by J. E. Parker
“Kyle!” Lily screamed from the floorboard where the man had her pinned.
His hand was on her head, his fingers intertwined in her hair. She clawed at his wrists with her nails and kicked at him with her sandal-covered feet, but it wasn’t enough. The man had seemed big from a distance, but up close he was huge, his muscles ginormous. There was no way Lily could get away from him.
Not without help.
“Kyle, please!” Her screams grew more frantic. “Help me!”
I hit the window harder, praying it would shatter. “Lily!”
My prayers went unanswered.
Ty made a break for the passenger’s door, but he was too late. Before he reached the other side of the vehicle, it lurched forward, pulling away from the curb. “Wait!” he screamed. “Lily!”
Determined not to let them get away, I lunged for the bed of the truck, intent on jumping in.
Wherever she goes, I go.
I missed the bed by inches.
The truck’s tires squealed as the man floored it, leaving a trail of burnt rubber and smoke in his wake. Running faster than I ever had before, I chased after him, my worn tennis shoes slapping the asphalt with each step I took.
Once again, Ty fell in step beside me.
Like me, he was fast.
But neither of us were fast enough.
“Lily!” I bellowed as the truck roared through a small intersection. “Teacup!”
The truck turned, disappearing around the corner.
My ankle rolled then cracked when I stepped into a small pothole. I fell forward, hitting the scorching Georgia pavement. The asphalt bit into my skin, ripping it from my body.
I climbed to my feet and hobbled forward.
But I was too late.
My Teacup was gone.
And part of me knew she was never coming back.
The silence was suffocating.
Alone in my bedroom, I sat on the edge of my bed, a temporary cast covering my foot and lower leg. My ankle was fractured, but I felt no pain from it.
The only pain I felt radiated from my chest.
It had been nine hours since Lily was taken.
Nine hours since I failed her.
Nine hours since I broke my promise to always take care of her… to always protect her.
The local police, along with FBI dispatched from Atlanta had no leads. They’d interviewed Ty and me numerous times, but neither of us had much to offer. We didn’t know the tag number of the vehicle that had taken Lily, and neither of us remembered much about the man who’d snatched her other than his size and hair color.
I didn’t remember what he was wearing.
Nor did I remember if he had any tattoos or piercings.
But what I did remember was the emptiness in his eyes, the hardness in his expression, and the coldness that took root in the center of my chest the moment his gaze met mine.
The moment I first saw him, I knew he was a monster.
I’d been right.
And he had taken the most important person in my life.
What he was doing with her, or to her, I had no clue.
Part of me didn’t want to think about it either, but part of me needed to know. I needed to feel what she felt, needed to experience what she was going through. If she hurt, I needed to hurt, and if she was going to die, I wanted to die right along with her.
Teacup wasn’t just my little sister.
She was my everything.
Knock, knock, knock.
Three soft knocks sounded at my bedroom door. A man, one I’d never seen before, pushed it open a second later. Dressed in black slacks, a pressed white button-up shirt and a blue and yellow jacket, he resembled every bit the FBI agent I knew he was. “Kyle,” he said, nodding in greeting. “Mind if I come in?”
Unable to speak, I shook my head.
The agent stepped into my bedroom, softly closing the door behind him. Grabbing the chair from my desk, he spun it around and took a seat in front of me. “My name is Special Agent Haskins,” he said, his voice calm. “I wanted to check on you. See how you’re holding up.”
I remained mute.
“I know this isn’t easy,” he continued. “But I assure you we’re doing everything we can to bring Lily home.” I clenched my eyes shut at the sound of her name. My chest tightened further. “Alright, buddy, I’m going back out to the living room to speak with your parents. Do you need me to get you anything before I go?”
More silence.
“You’re going to get through this, Kyle.”
My head snapped up. “No, I won’t,” I whispered. “Not if she doesn’t come back.”
Agent Haskins nodded in understanding. “My agents are working around the clock—”
His words died on his tongue when a blood-curdling scream suddenly ripped through the house. Eyes wide, he jumped to his feet and headed for my bedroom door. Opening the door, he glanced at me over his shoulder and nodded toward the bed where I still sat, my chest rising and falling in rapid succession. “Stay there.”
A ball of dread settled into the pit of my stomach like a lead weight as he moved into the living room where my parents, along with a handful of local officers and FBI agents were.
Trepidation engulfed me.
Needing to know what was going on, I grabbed the crutches the hospital had given me hours earlier and lifted myself on my good leg.
My entire body shook as slowly I moved to my door.
Heart in my throat, I peered out into the living room.
What I saw made my stomach plummet to the ground.
My mother was bent at the waist, her hands clenched into tight fists. A slew of tears streamed down her blotchy face. She looked a breath away from passing out.
Dad stood behind her, his muscular arms wrapped around her torso, holding her tight.
Tears of his own fell silently down his face.
In front of them stood a female FBI agent. In her hand she held a clear plastic bag that had orange tape affixed across the top. Inside it was something red that I didn’t recognize right away.
I narrowed my eyes and took a harder look.
