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Horror screamed.

Christina and Silas had been shot.

Sickness battered. A vicious, mocking storm.

“The children,” Meems suddenly rasped, jerking at his shirt again, a plea on her face. “I don’t want them to find out like this.”

He was on his feet again and bolting into the small house. The humble house that always brimmed with love and encouragement.

Brody and Elena shared a room, and he flew down the hall, though he slowed halfway, trying to tamp the fear and adrenaline that thundered through his veins. To stop the onslaught of guilt that vied to take him under.

The door was open, and darkness echoed back. Minimal light from the hall leaked into the room.

Brody was fast asleep in his bed. Arms and legs sprawled, wearing pajamas that looked like a baseball uniform.

But Elena…she wasn’t there.

Panic lit, and he pushed back out of the room and ran to Christina’s.

Emptiness echoed back.

A void already carved in the shadows.

A void his disloyalty had cost.

He squeezed his eyes against the onslaught of grief. Against the horror. He ran across the hall to Meems’ room. It was empty too, then he moved to Silas’s.

He choked over the pain when he found it vacant.

Rage and anger and the most gutting kind of regret spilled into his soul.

“You fucking fool,” he rasped.

He didn’t know if he was talking to Silas or himself.

He was pinned there for one distended, bloated second before he felt the pain crawl through the air.

Quieted and scared.

Air rushed from his thickened throat, and he tossed himself back out of Silas’s room and ran back down the hall. Into the living room where Meems was now on her feet, being supported while an officer muttered, “We need to ask you some questions.”

He wanted to stop and tell them to fuck off. Scream through the pain that the questions could wait. But he was already skidding into the kitchen and blowing out the back door.

His own terror locked. As if he could sense that she was in danger.

Or maybe he just knew their entire worlds had been ripped apart.

He barreled down the back porch steps and out onto the lawn.

Somehow already knowing where she was.

Sticks and sharp, jagged rocks pricked against the soles of his feet as he drove into the vacant lot. But he didn’t slow. He ran up to the apple tree that sat at the top of the hill.

Moonlight poured down and a cold wind whipped through. Rustling the branches into disorder.

Or maybe it was the little girl hidden almost at the top of it that lashed the atmosphere into agitation.

He felt no relief at finding her, considering she’d climbed so far up that the branches were no longer stable. Elena teetering precariously with her knees tucked to her chest.