Chapter Eighteen – Laina
I fell asleep in the car on the way home, so Kieran made the decision to stop by a hotel so we could sleep in an actual bed for a few hours.
I didn’t mind. Laying down on a bed, albeit a slightly uncomfortable bed, was better than sleeping while sitting up in a car. I’d take a bed over that any day.
Plus? I was a little sore after all that on the ground.
It was about eleven in the morning when Kieran finally dropped me off at home, and though it had been hours since our hunt in the woods, my body was still buzzing with the high. I felt so freaking good, it was unreal.
Kieran offered to walk me in, but I declined, not wanting to anger my dad. He might’ve now known we were seeing each other, but Kieran’s and my relationship wasn’t one I wanted to rub in his face.
“I’ll see you later,” I said before leaning over the car and kissing him, and he mumbled that he loved me before I got out. He made sure to stay until I was safely in the house, and only then did he drive off.
I slipped off my shoes near the door, still smiling to myself.
I went straight for the stairwell and headed to my room, where I grabbed a new set of clothes and hopped right in the shower.
Kieran’s shirt protected much of me from the forest floor, but the feeling of leaves and sticks and God knew what else beneath my legs and ass was still on the forefront of my mind.
After my shower, I texted my guys. Nothing crazy, but Fang and Mike should know I was back and everything went well.
Mike had probably rooted for something terrible to happen, if only so he wouldn’t have to keep sharing me with Kieran—but, frankly, the big guy was better at sharing than he let on.
Little old me was definitely scheming on when I could get him and Fang together again.
I didn’t know how long I laid there, on my bed, messaging back and forth with my guys, but eventually something dawned on me: the house was quiet.
My dad hadn’t come to check on me, you know, make sure I was still in one piece and all that.
Maybe he was avoiding me and my relationship with Kieran, or maybe he wasn’t home and had to run out for something.
He was always ducking in and out of the office downtown, even on the weekends.
I decided to give him a call as I went downstairs to make myself some lunch. Nothing huge, just a little something to tide me over until dinner. Walking down the hall, my dad’s phone rang on the other line—and right when it did, something a good ways away in the house came to life, ringing in tune.
My dad’s phone. So he was here.
I ended the call, stuffing my phone into my jeans’ back pocket as I did a one-eighty in the hall and changed destinations.
My dad’s office was out of the way, in the back of the house.
I expected him to be hunched over his laptop or tablet, so busy doing whatever it was he did that he might not have realized I was home.
I rounded the corner of his office’s open door and spotted him immediately. He was indeed in his high-backed leather chair, only… only something was wrong. He was staring at the ceiling, his arms hanging off the armrests of the chair.
“Dad?” I asked, taking another step into the room, and when I did, everything hit me all at once.
The air, how weird it smelled. Stale, heavy, with traces of metal only a nose who’d smelled an incredulous amount of blood would pick up on. The paleness of his skin, the way his eyes didn’t blink, didn’t focus, just two glassy orbs staring at nothing in particular.
But the biggest thing? The biggest thing was the bright red stain on his shirt, right over his chest.
My skin crawled. “Dad?” This time, when I said that word, I didn’t sound like me. I sounded like the girl I used to be: frightened, scared, the kind of girl who didn’t know what to do in a situation like this.
Everything I’d done, everything I’d seen with Lola, none of it mattered right then. I was just a girl who’d come home to find… this.
How long did I stand there, frozen? Time itself seemed to slow to a halt. I didn’t even know if I was still breathing—but I had to be, otherwise I’d be dead.
Dead. Was that what this was? Was I staring down the corpse of my dad?
The wound in his chest looked like it came from a bullet.
Just one, expertly placed… or done at such point-blank range there was no way for the shooter to miss, and if that was the case, then it had to have been someone he trusted well enough to let into the house, to bring into this room with him.
Strangely, a part of me remained that didn’t want to believe what I was seeing, so I mechanically walked around the desk and made it to my dad’s side. Blood had escaped from the wound on his chest, staining his shirt all the way down. It pooled on his pants, on the chair, and on the floor.
