Laura Kaye - Hard As You Can

Jenna sat back and nodded. “Okay, I will.”

“Promise me?”

“I promise,” Jenna said. “As long as you promise we’re not waiting eight months.”

Crystal blew out a long breath and met her sister’s determined gaze. She wasn’t a little kid anymore, was she? In just a few weeks, she wouldn’t even be a teenager anymore. She was a brave, smart, strong woman, and Crystal admired her. And in this moment, Jenna was right. “I promise. You got a deal.”

“We’re gonna be all right, Sis. Don’t worry.” Jenna smiled.

“Yeah, we are,” Crystal said. And for the first time in a long time, she came pretty close to believing it.

When the knock finally sounded against Shane’s bedroom door, he’d expected it. After they’d returned to Hard Ink the previous night, the only talking Shane had been up to was to share what Garza had said about another delivery happening Friday night. Then Shane had handed off his camera and called it quits on the day. The other guys had stayed up to debrief the op, but Shane’s mood had been for shit, his emotions were too volatile, and his brain was so scrambled, he wouldn’t have been of any analytical use to anyone anyway.

Late, late in the night, he’d finally managed to calm the storm raging in his head long enough to fall asleep for a few hours, but his dreams had been a relentless, horrifying, and heartbreaking search for Molly that always had him showing up moments too late or running into a dead end.

He woke up more tired and strung out than when he’d gone to bed, so he’d lain in the early-morning gloom spilling in from the high window and tried to get his head screwed on straight.

No luck yet.

The knock came again.

Shane sighed and sat up against the headboard. It was then that he realized Molly’s butterfly necklace was still wrapped around his fingers from the night before. He’d been turning the chain round and round, looking for a little peace or wisdom or insight. He was still looking. “Come in,” he called.

The door eased open, revealing Nick, so recently out of the shower his hair was still wet, and damp spots showed through his black T-shirt where he hadn’t bothered to dry off. “What’s up?” he asked.

Shane just shook his head. “Need me for something?”

“No, man.” He came all the way in and closed the door behind him, then he leaned against it and crossed his arms. “That scene last night—”

“Don’t,” Shane bit out, more harshly than he’d intended, but he really couldn’t help himself. The memory of the women’s bodies being delivered into those boats made him feel a whole lot like a giant exposed nerve. And everything—his clothes, the covers, even the very air—rubbed it raw and made it hurt.

Nick pushed off the wall, crossed the room, and sat heavily on the edge of the bed. “I’m going there, Shane. And you need me to.”

Shane drew up his sweats-covered knees and rested his arms on them, the necklace dangling from the fingers of his right hand. “Damnit, Rix. I said, don’t—”

“There was nothing we could do. There was nothing you could do,” Nick said, turning toward him.

“I know,” Shane said. And he did. His rational self knew Nick was right. But that didn’t keep his heart from splintering inside his chest.

“Shane?”

He dragged his gaze up from the little silver chain and met Nick’s intense stare. “Yeah?”

For possessing such an unusually pale color, Nick’s eyes could be warm with sympathy when he wanted them to be. And now was one of those times. Shane should’ve realized what was coming. “Would you finally tell me what happened the day Molly disappeared?” Nick asked.

The question sucker punched him hard in the gut, stealing his breath and beckoning a rolling wave of nausea. The team knew Shane’s little sister had disappeared when Shane was a teenager and that he felt responsible, but not the details. In fact, the last person he’d told the details to had been an Army shrink during his SF in-processing.

“Why?” Shane whispered. All he could manage.

Nick raked his hand through his damp hair, once, twice. “Because what happened to her is eating you up like a cancer, and the harder you try to beat it back, the more aggressive it becomes. This situation is strumming that string so hard, I can’t help but think it’s gotta snap.” He shook his head. “I missed the thing with Merritt because I didn’t trust my gut. And right now, my gut’s saying you’re in trouble. I thought so before last night, but now, just looking at you, I know it’s true.”

Thoughts whirling, heart beating almost painfully in his chest, Shane braced his elbows on his knees and held up the necklace. Shane couldn’t remember when Molly had gotten it, but she’d loved it because it wasn’t a little girl’s piece of jewelry. It was a grown-up necklace, which meant the pendant had hung low on her chest. But she hadn’t minded. In fact, she’d thought she looked fancy. Her word.

