“It’s already done.” She coughed. “You’re dead. You just don’t know it yet.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, frantically trying to wipe away the blood so I could see.
I used my shirt next, finally getting enough of the blood out of my eyes that I could focus on what was in front of me.
My sister on the ground, her leg bent at an awkward angle, pointing a gun at my face.
“You are the worst type of person,” she said. “Always going with the flow when you should be scared for your life. You didn’t even care that I slept with your boyfriend. You just walked out like you didn’t care about him or me and never looked back.”
I held my tongue, unsure what she wanted me to say.
“I fucked him for a year, you know,” she said. “But it was only after I convinced him that you didn’t like him. He hated you.”
I didn’t believe that for a second.
Men who hated women didn’t chase them around when they left.
They let them go without question.
And Teller sure the hell didn’t let me go.
“You didn’t fuck him for a year,” I denied. “And he didn’t hate me. All you could get him to do was kiss you.”
At least, that was what I hoped was the case.
Who knew if it actually was.
“Well, we’ll never know, will we?” she sang. “Because you’re about to be someone else’s problem. I’ll comfort your biker, though. Don’t worry.”
I threw my helmet at her.
The gun dropped from her hand and clattered to the ground.
Callum walked up and blinked.
Then he was running toward me, a look of abject horror on his face.
CHAPTER 24
I’m nicer than my face looks.
-Callum to Iris
CALLUM
“Hey,” Haggard said. “I don’t need you anymore. Some old man with a tractor stopped by, let me use his jack. Thanks, though. Hope you didn’t get too far away.”
I rolled my eyes. “Only halfway back, loser. Be safe.”
After hanging up with Haggard, I did a quick sweep of the area, then flipped a bitch in the middle of the road and started heading back the other way.
It took me eight minutes.
It would’ve taken me less, but some tractor trailer had pulled out in front of me, and he was pulling a massive load.
As in, a fuckin’ windmill kind of load.
I contemplated going around him twice before I decided to go for it and damn the consequences.
I made it around him, and into the space in front of Teller’s place, with its police tape still cordoning off the driveway, in less than a minute.
When I got off the bike, something started to strike me as off.
I wasn’t sure what it was, but the deeper I walked down the length of the driveway, and around where I’d seen Iris disappear, the worse the feeling got.
I’d just made it around the side of the house when I heard metal clatter to concrete, and a solid thump filled the air.
When I turned the corner to the front of the house, it was to see two women on the ground about eight feet apart from each other, and a whole lot of fucking blood.
The woman on the ground with the gun a few inches from her hand didn’t bother me.
It was obvious that she was out for the count.
But it was the woman leaning against the side of the house that did interest me.
Blood was running in rivulets down Iris’s face.
Her shirt and jeans were covered in it, too.
But it was the odd, vacant look in Iris’s eyes that had my throat seizing.
“Oh, fuck me.” I hurried toward her. “Baby. What happened?”
She started to cry, and I pulled her into my arms, careful with her arm and her face.
I felt the blood start to seep into my shirt, and her goddamn sobs were breaking my heart.
Before she could explain, Iris scrambled to her feet and ran toward who I now realized was her sister.
Her sister looked rough.
As in, I’d never seen her look bad, but her weeks on the run made her look like a shadow of herself.
“Oh, God,” Iris whispered as she dropped down. “Is she okay?”
I didn’t beat around the bush. “She’s dead, honey.”
Iris looked at me with such sorrow in her eyes that I now realized that she hadn’t known.
“Please, you have to help me,” Iris cried, wiping her tears. “You have to help me.”
Gathering her into my arms and ignoring the blood, I hugged her so tight that she squeaked.
I didn’t let go of her until she’d stopped shaking.
“They can’t know.” She breathed in so deeply that her breasts pressed against my diaphragm. “They’ll break if they know that it was all an act. That she…”
“That she tried to kill you while of sound mind?” I filled in. “That they spawned a daughter that was a psychopath, not a schizophrenic?”
Her breath hitched. “They’ll hate me.”
I smoothed my hand down her hair, my fingers catching on a piece of foam.
Foam that’d been in the couch that was pressed against Iris’s back. Foam that’d come out of the couch following the withdrawal of the knife that’d been meant for her face.
“We need to call the cops.” She sighed. “I can’t make you do this.”
I stilled her hand when it shakily made a move for her purse.
“This wasn’t your fault,” I told her bluntly. “What happened? It was fucking awful. But it wasn’t your fault. You defended yourself.”
Her breath hitched. “I’ll never be able to look at my parents or Anderson again.”
There was a long pause from me before I said, “Your parents won’t matter. But I’ll take care of Anderson. I won’t let him hate you.”
“You are going to tell him? What do I say to the cops?” she whispered.
In answer, I pulled her into the house, walked straight toward the bathroom, and turned the shower on. Once it was hot, I stepped into the shower fully clothed, pulling her right along with me.
Her body was shaking again, so I pulled her in tight once again, and waited another ten minutes until her body had stopped with the shaking before I reached for the shampoo and started to wash her hair.
I made a mental checklist in my head of the things that I would need to do to clean up after I’d taken care of the body.
Because I wasn’t calling the cops.
No. I called my brothers.
• • •
“Damn,” I heard Price say as he surveyed the scene. “How the hell?”
“Best guess? When she got hit in the chest with the helmet, it caused her heart to stop.” I jerked my chin toward the helmet that was lying next to where Abby’s body had once lain.
An hour ago, my brothers had arrived.
Twenty minutes ago, Easton had.
Five minutes ago, the body had been carted out in an old piece of furniture that was loaded into a box truck.
That box truck then had about fifteen other pieces of furniture loaded into it that were covered in blood in some way.
My brother had sent the furniture back to his warehouse where they would be decontaminated in the guise of removing Teller’s blood.