I didn’t know what made me do it, but I set a hand on his, and when I touched him, his skin was ice. Or, rather, room temperature, but it might as well have been ice. He’d been gone a long time. This wasn’t too recent.
Last night, or this morning? Either way, I was gone, blissfully ignorant to the fact that my dad had unknowingly taken his last breath.
Tearing my hand off his, I took a step away from him, although that step ended up being more of a tumble. I couldn’t take my eyes off his body, even as I went for my phone to check the cameras on the house. I had to look, eventually, if only for a second.
And what would you know? The cameras were offline. They’d been offline since this morning at seven.
So somewhere between then and now, someone came here, shot him, and left. I didn’t need multiple guesses as to who it could be, or who could be the root of it. But just because you knew the truth didn’t make it any less hurtful.
My gaze sluggishly lifted to my dad’s face, memorizing the slacked jaw, the glassy stare, and the off-white, ghostly skin. This couldn’t be real. This couldn’t be happening. Was I dreaming? Was I caught in some nightmare back at that hotel?
No. Even a nightmare wouldn’t be this cruel.
I dialed nine-one-one. My arm might’ve shaken as I lifted the phone to my ear as I continued to stare at my dad’s face. An emergency responder answered, and I relayed what I found, our address, and the fact that I was alone in the house as far as I knew. The killer was long gone.
“Is he still breathing?” the woman on the other line asked.
All I could say to that was “He’s cold.” The words might’ve been choked out, I didn’t know. I could hardly hear myself. I felt numb. This didn’t feel real.
Was this really happening?
The woman on the line got quiet after that, because she knew what it meant. I knew what it meant, too. EMS wouldn’t come save the day. They’d come, check out the body, and then call the morgue, who’d then come to take care of him.
“Whatever you do, don’t move him or touch him more than you already have. If it’s a crime scene, the police will need to see him exactly how you found him.”
I nodded dumbly. Made sense, I guessed. Besides, where would I move him to? What could I do with him? At least he looked comfortable in that chair. If I touched him, tried to move him, I’d only end up dropping him.
And I didn’t know if I could take that.
“EMS is five minutes away. The nearest squad car is three. The police will want to speak with you after clearing the house—” The more the woman said, the more I tuned her out, though I didn’t do it on purpose.
I felt dizzy. My stomach was lurching, like I wanted to bend over and be sick.
I finally turned away from my dad and left the room, barely making it to the hall before my top half bent over and I wretched. I had nothing in my stomach, so it was just bile. Bile on the carpet runner in the hall, yellow and ugly, but nowhere near as ugly as the sight I’d just left.
After a while, I made it downstairs, to the front door. I threw it open and sat on the steps just beyond. The stone was cold beneath my ass, but nowhere near as cold as the feeling that had overtaken my bones the moment I realized what I was staring at up there.
My chest was tight. My heart ached, but not in a way I was used to. That box inside my chest felt like a dozen knives had been shoved into it, at all angles. Sharp, new steel that slid through my heart like the organ was thawed butter. It hurt to breathe. It was agony to exist.
Yet people did this every day. People lived with this sort of pain all the time. Here I thought I was stronger than this. Here I thought nothing could bring me down.
How wrong I’d been. It only took my dad’s corpse for me to see how blind I was.
A police car showed up, flashing its lights.
The world around me grew fuzzy as a pair of cops rushed toward me.
I was pretty sure I threw a thumb over my shoulder and said something along the lines of, “He’s in his office.
” But I couldn’t say for certain. Everything was still blurry; I could hardly think straight.
One of the officers left to check on him—but it was too late. He was dead. There was no saving him.
I thought the other officer asked me some questions, but I didn’t have answers for him. I couldn’t speak. My voice had been taken away, stolen, the moment the gravity of the situation fully hit me.
My dad was dead. He was killed while I was away. What kind of fucked-up game did this turn out to be?
EMS showed up, and they hurried in the house past me. More police came, and soon enough the house was surrounded, the driveway full of flashing lights. One of the officers put me in the back of their car, and I didn’t stop them. I couldn’t. They wanted to talk to me down at the station.
I couldn’t fight them. I couldn’t tell them to screw off. I was nearing zombie territory, barely meeting the legal definition of being alive.