Taking the butterfly into his fingers, he smoothed his thumb over the heart-shaped wings made of purple and white rhinestones.

“I found this—” Shane began, his voice catching. “I found it down the street from my house, lying on the curb.” He turned the butterfly over and over in his fingers. “She would never . . . never have dropped it on purpose.”

Wondering how it had come off? That was the stuff of which nightmares were made.

For a moment, Shane got sucked back into time, to that hot summer day. Late July. Him and Henry Waller and Kevin Ryan, his two best friends from his baseball team, were up in his room playing video games. His father had a round of golf that morning, and his mother was down the street at a bridal shower. Just for a few hours. And, besides, at thirteen, they occasionally left him to babysit Molly.

The first time Molly had knocked on his door, she’d wanted permission to get a snack. So Shane had okayed the Goldfish and juice box and sent her on her way.

The second time she’d knocked, she’d asked if she could play with them. Or, if not play, watch. But what teenage guy wanted his eight-year-old sister hanging out in his room with his friends? So he’d told her no and sent her on her way.

The third time she’d knocked, he’d been so annoyed at the constant interruptions that he’d wrenched open the door and told her to leave them alone. And, then, to drive home the point, he’d told her to go away.

The better part of an hour later, another knock sounded at his door. It was his mother, home from the shower and looking for Molly. As he’d searched and searched, he’d been so sure she was hiding to get him in trouble as payback for not letting her play that he’d been mad. But as the hours passed, the search widened, and his parents’ eyes filled with fear and panic, and he’d realized that Molly wasn’t playing a game.

Shane had found the necklace late that afternoon, and he’d had to turn it over to the police to test for fingerprints it didn’t have. They’d returned it to the family a few weeks later, and Shane had kept it on him ever since.

“Jesus,” Nick said.

Only then did Shane realize he’d recounted the story out loud. And that something wet had rolled down his cheeks. He scrubbed the errant moisture away and pinched his fingers against his eyelids, catching a bit more wetness against his fingertips. The last time he’d shed tears over Molly had been the night of what would’ve been her thirteenth birthday. Because it was the age he’d been when he’d lost her, when he’d sent her away, and she’d gone. Never to be heard from again.

“You were a kid, Shane. You didn’t want anything bad to happen to her. You didn’t cause it. You couldn’t have predicted it. It wasn’t your fault.”

Words he’d heard from a shrink. From his parents. They’d just never sank in. “But I—”

“No. The only one to blame was the sociopath who took her.” Nick scooted closer. “Look at me, man. If you had a son, and the same thing happened to him. What would you tell him?” Shane shook his head, and Nick pressed. “What would you tell him? Would you look that little boy in the eyes and blame him?”

“It’s different,” he said, voice strained, mind reeling.

“How?” Nick said.

“It just is.”

“Look that little boy in the eyes, Shane, and tell him who’s responsible.” With both hands on the sides of Shane’s face, Nick forced their gazes to meet. “Tell him,” he said, voice gentler.

“I don’t know,” Shane said, his breath coming in a shudder. “Not . . . him. Not him. Not him.”

“Not him,” Nick said, dropping his hands. “Not you.” He lowered his gaze to the floor, as if he knew Shane felt too exposed, too vulnerable, too embarrassed at the emotional display, at the weakness of his tears.

Shane gulped in a breath and turned his face toward the wall, where he made quick work of removing all traces of the wetness that had somehow appeared there again.

“And you weren’t responsible for the loss of those women last night, either. None of us was. But you know who was?” Nick gave him a sideways glance.

That one was a no-brainer. Shane nailed him with a cold, hard stare. “Church.”

Nick nodded. “Church.” He didn’t need to say anything more. Because Shane knew. If they were going to hurt Church and right the wrongs done against them and their dead teammates, he had to get off his ass and get out of his head. “Marz wants to confab as soon as we’re all up and moving,” Nick said, pushing off the bed.

Shane forced himself up, too. “Wait. I owe you some words,” he said, rubbing a hand over the winged-heart tattoo he’d gotten in Molly’s memory. This Shane could make right here and now, and he wasn’t waiting another second to get his best friend back once and for all.