Worth the Risk (12 page)

Hannah bolted awake Monday morning, heart racing, body shivering from a chill brought by clinging memories, not cold. She noted each and every object around her room, a trick she’d been taught to ground herself in reality. The horse figurine on the dresser. A farm print on the log wall above it.

She’d told Mia she didn’t remembered
more.
That was the truth. She couldn’t remember more when she remembered everything. Blessing or curse, it mostly only came to her in dreams. But dreams came at night, in the dark. Alone.

Sharp, defined, and in stark color. Unimaginable pain. The metallic scent of her own blood. The taste of it in her mouth and the sound of it dripping onto the floor along with the feeling her skin was being peeled from her bones. And the worst, the squeak of the door that told her he was coming. Not knowing what he would do next and the white-hot pain when she jerked away from his touch.

She shuddered, the past so vivid she could still feel it. Still hear her own screams. And the silence, when it was so bad she couldn’t even do that. When she prayed for it to end.

Wrapping her arms tighter around her knees, she rocked, imagined Stephen’s arms around her, protecting her. But he wasn’t and wouldn’t be, so instead she tried to count the colorful shapes of the quilt that lay in a heap on the floor. Her eyes made another pass around the room and the nightmare loosened its grip. She rose and dressed, knowing the thing that would calm her most was in the pasture.

The silver light of dawn illuminated the familiar path to the barn. This was the place that had drawn her out of the darkest corners of her mind until she’d decided she would live again. That she could and even wanted to. Now she would spend her life bringing other children out of the dark. Give them joy and purpose. She’d do it for them and for herself. Today was the day she’d make sure of it.

She reached the first turnout paddock and whistled. Winnie raised her head and trotted over. A sudden rush of love and emotion filled her eyes.

The palomino followed her along the rail and was waiting at the gate when Hannah came out the back of the barn. She saddled and rode, just the two of them in the quiet of early morning. A gift from her brothers on her eighteenth birthday, Winnie had been a symbol of her healing at a time when a normal girl would have been graduating and spreading her wings. Instead hers had been clipped years earlier and she hadn’t wanted to fly. Or feel or talk or eat. So deep inside herself she’d been numb.

Now she focused on the rhythm of Winnie’s footsteps, noted each type of tree she passed and the deer prints left in the dewy grass. She rocked in the saddle, desperate for comfort, and willed it all to crowd out the memories as it had so many times. Tried to forget what it felt like to have Stephen touch her, look at her with desire. Forgot what it had felt like to think Stephen might actually…what? Want her?
Love
her?

It was all too fresh to block out. Her past all sharp and new from the nightmare, memories of Stephen too strong. Even as she rode and talked to Winnie, she felt strangely disconnected from the world as if she weren’t really there.

The sun was fully up by the time she returned and Lexie was already busy mucking stalls. “Hey, girl. Early ride?”

“Yep.” Hannah turned with the saddle to hide her splotchy face and swollen eyes. “I have a meeting in the city. Should be back by lunch.”

“All right,” Lexie answered and went about her chores.

She felt a twinge of guilt at not telling Lexie what was going on, but decided against it. In a few hours, it would no longer be an issue. She hoped.

Exhausted instead of energized, she barely felt the hot water from the shower. Dressed and brushed her hair like she was in a fog. She had the deed to the property in the Bradleys’ name and the handwritten letter. Double-checking the downtown address one last time, she grabbed the envelope on the counter and started out.

Driving was a bad time for the mind to wander and analyze. She flipped through radio stations, but the more she tried to hold off the past, the harder the memories came, bombarding her until her head pounded with the old questions. How could she not have seen it? What was wrong with her that she couldn’t see the core of people? Had there been signs someone else would have seen? Would they have felt a warning of evil before it was too late?

A car honked and she brought her eyes up to the green light. Was she supposed to turn here? Keep going straight? With a line of cars behind her, she didn’t have time to sit and think about it.

Twenty-one hundred Central Avenue South. She repeated the address in her mind.

Her chest felt tight, squeezed. She turned right and right again, but instead of circling back, she hit a one-way street. The car was suddenly too small, closing in around her like a box. Were the numbers going up or down? A glance at the clock told her she had less than fifteen minutes. Still had to park, and walk.

She strained to read the street signs, but they passed in a blur. Buchannon? Buckman? She didn’t recognize either. Her upper lip grew damp and she cranked up the air. She couldn’t be late. She couldn’t lose this land.

But she saw
his
eyes,
his
hands. An ice pick. A blade. The smells. The pain.
Please don’t touch me. Don’t touch me!

She turned again and a sharp ringing split her ears. Tiny starbursts on black flashed in her vision. Her heart raced and she struggled to take a deep breath. No. She was fine, it was just anxiety. She could breathe.

Ten minutes. She shouldn’t be going over a river. Lost. She was lost. Never going to make it in time. She slowed, made a U-turn, and as she did the buildings on her right wavered in and out of focus, while the ones on the left were sharp, overly defined. Sweat dripped between her breasts at the same time she had the sensation of ice-cold liquid dripping through her veins.

