My chest was so tight, I kept trying to suck air, but it was like sucking it through a straw. Black dots raided my vision.
Ethan threw Karson against the wall. He hit so hard the bones of the house quivered. Ethan charged again. Karson snapped out his hand, but Ethan ducked and his shoulder slammed into Karson’s chest. Karson’s face twisted with pain. He grunted as he reached down and grabbed hold of Ethan’s arm, then flung him like a rag doll into the wall. Plaster buckled and crumbled. He rushed after him. Their two faces, their eyes, black with rage, inches apart.
Kenneth grabbed onto the back of Karson’s shirt and reefed him off. He slammed into the staircase, cracking the timber. Karson bounced to his feet and they faced one another, theirbodies stiff, their eyes glued to each other like two caged fighting dogs.
Kenneth moved between them, one hand up in each direction. “If you want to fight you have to get through me.”
Rodney leaned against the wall, his arms folded, watching it all casually. Monique stood beside me, looking between us all, surprise and confusion on her features.
“I was trying to help her,” Karson’s growl rumbled through the room.
“Help her!” Ethan’s snarl rivaled Karson’s. “You stupid fuck. Would you throw a child in the water to teach them to swim?”
“Why did you hold me down?” My voice was so weak and broken it was barely audible.
They all turned in unison to look at me.
My lips trembled and tears streaked down my face. “Why did you say that? Why would you do that? Why did you hit me?”
Karson’s anger crashed and now he looked confused. Then his face paled. “I would never hit you, Amelia, I would never. I did not …” his voice trailed off, and he moved in a blur to stand in front of me.
“Who?” he whispered, his face a mixture of agony and barely contained fury. “Who hurt you?”
Time stopped. A clock that wouldn’t move. There was silence for seconds, minutes, hours, as everyone stared at me. I had been abused in a basement. People had hurt me in the worst ways possible, and I had blocked it out, buried it—until today. The blood drained from my head and my legs lost power. I heard a whine falling from my mouth.
My mother …“Run.”Was it true? Did she say that, or was it a confused mixture of my imagination?
A drop of blood fell from my nose like an allegorical shedding of horrors long buried surfacing for the whole world to see, and it landed on the floor in slow motion. Profound and pulverizing.
The room walls spun, the floor shifted under my feet, and everything went black again.
Chapter 46
The Accident
At first, all I was aware of was a sharp pain beating in my head. I blinked my eyes open, and my vision burned on a cloak of red and curdling darkness. The stench of burning rubber and blood filled my nostrils, choking my throat.
Dazed and confused, I groaned as I turned my throbbing head.
Blood ran down my mother’s face as she stared at me, shock and fear in her eyes. My mother was a homicide detective, like my father. She dealt with the worst of the worst, and I’d never seen her scared.
I sucked in a breath and smelled smoke. Was the car about to catch on fire? White-hot panic rushed through my body.
“Uhn,” she coughed, blood splattering from her mouth. She rasped in a wheezy breath as tears trickled down her face. “Run.”
I couldn’t leave her, wouldn’t leave her.
“No, Mom,” I cried, my fingers shaking as I fumbled for my seatbelt. My body crashed to the roof of the car. I crawled across shattered glass draped in blood, glinting like rubies,oblivious to the shards stabbing into my skin and pain ripping through my entire body.
Her eyes moved to the front of the car and widened, and when she looked back, panic and pain and love burned through them. Her shaking hand touched my cheek. “No, Amelia, sweetheart.” Blood dribbled from the corner of her mouth. “Please, you have to run.”
“I’m not leaving you,” I rasped, leaning across to try to unbuckle her seatbelt, but I couldn’t reach it.
“I love you, Amelia. Run!” she whispered, the desperation in her voice sending a chill over my body. Her eyes were fixed on something over my shoulder, and I jerked to look, squinting through the blinding light and curdling darkness. Not darkness. Smoke.
Then shiny black shoes appeared in the bottom of my vision. My eyes trailed up; all I could see was the silhouette of a man. Shadow Man.
I gasped awake,bolting upright, my heart thundering, tears streaming down my face. I was in our bedroom, lying on the bed.
