Chapter Fifteen
The glass is cool when I slam open the front door to the station, the steel cracking against the brick wall.
Officer James shouts behind me, something about having a little respect.
I don’t turn around. Respect only came when it was given. He could take the respect he believed he was owed and shove it up his ass.
I move into the belly of darkness, casting my twitchy eyes around the small and poorly lit parking lot.
It’s the following evening, like I’d thought.
Night had fallen fast; the sun had already tucked itself away.
I allow the weight of my head to fall to my shoulders and suck in a trembling breath, listening to the thumping of my heart.
I can’t find a moon, not even a single star.
The sky is a blanket of desolation, a weight that lingers over me and above this fucked up town.
A chesty cough has me shifting my gaze from the sky and to my left, finding both Harlen and Rusty resting on the speckled brick fence. They are passing a smoldering cigarette between themselves, tapping off ash in between, but they haven’t noticed me yet.
I crack my neck, don’t feel it. Numbness from the terror that had followed in the wake of Officer James’ words had consumed me.
Take your freedom as my condolences.
I hear Jade’s laughter, see Laiken’s smile, and fight to not let my mind take me where it tries to.
The glow of the cherry father and son are sharing brightens when Rusty takes a pull, dropping his eyes to the ground and kicking at the red dust beneath his boots.
I throw one leg in front of the other, carrying myself over, only, when I draw closer, I notice how the air thickens, its edges sharpening.
I stop. I rub at my throat, then I jerk my chin at Rusty, Harlen’s father—the one I wish I got—when he looks at me, and throws me the pack of cigarettes.
Tapping a stick out, I light it and throw the rest back.
I don’t look at them again until I’ve smoked it to the bone, and when I do, I notice how they’re both on their feet, pacing, both not looking at me.
Their necks are loose, thrust forward, stubbled chins drilled to their cotton covered chests.
I try to breathe but I can’t drag enough air in to fill my lungs.
They look like the definition of stalling.
Harlen stuffs his hands into the front pockets of his jeans, an attempt to hide a tremble I’d already caught.
He drops his head backward and squeezes his eyes closed, forcing a whimpered cough down his throat.
And it’s in the way he contorts—the rigidness that I notice has taken residency in his spine—that confirms to me something is very wrong.
I feel as if I am dangling over a cliff. My heart, my stomach, my entire body ready to plunge like a stone.
Don’t say it, please, don’t fucking say it, I think.
“Ch-ch-chase, help.”
A distinct rope of fear knots in my throat, and I try to talk but every word I could have spoken is strangled behind my teeth.
When a hand finds my shoulder, I flick my gaze to my side, finding Rusty to my right. His golden curls that match his son's hang over his solemn eyes.
I look back toward Harlen, as he drops his face into the crook of his elbow, wiping over his eyes. His hands tremble, shoving his hair behind his ears, staring at the ground, not meeting my eyes.
Before today, I had never seen my best friend cry.
Before today, he could have said the same about me.
Harlen is a picture of devastation as I stand frozen in place, feeling the hope I held onto for Jade and Laiken’s lives diminishing by the second.
Tears fall down my face, and I don’t so much as palm them away, I let them roll with the hollow words that seep from between my chattering teeth.
“Look at me when you say it.”
A pain so wicked and horrific tells its own story through the broken, crimson capillaries at the sclera of Harlen’s misty-blue eyes.
Because when he looks at me, he doesn’t have to say anything at all.
Harlen covers a cry with a cough, steps forward and grips my shoulder so tight that I shake with the force.
A moment passes before he raises his chin and his bleeding eyes meet mine. And with Rusty on one side, Harlen on the other, they hold me up when he speaks.
“I’m so sorry, man. I’m so fucking sorry.”
They were gone.
My blood.
And my sister's best friend.
The two girls I should have kept closer.
Dead.
Just.
Like.
That.
“Where?” It is the only word I can get out.
We are in my truck, Harlen behind the wheel, engine idling in the parking lot, fumes crawling through my open window.
9:09 p.m. glares back at me in glowing orange numbers and letters from the dash.
My fists lay slaughtered, numb and twitching at the ends of my limbs after I’d crunched both against the pillared brick fence outside of the station.
Blood is everywhere.
It is a massacre.
“Same…” Harlen tries to speak but he chokes. He’s not looking at me. He stares ahead.
I swallow the bile burning up my throat. “Devil’s Tunnel?” My words are spoken through the clenching of my teeth.
Harlen nods, chin meeting his chest. His eyes screw closed, fingers curling around the steering wheel.
He lifts his palm and slams it down, then does it again and again before twisting toward me, one hand coming to the side of my chair, the other at the wheel.
“The motherfucker just dumped her there, man. As if she was disposable.” He is shaking his head, still talking, but I can barely hear him. “Rusty and Skinner found her.”
My head cuts toward him and my pupils shake when I ask the question, “Her?”
He squeezes his eyes closed and an action so simple shouldn’t be so painful, and yet the way his face contorts tells me that it is, that this kind of pain had the ability to fuck up even the strongest of people.
Harlen blinks them open and his voice breaks. “Jade.”
Hearing him say my sister’s name felt like he’d jammed a screwdriver in my ear.
My world spins.
Flashes of darkness bursting in front of my eyes.
My heart is slamming inside my chest, and I reach to rub against it, only to find my limbs unresponsive, shaking in their place.
All I can hear is white noise.
I fight to speak.
“And Laiken?”
It is all I can get out, the question like glass in my throat.
There is a pause, and when I reach for Harlen’s clouded, grief-stricken gaze, he keeps his eyes on mine, swallows, and whispers, “Laiken is alive.”