Page 30 of Bleeding Blackheart

“They were hers, Montana. But they’re not anymore. They belong to me. Not her. She died over ten years ago, and she’s not coming back. Nothing belongs to her anymore.”

My throat burns, and my eyes water. She’s been gone so long that I don’t even know why I still care. But I do. It hurts to think about her. It hurts to say her name and hear her laugh in my head and remember her smell.

Montana plays with a loose lock of her thick hair. “You don’t have to pretend like she never existed.”

I press on the gas a little more, going way faster than I should. “And you don’t have to pretend you give a shitabout her when you never met her. I don’t need or want your useless fucking sympathy.”

Montana sniffles, and then she turns away while she starts to cry again softly. She’s so damn emotional.

Seeing her cry shouldn’t upset me, but it does. I just wanted to push her buttons a bit, but I feel like I went a little too far. I’d apologize, but I don’t want to. I don’t want to show any weakness in front of her. It’ll just be a slippery slope into a closeness I’m not interested in having with her.

We ride another two and a half hours in silence, and when we get closer to Denver, I snap my fingers at her. “What’s the address to your friend’s place?”

Just like when she first mentioned it, she freezes up again, but then she takes a breath and tells it to me. “Will you bring a gun in with you?” She digs her short nails into her arm, and I pull her hand away, not wanting her to break the skin I’ve spent the past twenty-four hours trying to heal.

“He’s not gonna be in there, Montana.” She doesn’t mention her father often, but whenever we’re talking about him, she makes this face like he’s Michael Myers or something.

Her eyes water, and she bites her bottom lip. “But what if he is? What if he’s waiting for me there? What if hetries to capture me again?” Her voice shakes, and her eyes are somewhere off in the distance. Her little body starts trembling just like it does when she has her sleep terrors.

I pull her hand in mine just so she can stay in the moment with me. “He won’t be there, Montana. I swear. Nothing’s going to happen to you. I won’t let him take you.”

She squeezes my hand like a woman going into labor and shuts her eyes while she tries to catch her breath. I let her rest, clutching onto me until we arrive at the apartment building.

When I park in the garage, I let go of her hand. “If you want to wait here, I can go look for your things.”

Montana asked to come here, but I’m worried about how she’ll react if she goes back inside the place she was taken from.

My terrified fawn looks up at me and sits up straight, removing her seatbelt. “I wanna go in. Don’t leave me here alone.”

Securing my weapon on my hip, I get out of the truck and go to her side to help her, and she latches onto me like a child to their parent while we head to the front of the building.

The minute we step through the doors, I’m filled with dread.

This place feels like death. There’s a front desk, but no one’s present at it. Montana types some code into the call box that overrides it, and the elevator doors open to let us inside.

I can feel Montana’s anxiety dripping off her body into mine as if we’re one person. The elevator doors open, and she leads me five doors down until we’re standing in front of a door with a dent in it. I take a quick glance to see if there are any cameras and confirm there aren’t. I don’t even want to think about the shit that’s gone on up here that wasn’t caught on camera.

Montana’s right hand lifts to the keypad on the door, and it shakes violently over the numbers. I place my hand on her back, centering her. “What’s the code, honey?”

She keeps her eyes on the door that has no peephole and blurts it out to me. “Forty-seven, fifty-seven. Then hit pound. Twice.”

I punch it in exactly as she told me, and then I hear the door unlatch. Montana stands in front of it like a statue, and I grab her hand again, gripping it tightly while I turn the knob and push the silver door inward.

We step into the freezing cold room, and I shut the door behind us.

Montana’s eyes dart all around in shock at the empty place.

There’s not a damn thing in this apartment. No stove. No refrigerator. It’s just barren and dead. She runs ahead of me in her boots, and I follow behind her with my hand on my gun, ready to fire at anyone who may be lurking inside here.

She takes us into a bathroom in the master bedroom, and her eyes focus on something on the sink. An antique hairbrush, coated in blonde hair. I see her lips wobbling in the mirror, and she picks up the tool gingerly, looking at it like it’s an artifact. She bursts into tears out of nowhere, and she falls to her knees, sobbing with it in her hands.

What kind of man kills his daughter’s best friend? What kind of man puts a hit out on his own child? I look down at Montana while she shakes, and her tears start to soak her breasts and the top of her dress.

Seeing her like this wakes something up in me that died a long time ago, and I feel an ache in my bones like I’m feeling the pain with her. I was on my knees just like this. Except instead of a hairbrush, I was holding a pale, ice-cold hand.

Montana starts to whimper like an injured animal, and that’s when I can’t take it anymore. “Come on.” I tuck my hands under her arms, standing her up gently. She falls into my chest with the brush still in her hands, and I pluck it from her grasp and tuck it into my pocket.

Her tears soak my white shirt, and I wrap my arms around her, not knowing what else to do. All I can think about is how I never want her to feel this way again and how bad I want to make her father suffer.

---