My body swayed when realization slammed into me.
The red item was Lily’s bow.
The same one she’d been wearing in her hair at the park.
Before I could process why the FBI lady had it, my mother crumbled. Her and Daddy both fell to their knees. Then she screamed again, this time louder.
“Mama!” I yelled, unable to stop myself.
Agent Haskins turned at the sound of my voice.
Our eyes met.
It was at that moment that I knew…
Lily wasn’t coming back.
Agony erupted in my chest.
I stumbled backward, dropping my crutches. Unable to hold myself up, and uncaring if I cracked my skull open, I fell. My back hit the floor hard, jolting my insides. The pain inside my chest intensified; I thought I was dying.
I turned to my side, pulling my knees into my belly. My ability to breathe vanished. Hard as I tried, I couldn’t suck in the smallest breath. Coldness settled deep in my bones as the feeling of loss overwhelmed me, making my body shake.
I screamed as loud and hard as I could.
The sound that escaped my throat sounded like a wounded animal.
In a way, that’s exactly what I was.
Tears, the first I’d cried in years, escaped my eyes.
In the living room, my mother’s agonized screams continued.
A sob ripped free from my chest in response.
Strong hands suddenly gripped my upper arms. “Kyle, buddy, I need you to breathe for me,” Agent Haskins said, forcing me to sit up. “Just take a breath.”
I shook my head wildly.
Lily was gone, and she was never coming back.
Without her, I’d never take another breath.
ONE
Kyle
Fourteen Years Later
Keep your shit together…
>
Madder than hell, I barreled inside station 24, the same firehouse I’d been assigned to for the past year, my white-knuckled hands clenched into tight fists. I stripped out of my turnout gear as I went, throwing each piece across the room, not giving a damn where it all landed. Focused on keeping the rage that boiled in the pit of my gut in check, I didn’t have the time nor the inclination to follow protocol and put it away.
Cap would chew me out later for acting like such an idiot, but I didn’t care. He could put me on boot duty… suspend me, whatever. At that moment, the only thing that mattered was getting away from everyone and everything before I lost my head and took out my anger on someone who didn’t deserve it.
I blocked out all sound as I stomped into the showers, stopping only for a second to take off my boots and socks. First one and then the other. I ripped my pants and briefs off next, followed by my shirt. I left all of it on the floor before heading toward the end stall, uncaring if one of the guys walked in and saw my bare ass before I made it there.
Inside the box, I stood beneath the showerhead, my back facing the wall as cold water poured over me, soaking my overheated skin. The icy temperature did little to calm the anger-fueled inferno that raged within me. Eyes closed, I tried to tamp down the urge to punch something.
Tried and failed.
Images of the scene I’d just left flashed in my mind, each worse than the last.
A desperate, screaming mother.
An angry, coldhearted father.
A tiny, lifeless body.
Remorse rose in my chest, trumping the anger that threatened to rip me apart at the seams. I’d tried to save the kid, I swear I had, but her body was too broken, her head too damaged. Surrounded by a puddle of her own blood, her breaths had ceased, her heart had stopped beating. By the time our truck had arrived, followed by EMS, it was too late.
One glance at her lifeless eyes and I knew there was no hope.
Still, I fought for her.
CPR. First aid. A useless IV.
My efforts were in vain.
Nothing I did would save her.
She was dead.
The memory of the ambulance pulling away, the lights and sirens dark and silent, was enough to push me to my breaking point. The minuscule hold I had on my emotions broke, my control snapped, and my chest cracked wide open, freeing every ounce of fury that had lived deep in my soul for years.
I spun around, facing the tiled shower wall.
An enraged yell ripped from my throat as I slammed my fisted hand into the ceramic. Bone crunched, my knuckles split, bolts of pain shot up my arm, and the dingy looking blue tile cracked under the force of the hit. Decades old grout dust floated through the air before being tamped down by the frigid water that still washed over me.
“Goddammit!” I bellowed, throwing a second, much harder punch.
More pain.
Another cracked tile.
Outside the shower room booted feet pounded against the vinyl hallway floor. Seconds passed before someone stomped through the open door and came to a stop on the other side of the room.
I didn’t bother to lift my gaze and see who it was.
I already knew.
“You done now?” A pissed off voice barked. “Or do you need to throw a few more punches and damage my station some more?”
I turned my head and glared at James ‘Pop’ Cole, or Cap as I called him, through narrowed eyes. The man was my Captain, my boss, and Hendrix’s father. I’d known him all my life and having known him all my life I could tell by the expression on his face that he was about to rip me a new one.
Didn’t matter though.
I welcomed his anger.
Christ knows I deserved nothing less.
When I didn’t respond, he crossed his arms over his chest and widened his stance. “You going to answer me?” His jaw ticked at my continued silence. “I know you can talk, Tucker,” he said. “Heard you do it plenty of times before.”
I exhaled so harshly my nostrils flared.
Chest heaving from the force of my ragged breaths, I gripped the navy blue, waist-high shower partition and dropped my gaze to the slick floor as my heart pounded against my ribcage.
