Chapter 23 #2
Need some help. Thumper’s not doing good. Have to stay with Katana, but someone needs to come lock him down. He’s losing it. Katana lost the baby last night and she’s decided that she’s tired of fighting. Wants to let go.
Fuck.
The cancer battle had started out hard because from the beginning, Katana hadn’t wanted to fight it.
Her mother had passed from breast cancer.
Her grandmother. Her sister. Her aunt. She’d watched every single woman in her family pass away from the brutal disease, all of them failing despite fighting hard.
Katana hadn’t wanted to fight it at all, but the baby had helped convince her.
Now, without the baby to help her fight, it was no wonder that she was ready to throw in the towel.
I looked at my watch. “Lys, can you finish cleaning up here?”
“What’s wrong?” Magnolia asked in concern.
I gave her a quick rundown.
“Dang it,” she breathed. “He was talking about both of them last night a lot. He was so excited.”
I grimaced. “Gotta get there and make sure he’s going to be okay.”
She nodded, eyes wet from tears.
I dropped a kiss on her head as I passed, then got dressed and headed out in the next moment.
It was as I was driving to Shaw’s place that I saw my sister in a black SUV swerving in and out of the oncoming lane of traffic.
I gritted my teeth and called Black.
“Hey, I’m on my way to Shaw…”
“My sister is in front of me, weaving in and out of traffic,” I grumbled. “She’s drunk.”
“Goddammit,” he said. “Where are you?”
I explained my location, and he said, “I’m about a half mile in front of you. Koen’s behind me with Ida Bell. I’ll tell him to pull off and…”
It happened almost before I could blink.
My sister started drifting off to the side.
Koen’s work truck pulled to the middle turn lane to turn onto the road that would take him to Shaw’s place, which allowed Black’s lights from the other side of the road to be seen.
Seraphina, seeing the lights, panicked and swerved hard to her side of the road. But she overcorrected, then violently swerved back to the left.
Right into where Ida Bell and Koen were stopped, ready to turn across traffic once it was cleared.
Seraphina slammed hard into the back of Koen’s truck, which pushed him forward and to the right into oncoming traffic.
The eighteen-wheeler coming toward him in front of Black tried to swerve, but it was no use.
The eighteen-wheeler T-boned Koen’s work truck.
Heart in my throat and lungs screaming in agony, I pulled as close as the accident would allow me to get and bailed from the truck.
I wasn’t even sure if I’d put it in Park.
I was running toward Koen’s truck before I’d consciously told myself that was what I was going to do.
The truck’s big diesel engine shut off and the man bailed out of his own truck, repeatedly saying, “Oh god. Oh god. Oh god.”
It was only when I heard the “please, please, please,” of my own voice that I realized I was having the same reaction.
“Koen!” I heard Black cry out. “Koen, can you hear me?”
Nothing.
No words, no nothing. Well, nothing but the sound of groaning and heated, popping metal.
I got to the side of the twisted metal frame that was once Koen’s truck and glanced into the cab window.
I was on the passenger side, and I could see Ida Bell’s long black hair lying over the powdery white pillow of an airbag, but nothing else.
“Ida Bell?” I called, pulling out my knife and puncturing the airbag that was blocking my view of her.
Nothing.
I followed the same route with the other two airbags that I could reach just as Black’s grim face appeared at my side. “Koen’s gone.”
I closed my eyes as a well of anger and hate started to overwhelm me.
“Ida Bell?” Black asked when I didn’t say anything.
“Don’t know yet,” I said as I got the last airbag down and her face was finally revealed to me.
Miraculously, the metal wasn’t totally squishing her like I could see that it’d done to Koen on the other side.
I looked away fast, my stomach souring at what I saw of the man that I’d seen last night looking so lively at Ida Bell’s side.
“Fuck,” I hissed as I reached in through the broken window and placed my fingers against Ida Bell’s throat.
The pulse of her heart was the sweetest thing I’d ever touched in my life.
“She’s alive,” I said. “We got medics on the way?”
The sound of a door creaking open behind me let me know that, unfortunately, my sister had survived.
Except the person who got out of her car wasn’t my sister, but Cain McDuff.
“What the fuck?” he slurred.
My sister got out of the passenger seat as I watched him, fury building in my veins, just as fucking drunk.
She stumbled off to the side, her hand to her head, as she looked dazedly at the accident they’d caused.
“What happened?” she garbled.
I turned my back on both of them and tried the handle of Ida Bell’s door.
It opened despite the frame being bent awkwardly at the door.
Black helped me open it completely, and I tried really hard not to look at my friend’s broken body in the front seat, the cab of the truck folded around him.
“Ida Bell, honey,” I called. “Are you awake?”
She moaned.
“Don’t move her,” the truck driver said. “9-1-1 is saying not to move her.”
I nodded. “Got it.”
“This is Sheriff Black. I need medics and a life flight to this location.”
I ignored them and caught Ida Bell’s hand in mine, talking to her about anything and everything as we waited long minutes for the medics to arrive.
Unsurprisingly, the first ones to arrive were more deputies, Gentry in particular.
“Fuck,” I heard him say. “Is she okay?”
“She’s going to make it, aren’t you, Ida Bell?” I ordered quietly.
She squeezed my hand, oh so lightly, letting me know that she heard and understood the assignment.
I heard Black and Gentry talking quietly behind me about scene control and setting up a landing zone for the helicopter but kept up my quiet diatribe of nonsensical things until the first medic showed up.
The helicopter landed in the middle of the road, and two medics made their way over to the door just as volunteer firefighters appeared. I acknowledged them all with a nod of my head as I backed away to relinquish my charge.
Black’s hand squeezed my shoulder, and I didn’t realize until right then how rigid I’d been holding myself until he squeezed.
Angrily, I turned to the two people handcuffed sitting on the ground with their backs against Black’s cruiser.
They were talking quietly, as if they didn’t have a care in the world.
“Don’t,” Black warned.
Anger, resentment, pain and disgust vied for a prime spot in my heart as I stared at the woman who was supposed to be my sister.
Doors slammed behind me, and the engine of the helicopter air lifting my friend to a hospital sounded behind me as my hair whipped in the wind.
It was when I saw Seraphina smile that I snapped.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I boomed the moment that the medicvac lifted off and banked hard to the left as it raced back toward town. “Do you have something missing in your brain that keeps you from making logical choices? Do you get off on hurting others? What is it?”
Seraphina rolled her eyes. “You’re so dramatic.”
And the slur in her voice made me want to kick her face into the fender of the cruiser.
Gentry stepped in front of me, blocking me from taking any threatening steps in her direction.
“Ma’am, we had reports that you were in a traffic stop with the cops in Tarrot County,” Gentry said. “You were driving and the sheriff’s deputy let your friend drive you home. You failed to mention that you were both drunk.”
Seraphina shrugged, as if that was someone else’s problem, not hers.
“Get them to the hospital. Get a blood alcohol drawn on them immediately,” he ordered.
Gentry walked toward the two and lifted them up by their shirts. “In you go.”
Gentry had them both inside the cruiser before he walked back over to the crushed truck where our friend’s body lay.
“Fuck.”
I couldn’t stop myself from glancing over and seeing the same thing he did.
Koen wasn’t Koen anymore.
And my sister had everything to do with it.