Page 15 of Whiskey and Whispers
The group would be much smaller than the party last night. Just the core friends who had all gone to high school together. It would be nice to spend time with them in a more informal setting. Even with the friends who hadn’t left town, he didn’t get to spend much time with them. Everyone was busy with jobs and kids.
Except me. I don’t have any kids.
That hadn’t been the plan. When he and Cat had been dating, they’d both said they wanted a couple of kids. They’d planned to have them young, too, right after they finished college.
But Cat hadn’t finished college. She’d flown off to exotic locations to be a supermodel.
Shit, I sound bitter. I’m not. I’m glad she found success. I truly am.
Tate only wished that she’d handled their breakup a bit better. But they’d both basically been kids. They hadn’t known shit about the world or how actions could have repercussions years later. He couldn’t be angry with her for living in the moment.
And it had been her moment. To shine, that is. He’d always known she was special. Now the world knew it, too. He didn’t want to be that guy who begrudged his girlfriend an amazing career. He’d been happy for her, even when it hurt.
If she were in attendance this morning, he’d make a point to pull her aside and apologize for being an asshole last night. Yes, she should have reached out. But it didn’t mean that she was a horrible person. She’d just been young. They both had. Her apology had hit him the wrong way last night.
In the distance, he could hear sirens - faint but growing louder. He reached to turn the radio down and glanced in the rearview mirror. Blue and red lights flashed as two police cars and an ambulance came up behind him. Pulling to the side of the road, he watched as they flew passed, in a big hurry to get where they were going.
And that was the thing…
There weren’t many houses down this road. Seven or eight, maybe? Including Josh and Rachel. They’d purposefully built out here, where the lots were large and they had more privacy. The dogs could run around, and Josh could park his boat in his oversized garage.
A pit had formed at the bottom of his stomach, and a deep sense of foreboding had taken up residence in his brain. Without a second thought, he pulled back onto the road, accelerating as he neared his friends’ home.
He could see the flashing lights and the emergency vehicles in Josh and Rachel’s driveway. Finn, the local sheriff, was standing near the mailbox, and a small group of Tate’s friendshad gathered, huddled together close by. The EMTs were kneeling next to a body that he couldn’t identify from where he’d parked his vehicle.
When he stepped out, Winnie ran over and threw her arms around him with an audible sob.
“He was shot. I can’t believe this is happening. He was shot.”
That pit in his stomach clenched painfully tight. Winslow Heights wasn’t completely crime-free - it wasn’t Mayberry - but people being shot wasn’t a common occurrence.
“Glen was shot?”
Winnie looked up at him, her tear-stained expression confused.
“Glen? No, it’s not Glen. He’s inside with Josh and Rachel. They’re so upset. It’s Tyler. Tyler was shot. I think he might be dead.”
Tyler?
He’d only been spending the night because his parents were remodeling their house. And somehow he’d been gunned down at some point between the end of the party and this morning?
It didn’t make any sense. He didn’t even live in Winslow Heights.
Something had gone wildly wrong.
And one of his friends might be dead.
The whole scene was surreal.
Tate watched as Tyler was loaded into the back of an ambulance, the back doors slamming shut loudly, and the EMTs driving away with the sirens blaring. He was alive but barely, probably needing surgery to stem the ocean of abdominalbleeding that had left a reddish-brown puddle at the end of the driveway.
“He was talking,” Rachel asked to no one in particular, clinging to Josh, her face wet with tears. “That’s a good sign, right?”
“Of course, it is,” Lindsay said. “Tyler’s going to be fine.”
Josh’s face was ashen, his gaze fixed somewhere in the distance. Tate wondered if his friend was in a state of shock.
“It could have been you,” Larry said. “You could have been shot.”
