Chapter 29
twenty-nine
. . .
FINN
“Finn,” Reagan whispered, half-asleep, from my side. “Your phone.”
I rose fully to consciousness then, recognizing the particular sequence of beeps and buzzes for what they were: a security system alert.
Sitting up as adrenaline spiked my blood, I scooted to the edge of the bed and reached for my phone.
Before I could fully make sense of where the alert had come from, my phone rang with an incoming call from Trey.
“What the fuck, dude? I thought Reagan was at your house.”
I glanced over my shoulder, confirming my girl was, in fact, still there. Her brow furrowed.
“She is. I’m looking right at her.”
“Then why are the alarms going off at the guest house?”
We seemed to come to the conclusion at the same time, for we said in unison, “Aria.”
“I’m heading over,” I said, already on my feet and swiping an abandoned pair of sweats off the floor. “Call Lane.”
Hanging up before he could respond, I tossed my phone on the bed, pulled on a shirt, and walked into my closet. My lockbox beeped as I tapped in the code, clicking as the locks disengaged, and I opened it, withdrew my gun, and closed it again.
“Finn.” Reagan stood directly behind me when I turned to leave the closet, now dressed in one of my tees. “What the fuck is going on?”
“Something tripped the alarm and motion sensors at the guest house,” I said. “Stay here. I’m going to check it out.”
“Like hell am I staying here.”
“Reagan,” I growled, gripping her upper arms lightly. “Please. I have no idea what I’m walking into, and I can’t put you in danger.”
She surprised me by nodding at my vehemence, then stepped closer until she was toe to toe, rising up slightly to press a single, hard kiss to my mouth.
“Be careful.”
“I’ll be right back,” I promised.
She followed me as far as the front door, where I left her on the promise that she’d arm the security system once I was out. I’d barely made it all the way off the porch when West slid to a stop in front of the house and threw himself out of his truck before he fully parked.
“What’s going on?” he asked. “Trey called.”
“Disturbance at the guest house. I’m going to check it out.” My eyes darted to the door, to Reagan’s silhouetted figure. “Will you stay with Reagan?”
He saluted me before climbing the steps. As soon as Reagan let him in, I took off.
When I reached the guest house, I did a quick perimeter sweep, making sure no one was lying in wait outside. Though the exterior was clear, I cursed under my breath when I found the bottom left windowpane in the door—the one closest to the knob—smashed in, the door itself slightly ajar.
As gently and quietly as I could, I pushed the door wider. I did my best to step wide to avoid it, but the broken glass crunching beneath my feet was as loud as gunshots, alerting anyone still inside to my presence.
The living room appeared to be clear, the high, full moon providing enough illumination to make out all the furniture in the room. Everything was where it should be.
Gun out in front of me, I turned right into the kitchen, crouched low as I rounded the peninsula.
A figure was sprawled out on the floor, the under-the-microwave light casting them in an orange glow. They were face down, head angled so they faced away from me, arms bent awkwardly beneath them.
Blood pooled around their head.
Matted in bright blonde hair.
Broken glass nearby.
“Aria!”
“Finn?”
Not my sister’s voice, but one of my brother’s.
“Trey. Clear the rest of the house. I’ve got Aria.”
He muttered something to someone else, and I heard a deep voice respond. Crew, I realized.
Not wanting to move her for fear of making things worse, I knelt at Aria’s side, dialing nine-one-one as I pressed my shaky fingers to her wrist, checking for a pulse.
I gasped in relief when it thumped, weakened but there, against my touch.
“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”
As calmly as I could, I explained the situation, relayed my address, and told them to fucking hurry before I hung up.
Crew rounded into the kitchen to find me still on the floor at Aria’s side, her chilled hand clasped in mine.
He knelt at her opposite side, careful to avoid the blood, and checked for a pulse exactly as I had.
I let him without comment, both because I understood the compulsion and because he had paramedic training.
Sliding on some nitrile gloves, he gently probed her skull, his fingertips coming away stained.
“There’s a contusion there. Head wounds always bleed a scary amount,” he explained. “As long as there isn’t internal bleeding, she should be okay.”
Trey joined us then.
“House is clear. Looks like point of entry was the front door.” His tone was flat, likely trying to distance himself from the scene until we had more information.