Forcing her eyes straight ahead, she drove through two more lights. Her chest hurt, her insides were shaking apart. She knew what to do. Tried to slow it down, take deep breaths.

Mia. Where was Mia’s office? It felt like she was moving too fast, but cars flew past on either side.

She pulled off and through a parking lot. Stopped in front of a building she recognized. Even walking felt strange, like there was nothing solid under her feet.

Her hand skimmed along the cool brick of the hallway. Through a door.

The receptionist counter wavered and there was nothing to hold on to. “I need to see the doctor.”

“Your name?”

Another door, the knob cold in her hand.

“Miss, you can’t go back there.”

“No, I can’t. I need—”

The narrow hallway stretched out in front of her longer and longer.

Nothing to hold on to.

“Hannah?”

Mia, but she couldn’t get to her. Moving, but not getting closer. Disconnected. She couldn’t breathe.

“Call 911.”

Mia’s voice, but it felt like a dream.

“Hannah. Hold my hand. Breathe.”

“I can’t breathe.”

“I’m okay, Nick. Don’t look so worried.”

Her brother sat in a chair beside her in a partitioned-off section of the ER. Elbows on his knees, head down, just as she’d seen him in too many hospitals, too many times before. And she was sorry for it.

“I’m not.”

A smile pulled at her lips. “It’s a sin to lie.”

He sighed. “Does this have anything to do with the other night?”

“No.” Nick had stopped by hours after Stephen left. Hours after she broke the mirror. And now she was the liar.

“You can talk to me, you know. If you’re having a hard time or…whatever.”

“Yeah? Like I could talk to you about getting my period? Or buying tampons?”

Nick’s face screwed up at the memory and the tension eased. “Really. I’m fine. I was on my way to the meeting with the city this morning and—”

“What meeting?”

Well, shit.
“Something about the property I needed to take care of. Anyway, I got lost and I guess I got upset. But I’m fine now. I want to go home.”

He’d heard that last bit before. At least this time she wasn’t begging and crying after weeks, months, of being confined to a hospital room.

“Okay.” He stood, patted her hand awkwardly. “I’ll get the doctor.”

“Nick?”

He stopped and turned at the door. “Yeah?”

“Please don’t worry.”

He gave the tiniest nod and left the room.

Damn it.
Just when she decided to step up and step out on her own, and now her brothers would be more worried than ever. One minute she’d been noting street signs and the next…she’d just lost it. Her heart rate was fine now, the chill gone. She knew what had happened, the why and the how, but it didn’t make her feel less stupid. Didn’t make her less the weak little sister to four ultra-strong brothers.

The heavy door cracked open and Mia’s face filled the gap. “Hey. How’s the patient?”

“Good.”

“Rough day, huh.” Mia sat on the edge of the bed and took her hand, so much more at ease than Nick had been. “I guess you know you had a severe panic attack.”

“Yes.”

“That’s not unusual after all you’ve been through. Honestly, I’m surprised it hasn’t happened before.”

Hannah rolled the edge of the scratchy sheet between her fingers and Mia let out a heavy sigh over the silence. “It has happened before. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I thought I was just having a moment. Doesn’t everyone have moments?” She made a weak attempt at a smile.

Mia gave her a look that said,
You know better
.

“I haven’t had one since I’ve been seeing you. Haven’t had a bad one in several years.”

“Do you have any idea what brought it on?”

“I had a nightmare.” Hours after I spilled my guts to a man I thought might mean something.

The hospital door flew open and Nick stepped through like a dark storm. “No one knows where the damn doctor is. But as soon as I—”

Her brother froze, drew in a sharp breath like he’d been punched in the stomach, and let it out on one word. “Mia.”

And it just got worse. As far as she knew, Nick and Mia hadn’t seen each other in ten years. Another thing that had ended because of her.

Stephen barely registered the noise coming from outside his office door as the reports he stared at blurred. Seconds later it came
through
his office. Nick Walker, looking like a man going into the ring.

“What the hell did you do to my sister?”

Stephen stood and came around his desk. “What are you talking about?”

“First I find her crying her eyes out and today she ends up in the hospital freaked out of her fucking mind!” Nick gave him a two-handed shove and his voice dropped to a growl. “What the hell did you do?”

His stomach tightened painfully and a million possibilities raced through his mind. “She’s in the hospital? Where?”

“Like I’d tell you.”

Matt strode calmly into Stephen’s office, past his concerned admin, hovering at the threshold. “Problem?”

“I’m warning you,” Nick said, ignoring Matt and stabbing a finger at his chest.

Matt uncrossed his arms and shifted closer.

“No.” Stephen held up his hand against Matt’s intervention. He’d earned the man’s anger.

Nick closed his hands into fists and stepped back, looking at Stephen like he was too disgusting to touch.

