I whimpered as I lunged for him, but whoever had their grip on my wrists held me much too tight.
“Make them let go,” I whimpered as tears poured down my face. “Please.”
“Anna,” he muttered as he dropped a soft nuzzle against the top of my head. “Take care of the girls. It’s going to be all right.” I pulled back just enough to look at his face. I don’t know what I was looking for. But whatever it was, I found something I couldn’t name. Something that looked less like fear and morelike a man carrying weight he’d already decided to carry. I didn’t have time to think about what that meant before they pulled him away from me.
And that was all I got before they dragged him out of my room.
“YOU CAN’T DO THIS!” I screamed as I donkey-kicked into the air. “THEY DIDN’T FUCKING DO ANYTHING!”
I barely got my bearings straight before the grip fell away from my wrists. I saw a man whip out of my room with the letters ‘DOJ’ emblazoned in yellow on the backs of their jackets, and for the second time in my life, I froze.
The DOJ?
We helped the DOJ!
I heard Marla’s voice explode at a volume I’d never heard before. “THEY WERE HELPING YOU, YOU SORRY SACKS OF SHIT! AND WHEN I’M DONE WITH YOU, NO ONE WILL FUCKING KNOW WHAT THE DOJ IS!”
I stumbled out of my bedroom, my bare feet crunching down onto glass. It hurt, but I didn’t care. My feet were bleeding, but I didn’t care.
I begged like a bitch in heat with no regard for what it made me sound like. “Please, you’ve got the wrong guys. They didn’t do anything! They aren’t the ones doing this!”
“Anna,” Amanda said as she reached for me.
I leaned to the side, dodging her grip as I rushed after the men in DOJ jackets with bloodied feet. “I’m serious. We’ll sue the hell out of your department. Into oblivion, with all of you!”
“An-n-n-n-aaaaa,” Charise sobbed out.
It was the only sound that stopped me in my tracks.
I turned toward the sound of her heaping sobs, and I saw the bloodied footprints I’d left on my fucking carpet. Just as quickly as they crashed into my home, they were gone, and I heard cars cranking up outside. How we didn’t hear them roll up on us wasbeyond me. And yet somehow I already knew that my brother had heard every single one of them.
That thought sat in the back of my brain like a splinter I didn’t have time to dig out yet.
“Char,” I said breathlessly as I stumbled toward the room I was sure she was in.
“Anna, you’re bleeding,” Jasmine said as she caught my wrist.
“I know,” I muttered as I slipped out of her grasp. “Char?”
I eased the door open and found her curled up in the corner, her watery eyes wide with a terror I knew I’d never erase from my head.
“W-w-w-w—what—what is—I don’t know—um…”
“Come here, I gotcha,” I whispered as the cars sputtered out of range, kicking up rocks and rumbling over twigs and leaves that only served to remind us of the chaos that had left us ruined. “I gotcha, beautiful.”
“I thought you guys said they were goooood,” Char wailed as I sat down beside her.
I drew her into my arms as Lizzy camped out in front of me with Doc’s bag. “Give me those feet.”
I didn’t argue. I just placed them in her lap as I pulled Charise as tightly into my embrace as I could.
“They are,” I whispered as I rocked her side to side, ignoring the searing pain in the soles of my feet. “My brother is the best man I know. Same with Brutus.”
“And Doc,” Lizzy said as bit down onto her tongue while she picked glass out of the bottoms of my feet. “He’s taught me a thing or two as well. I want to check all of you out. You, too, Char, so get ready.”
“O-o-o-kay,” Char choked out in between her tears.
“And Ghost,” Jasmine said as she sat on the other side of Char, drying her own tears.
