53. Mason
53
MASON
W e heard a blood-curdling scream and bolted.
I got there first, finding the door locked.
I didn’t have time to consider what I’d find on the other side. I reared back to kick the door down, but by that time, the others caught up. They saw what I was doing and all of them joined. I don’t know if they all hit the door, but it worked.
The door landed, and I had the equivalent of a heart attack. An intense pressure pushed down on me, making me fold under the weight of it. My knees buckled before I readied myself, forcing myself to take in what every parent’s nightmare is.
My child was standing in the middle of a giant pool of blood.
“Sabrina!” Steele’s voice was wrangled, hoarse, as he slid to where her body was crumpled in the pool. A letter opener had fallen to the side.
The blood was hers.
I blinked a few times, to make sure I was seeing that correctly.
Rushing to Maddy, I ran my eyes over her before padding her for any injuries. There was a haze in her eyes. She was here, but not totally here. I didn’t know what that meant.
“Yeah. There’s—uh, I don’t know what happened. There’s blood. A lot of blood. We need an ambulance.”
Beltraine was on the phone, running a shaking hand through his hair. He looked like he’d lost the blood. Axel too. Steele, I couldn’t see his face. He was holding onto his sister, his head bent over. He found the source of the blood, on the far right middle side of his sister’s stomach.
I leaned in closer, cursing under my breath. Let’s hope no organs were punctured.
I cupped Maddy’s face and rested my forehead to hers. “Are you okay?”
“Yes.” She spoke calmly, no infraction. No tremor. “She tried to hurt herself when I came in. I tried to get out, but she locked the door. Then she was saying something about a life taken. An eye for an eye. Something like that. I’m not sure what it meant.”
My daughter was lying to me. Lying through her fucking teeth.
“What’s your address?” Beltraine shoved his phone in my hand.
I took it, reciting it quickly to the 911 operator. I handed it back and said to Axel, who stood back, taking everything in. Everyone was rattled. That amount of blood was bad, so fucking bad. “Axe—you’ll need to open the gate for them.”
He jerked his head in a nod and ran out.
“The first gate,” Steele choked out, lifting his head.
I reeled from the expression on his face. It wasn’t too far off from the same look Sam had an hour ago. The similarities were a punch to my gut. And he was a kid. No kid should have that stricken and anguished look on their face. No kid.
I cursed, reaching for my phone.
It was then when a new voice spoke up from behind us, “What the fuck?”
I spun, fucking glad to hear that voice because my brother was here. Logan stood in the doorway, stunned at what he was seeing. Then he switched, raking over Maddy quickly before moving onto me and he held.
I grimaced. “Shit’s gone down since we last talked.”
“I’m seeing that,” he said faintly, then zeroed in better on where Steele was holding his sister, who was now unconscious. That wasn’t good. “What happened?”
“She hurt herself.”
I waited a beat, then said over my daughter’s words, “Knife wound to the stomach. Call Taylor.”
Logan’s eyes pinned on us both, lingering, before he took in the bloodied letter opener on the ground. On the other side of Brinna. “Uh. Okay. That wound needs to be stopped now or she’ll bleed out before they get here.” He had his phone out and was talking into it within a flash. “Taylor, how do I cauterize a knife wound?”
Steele froze in place, riveted by Logan. He tracked his every movement.
Beltraine was on the phone and ran out of the room.
Shit. The front gate.
But Maddy was speaking, murmuring into it, “…an ambulance is coming in. Yes. Please. Let them through. Thank you.”
She was almost serene. Smooth. Acting perfect.
She ended the call and handed the phone back to me. “The front gate is taken care of. They’ll get right in.” I didn’t take the phone. I knew what she’d done. There was no way Brinna took that letter opener and stabbed herself. That was the story, but I knew better. I knew my daughter and I knew how she looked when she lied.
She bit down on her bottom lip and put the phone in my pocket herself.
I didn’t know if Sam had fallen asleep. She told me she was going to crawl in bed. I’d meant to check on her, but the talk with the boys took precedent. After that, I’d wanted to figure out what to do with Sabrina. Considering what just happened, I was praying with everything in me that Samantha had fallen asleep and would remain asleep.
I did not want her to walk in and see what I saw.
I said under my breath, “Show me your hands.”
She blinked, the corners of her mouth curved down, but held them up. They were clean. Which meant she had taken the time to wipe them clean somewhere.
There was movement happening around us.
