Page 7 of Time to Bounce

“Mom said y’all were playing outside near the wall. She had eyes on y’all the entire time. One second, she saw you and Mary Beth, and the next, y’all were gone,” he reminded me.

Mom, Dad and the authorities didn’t know how it’d happened—at least that was what they told me.

The kidnapping had taken place near an area that didn’t have cameras.

Some of the officers had suggested that maybe she’d fallen in the water like me and died.

But there’d been a sighting of her getting on a commercial airplane a few days later, and then nothing.

“I hate this,” I said to Gavrel.

He smoothed his hand along my hair. “We’ll find her one day, Athena. I promise.”

We would.

I wouldn’t stop until we did.

I am looking to rehome myself. I’m tired of adulting. I’m house broken.

—Athena’s secret thoughts

ATHENA

Boom.

Boom.

Boom.

Boom.

Boom.

Boom.

The six-gun salute had me jolting with each blast of the gun.

“Ma’am.”

I looked up to see the assistant chief of the Dallas Police Department standing in front of me.

I blinked, wondering how I’d missed him walking up to me.

“This is for you,” he placed the flag in my lap. “I want to thank you, thank your brother, for giving it all.”

My brother had fought in the war in Afghanistan. He’d been to Pakistan and spent six months there.

He’d been to Kuwait, Japan, and Germany, all with his stints in the military.

He came home, joined the DPD, and died within a week of being out of orientation.

I was so lost.

My one constant in life… and he was just gone.

My mother, who was dead silent next to me, looked like she was a shell of the person she used to be.

A shell of the person she was before she and my dad had been shot with me in Dad’s arms.

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