“Is someone there?”
Instantly, Isobel’s body went on high alert.
“Please,” the voice choked out, anguished. “Help me.”
Dane swore and jogged forward into the trees. “Avi, is that you?”
Isobel followed behind, her eyes sweeping the brush.
“Lenny!” Dane bellowed, but his brother didn’t reply.
Avi let another sob slip free, an anguished moan drawing their attention. When she saw him, Isobel gasped.
Avi was face down, one hand clutching a clump of grass as he tried to haul himself forward. A depression the width of his body carved a clear path behind him. How far had he dragged himself? What had happened?
Why was there blood caking his face?
A burgundy stain smeared down his cheek, mixing with the soil beneath. But that’s not where Isobel’s focus landed. Her breath stalled in her throat at the sight of his left eye, gouged of its ball and the fluids inside it. Flowers spilled out of the empty, bloody socket.
“The hell?” Dane muttered as he rushed to the injured man’s side. There had to be other wounds too, Isobel realized, that prevented Avi from rising. His pants were ripped, and though one of his legs was scrambling to thrust himself forward, the other lay flat behind him.
Bile rose in her throat.
“Dane?” Avi cried out.
“I’m here,” Dane said, taking the man’s hand in his own and briefly squeezing. “We’re going to help you, Avi, all right? Can you tell me what happened?”
Avi let out a sob. “She came out of nowhere!”
Isobel stiffened.
“Who did?” Dane pressed as Dad knelt beside the pair of them.
Don’t you dare say her name.
“I don’t know.” Avi dug his fingernails into the already-damaged skin beneath his eye. When one of the flower stems popped free, he screamed in agony.
Dane pulled Avi’s hands away from his face. “Was it Eva?” he harshed out, breathless.
“No,” Isobel snapped, stunned at both the question and his coldness.He doesn’t get to say that.He couldn’t think that, after all they’d done to protect her from suspicion. Dane couldn’t… He couldn’t think…
Avi moaned. “She was made of trees, a-and roots…” he sobbed.
“Right,” Dane muttered, flicking a look to Isobel. She’d spent years learning his tells, and yet she couldn’t parse that expression. Her chest squeezed, the smell of mangled flesh and blood and flowers making her sick.
Dane shifted his focus to the wound on Avi’s leg. Unhooking his belt, he wrapped a makeshift tourniquet around Avi’s upper thigh. “There’s a medical kit in the glove box,” he said to Isobel.
She raced back to the patrol car and yanked the passenger door wide, crouching as she dug through the contents of the glove box, tearing out item after item. The car manual and registration. A notebook, pens, and… Isobel slowed, and lifted a small jam jar filled with a familiar shade of deep blue petals.
She knew this tea. It was the same blend Lenny had been sent to fetch from their house the day he and Arthur got into that fight.
“Isobel!”
Shaking herself, Isobel located a mini first aid kit from the depths of the glove box and raced back to the men just as Dane rolled Avi onto his back.
“Where is my brother?”
Avi let out a sob. “I-I don’t know!”
