Page 26 of The Eleventh Hour

“What’s so special about Hurricane?”

I glance at Dane and shrug. “Well, this is where Louis was born, and let’s face it, all the answers begin and end with him. Louis would have been the last person to see your brother.”

Rafael inhales quickly. “We haven’t been able to find any of that out.”

“It's not common knowledge.” I scrape my hair over my shoulder and watch as the merry-go-round starts to turn. The rusted metal creaks, a sinister song that makes the hairs on my arms lift.

Dane glares at the creaking metal and pauses when the powerful smell of smoke wafts past us.

“This is not amusing. You shouldn’t use children as scare tactics,” Dane growls.

“I’m not laughing.” I shoot back, but I frown. Dane can smell it, too? Is it real? I want to ask more, but I clamp down and scowl at the creaking metal slowly doing rotations.

“So, he was born here?” Rafael frowns.

“Yes, for all the good it’s doing me, I can’t find anything else. He doesn’t exist.”

“How do you know, then?”

“Because I was going to marry the son of a bitch,” I snap. “Just trust me!”

I walk and stop beside the slide, bending down to pick up my backpack from underneath, where I’d hidden it. I put my arms through the straps and heft the weight.

Dane walks towards me and stops. He bends over and clears some grass away from two concrete tombstones.

“They died here.” He sounds so surprised.

“I try to make it a habit not to lie about death.”

Dane grabs my wrist and squeezes. A flutter of something, rage, anxiety, intense awareness, presses in on me. I look up into his eyes. They are almost black in the darkening sky. And still I can’t find it in me to fear him.

“Tell us who you really are.”

I smile, letting him see the cold, dead person I am inside. “You know who I am, Dane Galbraith. I’m just another dead person walking around waiting to die.”

I pull my wrist free and head for the fence line.

“Where are we going?” Rafael asks.

“Gotta give you two a tour of Hurricane, don’t I? Show you where he grew up.”

We walk silently until the fence comes into view. Rafael sidles up beside me. He opens his mouth several times, and I brace myself, but when the question comes, it surprises me.

“What was he like?”

I take a moment to think about how to answer him, and then decide to give him the raw truth.

“He was…fun. Louis laughed, and it was contagious. He was attentive, driven, soft-spoken, and far too smart. Oh, yes, Louis Falcon was a man who turned your world upside down without you even realising it.” My mind turns inwards, but I fight to stop it.

“He was, on paper, unremarkable,” Rafael points out.

I laugh softly. “He was anything but, I’ve read what it says, too. It sounds boring until you’re with him, and then he’s like magic.”

Dane grunts and climbs over the fence. I stay where I am for a minute.

“He was smart,” I whisper, and I can still feel the pain in my voice. “I was a fool.”

Rafael watches me carefully. “I need to find my brother. I need to know what happened between them before Terrance disappeared.”

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