I took a deep breath, fighting to reclaim control.
It was a losing battle.
“I should have killed that son of a bitch!” I yelled, spearing my fingers through my wet hair. “I should have ripped that motherfucker’s still beating heart out of his chest for what he did to her! She was his daughter, Cap! He was supposed to love and protect her! But that sorry son of a bitch killed her!”
Just like you killed Lily, a voice in my head whispered.
My own past came rushing forward with no warning.
Mental images of another girl, one who I’d once loved more than anything in the world, flashed before my eyes. My heart cracked as memory after memory bombarded me, causing indescribable pain to slither thickly through my veins, stealing my breath away.
I stepped back and attempted to draw a deep breath.
Every ounce of anger I felt toward the man who’d beaten his toddler daughter to death hours earlier vanished and, in its place, slid my old friend… self-hatred.
The same self-hatred I was destined to carry around like a thousand-pound weight until the day I took my last breath.
“Just like I should’ve protected Lily.” My voice cracked as I spoke her name aloud. It was something I didn’t often do because it was agonizing to both say and hear it.
Cap’s features softened. “Kyle…”
I dropped my head back.
Shame washed through me.
“Tell me you don’t mean that.” Cap’s boot squeaked when he took a lone step forward. “Kid,” he said in disbelief. “Lily’s death, tragic as it was, isn’t on you.”
That’s where he was wrong.
So damn wrong.
“Nah, Cap.” I righted my head and stared at the far wall as waves of guilt crashed into me like a tsunami. “It was my fault. Every bit of it. What happened the day she died, what happened in the years that followed, it’s all on me.” Lifting my fisted hand, I tapped my chest with my bleeding fist twice, emphasizing each word that followed. “Just me.”
An invisible knife twisted in my gut.
The memory, the guilt, the pain of losing the most important person in my life was unbearable.
Unable to stand there any longer, I turned off the water raining down on me without soaping up. The stench of death still clung to my flesh like a second skin. It was a smell I doubted I’d ever be free of. Not after everything I’d seen, after everything I’d done.
I ripped a towel down from the rack next to the stall, wrapped it around my waist and headed out of the room. I couldn’t stay there a second longer. I needed to escape the suffocating grief that consumed me and the never-ending regret that was about to drop me to my knees.
I’d almost made it to the door when Cap reached out and wrenched his hand down on my shoulder, stopping me in my tracks. His grip was strong. Unrelenting. “Kyle,” he said, “look at me.” His steadfast gaze met my guilt-ridden one. “What happened to that little girl today isn’t your fault. And what happened to Lily sure as hell isn’t your fault either.”
He could repeat those words all day long.
It wouldn’t change a thing.
“You have to stop carrying all this guilt around—guilt that doesn’t belong on your shoulders.” It did belong squarely on my shoulders. I deserved to live with the pain and knowledge of what I’d done for the rest of my life. Cap may not have believed that, but I did. And what I believed was the only thing that mattered. “At some point, you’re going to have to accept that what happened to your sister isn’t your fault. If you don’t, it will eat away at you until there is nothing left for it to take.” He paused. “Trust me, kid, I know.”
I swallowed around the boulder lodged in the base of my throat. “You may be right about the little girl today, but you’re wrong about Lily
.” My voice was low, steady. “She died because I screwed up, and nothing you, Hendrix, Ty, or anyone else says will change that fact.” He opened his mouth to speak, but I kept talking, not giving him the chance to get a word in. “I told her I’d protect her, that I’d always be there…”
Guilt wrapped around my throat like a boa constrictor. Then it squeezed. Hard. My ability to breathe dissipated as the ache in my heart intensified.
“… I fucking lied.”
The truthful words burned like acid on my tongue.
“Kyle—”
I ripped my shoulder free of his hold.
“Save it,” I snapped, my voice harsh. “I know the truth. That’s all that matters.”
I walked away without a backward glance.
My shift ended an hour later.
More than ready to leave, I headed for the front door of the station, my duffle bag in one hand, and my truck keys in the other. I’d only made it two steps outside the door when Cap stepped in front of me, blocking the path to my truck.
He’d been waiting for me.
That much was obvious.
My skin prickled with irritation. “What do you need, Cap?”
“You headed over to my house for poker night?” he asked, lifting his chin.
I jerked my chin down once in affirmation. “Yeah.”
His assessing eyes studied my face. “You planning on staying there?”
I remained mute.
Cap, however, didn’t.
Sliding his hands into his pockets, he squared his shoulders, keeping his eyes locked with mine. “I don’t want you alone tonight. Not after your little episode earlier.”
For a moment, just a brief moment, I was confused. Then realization dawned on me, and my irritation morphed into anger. “You can’t be serious.” A humorless chuckle spilled from my lips. “You worried I’m going to off myself or something?”
His silence was the only answer I needed.
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” I continued, my tone laced with disgust. “For chrissake, Cap, I know I’m messed up, but I’m not that messed up.”
It was a lie.
A major one.
I’d thought about eating a bullet before.
More than once.
The only reason I hadn’t was because of my mother.