He knew Hannah was upset, had been racking his brain all night and day for what he could say to make up for not saying a damn thing when he should have, but…she was in the hospital? “What happened?”

“None of your fucking business. She’s fine, she’s home. And she sure as hell doesn’t need you. Stay the hell away from my sister,” Nick spat, and stormed out of the office the same way he’d come in.

A moment of silence passed as the tension in the room dropped a notch.

“Another brother?” Matt asked, closing the door.

“Yeah.”

“Damn, dude. How many brothers does this girl have?”

“Four.”

“Well, you’re halfway through. You planning on pissing them off one by one?”

Stephen didn’t answer, just moved to the wet bar and poured himself a drink. He’d fought it, kept the minibar in here just to prove he
could
fight it. But he was done.

“Little early, isn’t it?”

“Nope.” Stephen raised the glass. “Little late, maybe.” He looked into his glass then stared out at the sky and pictured Hannah. She’d been so pale, so clammy when he’d touched her before she threw him off. He’d wanted to stop her pain, comfort her. But his feet hadn’t moved. The right words hadn’t come out.

And he’d wanted to kill someone. Still did. That monster he’d discovered inside himself reared its head.

Stephen spun and heaved the glass across the room. It shattered and the amber liquid dripped down the floor-to-ceiling windows. He was as helpless to stop it as he’d been at stopping Hannah’s tears. Exhausted, he leaned back against his desk, hands on his thighs.

Matt didn’t react other than to stand beside him and clap a hand on the back of his neck. He gave a squeeze of support. “Talk to me, man.”

Stephen’s chest felt too tight. His eyes and nose burned. The memories he wanted to drink away only crystallized. He’d never told anyone about the stupid fight he’d had with his fiancée just before she was murdered. Wasn’t sure why he felt the need to now. Stephen stared at his feet, at Matt’s right next to them, and shook his head as the past invaded the present.

“She didn’t want me to go to Brian’s bachelor party. She didn’t say it right out, that wasn’t her way, but I was already traveling so much, and…I snapped at her. I don’t know why, and we fought. I left without even saying I loved her.”

He’d called her the next day to apologize. And continued calling, thinking maybe she was ignoring him, maybe she was more pissed than he’d thought.

But when his phone finally rang, it was his dad. He needed to come home. Now. Those four hours on a flight from Vegas to Virginia were the longest of his life.

He’d soon found out there would be longer. Much longer.

“I didn’t feel anything. No sense something was wrong. No sense she was gone. Nothing.” He looked up at his brother. “How could I not feel something?”

Matt didn’t answer.

There was no answer. Not then, and not now. The only thing clear to him was that someone was going to die. And he was going to kill them.

He’d snapped in the courtroom, jumped the rail and gotten to one of them. Hands around his neck, squeezing, finally doing what he’d dreamed of. He’d felt the blows from the guards, the baton on his back and head. Heard the shouts, his mother crying. None of it mattered except the bulging eyes of that piece of shit who’d murdered the woman he’d loved. He wanted to see his fear. Wanted to feel the life drain out of him. To hell with the consequences. To hell with God and his laws.

“I wanted to kill him.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Only because you stopped me.” Because Matt was the only one in that room who could have stopped him. He’d tackled him, pried him off. And there’d been many hours, sitting in the dark, drink in hand, when he’d hated his brother for that.

“I would have killed him with my bare hands without one ounce of remorse. It’s near enough the same thing.”

“No. It isn’t at all the same thing.” Matt’s eyes met his in a level stare. “I’ve killed.”

“But you didn’t get any joy from it.”

“God bless, Stephen, you haven’t
killed
anyone!” Matt raised his hands like he wanted to shake him.

“But I want to, and the difference is a very thin line.”

“A line I think many people walk. The woman you loved was hacked to pieces, for God’s sake. Hell,
I
wanted to kill him.”

“But do you still? Do you dream of it? Spend hours imagining how you would do it? Do you practically get hard fantasizing about torturing someone?” His family probably thought he’d turned to alcohol out of grief, or so he wouldn’t think about the crime-scene photos. They’d be wrong. He drank until he passed out to shut his mind off against his own depraved thoughts, so graphic, so perverted, no Hollywood horror could ever come close. He turned to stare out the glass at nothing. “It almost destroyed me before.”

And what had finally begun to dim had been revived by Hannah. “Fuck, Matt. If you could have seen her face, describing the things he did to her.”

“Who?
Hannah?
”

Stephen nodded. He’d been flattened. Crushed. Tossed back to his absolute darkest days. But at the same time he was there, in the present with Hannah. “It was bad. So bad I could see it. The blood on her body, the slashes. It was so much like before, only worse, more. She told me and I left.”

He looked down at his hands. Seeing her like that, hearing the words, broke him apart inside just when he was starting to feel not broken. “I don’t know if I can do this again.”

“It’s not again. Hannah is alive. And I have a feeling she needs you as much as you need her.”

He doubted that very much.