Pieces of a Mending Heart (27 page)

“How many people…?” I can’t finish the sentence.

“At least six
. We don’t know all the details yet, but your mother is safe and sound. Your father was found dead this morning and your mother locked in an upstairs closet,” the Detective says, sounding rehearsed but genuine.

Another sob escapes me and I crouch on the floor of the kitchen, clutching the phone as a crack of lightning lights up the room. The rain halts suddenly and everything is still.

He locked her in the same closet our father locked us in when he would beat our mother. We would be in there for hours, listening to the sounds of skin on skin and screaming words about food, cleanliness, ignorance and self-worth. David and I used to clutch each other and huddle on the floor, humming to try to drown out the sounds. It was horrifying. Actually, I used to clutch David. He would just stare at the wall, motionless as a stone, scolding me for humming.

Suddenly, the roaring of Tristan’s truck returns and my stomach drops to the floor. I gasp, stunned and feeling guilty I forgot I sent him to the store for me.

“Oh my gosh!” I exclaim, nearly dropping the phone in my haste to get up. “My boyfriend, he’s outside! I forgot I sent him to the store! He needs to come in
side
!”

“No! Katherine, don’t leave-” I don’t listen to the rest of his words, but instead drop the phone and race through the kitchen to the living room. I tear open the front door just as Tristan is climbing out of his truck. A feeling of pure terror courses through me at the feeling that we are not alone. Despite my earlier conviction and the Detective’s orders, I panic.

“Tristan! Get inside!” I scream, bounding down the steps, wanting to yank him into the house with my own two hands. His handsome face is shocked before turning ash white. He sways and
falls back against his truck before connecting his frightened eyes with mine.

“Hey, sis,” a gravelly voice whispers a few inches from my ear as an arm wraps itself around my neck.

Chapter 14

Tristan

             
Of course I get the slowest store clerk in town. Her nametag says Melissa, but it looks half-scribbled out with Sharpie.

             
“Evening,” I greet when I finally get in front of her.

             
Wordlessly, she scans the bottle of Tylenol and drops it into the plastic bag with a blank expression.

             
“Thanks,” I say, shoving my change in my jacket pocket and high-tailing it out of the 24-hour mini-mart.

             
The storm has picked up, making the trees bow like fans at a rock concert. The allusion makes me smile a little as I jog to my truck. I try to use as little gas as possible, because Rachel so graciously pays for it without even a second glance. I’m not sure how aware Katie is of her aunt’s financial situation, but the woman is richer than God. Not literally, of course, but no other metaphor explains the amount of her wealth in such detail. The woman could buy half the state if she was of mind to.

That’s what I love about Rachel, her kindness and utter humility. Nobody even knows about the couple million bucks she has saved in the bank from a lottery win a few years back, and I’m certainly not going to spill her secret.

The ride home is uneventful, but the rain suddenly stops as I turn onto Katie’s isolated street. It’s pitch black outside because the moon is hiding behind the thick storm clouds that have been haunting us all day. A horrible feeling washes over me, like I shouldn’t be here. The unease intensifies when Rachel’s house comes into view and it’s barely visible because all the lights are off. When I left not a half an hour ago, the majority of the lights were on. Katie hates the darkness.

My truck rolls up the rocky driveway and the uneasy feeling makes my heart pound, and I swear I feel Katie’s heart beating right alongside mine. Something isn’t right…

I leave the headlights on so I can find my way to the door. The rusty door of my pick-up pops open, breaking the eerie silence with its sound. Katie opens the door of her house, looking unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. Her clothes are slightly rumpled and her hair is out of the tight bun it’s been in all day, so her waves are bouncing down past her elbows. But it’s not her body language that scares me; it’s her eyes.

Those beautiful green eyes I see reflected in the dim light of my truck’s headlights are filled with a terror so thick that it makes me physically stumble backwards a step, making me hit my back against the truck’s side. A shadow passes behind her and a
face I will never forget protrudes from the darkness and bathes itself in the light from my headlights.

“Tristan! Get inside!” Katie screeches as she jumps down the steps, arms slightly extended like she wants to pick me up. She must know. She must have known he was out here and she still came for me. To warn me? To protect me? How foolish. It’s
my
job to protect
her
.

“Hey, sis,” David’s voice sounds dry, like he hasn’t had a drip of water in days. His hair is long, resting on his shoulders, and darker than I remember it being. But I don’t have time to focus on his appearance because his arm wraps itself around my angel’s neck.

She screams and tries to throw him off, but his other hand comes up to her face, gently stroking it with his knuckles. The gesture would’ve been comforting had it not been for the giant knife he held in his fist. Its long blade glinted in the light, the glare hitting me in the eyes for a moment. Katie stops squirming and closes her eyes. She’s praying, I know she is. I can feel it in the air, the Lord’s presence.

“Well, well, well, sissy! You got yourself a nice little house here. You’ll be so happy when you hear what I’ve done for us. I saved us! I saved you! You’re safe now, sissy! He’s gone!” David says, turning Katie around so that she’s no longer facing me. His
hands rest on her shoulders possessively and I can’t tear my eyes away from the knife in his hand, inches from her precious neck.

“David, please don’t hurt me,” she says, sounding shockingly calm. I’m proud of her bravery for a moment, until the terror kicks in a millisecond later.

“Hurt you? I’d never hurt you, sissy! I’ve missed you,” he pulls her close, inhaling the scent of her hair and rocking her back and forth. She’s stiff as a board, not moving, barely breathing.

“Dave. Why don’t you let her go and we can go inside and you can tell us everything you did for Katie,” I say, unable to stay quiet a moment longer. I can’t watch him hold her; can’t stand the sight of his hands on her beautiful body.