The same could not be said for the emotions swirling within me, coalescing into a dangerous tornado one second away from touching down and tearing this entire fucking world apart in search of who had done this to my baby sister.
“Call West,” I said. “He’s at my house with Reagan.”
Trey nodded and stepped away, and I heard the front screen door open and close a moment later.
As gently as I could, I brushed my hand over my sister’s head, a comforting gesture surely meant more for myself than her.
“Your house is secure,” Trey said a moment later, phone still pressed against his ear. “What do you want West to do?”
“Stay there. I’m not leaving Aria, but I can’t—”
Trey nodded in understanding.
I couldn’t focus on the task at hand if Reagan was vulnerable, and the only person I trusted with her right now was my twin.
Hours seemed to have passed before sirens distantly cut through the night, gathering steam as they got closer to the house. At last, the cavalry pulled up outside.
Lane led the charge, the ambulance and a few more sheriff’s vehicles close behind. Throwing himself out of his SUV, Lane stomped up the porch steps, but Trey cut him off at the top.
“What the fuck?” Lane asked, trying to push past our older brother.
Ignoring him, Crew shouted, “Rausch?”
“Here!” came Sutton’s reply a moment before she appeared in the glow of the porch lights. “What’ve we got?”
“Twenty-four-year-old female,” I said, joining the conversation, offering details in a detached sort of way. “She’s in the kitchen. Appears to have suffered blunt trauma to the skull. There’s…a lot of blood.”
“Twenty-four…” Lane whispered, eyes widening, all the blood draining from his face. “Aria?”
I could only nod, shifting out of the way so Sutton and her partner, Thomas, could enter the house. When they were gone, Lane turned to me.
“What the fuck happened?”
“I have no idea,” I told him honestly, though I hated the admission.
My baby sister was in there, unconscious on the kitchen floor, blood pouring from her head, and I had no fucking idea why.
Trey was moving toward his own vehicle before Lane could make the demand, and we all followed along, Crew rushing to catch up after handing Aria’s care off to Sutton and Thomas.
In the hatch of Trey’s SUV was a mobile command center of sorts, with all kinds of complicated looking equipment designed to allow him to check security systems remotely if something—like this—came up while he was on the road.
“There aren’t any cameras over here,” I reminded him, silently kicking myself for drawing the line there when he asked if he could install them. I thought the motion detectors, flood lights, and security system would be sufficient. I didn’t exactly live in a high crime area.
But I should’ve known better, should have realized there was no such thing as too much where the safety of my family was concerned.
And now, because of me, because I swore nothing bad could ever happen out here, my sister had been hurt.
As if sensing my distress, Crew put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. I knew he meant well, so I did my best not to shake him off.
I didn’t need to be comforted right now, though. What I needed was to beat in the face of the fucker who had done this to my sister.
“I know there aren’t cameras over here,” Trey said in answer to my comment. He withdrew a laptop and fired it up, tapping around on the screen until a set of feeds appeared. “But there are at your house.”
Trey rewound the footage an hour, and my brothers and I watched the screen raptly, waiting for the commotion we knew was coming.
The distant porch lights provided a small bit of light. Trey zoomed the feed in as close as he could, and I had to admit, I was impressed. While the picture became a little grainy, I thought it had more to do with the darkness than the loss of quality.
“I got the motion sensor alert at three seventeen,” he muttered to himself, stroking a few more keys that fast-forwarded the footage to the correct time stamp.
Right on cue, the flood lights mounted to the corners of the covered porch clicked on, illuminating a dark, hooded figure.
Seemingly without a care in the world, they ascended the stairs and walked right to the door. Trying the knob and discovering it locked, the fucker wasted no time turning and driving their elbow into one of the glass windowpanes.
“And that’s when I got the breach alert,” Trey said.
I watched the timestamp in the corner of the footage, waiting as five minutes ticked by where nothing happened. The flood lights extinguished, tossing the whole scene back into darkness.
Inside the house, the kitchen light flicked on, and we all watched in horror as two figures struggled, framed by the window that overlooked the yard.
One of the figures disappeared from view while the other moved back through the house, sprinting through the door.
The flood lights popped on again, catching the black-clad person running toward the left and out of the frame.
“Aria wasn’t the target.”
I could feel three sets of eyes snap to me, and Crew asked, “What do you mean?”