibly multiple times.” Her face whitens when her eyes sling to the other side of the room. “Send up EMTs. Now!” In shock, I watch her cautiously approach Henley to check her for a pulse. “She’s still breathing.”
“She is?”
Macy nods like my stupidity is understandable before demanding I help lay Henley down. “We need to stop the bleeding before she bleeds out.” When a creak sounds over Henley’s painful groan, Macy shouts, “Last room on the right!”
“Lu… Lu…” Henley stutters between low, weak breaths, peering up at me with eyes filled with pain. “Bir-Birt—”
“We’ve got men looking for her,” Macy assures her while pushing down on a large cut in Henley’s stomach before gesturing for me to do the same to a thinner slash across her throat. “We’ll find her, but for now, you need to keep fighting. You did so well, but you can’t stop yet.”
EMTs enter the room just as the closed closet door pops open.
As I struggle to stop the blood gushing from the wound in Henley’s neck, my eyes dart around the almost empty space.
There are no signs Lucy was in the closet during Henley’s brutal battle. Not a single mark or droplet of blood—thank God.
“Lu… Lu… Bir…” Henley tries again, her bloody hand rising. “Hi-hide.”
“We’ve got you,” one of the EMTs assures her, grabbing her hand and pulling it down.
His oath doesn’t hold true for even a second. Henley starts convulsing long before he pricks a needle into her arm. Her eyes roll into the back of her head, and her back arches.
“We need to move her now. She’s crashing.”
Quicker than I can blink, they lift her onto a crash cart and wheel her out of the room.
“I’ll go with her,” Macy says, easing my guilt when my steps toward the door are slower and more weighed down than hers. “She’d want you to find Lucy.”
Silence falls around me for the second time tonight when she follows the EMTs out of the room.
Lucy could be hiding anywhere, but my intuition is telling me she’s close by.
I can feel it in my bones.
“Lucy…” I call out, my voice barely a squeak. I’m shaking so much that my body is aching, and my breaths are shallow and ineffective. “It’s time to come out now.”
