Page 6 of Stolen Rival
She brushes me off with a cluck of her tongue. “Aye. Everyone else who’s robbed me blind.” She winks at me, her voice softening. “Just be careful, okay? I’ll be collecting my tenner in due course.” She pats my arm, and I believe her.
It ends up taking a couple of hours before I can make my great escape from Louth County Hospital. Bridie gets me a prescription for pain meds, antibiotics, and something to help me sleep from the doctors, and she stands over me to make sure I eat every bite of the disgusting hospital slop they call “food.”
“You need something in your stomach for all those tablets,” she lectures like she’s my own bloody granny. God rest her soul.
On the way home, I doze against the window, waking when the taxi driver’s gruff voice alerts me at the bottom of our driveway. There’s police caution tape holding the gates closed, and the driver gives me a guarded look in the rearview mirror. “Are ye sure this is the right place?”
Nodding, my stomach somewhere down at my feet, I clutch my paper bag of pills, hand over the money, and grunt my way out of the car.
He’s still waiting behind me as I shuffle to the gate.
Before leaving the hospital, all I wanted was to get home, crawl into my own bed, take a nap, and regroup. But as I fight with the caution tape to get inside, a cold shiver rolls through my bones, and now all I want to do is run.
Once I close the gate behind me, the taxi driver leaves, like he’s done his due diligence, and he can flee. Part of me wants to call him back.
With each slow step toward the house, the more noticeable the smell becomes. The unmistakable metallic tang of blood lingers in the air.
Gripping the handrail leading up to the front door, I close my eyes as another barrage of bullets and screaming assaults my ears. Hopefully the blood I smell is the bad guys, and once I get down to the safe room, Da and my brothers will be there, alive and well, and we can figure out who the fuck needs to pay for shooting me in the gut.
As though it heard me, my wound starts to throb. Both of them. The one on my head hurts more than my side. Despite having missed all the major organs, my injury is causing much more trouble than I expected. Who knew you used every muscle in your body to even breathe?
Fuck. This is brutal.
But I don’t think I could stand Bridie’s smugness if I took my arse back to the hospital now and admitted she was right.
The only way is forward.
There’s more caution tape over the front door. I rip it down on both sides and let it float to the ground. This is my house. I don’t need fucking caution to enter my own home. A shudder rolls through my bones telling me otherwise.
I’ve never really believed in the paranormal, but as I’m staring down the door of my childhood house, I don’t feel alone. At the same time, I don’t feel under threat. It’s as though I’m surrounded by people who know and love me, even if I can’t see them.
Hot tears spring to my eyes. I’m imagining things, jumping to the worst-case scenario. There’s a rational, logical reason why none of my immediate family are answering their phones. Once I walk through this door, it’ll all be fine.
Except it’s not fine.
I’ve never seen so much blood in my whole twenty years of being on this earth. The horror takes my breath away, and the twisted beauty of how the blood makes patterns on the walls churns my stomach. Who knew blood started to smell after only twenty-four hours? I’m learning all kinds of things on this fucked up journey of mine.
Shuffling farther into the house calling out my family members’ names does nothing. The safe room isn’t just empty. The door is open and has an angry red handprint on it with an aggressive sweep of blood, like someone clung to the door but was pulled away.
Another shudder rolls through me.
I could try to convince myself it’s not my family’s blood, but my gut knowsbetter.
My family is dead.
Panic scorches through me like hellfire. Did they get to Cathal in the care home?
Closing my eyes again, I take some slow breaths, finally allowing my heavy, hot tears to stream down my face.
Five minutes.
I’ll let myself cry for five minutes.
Once those five minutes are up, I’ll go into the laundry room and grab my go bag, a car key, and call Uncle Barry. Da might have kept me out of the business side of his life, but healwaysmade sure the whole family had bags ready to go in case of an emergency. And that we kept them up to date. Passports, important paperwork, a cash float, a few days’ worth of clothes. Even though it was annoying at the time, I’m grateful that Da had us update them every few months. It means I don’t have to rely on my obsession with true crime and suspense novels, or the internet to get me through figuring out a bag at this moment.
After that, I’ll get in the car, play some boss-bitch music, and figure out who the fuck I need to destroy. Because between my sobs of grief, flickers of white-hot rage vibrate inside my body.
Someone’s going to pay for this.
