Finally, his stare leaves mine and returns to Amira, and all that gratitude I saw before vanishes under the dense burden of repentance.
“Did those men… what I saw… Amira, what the fuck happened?” Colton asks, gravel rolling around the vocal cords in his throat as he pleads with Amira to deny what he already knows is true.
“What did you see?” Amira grinds through gritted teeth, wringing the back of her neck with shuddering palms.
I know this was her biggest fear, people confronting her about her past. So, I do my best and supply her with strength. Gripping her by the shoulders to pin her body to mine, I run my hands up and down her arms, wanting to scrape her terrors away with the callouses on my palms.
Officer Colton drops his arms, shaking his hands in a fidgeting motion, before bringing them back up to clasp around his head. Then, blowing a harsh sigh into the air, he says, “I was the only officer working that night. Sometime around eleven, I got a call saying there was a fire at the Lupo’s. When I got there, the fire department was already working on containing the flames.
“I was on the radio with the next town over. We needed more hands to search through the rubble, looking for your dad, brother… and you. They said it would take a couple of hours to get some bodies out here, so it was just me. I waited a while, hoping to see a body or hear a scream. I couldn’t touch anything without a ME there, but I began searching.”
Amira gives a violent shiver, whether from the recap or the dropping temperature, I don’t know, but Colton notices on the stop. Stepping away from the police vehicle, Colton walks around back, digging through his truck for a moment before coming out with a thick quilted blanket.
He goes to drape it over her shoulders, but I step up and hold my arm out. “I’ll do it.”
Colton doesn’t question me. Instead, he just passes over the blanket so I can tightly wrap her shuddering body in it.
“Thank you,” Amira says softly, giving Colton a stiff smile before saying, “Go on.”
“I found your dad first, with third-degree burns covering ninety percent of his body. When I first saw him, I figured he died from smoke inhalation, but the coroner’s report stated it was due to multiple lacerations to the back, severing the spinal cord and puncturing the kidneys.
“It wasn’t long after that I found Liam. He wasn’t too badly burned, so it was easy to spot the slash on his throat.”
Swallowing forcefully, Colton continues.
“I figured something really fucking sick happened, and I had to find you because if someone could be so cruel to kill these men in such a horrific manner, what the fuck could they have done to you?”
Amira freezes in my arms as Colton paralyzes her with his gaze, almost crumbling in my grasp when he says, “I never found you, but I did find a box, a small five-by-nine metal lockbox. Charred, but mostly unruined.”
I don’t see the significance of a lockbox, but the mention of its near-mint condition is destroying Amira. Her tears fall like leaden drops of rain over my knuckles, souring pain into my tissues until they roll from my skin.
I drop in a hurry to keep her collapsing body from hitting the ground, sliding on fragments of cracked twigs and slick leaves to hold her upright when my knees hit the floor.
She won’t look at me as I call her name, her eyes glaring into Colton as he continues.
“It took a while to get it open once I cut the lock; the sides sort of melded together, but the second I got the top off… Amira, I…”
Sliding his hands across his glistening eyes, Colton catches his breath. His pale skin turning a crimson red the more he thinks about whatever was in that fucking box.
“I’m so fucking sorry. Amira… fuck. I am so fucking sorry.”
“Can someone please tell me what the fuck is happening? What was in the box?” I snap, holding Amira in my arms on the cold, wet floor, trying to wrap my head around what the hell is happening.
“Pictures,” Amira rasps, shrugging out of my hold as she rises from the ground. “There were pictures in that box. Photos no one should have ever seen. Where are they?”
“Amira,” Colton starts, pity and sympathy in his tone as he begins walking toward us, but Amira isn’t having any of that shit, storming from her spot in front of me to get into his face.
“Where the fuck are they?!” she shouts, throwing my arms off her when I try to pull her away.
Amira, by nature, isn’t intimidating. Her face is too soft, with delicate little features that remind you of a fucking Disney princess, but there’s fury blazing in her gaze, and I’m not gonna lie, it’s a little fucking scary.
Colton doesn’t back down from her wrath, but the anguish in her tone causes him to flinch back.
“They’re gone, sweetheart. Torched them in my backyard along with the other shit I found in your shed.”
Amira laughs, a choking, hysterical laugh, before shaking her head, backing away from Colton’s sternum to crash into my chest.
“Wha-what are you talking about? My shed? There was nothing in there but tools and firewood….”
