Page 8 of Twisted Truths
More police tape covers the front door, but I don’t look atit; I can’t pull my eyes away from the massive blood stain on the front porch. I stumble, Levi’s arms shooting out to catch me, righting me before I can fall to my knees. Paul bled out right there.
“You don’t have to do this,” Levi croaks out. I don’t miss the waver in his voice.
Shoving him off, I circle the house to the backdoor. The back step creaks beneath my weight, and I draw in a deep breath as I turn the handle, slowly pushing open the door.
I’m not sure what I expect; Mum to be bustling about in the kitchen, or Rylan racing out of his room begging me to play ball with him, but the house is eerily silent. There’s no sweet aroma of freshly baked cookies or muffins. Instead, there’s a cloying coppery odour. My stomach churns knowing it’s their blood.
I scan the kitchen—it’s too clean, but nothing appears out of place—before proceeding to the dark corridor that leads to the bedrooms. A wave of nausea hits me, knowing Levi found Zara in her childhood bedroom. A note saying, ‘Forgive me’, had been scribbled in an open notebook on her desk, but I refuse to believe she didn’t write it under duress. There’s no way she did this.
Unable to face entering her room just yet, I head to the front of the house, to the living room. The moment I step inside, I wish I hadn’t. My eyes go straight to the two large stains on the carpet next to each other. Mum and Rylan.
This time, my legs give way, unable to hold my body any longer. My shoulders shake as I fall apart. This isn’t fair. Why them? Tears blur my vision, the weight of my grief crushing me. Everything about this is wrong, so impossibly wrong.
Rylan’s laughter echoes through my head, and I feel the tug of his small hands on my shirt as he tries to get my attention, his bright eyes full of life. Now all that’s left is the hauntingimage of his blood staining the carpet, and I can’t … I can’t escape it. A strangled sob rips from me, the sound so raw and guttural in the cold, suffocating silence.
Levi’s muttered curse barely registers as he appears in the doorway behind me. He crosses the room and tries to pull me to my feet, but I shove him away.
He grabs my arm again, tugging. “You don’t need to see this,” he pleads with me. “Come on, man. Let’s get out of here.”
“No!” I shout, wrenching my arm from his grip and shoving him away again. Staring down at the matching stains, I shake my head. “I’m not … I can’t … I won’t fucking leave them.”
My breathing comes in short, shallow gasps. I stare down at the spot where my mother tried to save my little brother. My entire world has been upended, shattered, and I have nothing left but questions and unbearable pain.
“Nash—”
“Ziggy didn’t do this,” I choke out. “She wouldn’t do this.”
She escaped. She ran from them. She got away.
“I know,” Levi says, trying for a third time to pull me to my feet. This time, I let him.
“We need to find the bastards who did this,” I say, my body trembling as he pulls me back through the kitchen and out of the house of horrors. “They’re going to pay for taking my family away from me.”
“We’ll talk to Shane and see what information he can give us,” Levi says, his eyes hardening. “We can go from there.”
Swallowing down my pain, guilt, and anger, I nod and follow him back down the drive. “They won’t give us anything. You know as well as I do, they’re corrupt. Why do you think they haven’t shut down Sunfire Circle and run Ignatius Solomon and his band of fucked up crazies out of townalready? Because he’s lining their pockets to make them look the other way.”
“Not everyone’s on the take.” We get in the car and Levi does a U-turn to head back towards town. “We can trust Shane.”
I’m not sure I believe him, but I don’t voice my concerns. I’ve been gone for six years, so Levi knows how this town runs better than I do. If he says we can trust Shane, I have to take his word for it.
Confusion washes over me as Levi pulls up in front of Whitmore House Café instead of the police station, and I’m ready to argue with him as he drags me inside, but then I spot Shane Elliot sitting at a square table in the back corner. He must have just come off the nightshift. With his back to the wall, his tired eyes dart around the café as if he’s expecting trouble.
I stride over and pull out the chair opposite him. “Shane.”
“Nash,” he greets me grimly. “Sorry to see you back here under these circumstances.”
Not knowing what to say in response, I simply nod.
Levi takes the seat in between us, and Shane eyes him warily. “You’re causing me a lot of headaches, you know that?”
He shrugs. “Your head would be fine if you did your job and shut down the Circle.”
Shane sighs. “If only that were true.”
“Zara didn’t do it,” I say, interrupting them and getting straight to the point.
“The evidence says otherwise.”