Logan was taking instructions on how to stop the bleeding now, not later. Steele was doing what he could to help without letting go of his sister. Beltraine was on the phone with the emergency responder. Axel had gone to open our initial gate leading to our house and wave down the ambulance.
And for myself, my daughter took priority.
I tugged her aside, speaking low, “Paramedics are going to come in here. They’re going to survey the scene before they get her on the stretcher. They’ll haul ass out of here with her, but the police will be called. What you’re going to do is stay behind. Whatever you used to clean your hands, you’ll find it and you’ll burn it. You hear me?”
Another scream hurled through the air.
Logan was straddling her, pushing down a towel over her stomach. She came awake, violently, but he held my gaze. His eyes were dead serious.
He knew what happened. He might not know the specifics, but he knew me. He knew Maddy. He knew there’d only be one reason why I wasn’t over there helping.
A flicker passed from me to him before he nodded, just slightly, and turned his attention back to the screaming girl. Maddy gave the initial story already. When the paramedics would ask what happened, they’d recite it. They wouldn’t think to question it. My daughter was smart, too smart. It was eerie how smooth all of this had been for her, which meant we had a huge problem on our hands.
“What?” Sam stumbled in the doorway, a hand pressed to her stomach. “Oh my God. Maddy !”
She ran for us, ripping Maddy from my arms and into her arms. She rocked her, hugging her before continuing to take in the rest of the scene.
I held my breath, waiting to see Sam’s reaction. There’d been another scene like this that she found by herself, when she was younger. I knew that’d been traumatizing to her and worried she’d be retraumatized.
Her forehead wrinkled and her eyebrows pulled down. She locked onto me. A darker question passing from her to me, asking me what the hell happened. I couldn’t answer, but I let my gaze drop down to my daughter.
Sam slowed until she was standing still, holding our daughter. Her gaze fell, still going at the slow pace, to Maddy. She gazed at her daughter before continuing, her head moving so she could see the scene again.
The paramedics rushed into the room.
Logan was still in place over her, stopping the bleeding. “I wanted to cauterize it, but my wife said that could make it worse. An infection or something?”
“Okay. We’ll load her up. You’ll need to stay on her.”
“No.”
“Yes—”
Logan moved, and one of the paramedics cursed, taking his place.
Steele yelled, but the other paramedic began giving him orders. Steele followed them and soon they took her out of the house.
Steele went with them. So did Beltraine.
I followed until the ambulance was gone. Beltraine and Axel got in their car and trailed after them. Once the gate was closed again, Logan turned to me. All pretenses were gone. He demanded in a no-nonsense voice, “What the fuck happened?”
I grunted, moving past him. “What the fuck do you think?”
I motioned to him. “Check the security footage. We don’t have cameras in the house, but double check nothing is on the ones we do have.”
“And if I find something?”
“Wipe it.” I glared at him. “What do you think?”
“Just making sure we’re aware of what we’re about to do.” His face was grim. “We still have the shareholder meeting.”
Fuck.
Fuck.
Everything had to happen on the same night.
I took a second. I needed to regroup. I needed to think of every fucking detail to make sure nothing slipped through when Sam spoke up from in the hallway, “Go.”
Logan and I looked at her.
I asked, “Where’s Maddy?”
“Showering.” She held up a bag. Red splotches could be seen inside. Something metallic was also inside. “I’m going to burn this. Then we’ll clean up. I called Heather. Channing’s coming here to help. Heather’s going to the hospital to cover us there. We got this.”
“They’re going to help cover up—”
She tipped her chin up, her mouth flattening. “It’s Maddy , Mason. What do you think?” Her eyes flashed. “We’re all in this together . We’ll do what we have to do to protect our child and afterward, we’ll do what we need to do to protect her from herself. If that means therapy, meds, I don’t give a fuck . Right now, we’re in crisis mode. Get to that meeting. Deal with it, then get to the hospital because when my sister wakes up, we need to figure out a way to have her corroborate Maddy’s story.”
Logan inhaled at the mention of Samantha’s sister. That was right. He didn’t know who she was. He’d just been rolling with us, following our lead when finding a girl bleeding out in my house. I had a few things to share with him on the way to the meeting.
“What about Max?”
Sam winced before stating, “She drugged him. Benadryl. He’s zonked out on the couch in the basement.”
A small relief that he was one less person pulled into this mess, but also, she drugged him.
“Jesus Christ,” I said faintly.
I didn’t know what else to say.
My daughter did all of this.
What else was she capable of?