He freezes and stops rocking her, gaze snapping up and gray eyes meeting mine before narrowing into slits. “Who are you?” he says, pulling Katie closer, closer to him and to the blade in his hand. I gulp.

“I’m Katie’s best friend. I’ve heard… a lot about you. She isn’t feeling well so why don’t you let her go lay down and you and I can talk while she’s resting?” I say, playing along. It’s what I’ve seen nurses do at John Adam’s when patients were being particularly hard to deal with.

“You want her to leave me? After I just found her again?” he laughs, an insane sounding one that sends prickles to the surface of my already freezing skin. “You’re not taking her from me!”

Katie makes eye contact with me, silently pleading with me to leave. I can see it in her eyes that she wants me to just hop back in my truck and speed off. Not a chance.

“I don’t want to take her from you. She just isn’t feeling very well. I picked her up some medicine so we should let her lay down, Dave,” I say.

He takes a few steps back and I instinctively take a step towards him, which he notices. “Stop it! Don’t make me hurt her. I don’t want to hurt her,” he says, whirling Katie around so that she’s facing me again. He moves the knife so that the tip barely rests on her stomach, but each time she breathes, her delicate skin presses into it a little more. My blood starts to boil and anger replaces a bit of the terror.

“Dave, let her go. Tell me about everything you did for her. I want to make her as happy as possible. I want her to be happy as much as you do,” I say, trying anything to calm him down.

Lord, help me. Please!
I scream over and over in my head.

“No one wants sissy happy like David does! Don’t you try to take her from me! She’s mine, I did this for her! So we could be a family again!” he screams, pressing the knife harder into her stomach. It tears her shirt and she drags in a ragged breath.

I wondered why she didn’t try to speak, but now I see why. My necklace, the one I placed on her last night while she was sleeping, is choking her. David’s headlock is yanking the chain taught, and my cross charm is digging into her throat, suffocating her, imprinting her with a symbol that should be a comforting object.

A tear slips down Katie’s cheek and the silence seems to stretch on for minutes, but it’s more like a few seconds. David takes a step backwards, dragging his sister by the neck. She loses her footing, sliding towards the ground, being held up completely by the arm of her brother. Katie starts thrashing, panicking, releasing strangled sobs as she tries to work free.

I charge. The sight of her lips turning blue and shirt growing bloodier by the second drives every ounce of fear from my body and I’m overcome with anger. Before I take three steps, another figure steps out of the shadows, her face red and jaw clenched as she smacks David on the back of the head with a baseball bat.

The impact is enough to force him to release Katie and she drops like a lead weight to the ground. Her brother is too stunned to react and his head whips back and forth between his sister on the ground and the brown haired girl holding a baseball bat. Sorren has never been strong, let alone strong enough to knock out a six-foot-four man.

Katie scrambles towards me on all fours and I rush to her, not embracing her, but shoving her behind me. I must push her harder than I thought, or she did it on purpose, because she falls to the ground with a grunt. I walk towards David, who is now brandishing a small revolver in his hand, the knife on the ground. He points the gun right at Sorren’s chest, but his eyes remain locked on mine.

The change within them is horrifying. His gray-blue eyes go from raging mad to… blank. With pupils enlarged, face relaxed, and all emotion eliminated from his body, he laughs. The sound sends a shiver down my spine and I sprint the remaining feet between us, tackling him to the ground as the sound of a gunshot rings out.

Chapter 15

Katherine

             
I’m frozen in terror. The power behind my brother’s hold is unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. Popping sounds fill my ears and the tears in my eyes are so thick I can’t see anything. A chain from a necklace I don’t remember wearing cuts into the skin around my neck, embedding itself into my flesh.

             
Tristan
… I think, silently pleading with him to run. I know he won’t, I wouldn’t if our situations were reversed, but it’s always worth a shot. I blink the tears from my eyes and they fall down my face before dripping onto David’s sweaty arm.

             
My angel’s eyes stare back at me, no longer feared with fear. Instead, an anger, in which I’ve never seen grace his eyes, fills him, contorting his face and making him stand taller. Tristan is a tall boy, but he has nothing on David’s sheer size and muscle.

             
A blow comes from behind David and me, catching us both by surprise. He releases me and I catch my breath, my blood flowing again so quickly that I get dizzy. Tristan rushes towards me, but instead of holding me like I’d hoped he would, he pushes me behind him. The dizziness returns with a vengeance and I tumble to the ground, landing squarely on a large rock that cracks a few of my ribs. I hear the snaps, but don’t feel the pain.

             
A gunshot rings out and I stop my labored breathing. Sorren lays sprawled on the ground a few feet from a tangled David and Tristan. Something hard hits me in the leg, and I pick it up. Another shot fills the air, making my ears ring, and the struggling boys on the ground continue fighting. I watch through blurry eyes as the sound of sirens breaks the loud silence. Red and blue lights cut through the mist that has formed over the land, and I lean against the truck, tucking my legs to my chest, as police officers rush towards us.

             
I put my face in my hands, shaking uncontrollably. The feel of cool metal presses against my cheek, and a dozen officers stand a few feet away from me, blocking Tristan and the scene that was just unfolding.

             
“Sweetheart, hand us the gun. You’re safe now,” a kind looking woman says, but with the gun she has pointed at me, I immediately see her as a threat.

             
The thing that hit my leg during the fight was the gun David had. Tristan must have gotten a hold of it and sent it flying wherever he could. I fired the second shot, the one that caused the ringing in my ears. I stare at the death trap in my hands before dropping it to the ground.