Meri sees how it hurts bone deep to tell her. Fuck, she can probably feel it, just like I can feel her pain. She draws up her knees to her chest as I crouch down in front of her.
“Ash found fox hair and it triggered a memory. I swerved to avoid a damn fox,” I confess. I swallow hard and Meri’s throat bobs up and down too. “I didn’t know I was choosing its life over Ewan’s, and I have to live with that decision. And maybe I have to live with your hate too…”
In a perfect world, Meri would collapse into my arms and tell me I reacted on instinct. She’d tell me she doesn’t hate me and she didn’t mean it when she said she wished ithad been me who died. But she just stares, tears streaming down her face.
Hesitant footsteps come to a halt outside the door. There’s a knock. “Is it safe to enter?” Rory asks.
“Come in,” I tell our brother, but I keep my gaze fixed on Meri. She’s still in shock.
The door creaks open, but instead of sure footsteps, there’s an ominous shuffle.
Meri blinks out of her trance as she looks over my shoulder. “Rory?”
I’m already rising to my feet as I turn. “What the hell?” I say, just as Meri says the same.
“Nice to see you two are back on the same page.” Rory goes to smile, but winces as the movement pulls at the cut on his lip.
There are more cuts on his face, fine lacerations that collectively add up to a horror show. There’s blood on his shirt and his left arm is in a sling.
“It looks worse than it is,” he insists as I move towards him. In a hushed voice he adds, “Have you told her?”
I’m nodding as Meri sweeps past me. “You need to sit down. What happened?”
Rory goes to resist, but Meri isn’t averse to manhandling one of her brothers, even a battered and bruised one. She drags Rory towards the chair she’s just vacated as Calder and Dad appear. Dad passes my brother a crystal glass with a generous measure of whiskey, and Rory takes it gratefully.
“What in god’s name happened, son?”
“It was a minor mishap on my way home from meeting Ash,” he explains. “A car came out of nowhere, probably went through a red light. It slammed into the side of my car hard enough to spin me around a few times and I hit a streetlight.”
“And the other car?” asks Meri, perching on the arm of the chair and checking through his scalp for more wounds.
“No idea,” he says, completely unfazed by the whole drama. Or maybe that’s just how he wants it to look for our sakes. “Whoever it was didn’t stop.”
“Do you want me to ask Mace to check CCTV?” asks Calder.
“Already did. There were no cameras nearby for him to hack into.”
“Someone was lucky,” mutters Meri.
“Yeah, me.” He offers our sister a wan smile. “I was treated at the scene, then got a cab here. I called Ash on my way. Just in case.”
My heart’s been thudding in my chest since I laid eyes on Rory’s wounds, but now it races like a jackhammer. “Just in case what, Rory?”
“In case there’s a threat we don’t know about” It’s no coincidence that he’s looking at me when he says it. “Ash is convinced we’re not seeing the whole picture with Katarina. Could there be a connection?”
I close my eyes, but instead of being greeted by darkness, all I see is red. My eyes snap open. I thought all the threats to my family were known. I thought I could handle it. “Are you sure you’re OK?”
“I’m good. And you shouldn’t worry. Ash thinks it’s unlikely I was targeted.”
Either Rory’s making that part up, or Ash said it to reassure his friend. It feelsverytargeted. “Even so, I’d feel better if I reviewed all our security measures. I should go.”
“Not a bad idea,” Dad replies. “Let me know if you need anything from me.”
“I should be good,” I say, but the world doesn’t feel solidunder my feet anymore. I look to Meri. “Can we carry on our talk later?”
“I don’t think that would help either of us,” she says. The anger has left her, but that makes her words all the more damning. “I don’t have it in me to ease your conscience, Duke. I’m not that strong.”
Neither am I, I want to tell her, and yet somehow, I have to be. I turn away from my sister, if only so I don’t have to see the tears welling in her eyes again and she can’t see the emptiness in mine as I set off to face my demons.
