17. Libby
LIBBY
“Maybe they don’t know about your brother,” I said, trying to reassure Johnny as we raced to his house in Iowa.
“You saw the fucking file,” Johnny bit out. “They’ve been watching us for years. There’s no fucking way they don’t know about them.”
Dirt flew behind us as we drove down the dirt road toward his brother’s house. I hadn’t known about his brother living out here, or the fact that he was married with kids. It struck me as odd that Johnny had a ranch out here, yet he lived in Kansas. Why on earth would he give all this up?
“I should have fucking warned them,” Johnny gritted out as we approached the house.
I scooted forward between the seats, staring out the windshield. “The house looks fine.”
“The horses are out,” Jack said, pointing toward the barn. “Is that normal?”
“For this time of day? Yeah.”
We all held our breath as the car jerked to a stop. Johnny was the first out, running flat out for the steps of the house, calling his brother’s name. I had never really been scared before Rafe went to that island, but now it felt like everything was hanging by a thread.
“Thomas!” Johnny called out as he shoved the door open and ran inside.
My heart pounded in my chest as I walked up the steps. Fear washed over me, my chest tightening painfully at the thought of anything happening to his family. The moment I walked through the door, I knew we were too late.
With little kids, a bit of a mess was to be expected, but this…Chairs were knocked over, lamps were in pieces on the ground, the kitchen was smeared with blood, dishes were broken on the floor…
I pressed my hand to my stomach, terrified of what we would find if we walked further into the house. Would they all be dead? Were they taken somewhere?
“We need to search the house,” Jack whispered. “Don’t let him find his family like that.”
I nodded, though right now, I didn’t feel like I had the stomach for it. But I let my feet guide me up the stairs to the bedrooms. I didn’t know why this was so fucking hard. This was my life. I was used to the danger and possibility of death.
But nothing was the same for me since Rafe died.
With every step I took, my legs shook. When I reached the first door, my fingers slid across the smooth wood, pushing just hard enough to let the door creak open.
Relief flooded me when all I found was a child’s room with the bed unmade. Other than a few toys scattered on the floor, nothing else was disturbed, but that didn’t mean the other bedrooms were the same.
Moving down the hall, I approached the next bedroom, the same as the last. I didn’t take my time, worried I wouldn’t have the nerve to actually go through with it. But again, I pushed open the door and found the room wholly undisturbed.
The bathroom door across the hall was open, and after a quick peek in the mirror, I saw nothing that resembled the movie Carrie, and proceeded to push the door open to verify it was empty.
That left just one room at the end of the hall.
I wasn’t sure why I felt a tightening in my gut or why my palms started sweating, but something told me I would not like what I found in the master bedroom. I had been working in this field for way too long to trust that everything would be okay.
I stood outside, straining my ears to hear downstairs. Maybe they had found everyone and I would find nothing inside this room. But the longer I stood there, the more it became clear that they hadn’t found a thing yet.
Steeling my spine, I pushed the door open and stepped inside. My stomach dropped in seconds.
The bed was a mess, torn apart like a fight had been in here. Blood soaked the sheets, but there was no body. I couldn’t tell if the injuries had been life-threatening, but it didn’t appear that whatever happened here, someone had died. There wasn’t enough blood.
Shouts sounded from downstairs, tearing me from the horror scene in front of me. I raced out of the room and down the stairs, desperate to get away from the scene in that room.
“Maybe they got away,” Jason said calmly.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Johnny snapped. “Did you see the kitchen?”
“They could have made it out?—”
“There’s fucking blood everywhere!” Johnny shouted.
As I hit the bottom step, all eyes turned to me for confirmation. I shook my head. “No bodies, but there is blood in the master bedroom. Not enough for someone to have died there, though.”
“What about the panic room?” Jason asked. “You fixed it up, right?”
For seconds, nobody moved. Then Johnny was tearing through the house for the basement stairs. Hope fluttered through me as I followed them downstairs. If they made it to the panic room, they could be just fine.
It took way too long for Johnny to get the door open. His fingers shook as he tried and failed to punch in the code over and over again. Finally, I stepped in and gripped his hand, squeezing gently.
“Tell me the code.”
He murmured the numbers to me, then took a deep breath.
