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Nobody comes.
Sebastian circles to the back door. “It’s open,” he says grimly. Sure enough, it’s ajar.
We exchange a worried look. Sebastian pulls his sleeve down to cover his hand and pushes it wider. “Hello?” he calls.
“Brian?” I follow him into the kitchen. “Brian, it’s me, Avery.”
Silence. It’s eerily quiet, and I feel unease creep down my spine. But I continue forward, heading for the office. I remember it’s just down this hallway, with the door—
“Avery, don’t!”
Sebastian calls from behind me, but it’s too late. I’ve already pushed the door wider and stepped into the room.
I scream.
Brian is slumped over his desk, a gun clutched in one hand, blood pooling on the papers there from a gaping bullet wound in his temple.
He’s dead.
18
AVERY
“Oh my god!”Panic grips me, propelling me forward towards his body.
“Avery, no!” Sebastian pulls me back.
“But we have to help him!” I cry, frantically looking around.
“It’s too late,” Sebastian holds me firmly, turning me so I’m facing him. “Avery, it’s over. He’s gone.”
I gasp for air. “No…”
“We have to go,” he says, his voice urgent in my ear. “Come on, Avery. We need to get the fuck out of here,now.”
I’m too shocked to resist as Sebastian drags me out of the room, back through the kitchen and out of the open door.
“But they’ll find him like that,” I blurt, horrified. “His family… The kids… Sebastian—”
“Go.”
He hustles me back to the car, and practically shoves me into the passenger seat. Then he drives off, cursing under his breath as we follow the road away from his house, and out into the open countryside. I sit there, reeling, in shock from what I’ve just seen, until Sebastian finally pulls off the main road, and down a winding country lane, finally coming to a stop beside an old fence in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but trees and fields for miles around.
My sob shatters the silence. I crumple into tears as the shock finally leaves my body. Sebastian pulls me closer, into a tight hug. “It’s okay,” he tells me, reassuring “It’s going to be okay.”
It comes back to me in flashes, the dark red pooling on his desk. “But I… I don’t understand it,” I sniff. “Why would he do something like that?”
“He didn’t.”
I raise my head to look into his grim face. “What?” I ask, shocked.
“Brian didn’t kill himself,” Sebastian says bluntly. “The back door wasn’t just open. It was forced. With a crowbar would be my guess. By whoever staged that suicide scene. You’re right,” he adds, “A man who’d do anything to protect his family would never put them through that kind of grief, finding him like that.”
“Oh my god,” I whisper, stunned by the violence of the scene. Then I realize, “We must have just missed them! The kettle, it was still boiling. If Brian had put it on the stove, then he couldn’t have been dead long.”
Sebastian nods. “Maybe…”
“If we’d just been faster,” I say with a guilty pang. “God, if I hadn’t stopped to buy that snack—”