“Okay.” I carefully put in the code, then stepped aside for him to scan his thumbprint and use the retinal scanner.
The door hissed as it opened partially. I took his hand in mine, feeling it tremble slightly. “I’ll look.”
He nodded again, unable to see for himself if they were alive. With a steadying breath, I stepped forward and opened the inner door to the safe room. Not a sound filled the air, which told me all I needed to know. But I looked through the large expanse anyway, finding it empty.
When I stepped out and shook my head, Johnny leaned heavily against the wall, hanging his head. “Fuck. I should have been here.”
His shoulders shook as the gravity of the situation washed over all of us. We were too late. His brother’s family had paid the price because of something that never should have touched them.
I grew angrier with every second that passed, pissed that an organization that had nothing to do with these people would come after an innocent family. And for what? What had Johnny’s brother ever done?
“What do you want to do?” Jason asked.
Johnny shook his head. “Where would they take them?”
Take them? If they took them anywhere , I thought. For all we knew, they could be buried in the yard. There was nothing to go on. None of us had any clue where the Shadow Government would take anyone. We didn’t know where they met or how they operated.
What we needed was Michael, but I had the feeling that he wouldn’t be able to tell us anything at all, if he was even willing to. Still, it was an opportunity we couldn’t pass up.
“Jack,” I said softly. “We should contact Michael.”
Johnny shoved past us and stormed up the stairs. I rushed after him, praying he didn’t go off on his own and do something stupid. That would definitely be something Johnny would do.
“Johnny!” I shouted, taking the stairs two at a time as I ran after him.
He was marching out the door and across the lawn by the time I caught up. But instead of heading to the car, he was striding toward the barn.
“Johnny! What’s going on?”
“I have to take care of the horses,” he called over his shoulder.
Okay, that was not what I was expecting, but then again, I didn’t have any siblings that I’d lost to psychopaths, so I was unfamiliar with the correct response to have.
“Johnny, wait! We need to figure out what to do!”
“About what?” he snarled, turning on me suddenly.
I nearly ran into him, stopping just short of plowing into his body. “About your family.”
“They’re gone,” he snarled. “Didn’t you see the fucking mess in there? That’s their blood, and it’s on my hands because I didn’t protect them.”
“You don’t know that,” I argued. “You don’t know for certain they’re dead.”
He tossed his head back and laughed, but nothing about this was funny. I could feel the pain and loss coming off him in waves, the desperation to be able to do something. But what? The Shadow Government was not something we had any hope of going up against.
Not if we wanted to win.
“I fucking killed them,” he said, his voice cracking. He bowed his head, the tip of his cowboy hat covering his eyes. But I could see the sorrow marring his face. The devastation that he hadn’t gotten here in time.
I hated that for him. He didn’t deserve the pain of losing all his family, not like this. Not because an organization decided the windfall of every fucking thing around the globe, and then decided who lived and died. It wasn’t right.
“You did not kill them,” I said fiercely. “None of this is your fault. They had nothing to do with anything in our lives, and that’s fucking clear by where we are right now. Those assholes went after your family for no reason other than they could.”
He nodded slightly, but I could see the doubt on his face. “But they never would have been on the Shadow Government’s radar if it weren’t for me.”
“You said it yourself,” I shook my head slowly. “They’ve been watching us for years. There’s no way you could have predicted that any of this would happen.”
He sniffled and glanced out into the fields. He needed to do something, anything, to keep his mind occupied, and I didn’t know how to do that. I wasn’t accustomed to taking on the role of the caring friend. But for Johnny, I would do my best.
“Come on. Let’s take care of the horses.”
I took his hand, giving it a firm squeeze before leading him to the stables. I didn’t know shit about ranches or farming. I had even less experience with horses, but for my friend, I would do whatever he asked.
Jack and Jason followed, their solemn demeanor just as black as Johnny’s. I assumed they knew his family somehow, but I wasn’t privy to any of that information.
“What do you need us to do?”
We walked into the barn and Johnny glanced around. “We need to put out feed. Hay…” he said, nodding to the back of the barn.
“Okay. I’ll get started on that and?—”
My words were cut off by the sound of a door creaking open. We all stiffened, reaching for our guns just as a trapdoor in the floor opened.